Moral government theology is a theological error that maintains that God is not immutable but changes His mind and that He does not exercise sovereign control over earthly matters and that He does not know all future events–particularly the free-will choices of individuals, etc.

Moral government theology denies that the atonement pays for our sins, denies Jesus’ substitutionary death, and denies the imputed righteousness of Christ to the believer. It asserts that people are capable of keeping the whole Law of God and that there is no depravity of human nature and that salvation is up to a person’s free-will choice.

The moral government theory of the atonement separates Christ’s sacrifice from the legal requirement of the Law and effectively makes God’s work of forgiveness arbitrary since it denies a direct relationship between Christ as a substitutionary and legal sacrifice and the ones for whom He atoned–which in MGT is no one.