Law and Grace, Faith and Works

 

As we saw last time, the Law was never given to us as a way of salvation. Salvation is accomplished through the finished work of Christ on our behalf. To even suggest that salvation might be possible by any other means is a fundamental attack upon the absolute holiness of God, and a fundamental denial of the depth and seriousness of sin. It is to bring God down, and exalt man in His place. This is blasphemy, and it is humanistic idolatry. Salvation has always been – Old and New Testament – by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Scripture is clear: “[W]e know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified” (Galatians 2:16 ESV).

But this still leaves us to answer the question: What is the purpose of the Law to us as Christians? If we believe that Scripture alone, and all of Scripture, is “breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17), then how are we to understand the place of the Law?

Turning Church into a Nightclub

“We’re under grace, not law.” You’ve probably heard this kind of phrase before. It’s become a religious mantra in many sections of the visible church, and it’s basically used to say that as Christians, we are no longer bound by obedience to the Law. “That’s Old Testament. Under the New Testament, we’re under grace, not law”. If pushed to defend this teaching from Scripture, they will generally suggest that it is because Christ has “fulfilled” the Law, in the sense of completely abrogating and ending it. But a little careful exegesis will show that this is not the correct understanding of our Lord’s words, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17).

The “grace, not law” doctrine suggests that God fundamentally changed in character between the Testaments, and so He also changed the way in which He relates to humanity. You get the distinct impression, talking to many, that they think that God was cruel and harsh in the Old Testament but that now, in the New, He has become loving and gracious. As a result, it was all law in the Old Testament, and it is now all grace in the New. This kind of thinking is nothing new. Needham writes:

““[T]he most outstanding Gnostic leader was Marcion…[, who] lived in Rome from AD 140 to 155… Marcion taught that the Old and New Testaments were in total opposition to each other. The Old Testament God was the Demiurge, a cruel and unloving Being, and Judaism was an evil religion, a religion of law and works and self-righteousness. The New Testament, by contrast, was the book of the supreme God, the heavenly Father revealed by Jesus Christ, and it taught a totally different religion of grace and faith and freedom.”¹

Sound familiar? “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). If you are being taught these kinds of things, even if only very subtly, then you need to seriously ask yourself: Why does my pastor sound like a second-century heretic?

There are, however, differences. While Marcion “taught that the world of space, time and matter was evil, and he was very hostile to sex and marriage”², those who teach a sharp divide between Old and New Testaments today are often found reveling in the things of the flesh, and of this world. Grace is perverted into a license to sin.

To be fair to C. I. Scofield, he did speak of the importance of “good works as a fruit of salvation”³. Much of modern Dispensationalism, though, has drifted far closer to what I’ve discussed above. Ironically, they have gone from salvation by works in the Old Testament, to salvation by mere “acceptance of Christ” without any need for works at all in the New Testament! One theologian claims that the very thing that “distinguishes the true Gospel from all its counterfeits” is that the true Gospel calls for “no spiritual commitment whatsoever.”⁴ To be saved, all you need to do is “accept” Christ as Saviour. Ideally, you should repent and submit to Christ as Lord too, but this is optional, because “we’re under grace, not Law”.

At the charismatic church I used to attend, it was pointed out that sin is “not God’s best for you”. But they were quick to add that you don’t really need to change anything in your life, so long as you believe in Christ as Saviour. This is because “we’re under grace, not Law”. They thought that this was some high, exalted doctrine. They also displayed a very warped understanding of what it means to “enjoy your freedom in Christ”. They seemed to take this to mean basically enjoying carnal pleasures and worldliness with impunity. The sin of drunkenness was especially popular.

One of the worst examples that I personally witnessed was the installing of what was basically a nightclub in a room upstairs, complete with a bar serving alcoholic beverages. Now, they said, they could “enjoy their freedom in Christ” after the evening meeting and, of course, show unbelievers how “normal” and “cool” they were. An old version of their website stated: “Refreshments are served before and after each meeting, including a fully licensed bar after the 7.00pm… [W]hy not relax with us afterwards and enjoy some live music and a drink.”

Untold people in these “churches”, up and down this nation and around the world, are self-deceived. Still dead in trespasses and sins, they are walking in the flesh, living for the flesh, manifesting the deeds of the flesh. They think that because they “prayed a prayer”, or had an emotional experience in a worship service that one time, they are saved. For all the obsession – to the point of idolatry – with alleged “gifts of the Spirit”, where is the fruit of the Spirit? Ignored, and downplayed. I was a false convert, I believe, for six years, before God by His grace saved me out of this wicked deception.

The truth of Scripture is clear:

“I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:16-24).

