Rachel Winkler’s Reviews > The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters > Status Update

“Neither implicit nor explicit assurance exists apart from actual faith.”

“…assurance is nourished on a clear understanding of grace and especially of union with Christ and the justification, adoption, and regeneration that are ours freely in him.”

“Reformed theology at its best and wisest spoke with one voice: it is possible to have assurance of salvation without extraordinary revelation. The first recipients of Scripture had it; saints throughout the ages have had it; we may have it too.”

“Like Old Testament prophecy then, so with Old Testament law, it is in the light of its fulfillment that the real structures that were always present in God’s ancient word are fully revealed.”

“At root then antinomianism separates God’s law from God’s person, and grace from the union with Christ in which the law is written in the heart…it dismantles the truth of the gospel.”

“Although in one sense antinomianism is the ‘opposite’ error, in another sense it is the ‘equal’ error, for it similarly abstracts God’s law from God’s person and character (which undergoes no change from old to new covenant). It fails to appreciate that the law that condemns us for our sins was given to teach us how not to sin.”

“It is only through the free, patient, loving grace of our second husband, the second man, the last Adam, Jesus Christ, that we can be delivered from a bondage frame of spirit. This the law cannot do. The personal, spiritual, mental, emotional, temperamental release comes only when we grasp the fact that what the law could not do, because of our weak flesh, God has done for us in Christ.”

“The danger of legalism is that it builds up again what Christ has torn down. It distorts and may actually destroy the gospel.”

“Every form of jealousy, all covering for oneself of what God has given to others, all seeing God’s distribution of gifts as related to performance rather than his fatherly pleasure and enjoyment, is infected with this [legalism].”

“If we come to think of God as one whose total focus is on exposing our sin, we will become too shortsighted to see his grace. We will be plagued by a spirit of doubting and mistrusting the Father of lights, who gives his good gifts to us.“

“…legalism arises not only out of a distortion of the grace of God but also from a warped view of the law of God…legalism begins to manifest itself when we view God’s law as a contract with conditions to be fulfilled and not as the implications of a covenant graciously given to us.”