All right, good morning, everyone. Nice to see you, as always. Let's begin with prayer. Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for this day. Thank you for your grace, your mercy, and your kindness towards us in Christ. Thank you, Lord, for the forgiveness of sins and the hope of heaven. Lord, we ask that you would please strengthen us this morning by your grace and to help us, Lord, to look to the things of your kingdom, of your word, to forget those things of this world and our day-to-day toils and troubles, but to focus upon that which you've set before us in Scripture, that we may come to a fuller and better understanding of who you are and who we are in Christ, and that in turn we would follow you more closely and grow in gratitude and love for you and in obedience to you. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. All right, last week we left off at the beginning of chapter four, which asks us the question, what is legalism? And I want to kind of start there this morning and get your understanding of, if someone were to ask you, what's legalism, what would you say? This is the part where you guys talk. She's looking back into the book. Okay, let's see. All right, we'll just give the different answers here. Absence of grace, that's an interesting one. What was it you said? Earning salvation. All right, what else we got? Have you ever been called a legalist? No? You think so? What do you think was meant when the person said that to you? Don't judge me. The most popular verse in the Bible, don't judge me. A funny mentalist? I'll put that with judgmental. Oh, there you go. That's a good one. Mm-hmm it kind of goes in with the the judgmental self-righteous kind of thing Yeah, yeah, which is good which is you know Really? I think the the attitude of humility that we're called to is just to recognize that. Yeah. Well, we're sinners before before Holy God ourselves Gerhardus Voss, the great Reformed theologian, gives a definition of legalism which I think is helpful to our discussion today. He says that legalism lacks the supreme sense of worship. It obeys, but it does not adore. And no deeper notes of adoration have ever been struck than by those inspired by the Reformed faith. No finer fruit of the lips making confession to God's name has ever been placed upon the Christian altar. There he's upping the kudos to the reformed faith. So he says that legalism lacks the supreme sense of worship. It obeys, but it does not adore. Sinclair Ferguson answers the question, the generic answer of what is legalism, from evangelical Christians would probably be something like trying to earn your salvation by doing good works. But around and underneath that, there gathers a web that extends more widely, which is woven intricately and invisibly to trap the unwary. Let's go back to the beginning. Let's go back to the book of Genesis, to the first, the opening chapters. If legalism is, you know, there's crass legalism, which would be earning salvation by works. We may have run into crass legalists who say that, yes, our works, at least in some way, do play a role in our final justification or in our salvation, whether, you know, various examples can be given. That would be crass legalists. A legalist in that sense would be someone who says, yes, Grace plus works, or Christ plus something else, or like the Judaizers, Christ plus circumcision, what have you. Christ plus your dedication to the church. Christ plus whatever, anything else. That would be a kind of crass legalism, or as basically every other religion in the world is, yeah, it's, you know, your good works outweigh your bad works in one way, shape, or form. But if we go back to the If we think about that, if we think about legalism in that sense, and we go back to the beginning, what do we see? What are some of the thoughts that come to your mind when you read those opening chapters of the book of Genesis? What's God doing? He's creating the world. And on each of the days, he creates a different aspect of the world. And what does he say? It's good. It's good. Then he creates man. And what does he say of man? Or before that. Very good. Very good. And then he creates male and female, and then what does he do? What does he do? I know you guys know this story. He challenges them? You take that as a challenge? You're on to something. Yes. Commands. Yeah. He creates the garden. He plants the garden. He puts them in it. He says, be fruitful and multiply. Take dominion over the earth. Basically what they were tasked with doing, they'd been given all these good things. They were created good. They were in a right relationship with God. They'd been blessed and given good commands that were for their benefit, that were for their good, that were for the glory of God. And they were tasked with basically expanding the borders of the garden over the entire earth. Those commands were good. and says that He blessed them and He told them, do this, do this, don't do this one thing, and if you do this one thing. So those commands, they were good. So what does that tell us about God's law and God's commands to us? They're good. They're good. They're blessings to us. They're for our benefit. They're for our