Today’s short limited edition is an excerpt drawn from John Owen’s treatise, The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded." It is an important precursor to this coming Friday’s episode in which I will begin to offer my application of this excerpt to present efforts to end abortion now. We must be "spiritually minded" (Romans 8:6) about the subject of law, because "law is spiritual" (Romans 7:14). Owen addresses a deceitful allure that can keep Christians from being so minded.

Today David looks at how some theonomists and abortion abolitionist might respond to what he said last week about Paul's 3-point summary given Timothy of what obeying the law of God means. Is it antinomian? To that end he considers what Paul meant when he told Timothy that some who desire to be teachers of the law don't use it lawfully because they neither understand what they say or what they affirm.

If we say with the Apostle Paul that "law is spiritual" can't that lead to antinomianism? Does a fear of antinomianism lurk behind the thinking of some theonomists? Is it behind the rhetoric of some abortion abolitionists who recently castigated all who did not think that Tennessee's legislators should make an abortive mother indictable either for first or second degree murder? Paul gives all those interested in law and public policy something to chew on.

Without a sound Biblical content to the words, "image of God," the term becomes a shibboleth, something of little importance. Without that, today's policy debates become equivocal, and Christians can’t fully appreciate why Paul wrote that “the law is spiritual” (Romans 7:14). So, what is the image of God. That is the focus of today's episode.

Certain events in Tennessee on Tuesday prompted me to release this SPECIAL and ABBREVIATED episode of GLL. It will be helpful to some who were the object of those events. However, it is also a helpful as a supplement to recent podcasts and a precursor to Friday’s.

Today's episode considers an aspect of “the law of God” that is often overlooked when it comes thinking about proposed legislation that would conform to it. In the coming weeks, this aspect of the law of God will be applied to two legislative proposals: One that would again impose criminal sanctions on an abortive mother and one that would define the martial relationship as one man and one woman.

This week Jason Farley returns to lay the final jurisdictional footer for building a Christian understanding of God's law, its purpose, and how it informs the way Christians use the jurisdiction God has given them in the legal and policy spheres. Find out why the key to understanding the two objectively real dominions we must deal with in law and politics -- of sin and of grace -- is, in Jason's words, that "everything is connected."

This week Jason Farley helps me lay the final jurisdictional footer for building a Christian understanding of God's law, its purpose, and how it informs the way Christian use the jurisdiction God has given them in the legal and policy spheres. Find out why the key to understanding the two objectively real dominions we must deal with in those spheres --that of sin and of grace -- is, in Jason's words, that "everything is connected."

Today David explains why he said last week that the use to which evangelicals have put the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause “diminishes the glory of Christ respecting what Christ accomplished on the Cross.” Find out how evangelicals failed to deliver what the Founding Father's expected from Christians to make "permanent" the "free government" they established, and what Christians can do going forward.

Special Edition: Last Friday, I said I thought the use by evangelicals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Free Exercise Clause emphasis on “religious acts” to mean protection for certain for civil conduct “diminishes the glory of Christ respecting what Christ accomplished on the Cross.” The following quotations from one of the leading Puritans on the dominion of sin and Christian liberty will be helpful preparation for this Friday's explanation of what I previously said.