Thank you for joining me for today's episode of God, Law and Liberty, and I'm your host, David Fowler. Today, we're going to look at whether it's possible to walk by the Spirit if we're afraid of anti-nomenism, either creeping into our lives or in lives of others or into our local congregation. We're specifically going to look at what Paul mean when he told Timothy that the law is good if it's used lawfully. Now I said last week that I thought some theonamist and abortion abolitionists might respond negatively to what I said last week about 1 Timothy 1 5 through 7. Let me repeat the verses and then what I said. The verse reads as follows. Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, from which some having strayed have turned aside to idle talk. That's IDLE talk. Desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say or the things which they affirm. Now as to these three things as the end or the tell us of what Paul was charging Timothy as an essential understanding for the ordering of the church that was to follow, I said this. The apparent looseness of the above might send shivers down the spine of some theonamist, particularly some who identifies abortion abolitionists. So not all, it would seem antinomian, meaning against the law of God as our rule of faith and practice. I said today that I would look at what the objectors might say and they might simply point to the words that follow Paul's previously quoted statement to Timothy. In verses 8 through 10 we read, but we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sotomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for pergers, and if there's any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine. Now notice that the passage begins with an affirmation that law can be used lawfully and presumably unlawfully. That would make no sense to a legal positivist, as was true for me, much of my life, because the law is law, right? Because we said so, we made it so. But notice too, that the next statement seems antinomian, as if the law of God isn't really relevant for the regenerate. The law is not made for a righteous person. That being the case, I once assumed by natural reasoning that Paul was saying in the rest of the passage that the law of God encapsulated and antin commandments, many of those specifics, touch on them, right? Is employed to restrain the unregenerate from sin, or at least from committing certain sinful acts against others, which is where criminal law would come in, right? But I don't think that's what using the law of God lawfully means. To use the law of God lawfully, I believe it should be used in the way Paul concludes this passage, quote, according to the glorious gospel of the Blessed God, which was committed to my trust, end quote. I believe this meaning, or this means understanding the law's purpose as respects the lives of the unregenerate identified in Paul's statement vis-à-vis the regenerate. So with respect to the unregenerate who Paul described to Timothy in verses 8 through 10, we have learned that the law of God serves the purpose of provoking or inflaming sin, not every straining it, and why? Because sin as an habitual principle in the life of the unregenerate person is an active and enslaving dominion. It produces in them, coveting of every kind, Roman 7.8. That's why Paul wrote that, quote, that what things so ever the law sayeth, it sayeth to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. Romans 3.19. And I believe Paul is telling Timothy, remind those in the Church of God that you are under grace, not under law, Romans 6, 14 through 15. In other words, when by the Holy Spirit, the unregenerate, see that keeping their moral convictions wears thin, breaking them repeatedly, or wears them out, some in despair or agony will cry out for mercy. They, I believe, are being tutored to Christ by the Holy Spirit, Galatians 3.24, toward a, quote, new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness, Ephesians 4.24. The rest, who don't, quote, kiss the sun, perish in the way, Psalm 2 12. The way incidentally in which those under the law were headed all along, see Romans 6.21. So am I saying there is no law of God for the regenerate? No. Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 9.21. It's not that they are, quote, without law to God, but they are under the law to Christ. In other words, the regenerate are under the law in a different way, or more properly speaking, they have a different relationship to the law of God than the unregenerate. Consider Hebrews 7 12, quote, for their priesthood being changed from, as we know, the tribe of Levi to Jesus Christ tribe, Judah, there is made of necessity, a change also of the law, end quote. In the regenerate, the declaration of the perfection in the Holy Law of God should bring forth praise and joy for a pure heart, a clean conscience, and the sincere faith given him or her freely by God's grace. Seeing in that gift the glory of God in the face of Christ 2 Corinthians 4.6 is their inner motivation to righteousness and true holiness, Ephesians 4.24. In contrast to this, I believe the regenerate's lawful use of the law of God with respect to the unregenerate is the declaration of it accompanied with prayers that the Holy Spirit would use that declaration to discover or to reveal to the unregenerate here the objective, active, corrupting residents of enslaving sin in him or her. See Romans 7.7 I believe that not appreciating this distinction may be the reason Paul said some who desire to be teachers of the law, quote, understand neither what they say nor the things which they affirm. First Timothy 1.7. Perhaps this would help us understand what I'm talking about as how the law of Moses was used and depicted in John Bunyan's book Pilgrim's progress. It may be all that's known by some Christians and by those abortion abolitionists who approach