Protestantism misleads many by equating the yoke of bondage in Galatians 5:1 with God's law, which they label legalism and connect to a definition of salvation that treats justification as identical to salvation. This produces the doctrine of once saved, always saved and the conclusion that God does nothing further to prepare people between justification and glorification. The same view treats law-keeping as a burdensome obligation unnecessary for righteousness, even though Scripture states that God's commandments are not grievous and that the law of liberty is the standard by which people will be judged. Paul repeatedly shows that justification clears guilt and imputes Christ's righteousness through grace and faith alone, yet this deliverance from condemnation does not end God's dealings with a person; a pilgrimage of growth remains before inheritance is received. The epistle's subject throughout is justification, not the abolition of law. When Paul states that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, he refers to the entire package of Old Covenant ritualism, halakah, and added Gnostic practices that people trusted for justification instead of Christ's sacrifice. That syncretistic approach is the true yoke of bondage because it cannot forgive sin, change the heart, or impart the Holy Spirit. In contrast, faith working through love produces commandment-keeping as its evidence. The Spirit and the flesh are opposed, but the Spirit never conflicts with God's law; walking in the Spirit fulfills the requirement to love one's neighbor and avoids the works of the flesh listed in Galatians 5. Thus Protestant antinomianism arises from misreading Paul's terminology and from carnal enmity against law, resulting in the false claim that the Spirit and law are diametrically opposed methods of living.

Protestants read the Bible through the lens of their own preconditioning and thus see only Protestantism, including the once-saved-always-saved doctrine of eternal security. This teaching asserts that salvation comes by grace through faith alone, rendering works unnecessary and functioning merely as optional expressions of gratitude rather than required means of character growth or obedience. The same bias leads them to interpret Colossians as a text supporting a no-works religion, claiming that Christ nailed the law to the cross in chapter 2 and that Paul's later admonitions in chapters 3 and 4 are merely good advice rather than binding commands rooted in God's moral standards. Their enmity against the law, noted in Romans 8:7, prevents them from recognizing the Ten Commandments hidden in plain sight throughout the epistle, where eight of the ten are referenced through the sins and virtues Paul enumerates without employing Old Covenant terminology. This antinomian reading distorts the high Christology of chapters 1 and 2, fostering the lukewarm condition described in Revelation 3, in which believers assume they need nothing further because Christ has already secured their standing. In contrast, the material presents the New Covenant realities of circumcision made without hands and baptism as binding believers to keep the commandments now written on the heart, so that the whole counsel of God, including every word proceeding from His mouth, must be lived out rather than dismissed.

Protestantism arises from the carnal mind's inherent enmity against God, which manifests as antagonism toward His law and leads to the conclusion that the law provokes sin and must therefore be done away. This position begins with prejudice rather than clear truth, as the carnal mind, under Satan's sway, reviles the law by calling it a yoke of bondage and shoots the messenger by declaring it abolished, even while claiming zeal for God. Such reasoning ignores that the law is holy, just, good, and spiritual, ordained to reveal sin rather than to stimulate or excite it, and that it was never intended to impart life. Protestants equate justification with salvation, asserting that faith alone renders law-keeping irrelevant, yet this view contradicts unambiguous statements that Christians must not continue in sin and that the doers of the law shall be justified. Their antinomianism targets especially the Sabbath and holy days, reducing them to ceremonial despite the perpetual Sabbath covenant extending through generations of Israelites and Christ's own custom of keeping the seventh day. By separating faith from works they render both ineffective, overlooking that faith without works is dead and that the law establishes righteousness rather than being voided by grace. This antinomian stance rips doctrine from God's larger purpose of reproducing Himself in humanity through unchanging law, which outlines His character and guides relationships in love. The Old Covenant was added because of transgressions to lead to Christ, but its moral core, including the Ten Commandments, remains in force under the New Covenant, where laws are written on hearts and minds. Misunderstanding terms such as yoke of bondage or circumcision further fuels the error, as these refer to ritualistic attempts at justification apart from Christ rather than to God's eternal law itself.