Lawless Christianity Part III: The Character of God

This is part 3 of 7. If you haven't read the previous parts, please do so before continuing, thank you! If you would like to contact the author you can email here: justin.hornbaker@gmail.com.

The Character of God

God’s moral law is inexorably tied to His moral attributes, or in other words, God’s character. Here I will do a quick theology proper lesson so that we are all on the same page. God's moral attributes as laid out in Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology are His Goodness, Love, Mercy (including Grace & Patience), Holiness, Peace (or Order), Righteousness (or Justice), Jealousy and Wrath. Brett Kunkle, discussing God’s standard of morality (If God Is Good, Why Is There Evil? Podcast), mentioned recently that many Christians talk a lot about the pleasant attributes of God, but it seems to be at the expense of his other attributes which are just as important! Christians shy away from talking about the Holiness of God, his Justice, Wrath, and His Righteous anger toward sinners. All of these moral attributes, including the ones less favored, are characteristics of God that we glean through His laws and statutes. If God did not reveal His Moral expectations to us through laws given throughout scripture we would have little to no knowledge of Him at all.

God’s moral expectations through His perfect Law also reveal His design for how we ought to live. This leads us to the problem of eliminating God’s law from the daily life of the Christian. If we throw out God’s moral laws, we have no specific guidelines on how we should conduct ourselves in Christ. What's more concerning is that we cannot identify sin or lawbreaking either. Consider these insights from Martin Luther:

“The Writings of the Holy Spirit maintain that sin remains dead without the Law, and without the Law there is no breaking of the Law (Romans 4:15). Sin, therefore, cannot exist or be acknowledged without the Law-either the Law written in our hearts or the Law in the Bible.” (Pg 32)

“If sin remains unacknowledged, a person imagines himself guiltless…” (pg 29) [Even as Christians we attain guilt from continuing in sin, and should acknowledge it, bring it to Christ who then takes it away when we confess those sins.]

“Because the Law demands our obedience to God, anyone who would discard the Law would effectively put an end to our obedience to God.” (Pg 32)

“In that you yourself can see that justified Christians continue to die daily, it is simply foolishness to think that Christians should be without the Law. For if there were no Law, there would be neither sin nor death.” (Pg 56,57)

“As the Law was given to the heathen not to be rejected but to create awareness of sin, death and the wrath of God, so is the Law given to the holy, as far as they have not yet died, and still live in the flesh.” (Pg 60)

“Those who want to remove the Law from the Church are totally inexperienced people and deceivers of souls. For such a thing is not only foolish and godless, but also completely impossible. For if you want to take away the Law, you must at the same time take away sin and death.” (Pg 56)

“What those who would eliminate the Law from the Church say about God, about Christ, about faith, the Law, grace, and other things is said in much the same way as a parrot says “Hello,” that is, it is said without understanding. It is simply impossible that one can learn good theology or right living from such preachers.” (Pg 69)

If you didn’t catch it, Luther was pointing out the self-refuting nature of this heresy as I did earlier! If one takes away the Law, the ability to identify sin, the ability to know right living and the very character of God are successfully eliminated! Naturally when you remove such a vital part of the Christian life, something must come in and fill the vacuum. This is, once again, where either moral relativism takes over in the private life of the Christian or a self-deception of contradictory living takes place. The latter results in over-simplified theology where the individual lives in a way that honors God’s laws because they can’t escape them in their scripture reading (or from their conscience which testifies to the moral law of God written on their hearts) but consciously denies their importance. Such a person’s understanding and teachings would be very confusing! I can only hope that this is the more merciful result of most who fall for this heresy, because falling into moral chaos is far worse.



To be continued... (Part 3 of 7)



Originally titled "Antinomianism: A Self-Refuting Heresy."