The antinomian charge is the Hebrew Roots Movement's most emotionally potent weapon. It is deployed early, deployed often, and it lands - because it sounds like a serious theological accusation backed by a serious concern. Christians who reject Torah observance are lawless. They treat grace as a licence to sin. They have removed every moral guardrail from the Christian life. They do whatever they want on Saturday while calling it the Lord's Day, eat whatever crosses their plate and call it freedom, and mistake the absence of covenant obligation for the presence of holiness. Paul is their cover. Antinomianism is their fruit.

This charge needs to be answered with precision, because it contains a true concern wrapped in a false conclusion. The true concern: grace can be abused, freedom can become licence, and a Christianity with no moral seriousness is not Christianity at all. The false conclusion: that freedom from the Mosaic covenant is the same thing as freedom from moral obligation, and that only Torah observance stands between believers and lawlessness.

Both the true concern and the false conclusion need addressing. This article does both - and then turns the charge around, because the antinomian accusation, examined carefully, applies more readily to the accusers than to the accused.

Paul Answered This Charge Himself - Twice, Before You Could Ask It

The antinomian charge is not new. It was levelled at Paul in the first century by people who heard "you are not under law but under grace" and concluded that Paul was dissolving moral obligation. Paul knew it was coming. He answered it twice before his opponents could formulate the question, and his answers are so emphatic that any honest reading of Romans should have ended this debate nineteen centuries ago.

Romans 6:1–2: "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 6:15: "What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!"

By no means. The Greek is mē genoito - the strongest negation available in Koine Greek. It is the equivalent of "God forbid," "absolutely not," "the very thought is abhorrent." Paul uses it fourteen times in Romans alone. He reaches for the strongest possible negative the language offers - twice in the same chapter - specifically to repudiate the lawlessness conclusion that his critics drew from his gospel.

And then notice what he does next. He does not say: therefore you need to observe the Mosaic law to avoid lawlessness. He says: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death?... We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." (6:3–4). The moral dynamic of the new covenant life is union with Christ in death and resurrection - not Mosaic covenant obligation. The engine of holy living is participation in Christ, not Torah compliance.

Romans 3:31 adds: "Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law." Faith upholds the law - not by requiring Torah observance as the governing covenant charter of all believers, but by arriving at the righteous standard the law always pointed toward through the Spirit's work in transformed lives. The righteousness the law demanded is now fulfilled - not in the flesh straining against external requirements, but in those who "walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:4).

The man the HRM accuses of preaching lawlessness wrote these sentences. He anticipated the charge. He answered it with the strongest available negation. If the HRM wants to accuse someone of antinomianism, they need to find someone other than the author of Romans 6.

Freedom From the Mosaic Covenant Is Not Freedom From Moral Obligation

The antinomian charge rests on a category confusion that is so fundamental it needs to be named and held up before anything else can be settled.

The HRM conflates two entirely different things: freedom from the Mosaic covenant as the governing charter of one's covenant relationship with God, and freedom from moral obligation altogether. These are not the same thing. Treating them as the same thing is the error on which the entire antinomian charge is built.

A person who leaves one country and becomes a citizen of another is free from the first country's laws. They are not thereby free from all law. They are now under a different legal and civic framework - one that may share many features with the first country's laws (prohibitions on murder, theft, fraud) while also differing in significant ways. Freedom from one covenant administration does not produce moral anarchy. It produces a different covenant administration.

Paul states this explicitly in 1 Corinthians 9:20–21. He says he is not under the law (nomos) - meaning the Mosaic covenant - but he is immediately careful to add: "not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ." He names the alternative. He is not lawless. He is under the law of Christ. Freedom from Sinai does not mean freedom from all moral governance. It means life under a different - and in significant respects, more demanding - governance: the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:2: "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." There is a law of Christ. It has content. It makes demands. Those who are in Christ are accountable to it. It is not the absence of law - it is a different law, a deeper law, a law written not on tablets of stone but on the heart by the Spirit of the living God, exactly as Jeremiah and Ezekiel promised the new covenant would bring (Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 36:26–27).

The antinomian charge assumes there are only two options: Mosaic Torah observance or lawlessness. This is a false dilemma. The New Testament presents a third option: life under the law of Christ, governed by the Spirit, fulfilled in love. Paul, Jesus, and John all describe this third option in detail. The HRM pretends it does not exist.

The Law of Christ Is More Demanding Than the Mosaic Law, Not Less

If the HRM charge were correct - if freedom from Sinai produced a more lenient moral standard - we would expect the New Testament's description of Christian ethics to be less rigorous than the Torah's. The opposite is true at every point.

The Torah prohibited murder. Jesus prohibited the anger that precedes it: "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment." (Matthew 5:22). The standard moved inward, from act to attitude, from behaviour to heart condition.

