📖 Biblical Definition
Antinomianism is the error of claiming that because believers are justified by grace through faith, they are released from any obligation to God's moral law. Scripture refutes this directly. Paul anticipates the objection: "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (Romans 6:1-2). James warns that "faith apart from works is dead" (James 2:26). Christ Himself declared: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17). The Reformed position distinguishes three uses of the law: to restrain evil (civil use), to drive sinners to Christ (pedagogical use), and to guide the believer in grateful obedience (normative use). Antinomianism denies this third use entirely, severing sanctification from justification.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
One of a sect who maintain that the moral law is not binding on Christians under the gospel dispensation.
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ANTINOMIAN, n. One of a sect who maintain that the moral law is not binding on Christians, under the gospel dispensation of grace, and who hold that good works do not promote, and sin does not diminish, the salvation of the soul. Webster correctly identified this as a sectarian error — the claim that grace obliterates moral obligation. His definition reflects the historic Protestant understanding that antinomianism is a corruption of the doctrine of free grace.
📖 Key Scripture
• Romans 6:1-2 — "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means!"
• Matthew 5:17-19 — "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."
• James 2:17-26 — "So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead."
• Jude 1:4 — "Certain people have crept in unnoticed... ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality."
• 1 John 2:3-4 — "And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Antinomianism thrives under the banner of "grace alone" preaching that severs obedience from salvation.
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Modern evangelicalism is saturated with functional antinomianism. The "free grace" movement teaches that a person can accept Jesus as Savior while indefinitely refusing Him as Lord — that repentance and obedience are optional additions to faith, not inherent expressions of it. Popular preaching reduces the gospel to a one-time decision that guarantees heaven regardless of how one lives afterward. This is the very error Jude warned about: perverting the grace of God into a license for sensuality. The Reformers insisted that justification and sanctification are distinct but inseparable — the same faith that lays hold of Christ's righteousness also produces the fruit of obedience. When preachers tell their congregations that God's law has nothing to say to the Christian, they produce not liberated believers but licentious ones. The third use of the law — as a guide for grateful, Spirit-empowered obedience — is not legalism; it is the normal Christian life.
Usage
• "The antinomian error severs what God has joined: the free grace that justifies the sinner and the moral law that guides the saint."
• "When a preacher says the Ten Commandments have nothing to do with the Christian life, he is not preaching radical grace — he is preaching antinomianism."
• "Antinomian theology produces churches full of people who claim Christ as Savior but refuse Him as Lord — which is no salvation at all."