good. They don't come from, a stingy God, a God who's keeping things from us. So we think about that in that context. We think about the creation of man, placed in the garden, given good commands, blessed by God with those commands, having a right and good and loving and kind relationship. God has been so good and beneficent and kind to create man in his own image, to have fellowship, to meet with him, to give him the earth, to give man a wife and promises. There's nothing but the beneficence and the graciousness and the loving kindness and the goodness of God is on display in this relationship, including with those commands. And then who comes into the picture? the deceiver, what does he do? He does. And in doing those things, what is he saying about God? What is he saying about God's laws? but they're not good. Keeping something from you. That you can be so much more than you are. I mean, he's undermining the character of God. He's undermining the law of God. And what is he saying in particular about God's commands to man? Those don't come to you from a loving father creator. He's keeping something from you. Those things are like a burden on you. That is the spirit behind legalism and antinomianism. One and the same. Because what's Eve's response? She's deceived. Her response is antinomianism. Yes, these commands, they're not good. They're not for my benefit. They don't come to me. My relationship with God isn't that of a loving father who cares for me and is looking for my good and is wanting to bless me. I'm going to break those commands. But she, first of all, said that, no, he didn't say that. God didn't say not to eat of that, you know, that they didn't. Because he said, no, you can't eat of the fruit. He said, no, just of this one tree. So she responded properly, but she didn't act in that way. Right. She didn't obey God's command. Which is antinomianism. She put the command aside. And she added to God's command. Don't even touch it. Yeah, you can put up a corridor and obscure the sun. Yeah, so I think what we're doing in looking at this instance from the garden is seeing really what the spirit is behind both legalism and antinomianism. Because in both, there's the attitude of, boy, these are really burdensome commands. My relationship to God is one of a burden placed upon me. These commands, they're not They're not born out of a love for me from God. And the legalist takes up that burden, the antinomian, and sets it aside. That's a really important distinction for us to make going forward with the whole Christ and our understanding of legalism and antinomianism. Because again, what we're talking about in the whole Christ is the offer of the gospel, and that it is a completely and totally gracious offer, that our salvation is all of grace, and that what we're given and what we're offering to Christ in the gospel and what we have in Christ in the gospel is all of Christ. It's not just benefits. It's Christ and he is the center of our salvation and of what we have in the gospel. And the response to that, think about the response to that of the graciousness of the call of the gospel and of Christ offered in the gospel. Particularly think about the objections that are answered or that are anticipated and answered by the Apostle Paul. When people hear the gospel, When they hear that, look, there's nothing you can do, but it was all done for you by Christ. How do people tend to respond to that? I can do whatever I want. I can do whatever I want. And Paul anticipates that answer. And I can't remember who it was that said it, but I think there's truth in it. If you're a gospel minister who hasn't been accused of antinomianism, it's probably because you're not preaching the gospel. Because the gospel says to us, it has all been done for you by Christ. You cannot do it for yourself, and it is offered to you freely. Take freely from the waters of everlasting life. Take my yoke upon you. I'm gentle, I'm lowly of heart. Is that really the good news? Yes. The good news really is good news. Though you deserve damnation, everlasting damnation and destruction, you're being given everlasting life and made an inheritor of the kingdom of God and made a son of God completely because of what someone else has done for you. That's the gospel of a God who loves us. That's the gospel of a God who, when he gives us commands, those commands are for our good. And you see how seeing the law as either a burden to be born or something to be thrust aside, it speaks to us about what we think about who God is and what His character is like. And that subtle move that people make is this subconscious move that Ferguson's talking about in the whole Christ that tends towards a legalistic spirit or an antinomian spirit. All right, back to chapter 4. Ferguson writes, no minister in the Church of Scotland in the 18th century would have openly denied salvation by grace. What troubled the Merrill brethren, however, was their sense that the web of legalism had been woven into the hearts and ministries of many of their fellow Presbyterians, including and sometimes especially into the souls of ministers. Some of them, like Thomas Boston, spoke from personal experience and knew that it