Tendencies Characterizing Antinomianism

Legalism, simply defined, is the belief that a person gains a right standing with God through keeping the law (or some set of rules). Legalism is a false teaching, which is based on a failure to understand sinners' desperate state before a holy God (that we are depraved and morally unable to keep His law). Legalism denigrates God's grace and the work of Christ on behalf of sinners, who must not rely on their own works, but on what Jesus has done for us, in our place.

As Christians avoid legalism, there is another ditch we must avoid as well. That ditch is antinomianism. The word "antinomian" literally means "against law." David Como identifies seven tendencies characterizing antinomianism:

• "a propensity to argue that the Mosaic Law, including the Decalogue, was in some sense abolished, abrogated, or superseded for Christians" [emphasis added] 
• an "aggressive polemical posture" against the "mainstream godly divinity" that emphasized "sanctification,... zealous application of the means of grace, and continuing repentance for transgressions"
• "the propensity to use images and motifs common to puritanism to attack mainstream puritanism"
• "against the strenuous, active faith of mainstream puritanism,... the total passivity of the believer" in salvation and assurance
• "a...tendency to claim that believers...were transformed into exalted (and sometimes supernatural) beings"
• the inclination "to pronounce believers in some sense free from sin"
• "the...crucial characteristic of antinomian religiosity–the propensity to offer believers a sense of assurance and joy that was more total, more satisfying, and more final than anything to be found in mainstream puritanism"

[The above is cited in James Renihan, For the Vindication of the Truth, 86.]

Christians should guard against modern day antinomianism. We should sing with the psalmist, "Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day" (Psalm 119:97). We should hear the words of Christ: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15).