Chapter 1: What is the significance of the new covenant and the Holy Spirit?
We don't live in the days of the old covenant. We live in the days of the new covenant and the gift of the Holy Spirit. But the question is, what does the Holy Spirit do? What is the promise of the new covenant? The promise of the new covenant is that when the Spirit of Christ comes and indwells believers, He writes the law of God into our hearts.
There are dangers surrounding both legalism and lawlessness in the Christian life. In the 18th century, there was great controversy in Scotland about the book, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, and the questions it raised for the church. It was a significant moment in Scottish church history, but it's also a topic that's relevant for you and me today.
This is the Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and today you'll hear one message from Sinclair Ferguson's series, The Whole Christ, on how we should deal with lawlessness in the Christian life, or what is often called antinomianism. To learn more about the marrow controversy and to hear Dr. Ferguson go in-depth on legalism and lawlessness, request this gospel-rich series, The Whole Christ,
when you give a donation at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight. We'll unlock the series for you in the free Ligonier app, and we'll send you the DVD and a physical copy of the study guide. But be quick, as this offer is only available today. So what is the cure for lawlessness? And what is the Christian's relationship to the law of God?
Here's Ligonier's vice chairman, Sinclair Ferguson.
We've been talking recently about these problems, endemic problems, really, in the Christian life of legalism and antinomianism. And one of the things we've been seeing so interestingly is that legalism is the basic problem.
It was what was injected into the relationship between the Lord and Eve in the Garden of Eden by the serpent, who very subtly turns her into a legalist, distorts the commandments of God, and gives her the sense that God is not a gracious God giving kind commandments for their benefit, but God is a kind of jealous person who doesn't want any joy, any happiness, wants to restrict their lives.
and then the reaction that sets in of antinomianism. And in our study we were seeing last time how there is throughout the history of the Christian church a sense in the masters of the spiritual life that antinomians are never fully and finally delivered from legalism. Only the grace of God and the gospel can deliver us from legalism.
But in many ways, the problem is not simply that we don't understand the gospel well. It is that we also don't understand the law well. So how do we begin to understand the relationship that a Christian believer has to the law of God? Paul has a very striking way of putting this in 1 Corinthians 9 verse 21.
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Chapter 2: What are the dangers of legalism and antinomianism in Christian life?
But from another point of view, he says, I am in law to Christ. And if you just step back from that expression and think about it, Paul is not speaking there in terms of family relationships, but that expression in law is a very good way of thinking about the relationship that we now have as Christians to the law.
We are not directly related to the law as though in order to be saved, we needed to keep the law because Christ has kept the law for us. But as you remember, Paul says in Romans 7, we have had an old husband who has died, and so we are now free to marry another, to marry Christ. And so through faith, by the ministry of the Spirit, we are united to Christ. The Bible uses that metaphor, doesn't it?
We are married to Christ. But when we are married to Christ, what happens to the law? Well, the law becomes our in-law. The law becomes our in-law. Now, I remember my Latin teacher at school telling me that the oldest recorded joke in the world was about a mother-in-law. And we're all familiar with that kind of difficulty.
A man marries a woman he loves, and it's a case of marry me, marry my mother. You can't have me as your wife without having my mother as your mother-in-law. Now, she is not directly related to you. But if you're a right-thinking husband, you want not only to love your wife, but to please your mother-in-law.
There may be times when the mother-in-law who wants the very best for this relationship proves to be slightly irritating to you. But if you love your wife through your wife, you're related to her mother, she is your mother-in-law,
And as you grow in wisdom and in grace, you live in a way that more and more pleases your mother-in-law for this reason that you are more and more pleasing your wife, blessing your wife. And in a sense, all illustrations break down. But in a sense, that's a good illustration, isn't it, of how we're related to the law.
We can't say to Christ, I want you, but I don't want your father's commandments.
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Chapter 3: How does Sinclair Ferguson define antinomianism?
I never liked your father's commandments and they always condemned me. And he says, marry me and I will have borne all the judgment of God against your breach of the commandments. But marry me and you will become the in-law of the law. The law and you through me will be related to one another. so that by God's grace, what Paul had said in Romans 8, 3 and 4 begins to become true.
That in Christ's flesh, the law was fulfilled, its penalties fully paid in order that now married to Christ through the Spirit, the just requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. the law and the gospel harmonize in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And it's this that points us in the direction of the gospel cure for our antinomianism. The gospel cure for our antinomianism is our union with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, who in that bond leads us to love the law and be obedient to the law.
Now sometimes it's just at this point that Christians can have difficulties because when you read through the New Testament, especially, for example, in Paul's letters and also in the letter to the Hebrews, there seem to be some very negative things said about the law. For example, Paul speaking about the law in 2 Corinthians 3 speaks about the law as having no glory at all.
Yes, it seemed to have glory in Moses' day, but now he says, from our point of view, there's no glory at all. Doesn't that suggest that we can be done with the law? Maybe an illustration will help here. And again, of course, illustrations break down. I remember going to school when I was four years old, and I've no memory of doing anything but loving elementary school.
I was having the time of my life. But then I went to high school. And I realized that the teachers in elementary school had been dragons. They hadn't taught me very much, didn't get any Latin in elementary school or trigonometry in elementary school.