had taken them years to find deliverance. But we need to go further back than the 18th century if we were to look through the issue. And then under the heading Biblical Theology, Covenant, and Law, whenever there is a revival of biblical theology, there will be a rediscovery of significance of the covenantal structure of God's redemptive activity from Noah through Moses to the New Covenant in Christ. In this context, questions about the role of the law of God in the life of the New Covenant people inevitably arise. When Paul realized that every covenant pointed to and was fulfilled in Christ, he found himself faced with the question, why then the law? Throughout his ministry, he regularly encountered two wrong answers. One led to legalism by smuggling law into gospel. The other led to antinomianism with its implication that the gospel abolished law altogether. This pattern of things resurfaced at the time of the Reformation and in the following century in the Puritan period. By the 1630s and 1640s, the rule of the law was being hotly debated in both old and New England. The Westminster divines gave as close attention to their chapter of the law of God as to any section of the confession of faith. Thus, it was in the context of rumors and fears of both legalism and antinomianism that the marrow of modern divinity first saw the light of day in 1645. Isms, such as legalism and antinomianism, can be dangerous, not only for those who espouse them, but also for those who employ the categories. They too easily become one-size-fits-all pigeonholes. Individuals are not categories, and treating them as such can be quite misleading and often ignore their context. In particular, we need to be cautious in using language in a pejorative way. Words ending in "-ism and "-ist seem to find themselves to emotive rather than descriptive use. In the era of the Marrow itself, legalist was a convenient put-down for a Puritan. Think here of Shakespeare's character and his portrayal of the legalistic killjoy Malvolio. On the other hand, in 18th century Scotland, it was the Marrow brethren who feared legalism and were in turn suspected of incipient antinomianism by those who were fearful that the Marrow promoted it. with what we've talked so far about the context of this issue, goes to the idea that the marrow of modern divinity spoke against and that the marrow men spoke against. If in our preaching of the gospel that what we're looking for are enough signs of repentance or enough marks of benefits of Christ in a person's life before we offer them the gospel or accept them as Christians, what are we doing? Yeah, we're saying that we want to see you doing enough Before we can before we're gonna deem you worthy of the gospel or preaching the gospel We're going to judge whether or not your repentance is full enough we're gonna judge whether or not your faith is full enough That is not a crass denial of the gospel, but it's a subtle shift It's a subtle shift. We're looking for certain fruits of the gospel in people's lives and putting the burden of the fulfillment of those things upon the person and not upon Christ. It's not seeing repentance as a gift of God's grace, repentance and faith as a gift of God's grace that comes through the preaching of the gospel where Christ is presented and offered to people as the solution to their sins. but it's seen as a mark of who's in, who's out sort of thing. Is that, are you guys tracking with that? All right, any comments or questions before we move on? All right. The Octorotor Creed had been condemned in the 1717 General Assembly, yet at the morning session on the same day, the fathers and brethren had for all practical purposes glossed over charges of false teaching made against John Simpson, Professor of Divinity at the University of Glasgow. His case had dragged on since 1715 and would continue for years to come. Simpson had, the assembly minutes stated, adopted some hypothesis different from what are commonly used among Orthodox divines that are not evidently founded on scripture and tend to attribute too much to natural reason and the power of corrupt nature, which undo advancement of reason and nature is always to the disparagement of revelation and efficacious free grace. But in effect, he received little more than a rap over the knuckles. By contrast, the assembly's treatment of the Octoriter Creed went to the opposite extreme. It was condemned as unsound and most detestable doctrine. Apparently antinomianism was seen as a more disturbing deviation than Arminianism Point of that paragraph was what was going on in the Church of Scotland There was a man who's who was teaching and his teaching fell upon the side of Arminianism Which and his treatment was you know as as Ferguson says like a wrap on the knuckles But the Merrill men and the octagrata creed were denounced severely Now, if we go back and who can remember what the Octorata Creed was, what the question is. In order to coming to Christ, that's in a nutshell. It's that tricky, poorly worded statement that was intended to suss out whether or not a person believed that salvation was all of grace or that there was a certain level of repentance necessary in order to come into