23/08/2026
Antinomianism often spreads in churches through antinomian preaching.
Antinomian preaching portrays God as permissive (Jude 4). It wrongly equates love and grace with permissiveness. It is similar to legalistic preaching because it undermines trust in God. It paints a picture of a god who does not love his people enough to tell them hard truths in his law, to teach them how to live, to require what is good, and warn and exhort them when they are in danger. The antinomian god is agreeable, nice, and grandfatherly. He is immanently near, but he is not the least bit dangerous or disruptive. He is safe, tame, and comfortable. Antinomian preaching can never inspire awe, wonder, and reverential fear. Such a god may be a shoulder to cry on, but he cannot be trusted to tell the truth when we do not want to hear it or to insist on the right way to live when we are drifting or confused.
Antinomian preaching distorts both law and gospel, but it does so differently than legalistic preaching. If legalistic preaching collapses law and gospel, antinomian preaching tears the law and the gospel completely apart. It proclaims a relaxed gospel, one that emphasizes only God's love, grace, and forgiveness. Antinomian preaching freely declares how much God cares for us and that we are righteous by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Christ's work alone. It avoids, however, the fact that our sins are so wicked that only the shed blood of Christ could pay for our guilt and that our rebellion against God's law is what sent Jesus to the cross. It says little to nothing about the fearful sight of God the Son crucified for our wretched sins against the law. Antinomianism preaches a gospel that implies we might willingly remain in our sins and still feel the comfort of grace (Rom 6:1-2, 12-14).
Antinomianism, therefore, proclaims a relaxed gospel, but it also preaches a silenced and toothless law (Matt 5:19). When antinomians preach the law, they do so in such a way that the law's commanding authority is virtually muted, and they preach the law mainly so that their hearers can rejoice that they are free from its authoritative commands. If antinomians preach the law as the guide for a Christian at all, they will only preach a kind of quietism, telling their hearers to rest and relax passively into the love and grace of God in Christ and that eventually some obedience may follow. Antinomian preaching has little to nothing of the law's directing force. Instead, it may tell hearers to wait for the promptings of the Spirit, that there is no law but love, or that the Christian life is spiritual and inward but does not absolutely require outward obedience. If people are only told about God's love and grace toward them, then they will never learn that they must do the hard and self-sacrificing work of loving, forgiving, and persevering with each other through the sins inevitably committed by the church community.
~ by Tom Hicks
