Antinomianism
Serious error
The teaching that God's moral law has no binding claim on the lives of believers.
Also called: antinomian, antinomians
What it means
The word means "against law." Antinomianism teaches that because Christians are saved by grace and not by works, the moral law no longer directs how they should live. In its milder forms it treats commands in Scripture as mere suggestions, or holds that preaching duty to Christians is a return to legalism. In stronger forms it says a believer's sin does not matter to God at all.
The concern behind it is often a good one: to guard free grace and keep works out of justification. Martin Luther coined the term against a colleague who said the law should not be preached in the church at all, and the Puritans contended with it in seventeenth-century England.
The Reformation confessions reject it. They teach that believers are free from the law as a covenant of works and from its curse, but not from obedience to it as a rule of life. Christian liberty is freedom to serve God, not freedom to sin.
What Scripture says
Paul flatly rejects the idea that believers should continue in sin so that grace may increase.
Faith does not nullify the law; it upholds it.
Jesus came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it, and warns against relaxing its commandments.
Knowing God shows itself in keeping his commandments; one who claims otherwise is a liar.
Some turn the grace of God into a license for immorality.
What is wrong with it
Scripture never sets grace against obedience. The same apostle who insists that no one is justified by works of the law also says that faith upholds the law, and that those who have died to sin cannot go on living in it. Jesus himself said that those who love him will keep his commandments. The law's demands did not end at the cross; its curse did.
Antinomianism confuses the ground of salvation with the shape of the saved life. Works add nothing to our justification, but the Spirit who joins us to Christ also renews us, so that we delight in God's law in the inner self.
How it undermines the truth
It undermines the holiness of God, as if he no longer cared how his children live. It undermines sanctification, by removing the pattern the Spirit uses to conform us to Christ. And it undermines the gospel itself, because a grace that leaves people unchanged is not the grace the New Testament describes, which trains us to renounce ungodliness.
How it can harm a church
A church shaped by antinomianism tends to stop calling sin sin. Members drift into patterns that wound marriages, families, and consciences, and leaders lose the biblical ground for loving correction and church discipline. Those who are struggling are left without the clear guidance that would help them, and outsiders see a church that looks no different from the world.
It can also give false assurance to people who have never truly repented, telling them all is well when Scripture would urge them to examine themselves.
This page describes a teaching, not the faith of any person who holds it.
Where it comes up
Confessions: WCF 19.6; WCF 20.3; LBCF 1689 19.6; LBCF 1689 21.3
On this site: Law & gospel
Related terms
Three uses of the lawHistoric orthodoxy
The Reformation teaching that God's moral law restrains evil in society, shows sinners their need of Christ, and guides believers in grateful obedience.
LegalismSerious error
Treating obedience to God's law, or to human rules, as the ground of a person's acceptance with God.
Free grace theologySerious error
The teaching that saving faith is simply believing Jesus' promise of eternal life, without any necessary turning from sin or submission to him as Lord.
SanctificationHistoric orthodoxy
The lifelong work of God's grace by which believers are made more holy, dying to sin and living to righteousness.
Church disciplineHistoric orthodoxy
The church's loving correction of members and officers who persist in serious sin or false teaching, aimed at their repentance, the purity of the church, and the honour of Christ.