The Torah prohibited adultery. Jesus prohibited the lust that precedes it: "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matthew 5:28). The same inward movement. The law of Christ does not raise the permissible - it lowers the threshold of what counts as violation.

The Torah required loving your neighbour and hating your enemy. Jesus required loving your enemy: "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." (Matthew 5:44). This is not a relaxation of Torah's moral demands. It is an intensification so radical that it redefines the moral universe.

The Torah regulated divorce with a certificate. Jesus restricted it to cases of sexual immorality and called remarriage after invalid divorce adultery (Matthew 5:32). Stricter, not looser.

The Torah said do not swear falsely. Jesus said do not swear at all - let your yes be yes and your no be no (Matthew 5:37). More demanding, not less.

Six times in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says: "You have heard that it was said... but I say to you." In every case, his standard exceeds Torah's standard. Jesus does not arrive with a more permissive moral framework than Moses. He arrives with a more penetrating one - one that goes past the external act to the internal motivation, past the behaviour to the character, past the compliance to the transformation.

The person who keeps Torah externally while harbouring hatred in their heart is, by Jesus's standard, a murderer. The person who keeps Torah's sexual purity laws while cultivating lust is, by Jesus's standard, an adulterer. The Torah-keeper who divorces their spouse for reasons Jesus does not permit is, by Jesus's standard, guilty of adultery. Freedom from Sinai is not freedom from moral accountability. It is accountability to a standard Sinai never reached.

The Spirit Produces What the Law Could Not

The HRM's antinomian charge assumes that moral outcomes require legal enforcement - that without the Mosaic law as a binding covenant requirement, believers will drift into sin because there is nothing holding them accountable. This assumption misunderstands both the problem and the solution.

Romans 8:3–4 identifies both: "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."

Paul identifies the law's weakness: it was weakened by the flesh. The problem was never the law's standard - the standard was good (Romans 7:12). The problem was the flesh's inability to meet it. An external legal code, however righteous, cannot produce the internal transformation needed to actually fulfil its demands. It can define the target. It cannot produce the archer who hits it.

The Spirit can. And does. Galatians 5:22–23 describes what Spirit-led living produces: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These are not morally neutral qualities. They are the fulfilment of everything the law was pointing toward. The person who is genuinely producing the fruit of the Spirit does not murder, does not steal, does not commit adultery, does not covet, does not bear false witness - not because Exodus 20 hangs over them as a legal constraint, but because the Spirit who indwells them is the Spirit of the one who gave Exodus 20 in the first place.

This is precisely what Jeremiah 31:33 promised about the new covenant: "I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts." Not the absence of law - the internalistion of it. Not the removal of moral obligation - the transformation of the moral agent. The new covenant does not produce people who do not care about God's moral requirements. It produces people whose hearts are aligned with those requirements from the inside, by the Spirit, rather than being constrained toward them from outside by a legal code.

The HRM's vision of moral life is fundamentally external: observe these practices, keep these calendar requirements, eat according to these classifications, and the observance will constitute faithfulness. The New Testament's vision is fundamentally internal: be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2), walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16), be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), set your mind on things above (Colossians 3:2). The moral dynamic is entirely different. The external/legal model is exactly what Paul identifies as the old covenant's operating principle - the written code, the letter that kills (2 Corinthians 3:6). The new covenant operates by the Spirit who gives life.

What the New Testament Actually Demands

Let no one read the preceding sections and conclude that the new covenant's moral demands are vague or easily met. The New Testament's ethical content is extensive, specific, and severe.

Romans 13:13–14: "Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts."

1 Corinthians 6:9–10: "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."

Galatians 5:19–21: "Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."

Ephesians 4:25–5:7: Put away falsehood. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and slander be put away from you. Be imitators of God. Walk in love. Sexual immorality must not even be named among you. Covetousness must not be named among you.

Hebrews 12:14: "Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord."

1 John 3:9–10: "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practise righteousness is not of God."

This is what the New Testament calls a lawless, antinomian document? These are the moral demands of people who treat grace as a licence to sin? The New Testament is saturated with ethical content, moral demand, accountability before God, and warnings about the consequences of unrighteous living. It does not lack moral seriousness. It is overflowing with it.

What it does not contain is a requirement for Gentile believers to observe the Sabbath, keep the feast days, maintain Levitical dietary practices, or live under the Mosaic covenant as their governing moral framework. The absence of those specific requirements is not the same thing as the absence of moral seriousness. The HRM cannot distinguish between these two different absences, and this failure to distinguish is the source of the entire antinomian charge.

Love Is Not a Lower Standard - It Is the Fulfilment of All Standards

Jesus summarised the entire law and the prophets in two commandments: love God with everything you have, and love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22:37–40). He said: on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Everything hangs on these. They are the load-bearing structure of the entire moral edifice.

Paul echoes this in Romans 13:8–10: "Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,' and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."