Christ, in order to claim Christ. The marrow of modern divinity would later be given similar treatment. On May 1720, the General Assembly passed its act concerning a book entitled The Marrow of Modern Divinity. condemning its teaching in five doctrinal areas and its harsh and offensive expressions. And therefore the General Assembly do hereby strictly prohibit and discharge all ministers of this church either by preaching, writing, or printing to recommend the said book or in discourse to say anything in favor of it. But on the contrary, they are hereby enjoined and required to warn and exhort their people in whose hands the said book is or may come not to read or use the same. Doubtless, many who voted at the assembly knew of the marrow only by reading a few quotations set within polemical statements against it, or from the extended critique of it being brought forward by a committee for the preserving of the purity of the doctrine of the Church. Expressions taken out of context can be easily abused, and some of the statements in the marrow were relatively easily abused. It is not altogether surprising that men who were sympathetic to the Merrow men's evangelical zeal were nevertheless troubled by what presented them as a lurch towards antinomianism. For the Merrow brethren, legalism was not a recondite doctrinal locus for leisurely theological discussion. Boston in particular viewed it as a major pastoral concern. He knew from experience that a legal frame or spirit can pervade the whole of an individual's life. It can twist the soul in such a way that it comes near to and yet veers away from the grace of God and the gospel, particularly if it is present in someone engaged in a preaching and pastoral ministry. It can multiply and become an epidemic in the congregation he serves. The root of legalism is almost as old as Eden, which explains why it is a primary, if not the ultimate, pastoral problem. In seeking to bring freedom from legalism, we are engaged in undoing the ancient work of Satan. In Eden, the serpent persuaded Eve and Adam that God was possessed of a narrow and restrictive spirit bordering on the malign. After all, the serpent whispered, isn't it true that he placed you in this garden full of delights and has now denied them all to you? The implication was twofold. It was intended to dislodge Eve from the clarity of God's word, did God actually say? Later, the attack focused on the authority of God's word. You will not surely die. So it was a twofold attack. Did he actually say that? Oh, that's not true. It's such a sinister, sinister attack. But it was more. It was an attack on God's character. For the serpent's question carried a deeply sinister innuendo. What kind of God would deny you pleasure and joy if he really loved you? He allows you nothing and yet demands that you obey him. takes us back to our discussion at the beginning of this class. We see that the roots of legalism and antinomianism go back to the fall of man, and that what is at the heart of it, and these are really the fruits of it, is a wrong view of the character of God. It's a wrong view of the goodness and graciousness of God that offers to us Christ in the gospel, in place of all of our sins, in place of our disobedience. It's an attitude that says, my relationship to God is founded not upon grace, but upon my performance. And we can see that when the Octorotor Creed is questioned. What do you mean? people's repentance isn't necessary in order for a person coming to Christ. Because we take the commands to repent and believe the gospel as conditions for us to perform, rather as Christ being freely offered to us to ungodly sinners to embrace. And again, just to be clear, I'm not saying that repentance and faith are not necessary. They're not necessary conditions upon us in the sense that we must perform these things in order to obtain Christ. They are given to us in the gospel. The conditions of the covenant of grace of the gospel are that which are given to us in the gospel. Repentance and faith is a gift of God's grace to us that comes through the preaching of the gospel, not things that we are to perform first in order to receive the gospel. It sounds like a really subtle distinction, but it's a distinction that speaks to the heart of the person preaching the Gospel, and to the heart of the person who's receiving the Gospel, that sees in the Gospel, even in the Gospel, a God who's requiring things of them, as opposed to a God who, yes, does require things of us, and gave us the things that He requires of us in Christ. You see guys, can you see that distinction? It's a subtle distinction, but it's one that, as Ferguson goes on and talks about, it infects and sours the soul of people. So that when we think of a legalistic person, do you think of someone who's filled with joy? You don't. Don't, what do you think of? Sensorious, judgmental, unsure, uncertain even. If they screw up, God might put them down. And the pernicious thing about it is that it so often tends to be focused outward upon others. It really does It's it's the it's the Pharisees You think of themselves as as better than others and look down at others Yeah, that's Again, that's not original to