What Is Legalism?
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:05.000 | Joe writes in to ask, "Pastor John, what is legalism?"
00:00:09.000 | The thing that makes this tricky is that there is no Hebrew word in the Old Testament,
00:00:14.000 | no Greek word in the New Testament for legalism.
00:00:18.000 | So whenever anyone uses the word, you have to do two things.
00:00:26.000 | You have to find out what they mean by it,
00:00:30.000 | and then you have to find out if their meaning corresponds to something in the Bible,
00:00:37.000 | or are they making use of the Bible in a way that's inappropriate.
00:00:41.000 | And that makes it a little trickier.
00:00:43.000 | When the Bible uses a word like "love," say you can go to a given text and say,
00:00:48.000 | "What does love mean there?"
00:00:49.000 | But the Bible doesn't have any word for legalism,
00:00:52.000 | so we can't go to any particular place and say, "There it is, right there."
00:00:57.000 | So I'll tell you what I would mean by using it,
00:01:02.000 | and what in the Bible I think would warrant that kind of use,
00:01:07.000 | and then you can decide whether you think it should be used that way or not.
00:01:11.000 | But mainly, check out the way people use it,
00:01:14.000 | and measure it by things in the Bible to see if this is so.
00:01:18.000 | Legalism is the conviction that law-keeping is now, after the fall,
00:01:27.000 | the ground of our acceptance with God.
00:01:30.000 | I'll say that again.
00:01:31.000 | Legalism is the conviction that law-keeping is the ground of our acceptance with God,
00:01:38.000 | the ground of God being for us and not against us.
00:01:42.000 | So if you ask, "How can I get God to be for me and not against me?"
00:01:47.000 | The legalist answer is, "Keep the law. Perform the law."
00:01:54.000 | Now, that's wrong, and the reason we call that legalism is because it's renounced.
00:02:00.000 | It's denounced in the New Testament.
00:02:02.000 | Romans 3:20, "By works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight,
00:02:08.000 | because through the law comes the knowledge of sin."
00:02:11.000 | Or Romans 3:28, "For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law."
00:02:19.000 | Or Galatians 2:16, "We know that a person is not justified by works of the law."
00:02:26.000 | So we call it legalism if one says, "We are justified by works of the law."
00:02:32.000 | We do get God to be for us.
00:02:35.000 | God becomes our friend when we measure up by keeping the law.
00:02:44.000 | And the biblical gospel is the good news.
00:02:48.000 | That's impossible. God knows it's impossible, and he has provided another way,
00:02:55.000 | namely the way of faith in Jesus Christ,
00:02:59.000 | who himself bore our punishment for not keeping the law,
00:03:03.000 | and himself fulfilled our requirement that we do keep the law,
00:03:08.000 | so that in Christ we have a punishment and we have a perfection that is complete.
00:03:16.000 | And therefore, God is for us because we're in Christ,
00:03:20.000 | not because we have gone the way of law-keeping.
00:03:24.000 | Now that leads us to a derivative meaning, I think, of legalism that may be even more common.
00:03:32.000 | It's the spirit and the life that flow from a failure to be humbled and broken and amazed
00:03:44.000 | and satisfied by the grace of God in Christ.
00:03:47.000 | There are all kinds of attitudes, right, of pride, demandingness, lack of mercy,
00:03:54.000 | lack of compassion, unkindness, impatience, and these have their root, don't they,
00:04:03.000 | in a heart that is not stunned by grace, not broken and humbled by grace,
00:04:13.000 | not joyfully filled with grace, and that creates a legal spirit.
00:04:19.000 | So legalism is not just this conviction that we get right with God by keeping the law.
00:04:25.000 | Legalism is used rightly, I think, biblically, if we say it's an attitude, a spirit,
00:04:34.000 | a disposition of all kinds of behaviors and feelings that are rooted in a failure to be amazed that I'm saved by grace,
00:04:48.000 | amazed that I'm accepted by God freely, melted and broken and humbled and filled with joy
00:04:56.000 | because of what God has done, because that flavors all we do.
00:05:02.000 | And the opposite of it is right there in Luke 18 in the Pharisee, standing by himself,
00:05:10.000 | he prayed, "God, I thank you that I'm not like these other men, extortors, unjust, adulterers,
00:05:18.000 | even like this tax collector."
00:05:20.000 | That's the spirit of a man who says right words.
00:05:25.000 | He says, "Thank you," right? He says, "Thank you, God."
00:05:28.000 | That's the right thing to say, but he's not broken.
00:05:33.000 | He's not stunned. He's not blown away by the fact that he is saved by grace, not according to his works.
00:05:43.000 | So what we want, what I want in my life is not just to be free from a principled legalism,
00:05:50.000 | a theological legalism that says you get to heaven or you please God,
00:05:55.000 | you win his favor by keeping the law.
00:05:58.000 | I want to have a gracious spirit, a gospel spirit, not a legal spirit that comes from a failure
00:06:07.000 | to be amazed at my being saved by grace.
00:06:12.000 | Yes, thank you, Pastor John.
00:06:14.000 | And for more on legalism, see the new edition of the book,
00:06:16.000 | "Brothers, We Are Not Professionals," and particularly chapter 26, which is titled,
00:06:20.000 | "Brothers Don't Fight Flesh Tanks With Pea Shooter Regulations."
00:06:24.000 | And there's a similar sermon available, which is titled,
00:06:27.000 | "Flesh Tank and Pea Shooter Regulations," which was preached on January 17, 1982.
00:06:32.000 | Both the chapter and the sermon are available through DesiringGod.org,
00:06:36.000 | along with thousands of free books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper.
00:06:40.000 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening.
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