Chapter 22: Appendix #1

I planned on reading all of the Appendices to Chapter 22 this afternoon, but as I reading, I glanced up and saw a vehicle pulling in and around back. Turns out it was relatives--one of whom I haven't seen in five years, so perhaps I shall be excused for my negligence! I did go ahead and finish up the first Appendix after eating supper...

Appendix: The Answer to Antinomians, i.e, Those Who Believe There is No Place for Law in a Gospel of Grace 

Dr. Morecraft wastes no time in getting down to business:

We have learned that the believer in Jesus will obey Biblical Law for Jesus’ sake. (645)

Some critics of Biblical Law like to quote Romans 6:14 to defend their viewpoint that the Christian is not obligated to obey the laws of the Old Testament, but simply to yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit and to live in a way that is consistent with grace, which is antithetical to law, in their opinion. (645)

We know this is not the correct interpretation [of Romans 6:14] for two reasons: (1) In verse 15 Paul anticipates this error by telling us that we may not “sin”, i.e., we may not break God’s Laws simply because we are under grace: “May it never be!” (2) In the context of Romans 6–8, the Christian life is NOT freedom from the
Law as a rule of life, but freedom from the Law as something that indicts us and condemns us for our sin, and which aggravates our sin as long as we remain in unbelief. (645-646)

What verse 14 IS saying is that, since the believer is under the power of God’s grace in Christ which delivers us from bondage to sin (6:1–2), and enables us to live a new life in Christ, we are no longer under the condemnation (8:1), and the sin-aggravation of the Law (7:9–11), for these reasons: “he who died is freed from sin” (6:7), and “having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness,” i.e., conformity to God’s Law (6:18), because “when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness” (6:20). (646)

Or as Paul said in Galatians 2:19: “I through the Law died to the Law so that I might live to God.” We must notice carefully that it is NOT the Law of God that dies! It is NOT the Law of God that is dead! We, in Christ, are dead to the death sentence of
the Law (Rom. 8:1) but the Law of God is not dead. (647)

According to Romans 7:4, there is a death that releases the bond of condemnation of God’s broken Law...That death to which Paul refers is our death to the claims of
God’s Law against us for our sins in the vicarious death of Jesus Christ, and our union with Him in that death. (647)

Christ died on the cross for one reason: to satisfy the claims of God’s Law against His sinful people. If His people were to be accepted with God, the demands of the Law against them had to be silenced and its just judgment satisfied....The Law as
that which condemned us for our sins is now silenced. Because of the sacrifice of Christ and through faith in Him we are dead to the claims of the Law against us. (648)

Having died to sin and the claims of God’s Law against our sin, we are raised to newness of life in Christ and we are no longer slaves of sin, i.e., habitual Law-breaking; rather we are now “slaves to righteousness,” i.e., habitual Law-keeping. (649)

And there you have it. No more, no less. 

     Racheal