Thank you all.
My question is not on what our sinful actions deserve and what the consequences are for breaking the law. Rather it is on how serious it is
to believe and teach and defend doctrines such as:
- The second commandment was just for OT, I can now make images of God as a way to worship Him
- The fourth commandment was just for the OT, I can now do my own pleasure and work on the Sabbath
- (For the sake of argument) There is no unique honour due to my parents, but I can treat them as equals and like any other person.
I think when I read Dickson here there seemed to be a distinction between a person who (a) believes the Sabbath is a law from God but can never perfectly sanctify the Sabbath and is always in need of Christ's atoning work and priestly intercession, and (b) a person who teaches and defends that the Sabbath or Lord's day is done away with and encourages others not to keep it.
When Dickson says:
I took "reject the yoke of" the law not as referring to "failure to keep" the law but as "rejecting the binding nature" of the law. I.e., Dickson is referring to someone who denies that the law is a "rule of life" which "for ever bind all, as well as justified persons" (WCF 19:5-6). This understanding seems supported by Dickson's phrase "and shall defend his practice, teaching that men may without guiltiness break the same". So the person in view clearly thinks that there is no problem in breaking God's law. But the believer who views the law as a rule of life would not teach "that men may without guiltiness break the same".
Question Clarified: How grave is it to teach others that the moral law as summarised in the 10 commandments, is
not a rule of life and
in no way binds the justified person? Dickson mentioning "the yoke
of any one of these commandments", how serious is it to deny that any one of the 10 commandments functions as
a rule of life and to deny that it is
binding on the justified person?
To put your issue differently: How serious is the sin of antinomianism?
What is antinomianism? It is that doctrine claiming God's moral law is non-existent, or defunct in the present age, or is non-binding on Christians (being under grace, not law). There are degrees of antinomianism, and many people today who would fall formally under that designation per the definition offered nevertheless maintain that all or nearly all that part of the Sinai-law commonly called "moral" (10 commandments) is reconstituted within the law or will of Christ. We could charitably recognize such persons as being functionally moral-law abiding in most cases, despite their formal denial.
But there are others calling themselves Christians who are truly antinomian. I was recently reflecting on today's commonplace encounter of people who identify as Christian, who may attend church semi-regularly (or even consistently), but whose sexual-ethic is barely if at all distinguishable from the culture of promiscuity that surrounds us today in the USA. How does this happen? Well, the teachers of the congregations and the other leaders do not insist on teaching the biblical (NT/OT identical) sexual-ethic as normative, binding, having the whole quality of law.
Clear warnings in Gal.5:19-21 and 1Cor.6:9-10 are ignored, explained away, or rendered powerless to convict by the perversion of some other passage to make an excuse for repentance-free pardon. The sinner's prayer and baptism are treated like prophylactics, spiritual insulation and guarantee from judgment. The attitude shown is captured in this question: "If God won't judge me, who are you to call me to account?"
This antinomian spirit is what is being taught to people in a hideously extensive portion of the church today. This is the danger Dickson warns about. Many people who are not rightly convicted of their sin (not being taught to recognize it) are bound in it, and do not know the Christ who died the penalty for sin--
their personal sin, not just a vague corruption of the human race. Perhaps threatened by hell for beginning on the wrong side, or promised a better life for a modest faith commitment, or bamboozled by religious experiences, many church-going people have no clue of the Mediator of the New Covenant, having never encountered him. They know Christ as well as they know their secular governmental representative who they voted for because of some advice they received.
What reasonable conclusions can we come to as regards the gravity of the situation in which these folks are found? Here are a few.
People need a spiritual diet of law and gospel, both. Without it, they go on in various sins; and if they are true children of God, when they find they have for a long time been sinning in ignorance (the truth withheld from them) it may crush their spirit by adding to their guilt, as well as stirring up indignation and bitterness against their spiritual abusers (an opening for the devil to exploit them further). Shouldn't they have read the Bible, and found more of the truth for themselves? The possibility of Bible-possession and the skill to read is more widespread now than in old time; but still it is of great importance to have a skilled interpreter of the word for our guide. Profiting from reading Scripture is a learned skill, and it is always an immense benefit to have a loving teacher at the start of any skill-development. We need to be spiritually fed, and to know what it is we are being fed, and what constitutes a good measure taken of both imperative and indicative from God's word.
Some antinomians are frankly lost, and despite a connection to the church of Christ do not know the Christ who is head of the church. They give evidence of this by having no interest in his commandments, Jn.14:15; Lk.6:46. Some others, who are
partly antinomian in expression, do despite to God's moral will in perhaps as little as one dimension of the law. And this casual or hostile regard for the law of God may reveal more of their actual state of salvation than they suppose. They may think they are quite close to God, but if confronted by his standard in the word they work around it, deny it, whitewash their refusal of it, become angry with the one who rebukes them. This could be a sign that they are "least in the kingdom," and actually have no part or lot in it. It is never, and cannot be, spiritually healthy for a Christian to resist the force of truth. Still, given that none of us are completely faith-filled and as righteous as we ought to be, perhaps we should not dismiss as hopeless any we encounter who presently show such imperfect obedience. It seems likely that some antinomians are redeemed, and will in due course be more and more conformed to the truth as it is in Jesus. Their antinomianism will fade, if it does not dissipate completely in this life.
Though antinomianism is a serious error, definitely heretical in its more virulent forms, and the source of much false-profession and stunted growth in grace; and though its teachers bear a dreadful responsibility for peddling cheap grace, weakening Christians and the church generally; and though we are all antinomians when we flout the law and its threats and presume on the grace of forgiveness; let us remember that our knowledge of the law, and any care we exhibit or desire to perform it or restore to it, does nothing to save us. The law is holy, just, and good, Rom.7:12; it is good when it is used lawfully, 1Tim.1:8; but it condemns rather than justifies, and by it we know sin for what it is, Rom.3:20. Antinomians take that conviction away, in part or in whole, which does no one any good. Yet, only the gospel overcomes the power of the law to condemn, or allows us to gain new strength to obey even partly, and demonstrate our love of God and of his way for us.
