American Churches Trade the Cross for Lawless Grace

This piece argues that a widespread drift in American churches has replaced the cross with a coupon, trading the call to follow Christ for a feel-good, do-what-you-like gospel. It presses that antinomianism — a modern soft lawlessness dressed as freedom — is not the opposite of legalism but its mirror image, and it explains why restoring a Christ-centered preaching of both justification and sanctification matters. The article surfaces cultural causes, theological errors, and practical signs of the problem, and points to preaching Jesus whole as the corrective.

Somewhere along the way many congregations stopped preaching the hard edges of holiness and began selling a sanitized peace-of-mind. The cross implies dying to self and following a Lord; the coupon model implies a one-time fix and lifelong exemption from accountability. That shift has allowed a private, therapeutic faith to pass for the gospel in too many pulpits and pews.

Pastor Wilson Van Hooser frames the crisis precisely: the enemy has simply changed costumes. The old danger was the Pharisee who piled rules on people to make himself righteous. The new danger is someone who proclaims freedom from rules so loudly that the person in the pew never learns to be a disciple.

The cultural pressure is obvious in a phrase that has become the anthem of the age: “Don’t tell me what to do. I am a law unto myself.” That sentiment is driving debates from gender to governance and it has seeped into the church as a religious libertarianism that hides behind the language of grace. When grace becomes a privacy pass, Scripture, elders, and parents are politely locked out of the most important conversations about how Christians should live.

What looks like liberation often becomes consumer theology: pick what you want, enjoy the benefits, and refuse any instruction that feels inconvenient. The result is a spiritual fast-food culture that borrows vocabulary from the Reformation but strips it of its nourishment. Nominal believers can claim justification while resisting any experience of true Christlike transformation.

Legalism and antinomianism are not opposites, but cousins who both misunderstand God’s law and grace. The legalist seeks favor by performance; the antinomian seeks convenience by dismissing obligation. Both end up treating God’s commands as obstacles rather than displays of His holiness and goodness.

This Antinomian principle, that it is needless for a man, perfectly justified by faith, to endeavour to keep the law, and do good works, is a glaring evidence that legality is so engrained in man’s corrupt nature, that until a man truly come to Christ, by faith, the legal disposition will still be reigning in him… though he run into Antinomianism he will carry along with him his legal spirit, which will always be a slavish and unholy spirit.

That Boston quotation lands hard: the loudest champion of freedom from law often carries a legal spirit beneath the surface, reactive and intolerant toward anyone who calls for repentance. The truly liberated believer does not cringe at commands; he reads them, delights in them, and obeys out of love for the one who saved him. Freedom in Christ never means license to ignore the Lord.

Van Hooser lists unwritten rules that now govern many churches, and they should make churchgoers wince. Among the new commandments of the antinomian are:

• You shall not tell me what doctrine is right and wrong.
• You shall not tell me how I must live, and I shall not tell others how to live.
• You shall not make me feel guilty, and I shall not make others feel guilty.
• You shall not make me undergo church discipline.
• You shall not tell me how to identify myself.
• You shall not exhort me to particular repentance.

Listen to how easily therapeutic culture reshapes pastoral courage into unpopularity, and then awards the pulpiteer who promises comfort above conviction. The irony is that antinomians often become harsh judges of those who insist on moral teaching, demanding tolerance while practicing intolerance toward critics. Grace becomes a cudgel instead of a balm.

The deeper error is preaching justification only, as if Christ’s lordship were optional. The Reformed catechisms did not stop at justification; they insist that justification, adoption, and sanctification come together in union with Christ. To want forgiveness without submission is to want a Christ who does not exist.

The Reformers taught three uses of the law: to expose sin and drive us to Christ, to restrain evil in society, and to instruct believers in holy living. Ignore the third use and you turn Christians into passengers who wait for heaven while doing whatever feels authentic now. The New Testament epistles are full of imperatives addressed to the redeemed; to label them all legalism is to call the apostles legalists.

James warned that “faith without works is dead, being alone,” and that stark sentence should haunt churches that prize inner assurance but produce no change. The cure is not swinging the pendulum to harsh legalism; it is preaching Christ with balance, where indicatives come before imperatives and the Savior who justifies is the same Lord who sanctifies.

Paul gave the formula in a single breath: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Salvation is not earned, but it creates people who do good works.

The Jeremiah episode is a warning about trimming the text to fit preference: “Yet they were not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the king, nor any of his servants that heard all these words.” The danger is a congregation that chops inconvenient truth to ash and calls the smoke grace. The word of God, however, returns with its demands and mercy intact.

Preaching that refuses to reconnect justification with Christ’s lordship leaves a church that cannot speak meaningfully to a lawless culture. The remedy is not louder denunciation but a whole Christ preached clearly — one who forgives, rules, sanctifies, and loves until his people are formed into a holy community that can stand as a faithful witness in a confused age.