Are You Legalistic?
Grace, Obedience, and Antinomianismby Robert G. Spinney
Are You Legalistic? Grace, Obedience,and AntinomianismISBN 0-9776680-7-X1st EditionCopyright © 2007 by Robert G. SpinneyAll rights reserved.TULIP BOOKSP.O. Box 481Hartsville, TN 37074 USAwww.tulipbooks.comAll Scripture quotations are from theNew American Standard Bible© The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971,1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.
Though antinomianism and legalism are, from onestandpoint, opposite poles of error, there is theologi-cally, and often in experience, a link between them: for both proceed on the same false assumption, that the oneand only purpose of law-keeping is to gain righteous-ness with God. Thus the legalist goes about to establishhis own righteousness, while the antinomian, rejoicingin the free gift of righteousness by faith, sees no reasonto keep the law anymore.
J. I. Packer,
God’s Words: Studies in Key BibleThemes
, p. 104I formerly served as a professor at a conservative Christiancollege. Perhaps three-fourths of my students had been rearedin evangelical homes and attended Bible-believing churches. Irecall one day in an American history class when we werestudying the New England Puritans. My students had readEdmund Morgan’s
The Puritan Dilemma
, a delightful biographyof John Winthrop that discusses the Massachusetts BayColony’s founding in the early 1600s.For those who think that starting a community from scratchmust necessarily look like one of television’s
Survivor
episodes,the Puritan story is amazing indeed. These godly men andwomen relocated to a barren wilderness, embarking upon a taskthey regarded as a holy experiment. While not endorsing every-thing that every Puritan said and did, I nonetheless explained tomy students why I regard many of the Puritans as spiritualgiants. J. I. Packer’s right: we need the Puritans today becausethey display a spiritual maturity that is exceedingly rare.(Packer makes this case in his superb book
A Quest For Godli-ness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life
.)But I could tell during our class discussion that despiteMorgan’s favorable biography of Winthrop, my students did
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