LEGALISM: THE SIN OF TRUSTING YOURSELF MORE THAN YOU TRUST GOD
Obedience is how Christians should live, not how they are saved.
We are save by grace through faith
If you were raised in Christian home, or if you have been around “Church people” for any length of time than you have undoubtedly heard the term “legalism,” and you may even have heard your grandmother or one of your friend’s grandmothers say that someone was “going to Hell in a hand basket,” but despite the prevalence of the term there are a lot of people who don’t know what it actually means, and some of those who don’t know what legalism is are the most legalistic. A legalist believes that their good works and obedience to God affects their salvation. Legalism focuses on God’s laws more than relationship with God. It keeps external laws without a truly submitted heart. And legalism adds human rules to divine laws and treats them as divine
The dictionary defines legalism as excessive adherence to law or formula and a dependence on moral law rather than on personal religious faith. In short, people who are legalistic believe that God either is unwilling or unable to save people unless they have first perform a specified number of good works or perform the right rituals at the right time, and anyone who truly believes that believes that God is either impotent and incompetent or else heartless and a horrible parent. The Bible is clear that the only thing we contribute to our own salvation is the sin that made it necessary in the first place; to teach that we somehow earn our salvation is heresy.
The teaching that we have to earn, or that we can earn, our salvation and God’s love is to suggest that God is a horrible parent. One of the many songs I love is “Piece by Piece” by Kelly Clarkson, and in that song she talks about her father and how he only ever wanted anything to do with her after she was famous and had money, and she contrasts that with the way her husband shows her he loves her, and the way they both show their daughter their love. I think it is a safe statement to say that I don’t know a single person who would argue that Kelly Clarkson’s father was or is a good father, and the false gospel of earned grace, which is no grace at all, teaches that God only loves us when we somehow deserve it. A love that has to be earned is not love at all, and I feel deep sorrow for anyone who thinks, or has ever thought, that it is. Anyone who has ever been in a relationship with conditional love, be it parental love or romantic love, knows the painful truth that they were not truly loved and were only tolerated so long as they were useful.
One of the many Biblical supports for the fact that God loves us because he is good and not because we are is Romans 5:8 that tells us that Jesus died for us while we were still enemies to God, not after we got our act together and it says, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
A good parent doesn’t just love his or her children when they are behaving properly, and to suggest that God only love us after we have followed all of the rules is to say that he does not love us at all but merely tolerates us because we are good at following rules. Even most bad parents don’t get upset with their children when they are learning to walk, or any other new skill, and fail, but rather they are excited at any progress and encourage them to try again. My own father, however, was a notable exception to this. Jesus wanted us to know that God is a good father, far superior to the best humanly parent.
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Matthew 7:7-11 ESV
One of the many, many problems with basing our salvation on our ability to keep rules is the truism that none of us can follow all rules, regardless of how simple or easy they appear to be. Ask yourself how many rules or laws you have broken or otherwise failed to keep, just today. Hint: The answer is a lot more than you think, and certainly a lot more than you are willing to admit to. Unless you just woke up five minutes ago you undoubtedly broke some rule or law, and even if you have only been awake for five minutes it is still extremely likely that you have as well.
Most of us will admit that there are certain rules or laws we consider, in our limited wisdom, to be less important than the rest that we don’t even attempt to keep and somehow justify our decision or failure to keep them based on all of the major rules we do keep, and all of the rest of us are liars and damned liars. I have never met a single person who is willing, much less capable, of keeping all rules and laws, and if our salvation were based upon keeping rules like some religions teaches than not a one of us would be saved. The Bible says that if we rely on the law for salvation than we are cursed if we don’t follow every rule, regardless of how small or seemingly unimportant it is.
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”
-Galatians 3:10-11 ESV
If we were saved by following the rules, regardless of how well we or others think we are doing, we would all end up in the depths of Hell because none of us are anywhere as good at following rules as we have convinced ourselves that we are. In Romans 3:23-25 it says that ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, not just some of us, which means that there is not a single one of us that can measure up to God’s standard. If we are honest, we would have to admit that we don’t even measure up to our own standards. 1 John 1:8 (ESV) says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Despite what the Bible, and reality, says, some people are pretty good at deceiving themselves and are either highly confused or are habitually lying about the level of their own piety and righteousness. As anyone who has ever been around a person who just knows they are the epitome of righteousness knows, everyone else knows they are nowhere near as righteous as they want people to think they are, and most people avoid them as they are not fun or uplifting people to be around.
When I was younger and had an extremely low self-esteem and because of that and because of my father telling me that I was not worthy of love, I got suckered into the Mormon Church (formally known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), and only later learned that, despite its name, is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Mormonism is one of the most legalistic religions on the planet, and that is part of the reason I was attracted to them because I thought that if I could not get into heaven through God’s love than perhaps I could earn a spot. One of the extremely interesting things about Mormons is how even the most devout members willingly fudge on at least one rule and act like it isn’t a big deal, but I never understood that mentality because the doctrine of the religion does not allow for that and teaches that nothing less than perfection is acceptable.
