Antinomianism

Pastor Martin addresses the origin of the fear of God, demonstrating that it is a distinct blessing of the new covenant, not something that grows on natural Adamic soil. He expounds Jeremiah 32:38-40 to show that God pledges to put His fear into the hearts of His people, then traces how the three ingredients of the fear of God correspond to the three blessings promised in Jeremiah 31:31-34. He culminates with Psalm 130:4 — 'There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared' — showing that the discovery of forgiveness through the blood of Christ is the very thing that produces true, covenant-rooted fear of God.

Pastor Martin opens a new section on sanctification by considering it in three lights. He first relates sanctification to the human problem of sin, using the illustration of a drunk driver who needs both a lawyer and a physician to show that sin creates both legal and personal problems — justification and adoption address the legal, sanctification the personal. He then traces sanctification as central to the divine plan of salvation in its initial design, actual procurement, powerful application, prolonged interval, and final consummation. He closes by pressing the personal necessity of holiness from Hebrews 12:14, warning against two fatal errors: a salvation that makes sanctification optional, and a sanctification sought apart from union with Christ.

Pastor Martin turns from the agency of sanctification to the pattern of sanctification, asking by what standard the believer is to evaluate growth in grace. He unfolds the first three strands of the biblical fourfold pattern: God Himself (Be ye holy for I am holy), the moral law of God epitomized in the Decalogue (Romans 7:12 — holy, righteous, and good), and the entire spectrum of God's revealed will in Scripture, including the apostolic instructions, Old Testament biography, and even the principles woven into the civil and ceremonial law (1 Corinthians 9, 10; 2 Timothy 3:16). The fourth strand — Christ as the law incarnate — is held over for the next message.

Pastor Martin examines the continuous, ongoing effects of regeneration as distinct from the immediate effects of repentance and faith. Following an outline drawn from Robert Law on 1 John, he sets forth three inevitable, abiding marks of the regenerate: a doctrinal or theological confession of Jesus as true God, true man, and Messiah; a moral or ethical practice of righteousness and obedience; and a social love for the brethren. Where these three are absent, claims to the new birth are exposed as empty.

Pastor Martin sets the doctrine of justification within the supportive framework of three indispensable truths without which it cannot be rightly understood: the character and position of God as holy and just Creator and Judge, the character and position of man as accountable creature and guilty sinner, and God's overall ultimate purpose to conform His people to the image of His Son. He warns that whenever justification has been wrenched out of this larger context, it has suffered grievously even at the hands of its friends.

Concluding eleven weeks on justification by faith alone, Pastor Martin turns to the second front of the devil's attack: the error that justifying faith can stand alone, devoid of works. He expounds James 2:14-26 as a carefully developed argument that saving faith is never a dead or merely notional faith but a living principle that produces self-denying obedience, using Robert Johnstone's illustration of Paul and James as two armies firing from opposite flanks at a common enemy. He closes by pressing searching questions on both the antinomian and the legalist, urging hearers to embrace Paul with one arm and James with the other.

Pastor Martin opens a second appendix to his series on justification, confronting how a believer honors both the once-for-all justifying act of God and the reality of indwelling and actual sin. After surveying the false solutions of antinomianism and sinless perfectionism, he expounds two of four principles: sin in a justified person must always be acknowledged as sin, and sin in a justified person must never be allowed to bring him into legal bondage. He draws heavily on Romans 7-8, 1 John 1-2, Psalm 51, and Psalm 130 to show how believers are to be both honest with their sin and anchored in the finished work of Christ.

Pastor Martin continues his pastoral appendix on justification and sin, reviewing the first two principles and expounding the third: sin in a justified person must be dealt with primarily in terms of God's fatherly displeasure, not judicial wrath. He argues from Matthew 6, 1 Peter 1, 1 John 2, and Hebrews 12 that while God no longer wears the face of an angry judge toward the justified, He does wear the face of a displeased Father. He exposes the antinomian's discomfort with obedience and fear and the legalist's discomfort with filial confidence, and closes with a Murray quote summarizing the change of relation.