How can I share the gospel with those who hold to these forms of false teaching? Focus on the biblical teaching about the depravity of the human heart. Since legalism and antinomianism stem from the sinful depravity of the human heart, we can help others move away from these errors by pointing to what the Scriptures teach about our sinful condition. The Bible teaches that all people by nature are “dead in . . . trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1–5). In ourselves, we are unable to do anything spiritually pleasing to God (Rom. 5:6; Eph. 2:12). All our deeds apart from Christ are violations of God’s law, for which we deserve God’s eternal wrath and judgment (Matt. 7:23).

The terms legalism and antinomianism describe two false teachings regarding the relationship between the law and the gospel. Legalism is the insistence that a person is accepted by God on the basis of his law keeping. It teaches that we are declared righteous before God through our own observance of either God’s law or man-made rules and regulations. Antinomianism says that God does not require a believer to obey the moral law (i.e., the Ten Commandments). In its more extreme and perverted form, antinomianism permits immoral behavior based on the leniency of grace.
When did they begin?
Legalism and antinomianism are rooted in the fall of Adam. All mankind is predisposed to these two moral and theological errors. Accordingly, countless forms of legalism and antinomianism have surfaced throughout history. Legalism and antinomianism undergird all forms of false teaching and heresy.
Who are the key figures?
Legalism
Jesus rebuked the religious leaders in Israel for their hypocritical, self-righteous teaching and lives (Matt. 23:4; Luke 18:9). The Apostle Paul stridently defended the gospel against the doctrinal legalism with which the early church was infected (Gal. 1–3; 1 Tim. 1:6–7).
The Roman Catholic Church has long promoted an elaborate system of religious legalism, which is most evident in its monastic asceticism, penitential system, sacramentalism, and emphasis on merit.1 Roman Catholicism denies the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone, teaching that a person is justified by faith in Christ together with his Spirit-wrought good works.
Doctrinal and practical legalism has surfaced in evangelical and Protestant churches over the centuries. By imposing obligations on members to observe man-made rules and regulations, many churches have advanced a form of man-centered legalism (Col. 2:20–23).
In recent decades, proponents of the New Perspective(s) on Paul have taught that a person’s final right standing before God is based on his obedience to God’s commands.
False religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, because they teach a works-based salvation wherein we enter heaven or experience Nirvana because of our good deeds, are non-Christian forms of legalism.
Antinomianism
In the early church, certain false teachers promoted the idea that God’s grace tolerates lawless living (see 2 Peter and Jude). Some wickedly dismissed sexual immorality in the name of grace (Jude 4). The Apostle John contended against antinomian ideas in his first letter (1 John 2:4).
Throughout church history, antinomianism has appeared in less overt and perverse forms than that in which it appeared in the early church. Martin Luther wrote Against the Antinomians to refute the erroneous teaching of the neo-Lutheran antinomian Johannes Agricola. Edward Fisher wrote The Marrow of Modern Divinity to address the undercurrents of legalism and antinomianism in certain streams of the Puritan movement. This book was also at the center of a debate over antinomianism in the Church of Scotland in the eighteenth century.2 In the twentieth century, notable dispensational teachers promoted a form of antinomianism called “easy-believism.”
What are the main beliefs?
In the church, legalism surfaces when people teach or believe these ideas:

Get in by grace; stay in by law keeping. While most forms of legalism in the church deny strict merit in the sense that they affirm the necessity of grace, almost all insist that an individual’s good works are necessary for his final justification before God on judgment day. Roman Catholicism teaches that a person is initially justified at baptism;3 however, his final right standing before God is dependent on a life of continued adherence to religious rituals and Spirit-wrought good works.
Meriting righteousness. Legalism teaches that people can cooperate with God in order to gain a right standing by their works. Though this view does not involve strict merit, it still reflects a meritorious scheme of salvation. Legalism is often accompanied by a self-righteous spirit in those who advance it.

