500, Part 3: Gospel Errors

Most people have the concept of acceptance completely inverted. They think that one should turn to God because others don’t accept them. The idea is that our bold individuality is sometimes unacceptable to some people, the haters, and the good news of the gospel is that we can rely on God to accept us as we are.

The truth is exactly the opposite. It is precisely because God cannot accept us as we are in our sinfulness that we require Christ. On the other hand, we can easily manipulate people into liking us, or at least “accepting us,” so long as they don’t have to live with us. But when it comes to God, we are only made acceptable because of Christ. The striking reality of the gospel is that only God can make us acceptable to God. Once God has done so, whether or not others accept us is superfluous if grounded in Christ and irrelevant if not.

Perhaps a good place to start in triangulating the true gospel is to probe what it is not. One must treat the historical errors with respect to this, and even pay attention to whether or not they are re-emerging in our own time. As with many errors, they are opposing errors. They are known as "antinomianism" and "legalism."

Antinomianism, simply defined, means lawlessness. The idea here is that of a person who hears the message of free grace offered in Jesus Christ, and is exposed to all the ideas that comprise the gospel, and therefore concludes that God is obligated towards forgiveness. What this must mean is that a person who believes in God's forgiveness offered through the gospel can sin at leisure, because God has already assured forgiveness for sins.

Practically, "Christian" antinomians today look like everyone else in the world. They struggle with various sins, but have come to a place of "freedom" with regard to those sins. What they usually mean by this freedom is that they no longer feel guilt about various habitual sins in their lives. They do them now without the pangs of shame because they know that God loves them "through" these sins. These are the people granting license to adulterers, homosexuals, drunks, etc., all on the claim that God's love is bigger than human sin. God tenaciously loves sinners, and what that must mean is that he endures their sin and not that he will relentlessly attack sin in the hearts of those he loves.

These people love to point out that Jesus "hung out" with tax collectors, prostitutes and sinners. They always neglect to mention what happened to these people because they "hung out" with Jesus.

Antinomian grace is exactly what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace." It is a grace without change, without repentance. It is something like affirming the doctrine of justification without living out the doctrine of sanctification. You can spot an antinomian rather quickly. If you are discussing his behavior--say a drinking problem--and he affirms that this is just "who I am," then you are probably dealing with an antinomian. These people are fond of the claim that they are "just this way." To reject their freedom to be Christians and continue to sin is to reject them!

Antinomianism is rampant in the Christian church today. People don't overtly claim that they believe God's grace is an open license for them to sin, but neither do they tirelessly oppose sin in their own hearts. They are not that serious about their sinful behaviors. It is just a "struggle," or a "thorn in the flesh," or "normal." They are "working on it," and "praying it through." All of these lovely cliche's hide the simple fact that they want to do these things, and they are relying on God to look the other way in the end.

There is a fundamental difference between a Christian, struggling and grieving through seasons of temptation and sin, clinging to grace at every turn, and an antinomian, who is not struggling seriously against sin, but is from the outset making a shallow claim of Christian faithfulness in order to embolden his wicked self-interest. The latter can be lived even if never claimed.

And what of the legalist?

Raw legalism, of the variety that Jesus opposed in the Pharisees, is the idea that one can perform his or her way into perfection. One can earn one's salvation by doing what God requires in his law, so that God would be obliged to grant heaven as an earned income, so to speak.

But there are other forms of legalism as well. I would call these semi-legalist ideas, which means they are legalist ideas. One would be to say that Jesus does most of the equation of salvation, and I am left with a small bit to do myself. The last would be the idea that Jesus grants me salvation as a free gift of his grace, and there is nothing I can do to earn or deserve it, but once it is granted, I must perform to keep it and be worthy of it.

Notice that this is the reverse of antinomianism in an important way. Where antinomianism is like justification without sanctification; this is a form of sanctification without the freedom of justification. In other words, I must always look to my performance, because therein lies my faith. If my performance falls off, then my faith is likely to be lost. So fear is often the underlying motivation. Note also that many of these people are not even operating under the burden of Biblical ideals, but rather the additions and distortions of their favorite teachers, or even their own distorted ideals, as was the case with the Pharisees.

Legalism in our day looks like that Christian who is constantly pushing "health" in various ways. She is a rather vocal advocate of organic food, working out, goal setting and general positivity. She is a "you can do this" kind of gal.

She wants to fight a constant war against complacency, negativity, poor performance, and belly fat. She is a tireless cheerleader for a disciplined life. And here is the interesting part. All of her non-Christian friends like all of her posts from the various life-coaches and fitness gurus she follows. And even her harassment of others to live better lives is received warmly by her many followers. She is all about getting things done, and secretly judges fat people, because their bodies are evidence of a failure to get it done!

Perhaps our modern legalists really do mean this push towards excellence in the context of the gospel. The problem is that this context of the gospel, if intended, is never explained in any clear way to their friends, either online or in person. The thing that brings them together is the moralistic push to be better today than they were yesterday. If we can't agree on the reason to be excellent, at least we can agree that we should be excellent. And excellence doesn't require a definition. It obviously means a toned body, sharp mind, and thriving relationships.

A last thought on this before I end...

Many people who affirm one of these errors have to affirm the other when pressed by those who would dare to challenge them, or when their own sense of dissatisfaction pushes them. Here is what I mean: 

An antinomian grows tired of his lack of progress, and raises himself up, makes a few New Years resolutions, and becomes a legalist as a corrective to his antinomianism.

A legalist grows weary in her endless pursuit of her ideals, and is mired in failure, but in the end affirms that Jesus loves us "as we are," and becomes an antinomian as a corrective to her legalism. 

The curious thing about error is that it tends to come in pairs. Its practioners are often duplicitous.