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[Note:\u00a0 <\/strong>This MS is available in larger font on our Longer Articles<\/strong>\u00a0 page.]<\/span><\/p>\n Introduction<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The prevailing attitude in society concerning morals and behavior in our time is tolerance (except, of course, toward those who dare to expose the fallacy of their misplaced tolerance). This attitude is also widespread in religion, even among those who profess belief in the Christ and His Word. Authority, law, obedience, commandments<\/em>, and like terms relating to religion represent to millions of folk negative and repugnant concepts, long since outmoded. There is a technical name for this attitude: antinomianism <\/em>(from two Greek words that, when combined, mean \u201cagainst law\u201d). Because of this belief system, modern theologians (as well as popular writers on religious themes, such as Max Lucado) emphasize God\u2019s grace almost to the exclusion of His wrath and judgment against sin and error.<\/span><\/p>\n Implications of the No Law <\/em>Mantra in the Church<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n These attitudes have seriously infiltrated the church of the Lord by means of some vigorous liberal elements. Various congregations, schools, journals, and individuals seem dedicated to advancing these erroneous \u201cno-law\u201d notions as rapidly as possible. These views of God and His Word imply certain corollary concepts, which various erstwhile brethren have not been timid to iterate. The all grace-no law <\/em>premise implies all of the following conclusions, as well as many others:<\/span><\/p>\n Those who would still condescend to try to furnish Scriptural justification for such anti- Biblical emphases seem especially drawn to Romans 6:14\u201315 (note how nimbly they run to Scripture when they perceive its agreement with their agenda, while otherwise having little use for it): \u201cFor sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? God forbid.\u201d They allege that Paul is here teaching that grace and law are mutually exclusive and that, since we are under grace, we are not under law\u2014any law\u2014in the Christian Age. They aver that there are no restrictions upon us. Admittedly, at first glance\u2014and removed from context (both immediate and remote)\u2014this may appear to be what Paul was saying but let us examine the passage more closely.<\/span><\/p>\n That Which Paul Cannot Be Teaching<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n We may begin by noticing that whatever Paul is teaching here about law and grace, he cannot <\/strong>be saying that we are not obligated to law or a system of law of any sort in the Christian Age. (Law <\/em>in this passage should not be limited to the Law of Moses, but it surely includes it.) Paul had just warned them not to yield to sin (vv. 12\u201313), but this would be nonsense if they were under no law, simply because sin cannot occur in the absence of law (3:19; 4:15; 5:13; 1 John 3:4).<\/span><\/p>\n Further, the antinomian view would constitute a most glaring Pauline self-contradiction, even in the immediate context. In Romans 6:16\u201318 Paul commended the Roman saints because they had obeyed a \u201cform [pattern, ASV fn] of teaching,\u201d whereby they were made free from sin and became bondservants of righteousness. These statements imply a norm, a standard, commandments, a law <\/strong>system to which they were accountable. Not only would Paul contradict himself were he denying our accountability to law, but he would also contradict the Lord Himself, as well as every other New Testament writer in passages too numerous to cite.<\/span><\/p>\n Consider how consistently and frequently Paul states that we are under law: In Romans 3:27 he argued that we are justified by \u201ca law of faith.\u201d In Romans 8:2 He wrote of \u201cthe law of the Spirit of life\u201d and said it was the means by which we have been made free from \u201cthe law of sin and death.\u201d This is equivalent to his declaration in 1:16: \u201cThe gospel…is the power of God unto salvation.\u201d It is also parallel to Jesus\u2019 announcement in John 8:32: \u201cThe truth shall make you free.\u201d Thus, we have the law, the Gospel, and the Truth used interchangeably. Since, therefore, one is subject to the Gospel or the Truth under Christ, he is subject to law, because law <\/em>is but another term for Gospel <\/em>and Truth<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n But someone may say: \u201cThese things were true of them before <\/strong>they came under grace and were necessary to bring them under that grace. After coming under grace, they were no longer under law.\u201d This will not work, either. This same Paul wrote of himself (one who was under God\u2019s saving grace) that he\u2014as a Christian\u2014was \u201cunder law to Christ\u201d (2 Cor. 9:21). Further, he urged the Galatian saints to continue to \u201cfulfil the law of Christ\u201d (Gal. 6:2). James wrote of \u201cthe perfect law, the law of liberty\u201d in which Christians must continue (1:25) and of \u201ca law of liberty\u201d by which we will be judged (2:12). We learn from these passages that Christ has a law and that Christians are obligated to keep it, as are all men. Again, his meaning in Romans 6:14\u201315 cannot be that Christians are not under law in any and every sense.<\/span><\/p>\n That Which Paul Is Teaching<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n What, then, is the meaning of Romans 6:14\u201315? In Romans 1 and 2 Paul demonstrated that Gentile and Jew alike had miserably failed to obey perfectly their respective systems of Divinely imposed law. He concluded in chapter 3 that both Jew and Gentile were under the condemnation of God because they had sinned (violated His law) (vv. 9, 23) and could not be justified by any system of mere law (v. 20). In that same chapter he began elaborating on the great principle of justification by faith, as opposed to justification by law (vv. 21\u201330), which he had set forth as the theme of his letter in chapter 1 (vv. 5, 16\u201317). He continued to build upon this great theme through chapters 4 and 5.