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Preach in a manner that none of your people can stand before the Lord on the judgment day and complain to the Lord that you did not confront them with their personal need to receive Christ and to consider their standing before the Almighty.

Introduction
And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.—Samuel 12:7
I recently listened to a sermon on the free offer of the gospel on SermonAudio. As the minutes rolled on, I could not help to note that the sermon was rather detached and lecture-like. When the sermon was more than 3/4 of the way through it struck me that it was unlikely this minister was going to press his congregation to see if they had freely received Christ for themselves. He did not preach as if Christ had been crucified among them (Galatians 3:1). The assumption seemed to be that the congregation only needed to understand the Bible’s theology better.
This happens all too often in Reformed pulpits but what made it more jarring was this was done during a sermon on the gospel itself. A sermon with no exhortations to close with Christ (John 1:12). Sadly, I hear the same kind of thing from many students that preach in Presbytery trials, they simply do not do what Bible preaching demands—to search out the hearers. After preaching that salvation is of the Lord, few today will take the next step and ask their hearers the simple question: “have you yourself, seen that you are a sinner, and have you cast yourself entirely upon Jesus for salvation?“
And so, it is the case, sad to say, in addition to a famine of practical preaching, there is a great famine of discriminatory preaching in Reformed Churches. Discriminatory preaching does not discriminate as we use the word today to show bigotry between ethnicities or sexes or something of that sort. Instead, it is a discrimination between sheep and goats—the true Christian and the non-Christian or the “almost Christian” (the same as the non-Christian).
Because such discrimination is not sought in preaching—the outcome is that hypocrites are never confronted with their sinfulness and will hear on that last day, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23). Sadly, many covenant children apostatize because their minister has never preached in a way that exposes their sinfulness and their own need for a Savior.
Confront the Hypocrite
Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?—2 Corinthians 13:5.
This need for searching in preaching is seen in 2 Corinthians 13. The apostle Paul confronts the Corinthians to see if they are in the faith or are reprobates.
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Written by Reuben M. Bredenhof |
Sunday, July 24, 2022
The amazing thing is that the more we eat the Bread of Life, the hungrier for him we become. Once we have started to experience Jesus’s grace and power, we want more of him. Your appetite for Christ doesn’t decrease the more you get to know him, or the more you read his Word. Your appetite for Christ will only increase when you taste and see that the Lord is good. Such a hunger isn’t oppressive, but there’s a great joy in it. For the hungry are being filled with the Bread of Life.

Have you ever eaten a meal that seemed to fill you for only an hour, or even less?
Perhaps it was a Big Mac and fries or a plate of white rice. Such food can be disappointing. This is what people mean when they refer to ‘empty calories,’ food and drink composed primarily of sugar, or certain fats and oils.
In John 6, Jesus’s message isn’t about proper nutrition. Yet He does warn against the emptiness of earthly bread. He has just fed the multitude in an amazing display of his power and compassion. But it’s not long before the people are asking him for another meal. To the hungry crowd, Jesus gives this warning in verse 27:
Do not labour for the food which perishes.
They want enough sustenance to keep going another day. When Jesus warns here against “food that spoils,” He’s not just talking about filling up your pantry and freezer with non-perishables. For over time, almost any kind of food will spoil: growing moldy, or stale, or freezer burnt.
This isn’t mainly about food, but about all things that decay, every earthly good that will not last. He is thinking about the house you live in right now. He’s imagining the car you drive. He means all the other treasures that you treasure, the opportunities and privileges you desire. For like the crowds trailing Jesus in John 6, we can become fixated on what is physical.
Earthly bread is hollow, and worldly satisfaction is like so many empty calories. Yet we sometimes let ourselves be motivated by such things.
For instance, we might let our incentive for daily work become little more than material gains. You can earn a lot of money today: the longer hours you put in, the better clients you have, the more jobs you sell, the more money you can take home.
Is that what our life is for, the endless pursuit of earthly bread? To what end do we go to work tomorrow and the next day?
It’s a question which should make us reflect on our reasons for everything we love to do. Why do we serve in the church? 
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