There are a number of passages in Galatians and Romans where Paul teaches that believers are freed from the law:
Gal 2:19: Through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God
Gal 3:23-25: We are no longer under a guardian
Gal 4:4: Born under the law to redeem those who were under the law
Gal 5:18: If you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law
Rom 6:14-15: We are not under law but under grace
Rom 7:1-6: We have died to the law through the body of Christ
Antinomians take these texts to mean that believers are freed from the moral law as rule of life. A better explanation is to utilize the concept of Republication and to suggest that what Paul is affirming is that we are freed from the law as a covenant of works. On this view, Paul is not denying the third use of the law (which he affirms, e.g., in Rom 6:15-22; 8:4).
This is the standard Reformed position, as seen in the Westminster Confession: “Although true believers be not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified, or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life informing them of the will of God, and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly” (WCF 19.6; cp. WLC #97).
Republication enables us to answer the antinomian interpretation of the Pauline “not under law” texts. Some have tried to get around this by suggesting that when Paul says we are “not under law” he means we are “not under legalism” or we have been “freed from a legalistic misinterpretation and abuse of the law.” But that theory breaks down when one realizes that Paul affirms that we died to the law through union with Christ in his death and resurrection. He does not say that God delivered us from a cognitive misunderstanding and misuse of the law. He says God delivered us from the law itself “through the body of Christ” (Rom 7:4). The Mosaic law pronounces a curse on all who do not keep it perfectly (Gal 3:10; Deut 27:26), but Christ “became a curse for us” (Gal 3:13). Christ was “born under the law to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal 4:4). Thus, “the law” in these passages cannot be a “legalistic misuse of the law” but “the Mosaic law as a covenant of works.”
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