I needed a haircut recently, so I tried a new place.

The man cutting my hair turned out to be very chatty and very opinionated.

So I listened intently, as one does when someone is holding something very sharp and pointy, near one's head.

As it turned out, my friend the barber had become a Christian only four years previously.

I don't remember exactly how it came up, but he

mentioned that he'd never been baptized and had no intention of ever being baptized. Well, at this

point, I decided to pipe up. Doesn't Jesus command us to be baptized in Matthew 28? What will happen

if I don't, he said. Will that mean I'm not saved? Well, not necessarily, I said,

but if Christ commands it, don't you think followers of Christ ought to take that seriously?

That sounds like you're trying to place me under the law, he said. Anyone who's in Christ is no longer

under the law. Now, at this point, I could tell that the other customers were looking at us and thinking,

wow, that British guy really chose the wrong barber to cut his hair. I don't know if my friend

the barber falls into this category, but it sounded to me as if he was in danger of what

theologians call antinomianism. The word antinomian literally means against law. It describes someone who believes that a Christian is someone

who is free from the demands of God's law. As Christians, it seems to me we're often in danger

of being so infatuated with the idea that our sin has been paid for, put away, dealt with,

forgiven, that we can, without realizing it, become functional

antinomians. Of course, we would never say that sin doesn't matter, and yet we can start to live

as if it really didn't. What does it matter? We say to ourselves, if we sin just a little bit.

The Bible tells me I'm forgiven if I'm a Christian, so what's the big deal?

We can become, like the poet Heinrich Heiner, whose last words were apparently,

of course God will forgive me, that's his job.

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