Dear Brother: What is the difference between Gill\u2019s \u2018free declaration of peace and pardon, righteousness, life and salvation to poor sinners\u2019 and the \u2018free offer\u2019 and \u2018duty faith\u2019 of those who deny outright that Gill appealed to all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel? The difference is that Gill keeps to the gospel as fulfilling what the law could not do, namely provide \u2018free grace\u2019. Modern harsh critics of Gill such as friends of the Banner of Truth and Reformation Today, cannot give up their trust in the law for salvation and sanctification. They start with preaching the gospel of duties until faith comes (sic!) and end with preaching sanctification and holiness through keeping the law. There is no room for free grace in their religion, though they might talk ever so much of \u2018free offers\u2019. These offers are not \u2018free\u2019 but rewards for sinners who exercise saints\u2019 duties. In his essay Three Forms of Law, Maurice Roberts, speaking for the Banner of Truth Trust, divides the Old Testament law into parts that he believes have been abrogated and rejected and parts which have not, taking a midway position between New Covenant Theology and what he sees, quite wrongly, as Westminster Confession Theology. Roberts views part of the Law as still binding on both sinners and saints leaving the impression that therefore Christ has still not fulfilled it. He calls this binding part of the Mosaic Law the \u2018Moral Law\u2019, using a pagan, classical term. In his theory, Roberts argues that justification is merely an empty, formal declaration on the part of God which has nothing to do with the separation from the world which holiness and sanctification bring with it. This can only be obtained by law-keeping which means that God can never look upon us as truly sanctified in this life because we can only imperfectly sanctify ourselves by following the Moral Law.[1. See Roberts\u2019 articles, Three Forms of Law, BOT Issue 519 and Godliness, Issue 472.] This is the legal gospel of most of the \u2018free offer\u2019 and \u2018duty-faith\u2019 community which are now infesting our Reformed churches. For them, the New Testament appears to be a closed book. Obviously, these modern Fullerites follow their favourite guru in rejecting the Biblical and Reformed teaching on justification and with it the essential doctrine of imputed righteousness.<\/p>\n
George Ella<\/p>\n
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George M. Ella is a historian, author and biographer. His writings may be accessed at the online archived, \u201dBiographia Evangelica<\/a>\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n