“His name shall be called Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins,” (Matthew 1:21).

A Brief Introduction

This brief excerpt was taken from a larger treatise entitled, Antinomianism Unmasked and Refuted by the Baptist poet, hymnist, and theologian, Maria De Fleury (1752-1791). Not much is known of Maria De Fleury’s private life and upbringing, but she was an able hymnist and avid polemicist. Descended from French Heugenots she came to embrace Baptist principles and often sought to defend them in writing – which, for women, was not so common in the 18th century. In this particular treatise, she aimed at antinomianism, a doctrine of licentious liberality that plagued Calvinistic Baptists in 18th-century England. In the particular excerpt, which serves as a setup for her assault on the doctrines of antinomianism, De Fleury makes the case that Christ saves his people from their sins completely, leaving no room for harboring or excusing sin.

Complete Salvation Considered in Five Ways

Sin is the greatest of all evils: – Where shall I find a tongue to express, or a pen to describe the evil of sin? If we look back to a world overwhelmed with waters, or to cities destroyed by showers of fire, if we look around to the numberless miseries human nature is subject to, and continually surrounded with, we may learn a little of the evil of sin. If we consider the innumerable millions of angels and men eternally separated from God, from holiness and happiness, and consigned forever to [the] blackness of darkness for ever; we may well conclude, that the cause of such effects must be the greatest of all evils, and that therefore the evil os sin is so great, that human understanding must fail to conceive of it; and language to paint it with any degree of propriety.

How delightful then, to a sinner’s ears, who is truly sensible of the evil of sin, must this grand declaration of the gospel be, “His name shall be called Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” This salvation, I apprehend, may be considered in five views.

First, It is salvation from the guilt of sin. “We have redemption in his blood, the forgiveness of our sins,” (Eph. 1:7).

Secondly, From the condemnation of sin. “There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus,” (Rom. 8:1).

Thirdly, From the love of sin. “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man,” (Rom. 7:22).

Fourthly, From the power of sin. “Sin shall not have dominion over you,” (Rom. 6:14).

Fifthly, “From the nature and being of sin,” (Eph. 2:7).1

Thus the Lord Jesus Christ saves his people from sin, with a complete salvation, and this is the salvation which his people desire, and which every one of them shall be made partaker of; and whatever does not amount to this, is not the salvation of Jesus Christ, but a delusion and a fancy.2

Footnotes

  1. Maria De Fleury included this footnote regarding this fifth point: “The Lord Jesus saves his church from the nature and being of sin, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. Salvation from the nature and being of sin will never be experienced in this world, every believer shall experience this glorious part of salvation, but not till he has put off his tabernacle of clay; it is a part of the rest which remaineth for the people of God, sin will accompany the Christian to the dark valley of the shadow of death, but it will leave him there, it cannot follow him one step further; he shall come out of it adorned with the perfect beauties of holiness.”
  2. The whole of this excerpt is taken from Maria De Fleury, Antinomianism Unmasked and Refuted, and The Moral Law Proved from The Scriptures (London: T. Wilkins, 1791), 5-6.