And Galatians 5:14: "For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.'"

The HRM frequently treats love as a vague, undemanding substitute for specific commandments - as if saying "love your neighbour" is a way of avoiding the hard work of specific moral demands. This misunderstands both love and law. Love is not less demanding than specific commandments. It is more demanding, because it cannot be satisfied by external compliance. You can keep every specific provision of the Torah without loving your neighbour. You cannot love your neighbour without fulfilling every specific provision of the Torah that protects him. Love is the root from which the specific commands grow, and a tree with healthy roots produces all its fruit, not just the fruit someone specified in a list.

The person who genuinely loves their neighbour does not murder them, steal from them, covet their goods, bear false witness against them, or commit adultery with their spouse. Every one of the Ten Commandments that relates to human relationships is a specific application of love. Love does not replace them. Love fulfils them from the inside out, rather than complying with them from the outside in.

The Charge Reversed: Who Is Actually Lawless Here?

Having answered the antinomian charge directly, it is fair to turn it around - not in a spirit of retaliation, but because the reversal is exegetically justified and practically important.

Jesus's most severe condemnations in the Gospels are not directed at people who abandoned the Mosaic law. They are directed at people who kept it meticulously while abandoning what the law was actually about.

Matthew 23:23: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others."

The most Torah-observant group in first-century Judaism - the Pharisees, whose observance 119 Ministries frequently holds up as a model - are told by Jesus that they have neglected the weightier matters of the law. Their meticulous external observance coexisted with the neglect of justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Their tithing of herbs was impeccable. Their hearts were far from God.

Matthew 23:27–28: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."

Jesus calls the most observant Torah-keepers of his day full of lawlessness - anomia, the very word used to describe antinomianism. External Torah observance did not produce internal righteousness. It produced the appearance of righteousness over the reality of lawlessness. This is not an obscure passage or a minor point. It is Jesus's direct assessment of the most careful law-keepers of his era.

The antinomian charge assumes that Torah observance is a reliable indicator of genuine moral seriousness, and that its absence is a reliable indicator of moral laxity. Jesus's own assessment of the Pharisees dismantles both halves of this assumption. Torah observance can coexist with - and even facilitate - a form of lawlessness that is more dangerous precisely because it is invisible beneath a veneer of religious compliance.

The HRM should sit with Matthew 23 before deploying the antinomian charge. The people Jesus called lawless were not the people who had abandoned Torah. They were the people who had made Torah their identity and lost the one it pointed toward.

The Obedience That Counts

1 John 3:23 states the new covenant's defining obligation with crystalline clarity: "And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us."

One commandment. Two inseparable parts. Believe in Jesus Christ. Love one another. John calls this the commandment - using the singular. Not the commandments of Sinai. Not the 613. The one commandment of the new covenant, which contains within it everything else.

And 1 John 5:3: "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome."

Compare this with Acts 15:10, where Peter describes the Mosaic law as "a yoke that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear." Two descriptions of commandments: the commandments of the new covenant are not burdensome; the yoke of the Mosaic law was unbearable. These are not the same commandments. They cannot be the same commandments, because burdensome and not-burdensome are contradictory properties.

The new covenant's commandment is not burdensome because it flows from love, is fulfilled by love, and is enabled by the Spirit of love. The person who loves God and loves their neighbour is fulfilling everything the law ever required - not as a performance to earn standing, but as the natural overflow of a transformed heart. That is not lawlessness. It is the fulfilment of all law. It is exactly what the law always pointed toward.

Conclusion: The Charge and Its Proper Target

The antinomian charge, as levelled by the HRM against mainstream Christians, is built on a false equation: freedom from Sinai equals freedom from moral obligation. The New Testament does not support this equation. Paul explicitly rejected it. Jesus intensified moral demands rather than relaxing them. The Spirit produces moral fruit rather than moral indifference. The new covenant commandment is not burdensome - but it is not absent.

The true antinomianism is not found in those who live under the law of Christ, walk by the Spirit, and pursue the love that fulfils all law. It is found - as Jesus himself identified it - in those who maintain external religious compliance while neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness. It is found in those who wear the appearance of covenant faithfulness as a status marker while their inner life remains untransformed.

Freedom from the Mosaic covenant's specific covenant administration is not moral freedom. It is freedom to live under a more demanding, more penetrating, more internalized moral governance - one that does not ask whether you avoided pork on Saturday but whether you loved your enemy, forgave your brother, gave to the one in need, told the truth when it cost you, and walked in the Spirit's fruit rather than the flesh's works.

That standard - the standard of Jesus, of Paul, of John, of the entire New Testament - is not lawlessness. It is the law written on the heart. It is what the law was always pointing toward. And it leaves considerably less room for self-congratulation than a carefully observed feast calendar does.

For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law... Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. - Romans 13:8, 10