me, but it very much is that spirit that says to oneself and says to others that I'm as justified as I am sanctified. That I can have as much confidence before God and others as I am obedient to God. And that's not the gospel. And my saying that is not saying that obedience and holiness is not important in the Christian life. It certainly is. But our acceptance before God has nothing to do with us or our performance. It is grounded solely in the love and graciousness of God in Christ alone. Accept it in love despite yourself. Accepted and loved and forgiven counted righteous completely and totally outside of yourselves That's the gospel That's the good news That's Are they hiring The beatings this work will the beatings will continue until morale increases You know, that's I mean, that's funny, but I've heard people say of going to church that they think it was a good sermon if they really got the leather taken to them. They got taken out to the woodshed by the pastor. Oh, that sermon was good. Oh, that one hurt. And again, that's not to say that we shouldn't be convicted when we're of sin. But the gospel is a gospel of grace. It's a gospel of a God who accepts us completely and totally on the grounds of Christ alone, despite what we've done. We don't deserve it, and yet we get it. It's not grounded on us. It's not grounded on our performance. That attitude and that understanding has to inform how we live the Christian life and how we view others and treat others. How do we explain that in the context of, let's just say, church discipline? Let's say we have someone in the church who committed adultery, and they're just committed to going down that road. They're eventually put out, but they're put out because of a lack of repentance, right? You know like how yeah, you know the question I would ask is it's come up a couple times like our Catholics are Homosexuals there are adulterers, you know some point you're putting up a Repentance issue Whether you cast someone out casting them out You're not necessarily saying they're not safe, but you're a minimum treating them Yeah, it's it's well first and foremost It's it's not some kind of infallible infallible declaration that this person that is not a Christian does not have the Holy Spirit It's really in an excommunication as I understand it is a declaration of that person's refusal to believe It's it's it's saying that this person by their actions is declaring themselves to be an unbeliever and to be regarded as such. It's not that, for instance, in Corinthians, the man put out of the church, we know, repented and was brought back into the church and received as a believer. And even in his excommunication, it was for the destruction of the flesh, so that his soul may be saved. So there's always The attitude is for the salvation of the person who is being put out of the church. It's not this infallible declaration as if we can look into that person's heart and know whether or not the Holy Spirit is there or not. It's really a declaration about what this person is saying about themselves. Or doing. Yeah, or saying about themselves by their actions, by their refusal to heed the call to repentance. In regards to repentance as a part of the Christian life, I wholeheartedly affirm that repentance is how Christians live. And works are a part of the Christian life. but it's not the grounds upon which we're accepted before God, and it's not the grounds of our relationship with God. It is through union with Christ, and it is through Christ alone. Works flow from that, repentance flow from that, but in the preaching of the gospel, the repentance and faith that we exhibit towards God is itself a gift of the gospel. It's something that is given to us. It is a fruit. Is a what? No assent is an agreement to a proposition if we're assenting to something we're saying we recognize that something is Oh I think you're thinking about what are the marks of saving faith notitia essentia fiducia There's there's knowledge. There's a scent to that knowledge and then there's personal trust in it But that's what, and that is a gift. That is a gift. Faith is a gift. It is. The scriptures, I think, abundantly clear upon that. Repentance is a gift. Our salvation is a gift. The works that we perform are a gift to us, work within us. The fruits of sanctification, our good works, our obedience, our seeking to mortify sin are a gift to us. We are active in those things, and they are the fruit of the Spirit's work within our lives. And it's all to varying degrees. We're all in different places in the Christian life, and God works differently according to His eternal wisdom and plan in our lives. But it is by grace. We are saved by grace in the beginning, we're saved by grace in the middle, and we're saved by grace at the end. We all need that kind of rewinding again. Yeah, it's... It's a problem in churches that don't recognize the distinction between the law and the gospel and make that distinction clear in the preaching, whereas the preaching tends to be heavily focused upon the law and upon moralism. That tends to breed legalism. It tends to breed that my acceptance before God is somehow based upon my performance. Yeah. So in regards to