O How I Love Your Law!

We continue a year through what we believe as Christians using the Heidelberg Catechism. This afternoon, we enter the third part of the catechism. Having been delivered by the condemnation of God's law by grace alone through faith alone and in Christ alone, we now live out that same law that once condemned us by looking to Christ, empowered by his Spirit, out of gratitude.

Introduction:
o Saving Private Ryan: "Earn this."
o In light of the sacrifice of Christ, do we now try to make ourselves worthy of his sacrifice?
o We live in the freedom of grace out of gratitude

False Views of the Law
o Legalism
• Its root
• Kinds of legalism
Ø Earning our salvation
Ø Adding to God's law
Ø Earn this: are you doing enough?
o Antinomianism
• Its root
• Kinds of antinomianism
Ø Sins of commission (Rom 6)
Ø Sins of Omission (James 2)

Their Antidote
o Bad medicine: treating them as though they are opposites
• For the legalist: to teach our freedom from the law?
• For the antinomian: to teach our obligation to God's law?
• Antinomianism and legalism are not opposites of one another
Ø "Non-identical twins that emerge from the same womb" – Sinclair Ferguson
Ø Their opposites are the gospel
o The best prescription:
• More gospel!
• Union with Christ How We Now View the Law
o In Christ and by the Spirit
o Out of gratitude
o Blessed Assurance
• Through the good fruit we bear
• Grounded in Christ