The Antinomian Heresy

John MacArthur writes (in a book on this subject I highly recommend):

“The gospel in vogue today holds forth a false hope to sinners. It promises them that they can have eternal life yet continue to live in rebellion against God. Indeed, it encourages people to claim Jesus as Savior yet defer until later the commitment to obey Him as Lord. It promises salvation from hell but not necessarily freedom from iniquity. It offers false security to people who revel in the sins of the flesh and spurn the way of holiness. By separating faith from faithfulness, it teaches that intellectual assent is as valid as wholehearted obedience to the truth… Thus the good news of Christ has given way to the bad news of an insidious easy-believism that makes no moral demands on the lives of sinners. It is not the same message Jesus proclaimed.”⁵

No it is not. What we have here is the heresy of antinomianism. This is a compound word from the Greek ἀντί, “against”, and νόμος, “law”. So antinomianism means, literally, “against law”-ism. According to one article from Ligonier Ministries, “the old heresy of antinomianism… proclaims freedom from the law in the form of licentiousness. Antinomianism… says that Christians can live however they want, for the law is in no way binding for believers.”⁶ I do believe that heresy is the right word for antinomianism, because this is not some small error. The gospel of antinomianism is a different gospel entirely.

The Obedience of Faith

In order to embrace antinomian teaching, of course, it’s not just the Law of God that is dismissed. People must also ignore the huge amount of New Testament Scripture which stresses the importance of obedience. The Apostle Paul, for example, speaks of “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5). True faith is obedient faith. And there is a very good reason why this is the case.

The purpose of our salvation in Christ is not merely to save us from the punishment our sin deserves. Dear reader, if your only concern and interest in Christ is to escape from hell, and you have no corresponding hatred for sin and hungering after righteousness, then you are not a Christian. Even the worst of reprobate sinners want to escape from the wrath of God, out of purely self-seeking motives (cf. Revelation 6:15-17). Christ did not die so that we can go on sinning with impunity, and then have a convenient escape from hell in the end. To reduce the glory of the Gospel to a “get-out-of-hell-free” card to be played when you die is a blasphemous perversion of grace.

Part of the issue here is a misunderstanding of what grace is. Many people seem to think that grace is basically just God forgiving us. But that’s not grace. That’s forgiveness. Saving grace is something far more than this: “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). God’s saving grace is His active working in the hearts and lives of His people, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The mark of a true Christian is not fear of hell, but love for God in Christ and hatred of sin. This is so because God’s purpose in our salvation is to make us holy, as He is holy. His purpose is not merely to save us from the punishment, but also from the power and presence of sin. This is what the Scriptures tell us: “He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). That is true freedom in Christ! The words of God through Ezekiel, speaking of the new birth:

“I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to do My judgments” (Ezekiel 36:25-27).

This is what true salvation looks like. The obedience of faith, flowing from a regenerated heart that by the power of the Holy Spirit is growing in love for God, and growing in hatred of and freedom from sin. Repentance, sanctification, and obedience are not some optional extras in the Christian life: They are an essential part of what it means to be a true Christian. Any gospel which would downplay or remove the call to obedience is no gospel at all.

Some words from 1 John should be more than enough to demonstrate the point again:

“Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:4-10 ESV).

These are not complicated, difficult words. Sanctification is – good works are – the necessary fruit of true salvation. Christ was manifested “to destroy the works of the devil”. Christ came to “save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21), not to leave them enslaved to them. The true Gospel proclaims that for every person whom Christ came to save, He saves them indeed from the punishment, the power, and ultimately the very presence of sin, without and within. Therefore the true Christian bears good fruit in keeping with repentance, because the Spirit is at work in them, to transform their hearts and their lives, taking them captive to obey the Word of God:

“Therefore, having girded your minds for action, being sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, not being conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your conduct; because it is written, “you shall be holy, for I am holy”” (1 Peter 1:13-16).

Which brings us back around, then, to the subject of the Law of God, and how it relates to us as New Testament Christians. Lord willing, that will be the subject of my next article.

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1 Nick Needham, 2000 Years of Christ’s Power: Volume 1 - The Age of the Early Church Fathers (Fearn: Christian Focus Publications, 2016), pp.104-105.

2 Ibid., p.105.

3 C. I. Scofield, “Scofield Reference Notes, 1917 Edition”. Available at: https://www.stepbible.org/?q=version=Scofield@reference=John.1, accessed 10^th July 2026.

4 Zane C. Hodges, The Gospel Under Siege (Dallas: Redencion Viva, 1981), p.14.

5 John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus: What Is Authentic Faith? (Revised and Expanded Anniversary Edition) (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), pp.19-20.

6 Ligonier Ministries (2017), “The Antinomian Error”. Available at: https://learn.ligonier.org/devotionals/that-antinomian-error, accessed 18^th July 2026.

Image: Andrew Barden, "Strong Crocus, Wolverhampton" (March 2025).