everybody who opposes them regenerate or not with reviling in censorship. Well, consider the use of that law as expressed to Christian by faithful in the book who had been overtaken on his journey by a certain person. Here's the dialogue, faithful. He gave me a blow and knocked me down nearly killing me. When I somewhat revived I asked him why he abused me so and he replied because of your secret and clining to Adam the First. And with that he struck me another deadly blow on my chest and beat me down backward. So I lay at his feet as dead. And when I recovered again I cried to him for mercy but he said I don't know how to show mercy. And with that he knocked me down again. And further in the conversation Christian says the man who overtook you was Moses. He spares none. Neither does he know how to show mercy to those who transgress his law. So in my view this threatening use of the law of God is employed consciously or subconsciously by the plagians of old and those of our day. It provides the external motives to sanctification. You may recall the description of this kind of sanctification by John Owen in the publication entitled sanctification and two graces. Quote, some believe the Spirit of God only makes us holy by persuading us to be so, not recreating us in the image of God. He does it by requiring us to be holy, proposing unto us motives to holiness. I would insert here perhaps threats of hell and final judgment for example. And three gives us convictions of its necessity. It's by those means only that a person is excited to pursue and attain holiness. In quote, beating down people indiscriminately, they're regenerate and unregenerate alike with the law of God as a motive to holiness. Is all some people know? With respect to the unregenerate, it seems to me as if they think there's enough left of the image of God in them, in the broad sense compared to the narrow sense we've discussed before, that with just a little brow-beating they can be motivated to make a good-go at holiness. No recreation of the image of God and a habitual principle of righteousness and holiness by the Holy Spirit is needed, just motivation to commit oneself to moral reform. With respect to the regenerate, threats of the final judgment can even be employed by ministers during worship on Sunday mornings as motivation to keep plugging towards holiness. For many, Moses' law without Christ nearly beats them to death. I suspect they either quit coming or find themselves coming to the front of the church every so often to recommit themselves to moral reform. Now, there may be an alternative to this indiscriminate, insorious, reviling of even the regenerate who disagree with or oppose specific political efforts. And it's that they fear it will lead to antinominess and if there's not a little brow-beating from the hand of Moses. And I appreciate that at one time I would have, but it raises some questions for me. Do they, who do this, think the Holy Spirit that recreates the image of God and fallen man, the same as he originally did in Adam, cannot really be trusted to illumine their minds beyond his initial recreating work, now that they are joined in reality, to the risen never to die again, perfect Holy Jesus Christ? Do they think a newly implanted habitual principle of righteousness will not be sufficiently efficacious under the Holy Spirit's influence to motivate them to rightly divide the word and study to show themselves approved? But if those doubts reflect spiritual truth and reality, it would seem to me that Adam, even before his transgression, was destined to fail at the dominion mandate given in Genesis 1-28. The analogy that comes to my mind is God creating Adam like he would have built a racecar, but putting him in the racecar at the starting line without a driver. Now we all not forget that some desiring to-be teachers of the law is Paul Toltimethy. They only have, quote, the form of knowledge in of the truth in the law, Romans 2-20. They may not yet have an experiential acknowledgement of the metaphysical truth that the regenerate quote, have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and the church of the first born who are registered in heaven, to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, Hebrews 12, 22-24. Now if metaphysical considerations are absent in our thinking, this passage easily becomes only a metaphor without a reality. That should not be true for the regenerate. They live by a supernaturally bestowed spiritual faith in what is not seen 2 Corinthians 4-18, a meta-physical understanding of reality with a distinct and unique cosmology. This understanding of reality is spiritual and not known to or discoverable by the natural man, the unregenerate person whose mind remains darkened. The regenerate know with a certainty that only a supernatural faith can supply that Christ quote has delivered them from the power of darkness and conveyed them to the kingdom of the Son of His love, Colossians 1-13. This faith objectively grounded in who Jesus Christ is and His mediation now defines their relationship to the law, and everything else, as Jason Farley reminded us a few weeks ago. But sadly, I fear too many still live as I did for so long under the shadow of quote, the mountain that may not be touched, and it burned with fire into blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words so that those who heard it beg that the words should not be spoken to them anymore. And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I am exceedingly afraid and trembling. He was 12-18-19, and 21. So what do the four-gong verses mean as a practical matter to the unregenerate who simultaneously live in the kingdom of the Son and under civil institutions now influenced by the unregenerate? Who at bottom are at imnity with God and them. And we'll start to look at that next week. I hope you'll join me.