And so now I look back on elementary school and I think, you know, that was like being in prison, but now there's this wonderful freedom to study all these subjects with these people who seem to know so much. And then I leave school and I go off to university And I remember first lecture in the English Lit class at university, a very distinguished Shakespeare expert is the professor.
I had been studying one of Shakespeare's plays for six months in my last year in high school. I learned more about that play in this man's first lecture than I'd learned in all the six months. Suddenly, I'm free from all that. These people, my teachers, they didn't really know anything. But these people... And I live in a day when they put money in your pocket to go to university.
I have more money than I've ever had in my life. Of all these hours, I have to go to half a dozen lectures, sit a few exams, write the occasional paper. I can read my Bible. I can read other books. I can go and play golf. Boy, this is really living. This is really living. And these long vacations, I guess there are still exams at the end.
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Chapter 4: What is the relationship between the law of God and the believer?
I never noticed that there were any restrictions really placed on me. There was so much to enjoy. There was freedom until I moved on to the next stage and then by comparison saw that the previous stage had been so restricting. And it seems to me that that's how the New Testament Christians who had gone through the barrier between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, that's how they saw things.
In fact, Paul says precisely this at the end of Galatians 3, beginning of Galatians 4. He says, as Old Covenant believers, we were like underage children. We were heirs, but none of the inheritance was actually coming to us. We were still waiting for it. Now we have entered into the full privileges of sonship, and we say what no Old Testament believer ever said, never said, Abba, Father.
And so we are to understand that when the New Testament seems to speak critically of the law, it's not an absolute statement. It's really saying, now look at how the law worked. There were the commandments of God and then those commandments were surrounded by civil regulations.
And then there were all those regulations about the liturgy so that you were restricted and constrained because just like children, just exactly like children, God was saying, it's for your good that I don't just let you loose.
But then when you look back, you understand that the Mosaic administration, the law in that sense, by comparison with the internationalism and the liberty and the sense of God being Abba Father, all of this is gloriously new and so by comparison. Those old days look as though they were the shadow lands, and now you're beginning to live in the sunshine.
And the fact of the matter is, there is more yet to come. We may be enjoying the Christian life now, but it's little compared to the glory that is to be revealed. So you see, God moves his purposes on in these staging posts. Remember I said the problem was not just that antinomians misunderstood the gospel. It was that they misunderstood the law.
So let me take a few minutes in our session on this occasion just to explore how the Bible thinks about the law of God. and to walk us through a series of stages in biblical theology that I think very much help us to appreciate why God gave the law and how the law functions. To do that, we actually do well, I think, to begin with Romans 2, 14 and 15.
Romans 2, 14 and 15 is an interesting statement Paul makes. He's thinking about the New Testament age. And he says a very striking thing there in chapter two, verses 14 and 15. He says, Gentiles who do not have the law by nature may do what the law requires, and they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. What's he saying here?
He's saying you look around the world and you see that there are Gentiles who live according to the commandments of God as though the faded image of those commandments was still on their hearts. They don't do it perfectly. He goes on to say their thoughts excuse them sometimes and other times accuse them. Now, why is this?
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Chapter 5: How does Paul describe the Christian's relationship to the law?
are not laws that are to be distributed internationally. They belong to a particular people in a particular place at a particular time. Yes, we may learn lessons from them. And so there is stage three of fulfillment in Jesus Christ. And this is, of course, what Paul is saying in Romans 8. The condemnation of the law, as well as obedience to the law, both meet in Jesus Christ.
And then there is the fulfillment of the law in us, a fourth stage. The very point that Paul makes in that pivotal statement in Romans 8, 3 and 4, that Christ bore the judgment of God against our breach of the law, not in order for us to say, law is no longer relevant.
but in order that the requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." Very interesting thing that people sometimes quote Jeremiah 31 in this context, don't they? We don't live in the days of the old covenant, we live in the days of the new covenant and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
But the question is, what does the Holy Spirit do What is the promise of the new covenant? The promise of the new covenant is that when the Spirit of Christ comes and indwells believers, what does He do? He writes the law of God into our hearts. And we're bound to ask the question, well, which law of God does He write into our hearts?
the same law of God that was written for Israel and placed at the heart of the relationship in the Ark of the Covenant. Because what the Spirit does is transform us into the likeness of Jesus Christ, that we may be restored to the likeness of the Heavenly Father. In a sense so that we may be restored to Eden, but not only restored to Eden,
prepared for the new Eden that will come when, thank God, by the Spirit in the presence of Christ, at last the commandments of God will be easy to obey. That makes you say, doesn't it, even so come Lord Jesus.
Don't you look forward to that day when God's law is easy to obey, and we can obey it perfectly and joyfully? This is the Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. Today's message is from Sinclair Ferguson's series, The Whole Christ.
And it's a series that clearly presents the gospel and confronts errors and challenges to the gospel, exposing where some of our thoughts might not be consistent with the gospel we first believed.
So in addition to introducing you to a moment in church history that may be unfamiliar to you, it deals with vital truths that every generation needs to be reminded of and every generation needs to affirm. Request this series on DVD along with a physical copy of the study guide when you give a donation at renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4343.
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