Legalism

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 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.