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lawIt was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. — Romans 3:26

I think I understand what Steven Furtick is trying to say in this now-infamous clip from a recent sermon, but it is so problematic on so many different levels, it is difficult to know where to start untangling it. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals’ Todd Pruitt has done a good job of outlining the significant theological problems with Furtick’s statements here.

Furtick is wanting to emphasize that the gospel is better than the law (I think), and this is true enough. In fact, we should all be eager to emphasize that, as Paul does in 2 Corinthians 3. The gospel’s superiority to the law is the essence of sound Christian preaching, because in fact the gospel (not the law) is the essence of sound Christianity. (In fact, I wish Furtick’s regular preaching offered up more of the emphasis of the finished work of Christ rather than regular sets of steps and tips and pick-me-ups based on human potential, which, whether he realizes it or not, is a pretty legalistic way of preaching.) But there is a biblical way to express this important truth, and then there is Furtick’s way. Furtick’s way is to say that God breaks the law “for love.” But this only makes sense of his illustration, not of anything the Bible actually teaches.

See, many people tend to think that when the Father sent the Son to die on the cross to forgive sins, he was in some sense “breaking the law.” That line of thinking is what I suspect is at work in this sermon clip. Like, because of Jesus, God is letting our law-breaking somehow slide.

The god preached in this kind of scenario is really the false god of antinomianism (“against the law”) because he can only forgive sins by in some way compromising his holiness. In other words, he sort of tips the scales towards his mercy and away from his righteousness. A lot of Christians tend to think of God’s work like that — as if, with Jesus, he’s kind of bending the rules. He sacrifices one part of his self (holiness) in order that we might take advantage of another (love).

But the one true God does not compromise one bit. He bends no rules! In fact, he punishes every single sin. Not a single sin throughout all of history slips through the cracks.

So how can he forgive sinners like us while maintaining the perfection of his holiness? He puts our sin on Jesus Christ.

God has declared that he will by no means clear the guilty (Nahum 1:3). So he instead makes guilty people righteous! But to do this in a way that is just, he must make a righteous person guilty. And he accomplishes this, the Bible reveals, by punishing our sin by punishing his son Jesus.

In this way, all sin is accounted for. Whether by the wrath of hell or by the wrath of the cross, every single sin is accounted for. And in this way, the grace of God is revealed. Christians therefore believe that if anyone wants to stand before a holy God and be declared holy enough to escape judgment, they must reject trusting in their own good works and instead accept the good works of Jesus Christ as their own.

The cross of Jesus Christ, then, shows us how God is both perfectly holy and perfectly loving, simultaneously and totally just and yet totally gracious. He doesn’t bend any rules or break any laws, as the spirit of antinomianism would suggest. It is in fact through the very cross of Christ that God, according to the Apostle Paul, “showed his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

The Christian God is both just and justifier, and he does his justifying as an act of sheer grace, forgiving sinners not by their obedience (because they could never obey well enough) but by Christ’s obedience, which is perfect and thus perfectly fulfills the perfectly holy law of God.

In fact, when you do a bit of “reverse engineering” on the atonement knowing this, you can see that in fact it wouldn’t be very loving at all for God to have broken his own laws to save us. Because an atonement made by a law not perfectly kept is no atonement at all. If God broke his law to save me, I am not saved, because what is needed is perfection. It would not be perfectly loving for our holy God to apply to me an imperfect atonement! But in fact the gospel announces not just that my sins are forgiven, but that I am counted righteous in Christ.

I have received the righteousness of Christ, which means that’s his perfect obedience to the law of God is considered as my own perfect obedience to the law of God. That’s how gracious God is! He has broken antinomianism for love.

And now, in the spirit of this grace, I pursue obedience of God with gratitude and freedom and joy — not because I am saved by my righteousness but because, in a sense, I am saved from it.

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

(A portion of this post is a slightly edited excerpt from my forthcoming book Unparalleled: How the Uniqueness of Christianity Makes It Compelling)

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