what John was saying, There's an antagonism there, usually. If somebody won't repent, there's an antagonism. So that's why you treat them as an unbeliever. Just the same as if someone that says they're a Christian, but they live a holy homosexual life. They're living in an antagonism of the Word. Which is not a sin. No, they're saying one thing with their mouth, but their actions are saying something else. So, I mean, to the question of, you know, are Roman Catholics saved, or can Roman Catholics saved, or can homosexuals be saved? It all depends on how it is that we're talking about it. Again, when it comes to Roman Catholicism, I always want to make a distinction between individual Roman Catholics and what they believe, and Roman Catholicism itself as what the Roman Magisterium says is the truth. What the Roman Magisterium says is the truth in regards to the gospel is a denial of the gospel and is a dangerous, dangerous, deadly error. It is anathema. It falls under the condemnation of Galatians chapter one. It is another gospel that is no good news. It is a blending of justification and sanctification. That's a whole other class that we can go into. I do. I'm trying to be careful. Sure. So when I care for the souls, because we listen to Paul in his letters, he's always telling you to flee from the line or the edge of the cliff, not where the cliff is. Right. You're always to flee these things. Yeah. Catholics aren't fleeing those things, you know what I mean? Yeah. How bad is my theology to be to still be saved? Well, I mean here's here's the thing like when it comes to air like heresies and serious errors All of us at one time or another would probably be guilty of them, but there's a difference between a heresy that's held in ignorance and and a heresy that is held in opposition to a clear presentation of the truth. That is a difference. The official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, not all of it, because I mean, good grief, we would agree on so many things, so many things, but in regards to the gospel is a stated specific denial of justification by grace alone, through faith alone. is damnable heresy. That is a denial of the gospel. You should flee from it for the sake of your soul. So can a Roman Catholic be saved? Yes, if they believe the gospel. Can a homosexual be saved? Yes, if they believe the gospel. And guess what? The person who does is no longer the thing that they were. Such were some of you. The Apostle Paul is clear. He lists a whole host of sins. There's the ones that we really hate, and then there's ones we don't realize, like slander and having a quarrelsome spirit and gossip and things like that. But Paul says that such who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. And then he says to the Corinthians, such were some of you. And this goes back to the issue of our sanctification. So much of the Christian life is, and what I think the writers of Scripture are trying to get us to do, is to live in accordance with who we actually are in Christ. Shall I continue in sin that grace may abound? asks Paul. God forbid. How shall I who died to sin continue to live any longer in it? What is he saying to the church there? He's saying, church, don't you get it? You are in Christ. In Christ, you died to sin and you rose to newness of life. Live like that. Live in accordance with who you are in Christ. That's what sanctification is. That's the goal of it. That we live according to who we are in Christ. I kind of feel like I went way off the path on that one. Does that answer your question? Or at least, you know, come into the neighborhood of it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It was a while. Yeah, no it is definitely not Yeah, but sanctification and I Sanctification in this life is imperfect and it's unequal between us. It varies from person to person. And sanctification in this life, what do I mean by sanctification? It's that spirits work within us, that stirring up the graces of God given to us, that brings about mortification of sin and vivification. Death to sin and life to righteousness in our lives. It is imperfect in this life, and our obedience in this life, they're really just the beginnings of obedience. And our best works are stained by sin, but accepted by God in Christ as marks and works of His grace. All right, that's sanctification. The standard is high. Look at what James says to us in the book. The standard is the law of God as exemplifies in the person of Christ. That's the standard we're to look to each and every day. All right, so we fall short of that standard each and every day. What's the solution to that? Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Draw near to God, he will draw near to you, and he will work that sanctification into our lives gradually. All right, we should end there, we're over time. All right, Father, thank you so much for this time. And we ask that as we go to worship you and as we seek your face, Lord, that you and your kindness would draw near to us and that you would change us and help us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ and to live as who we are in union with him. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.