If you want to humiliate someone in church, you only have to use that word when you talk to or about this person. The number of times a believer has called another loyal believer is incalculable. The insult usually occurs when someone in the church believes that the other has said or done something that affects Christian freedom. Like its fraternal term, “fundamentalist,” the legalist label has become a kind of conventional religious slor in grace-oriented, gospel-centered churches. We must be extremely careful when we use this word when we talk to others or others in ecclesial communion. One believer can simply have a more fragile or flexible consciousness than the other (Rom 14-15). In addition, those who love God’s law and seek to walk carefully according to it will always be called legalists.
We must protect ourselves from the negligence of an accusation of legalism, but we must also recognize that legalism in various profiles and forms is alive and kicking in reformed evangelical churches, and this must also be monitored with the utmost determination. a believer, to avoid personally embracing legalism and helping to restore a believer who has fallen into legalism, one must know how to identify this recurring evil in its doctrinal and practical forms.
- Legalism is.
- By definition.
- An attempt to add something to the whole work of Christ.
- It is to have confidence in more than Christ and his complete and permanent work before God.
- The rebuttal of legalism in the New Testament is above all a response to the perversions of the doctrine of justification by faith only.
- Most of the Savior’s adversaries were those who believed in themselves and themselves as righteous.
- Based on their zeal and commitment to God’s law.
- The Pharisees.
- Sadducees.
- And scribes exemplified doctrinal legalism in the time of Christ and the Apostles through their words and actions.
- As they made occasional callings by grace.
- The biblical meaning of grace was justified.
- Truncated.
- And distorted.
- The Apostle Paul summed up the nature of Jewish legalism when he wrote.
- “For.
- Not knowing the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own.
- They did not submit to what is of God.
- Why is the end of the law Christ.
- For the righteousness of all who believe?(Room 10.
- 3.
- 4).
Understanding the relationship between the law and the gospel for our justification is essential to learning to avoid doctrinal legalism. The scriptures teach that we are justified by the Savior’s works, not ours. The last Adam came to do all that the first Adam did not do (Rom. 5. 12-21; 1C 15. 47-49). Was Christ born under the law to redeem those under the law?(Galatians 4. 5). He became our representative to meet the legal requirements of God’s covenant, that is, to render perfect, personal, and continuous obedience to God on behalf of his people. Jesus deserved perfect righteousness for all that the Father had given him. We receive, through the union of faith with him, a state of justice by virtue of the righteousness of Christ who is imputed to us. In Christ, God provides what He asks. The good works by which God has redeemed believers, so that we may walk in them, do not contribute to our justification. They are the only proof that God has forgiven us and accepted us in Christ.
However, doctrinal legalism can also penetrate our minds through the back door of sanctification. The Apostle Paul made it clear in Galatians 3. 1, 4, that the members of the Church of Galatia were deceived and believed that their position before God ultimately depended on what they were doing?in the flesh? Christian life. It is possible for us to begin the Christian life by believing in Christ and his saving work, and then fall into the trap of imagining that it is our full responsibility to complete what he began. In sanctification, no less than in justification, Jesus’ words are truthful: “Without me, nothing can you do?”(Jn 15. 5).
Doctrinal legalism in sanctification is sometimes nurtured by passionate preachers who emphasize Jesus’ teaching of the demands of discipled Christians as they divorce them or minimize apostolic teaching about the nature of Christ’s saving work by sinners. The famous reformed theologian Geerhardus Vos explained the nature of this subtle form of legalism when he wrote:
“A subtle form of legalism still prevails that would deprive the Savior of his crown of glory, conquered by the cross, and make him a second Moses, offering us the stones of the law instead of the bread of gospel life. . [Legalism is] powerless to save?.
In Colossus 2:20-23, the Apostle Paul refers to another form of doctrinal legalism that enters through the back door of sanctification. He writes:
If you died with Christ in the rudiments of the world, why, as if you lived in the world, do you submit to ordinances?Don’t manipulate this, don’t try this, don’t touch this, according to the precepts and doctrines. men’ men? Because all these things, with use, are destroyed. Such things, in fact, have the appearance of wisdom, as a cult of oneself, and false humility and ascical rigor; However, are they useless against sensuality?
Those who have adopted this form of doctrinal legalism forbid what God did not forbid and order what He did not command; they impose on themselves and others a standard of external holiness that God did not establish in His Word. widespread and pernicious forms of legalism in today’s Church, which often manifest themselves in the form of prohibitions on eating certain foods and drinking alcohol, sometimes alluding to personal beliefs about fatherhood and education.
Is there another kind of legalism that we should be aware of?Practical legalism that can imperceptibly take control of our hearts. By nature, the alliance of works is engraved in our consciousness. Although believers have become new creatures in Christ, still bring the old man?Adam’s old sinful nature. The standard behavior of old nature is to recover mentally under the labor pact. We always run the risk of becoming practical legalists by nurtureing or neglecting the legalistic spirit.
It is quite possible that a man or woman has a mind full of Orthodox doctrine, while he has a heart full of self-satisfaction and pride Can we be intellectually committed to the doctrines of grace and have an empty discourse?freedom that Christ has bought for believers, while we deny it with our words and actions. A legalistic spirit is nourished by spiritual pride. When a believer experiences growth or strength in spiritual knowledge, he or she may begin to rely solely on his spiritual experience. This happens, practical legalists begin to despise others and sinnedly judge those who have not experienced what they are going through. In his sermon “Bringing the Ark to Zion a Second Time,” Jonathan Edwards explained that he had observed reality. spiritual pride and practical legalism among those who had experienced awakening during the “Great Awakening”:
“There is an excessive will in men, while they live, to do justice to what they are in themselves, and an excessive will among men to do justice to spiritual experiences, as well as other things. Can a convert be exalted by high thoughts of his own eminence in grace?
Perhaps most damaging of all is the way a legalistic mind can manifest itself in the pulpit. A minister can preach God’s grace in the gospel without experiencing that grace in his own life. This, in turn, tends to foster a legalistic spirit among people. some members of the church.
God’s grace in the gospel is the only remedy for doctrinal and practical legalism. When we recognize doctrinal or practical legalism in our lives, we must flee to the crucified Christ; In doing so, we will begin to grow again in our love for which he died to heal us from our propensity to trust in our own works or accomplishments. We need to remember daily the grace that covered all our sins, brought us the righteousness that comes from outside ourselves, and freed us from the power of sin. We follow holiness with joy. Only then will we love God’s law without trying to keep it for our justification before Him. The cry of a heart free of legalism is as follows:
“I am crucified with Christ; therefore, I am no longer the one who lives, but Christ lives in me; and this life that I now have in the flesh, I live it by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up. For me. I do not annul God’s grace; because if justice is by law, is it followed that Christ died in vain?(Galatians 2. 20-21).