During the time when I bought the Mormon doctrine, hook line and sinker, I strove to follow every single rule to the best of my ability, and being human, I fell painfully short and would stress out about it and would then do my absolute best to follow the rules that supposedly made it possible for me to make up for the rules I broke, and instead of ever getting any peace it was a continual cycle of trying and failing and then being overcome by guilt. Not only did I try to follow every rule, but I also tried to get others to do the same, and I could not for the life of me understand why why anyone would be willing to not follow any rules when the doctrine taught that ever decision we make on this earth, even the most minute, has eternal consequences and that even if we are the best person we could possibly be that we can’t be sure that we have done enough.
It also has not escaped my notice that some of the people who are the most concerned with how well others are following, or not following, the rules are the biggest rule breakers, and I have found that to be true in all religions. I am not sure what other people’s motivations for pressuring others to follow rules is and I can only speak for myself, but I always wanted to do my best to ensure that no one would break too many rules, or too big of a rule, to get the best that Mormonism had to offer, even if I was not able to attain it myself. At this point in my life, I am a lot more concerned with my own sins than those of other people, and while I always pray for people who are not living right, I don’t judge them and know I am not in a position to do so, and I realize that no one is without sin and my own sins are every bit as grievous to God as other people’s are. Without the grace of God we are all dead in our sins and there are no degrees of deadness; dead is dead. Either we are dead or we are not and no one can be partially dead, which brings me to my next point.
Legalism often ranks sin and makes a sort of hierarchy of sin, and Mormonism is one of those religions that rank sins, and in their eyes, any sexual relations outside of marriage is almost as bad as premeditated murder, which not only sounds ludicrous on this side of the religion, but is also not supported by the Bible. In Mormonism, the armed robbery of a bank in which people were injured but no one died is not as serious of a sin as two unmarried people having consensual sex. In reality, stealing a candy bar and being unrepentant of it will keep us out of haven just as surely as going on a killing spree would, and no, I am not trying to say that they are equal sins, but if we are to be saved by following the rules it is an all or nothing arrangement. Jesus was the only person who was capable of living without sinning even once, and that was only because he was God in the flesh. Even the greatest heroes in the Bible were deeply flawed people deserving of Hell.
This is not a message on judging other people, but our sins are just as bad as everyone else’s are, and if we look at another person and think we are closer to being saved than they are because we are better at following rules than we have missed the point and and are probably not saved at all because with that line of thinking our faith is in our ability to to follow rules and not in Jesus, the one who actually does the saving, and we have already established that none of us could ever keep the rules well enough to be saved by our obedience to the law.
Every human who was ever born or who will ever be born has or will sin, but we should do all we can to keep our sinning to an absolute minimum, but regardless of how well we succeed in living what we would consider a good life, we are not saved because we have overcome sin, and none of us ever will, but because Jesus overcame sin on our behalf. In the Bible it says that, while we are saved by grace, we should not willingly sin.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Romans 6:1-4
A lot of people who are trapped in legalism are not following God’s rules out of love and a fear of disappointing him, but rather because they are afraid of the consequences of breaking the rules, so basically they are only following the rules for what it gets them or what it gets them out of and not from any desire to actually please God. My pastor always says, “Guilt is a terrible motivator.” When we are following God and not wanting to disappoint him because we love him it is altogether different.
When I was a kid I would often get whipped for behaving poorly, but the pain would only last a short while and I would often do the same thing again if I thought there were any possibility of my getting away with it, but one time when I did something wrong my mother decided not to punish me but instead went off and cried, and I felt so bad that I decided to never do it again. Knowing that I truly hurt my mother was more painful to me than any whipping ever was, and considering my father’s temper that is really saying something as I really had some doozies.
Any man who only doesn’t cheat on his wife because he is afraid he might get caught and can’t stand the thought of all he may loose is not a good man or a good husband, and any woman who only doesn’t cheat on her husband because she is afraid of what she would loose if she were caught is not a good wife or a good woman. A good husband’s motivation for being faithful, and a good wife’s motivation for being faithful, is the love for their spouse; if you truly love a person you can’t stand the thought of hurting them, and if we are only following God’s rules out of fear of punishment than we don’t truly love God. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” (John 14:15).
Another major problem with legalism is that a lot of the rules we are expected to follow are not even God’s rules but man’s, as if we didn’t have enough rules to follow already, but despite the fact that these rules did not originate from God they are still treated as divine and when someone breaks one of them they are treated as if they had committed a cardinal sin. People creating their own rules and trying to pass them off as God’s laws is not a new phenomenon, and the rulers of the Jews had added so many extra rules that it was difficult, if not impossible, for any person to live their life without breaking a great number of them, and Jesus called them out on it over and over again. If anyone thinks something is a sin that the Bible does not say is a sin than they probably should not do it, but they have no authority to impose their rules on others, and even less authority to do so in the name of the Almighty God.
I recently came across a quote that I like on the subject of legalism that says exactly what I am trying to say.
“Legalism exists when people attempt to secure righteousness in God’s sight by good works. Legalists believe that they can earn or merit God’s approval by performing the requirements of the law”
Obedience is how Christians should live, not how they are saved. Yes, God wants us to keep his commandments, and yes, if we love God we will do our best to keep his commandments, but it is not by our success in following those commandments that earns us a place in heaven, and none of us could ever earn a place, regardless of how good we are or think we are. Isaiah said, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away,” (Isaiah 64:6). Also, if it were possible for any of us to amass enough good works to earn our own salvation than there would have been no need for Christ to have come in the first place. The Bible says, “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come[s] by the law, then Christ is dead in vain,” (Galatians 2:21).