• Sep. 4, 2009
Beware Legalism

I have been thinking a lot lately about legalism.  I am not sure why, but I have, and a few days ago I was reading the testimonies of many people who had been subjected to a very legalistic setting when they were growing up.  Some, thankfully, had discovered the wonder of God's amazing grace, but others had been so brutally scarred by the legalistic paradigm that had been forced upon them that they have turned their backs on all forms of religion.

Legalism is so attractive because it gives us exactly what we want in our human nature, something to control.  We spend our lives trying to stay in control and legalism says we can do that.  It tells us that if we just follow these rules we will have a relationship with God and a perfect life.  There are just a couple problems with that premise.  First, God never promised any such thing and therefore; secondly, it is not true.

Sometimes legalism is difficult to discern right off.  It is usually couched in such beautiful terms, sometimes even biblical terms.  For example: Love = Obedience.  That statement is true in some form, Jesus said, "If you love me, you will obey my commands."  So, being a Biblically knowledgable person you can hear someone say that and say, "Amen."  When legalism says "love = obedience" however, it usually has a list of rules you need to follow.  Some of these rules may even be biblical principles, making it even harder to detect the legalism.  But I challenge you, if you have a set of rules you feel you need to follow, read them carefully, then check them against scripture.  If you can't find them in God's word, then, while they might not be bad rules, don't give them the credence that you give to God's word.  When we take God's law, and add to it the laws that have been made up by men, we put on the robes of the Pharisees and Sadducees.  I don't know about you but I did not particularly care for what Jesus had to say to them, and I do not want to pick up where they left off.

I hope I am not rambling,  These thoughts make sense in my head but I don't feel like they are coming out correctly.  Maybe I should give an example.  I once had a friend (Godly, biblically knowledgeable friend) show me a book that had rules of etiquette in it.  They were interesting, nothing wrong with them, just rules of etiquette.  The problem was, these rules were presented as if they were Biblical principles!  Well, I would charge you with the job of finding in the Bible where it tells you what to do if you are eating a bite of meat and you end up with gristle in your mouth.  I don't think you will find it in the Bible, but this book had the answer!

I pray that we will be very careful with the rules we follow, and the rules we impose on our children.  Please don't get me wrong, we NEED rules.  We must have them.  God gave us the law, first and foremost, to show us our need for Him but also to protect us.  His laws do lead to good in our lives.  But we, like the Pharisees, are so quick to add more to them so that we have more control.  Not all these rules are bad, but if God's word does not spell them out or clearly show them in principle, then we must be careful not to give them Biblical importance.  And we must be extra careful not to look down on others who don't follow our ideas.  Love = Obedience applies fully when it applies to Christ.  We do show our love for Christ by following His teaching. 

I have been writing this with Christians in mind but I feel that I should finish by stressing the fact that there is no law we can follow to make us right with Christ.  The law was given to prove that to us, to show us that we could never do anything but fail on our own, and to show us our need for a Savior.  Christ did all the work, followed all the rules on our behalf.  To have a relationship with God we must only depend on Christ.  And while it is true that when we have a relationship with Christ we will want to do good, we will want to follow God's law, the act of following His law does not get us or keep us saved.  It does not make us more righteous in God's sight and it does not guarantee an easy life.  Our obedience to Christ is simply the evidence of our love for Him, not the cause of His love for us.

Praise God for His amazing grace!!!

Shannon

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