<\/span><\/p>\n Since Paul had so strongly taught that law was insufficient for justification because none could perfectly keep it, he anticipated that some might erroneously conclude that law was worthless, which misunderstanding he answered in 3:31: \u201cDo we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid: nay, we establish the law.\u201d He could just as well have asked and answered this question about grace <\/em>as about faith<\/em>, for the point is equally valid in both cases. When he states in 6:14 that we are not under law, he immediately cautions us not to infer erroneously that we can therefore sin. He says, \u201cGod forbid\u201d (the strongest negation possible in the Greek language) to dispel any such false conclusion. The very fact that he warns us not to sin implies that he was not teaching that we are under no law.<\/span><\/p>\n In what sense then are we \u201cnot under law\u201d? In the sense introduced in chapter 3\u2014we are not under law in order to be justified from sin. In other words, we cannot be justified from sin by relying on a system of law; we must (and do) have a system of grace. However, this gives no one an excuse for, nor an encouragement to, discount the law and excuse the practice of sin. Since Paul says we (as Christians) can sin, it must follow that we are under law in some sense, for, as already seen, where there is no law there is no sin.<\/span><\/p>\n Paul\u2019s seeming exclusion of law with God\u2019s provision of grace (Tit. 2:11) is an expression that employs a literary device in which one element is de-emphasized in order to emphasize another. Such is not unique to Paul or to Romans 6:14. John employed the same device in 1 John 3:18: \u201cMy Little children, let us not love in word, neither with the tongue; but in deed and truth.\u201d Surely, even the ripest liberal would not argue that John here excludes the use of the tongue in expressing love. Nor is he teaching that the only legitimate means of expressing love for one another is by our deeds. Even a novice in the Word of God can perceive that John is saying that we must not employ words and tongue alone, but we also use appropriate deeds to express our love one for another. Thus in Romans 6:14, Paul is de-emphasizing law (rather than totally excluding it) in order to emphasize the grace whereby we are justified.<\/span><\/p>\n MacKnight, though not a member of the Lord\u2019s church, gives the following paraphrase of Romans 6:14, which has merit:<\/span><\/p>\n Besides sin shall not lord it over you, for this reason, that ye are not under a dispensation of law, which gives no assistance against sin; but under grace, which affords all the aids necessary for subduing sin.1<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Paul is by no means teaching that this system of grace is free of law or commandment. I have found no better comment on Paul\u2019s \u201claw-grace\u201d statement than that of the late R.L. Whiteside:<\/span><\/p>\n This verse [Rom. 6:14] does not mean that we are free from all law. Grace predominates. Where law condemns, grace makes pardon possible. If we were under no law, we would be guilty of no sin, and there would be no need of grace to forgive our sin. This verse is a figure of speech in which the less is denied so as to emphasize the greater. We are not merely under law, but more especially under grace.2<\/sup><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Paul\u2019s point in this passage then is that, in the Christian Age, men are no longer solely under a system of law (which characterized the situation of all men, Jew and Gentile alike, before the cross). While there were many expressions of God\u2019s grace in the lives of the patriarchs and toward Israel under their respective systems of law, God still dealt with those ancients primarily through law. Law alone was\u2014and is\u2014insufficient to justify men from sin; it only condemns the sinners, which term describes us all (Rom. 3:23) before our redemption. The Son of God brought and empowered a system of grace and law in happy and perfect combination, wherein justification was fully supplied to \u201cmake up the difference\u201d between God\u2019s perfect law and man\u2019s failure to keep it flawlessly. This fact is the very thing that makes the Gospel \u201cgood news.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Law of Christ includes a form\/pattern of doctrine, which the Romans had obeyed in being justified from their sins and added to the church (Rom. 6:16\u201318). This pattern involved hearing and believing the Gospel (10:11\u201317), confessing one\u2019s belief in Jesus (vv. 9\u201310), dying to sin in repentance, and being baptized into Christ and into His death in order to be cleansed by His blood (6:3\u20134). The law of Christ also teaches us that, upon arising from baptism, we must live a new life that rejects the practice of sin (vv. 4, 12\u201313). He has made all of these wonderful commands of His law the keys to obtaining and maintaining His grace. Herein is illustrated the wondrous balance between Divine law and grace.<\/span><\/p>\n Endnotes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n [Note: <\/strong>I wrote this MS, and it originally appeared as an \u201cEditorial Perspective\u201d in the December 2003 issue of The Gospel Journal, <\/em>a 36-page monthly of which I was editor at the time.]<\/span><\/p>\n Attribution:<\/strong> From thescripturecache.com<\/em>; Dub McClish, owner and administrator.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Views: 1[Note:\u00a0 This MS is available in larger font on our Longer Articles\u00a0 page.] Introduction The prevailing attitude in society concerning morals and behavior in our time is tolerance (except, of course, toward those who dare to expose the fallacy of their misplaced tolerance). This…<\/p>\n\n
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