Can We Be Legalistic About Not Being Legalists?
00:00:00.000 | A couple of different listeners in the past month have written in to ask essentially the
00:00:07.600 | same thing and it's this. Is it possible to become legalistic about not being legalistic?
00:00:14.960 | Pastor John, what would you say?
00:00:17.680 | My short answer would be simply yes, but that won't have much meaning until we provide some
00:00:24.080 | definitions and biblical content for the word legalism. Here's the startling fact that more
00:00:31.440 | people need to take into account and they need to become more careful in their use of the language.
00:00:36.880 | There is no word for legalism in New Testament Greek. The English word legalism never occurs
00:00:44.320 | in any modern translation of all the Bible. It's not in ESV, NIV, NASB, New King James.
00:00:52.720 | What this means is that the incredible frequency and confidence with which we use the word today
00:01:02.400 | in a negative way to criticize other people stands on very shaky ground. Not shaky because
00:01:12.000 | such a thing may not exist, but shaky because we may not know what we're talking about.
00:01:20.400 | And if we do know what we're talking about, it may not be in the Bible, may not be a biblical idea,
00:01:27.920 | but everybody just slings this word around, unbelievably common and with such amazing
00:01:34.480 | confidence. So we need to look at the scriptures and decide what the English word legalism
00:01:43.040 | might refer to in the Bible. So let's mention three or four things that are often called
00:01:50.160 | legalism, which the New Testament does not condemn, but in fact encourages. And I am using
00:01:58.480 | the word legalistic here to refer to something bad just because that's the way it's universally
00:02:03.520 | used. So number one, I think I have four of these. So these are things that are
00:02:10.560 | considered to be bad when people call them legalistic, but in the New Testament are good.
00:02:16.640 | So number one, it is not legalistic to believe that a changed life of love and holiness
00:02:24.960 | are necessary for final salvation. Hebrews 12, 14, "Strive for the holiness without which
00:02:33.040 | no one will see the Lord." Ephesians 5, 5, "For you may be sure of this, everyone who is sexually
00:02:40.720 | immoral or impure or who is covetous," that is an idolatry, "has no inheritance in the kingdom of
00:02:48.400 | Christ and God." So the biblical truth is that Christ's blood and righteousness are the sole
00:02:57.840 | ground of our full acceptance into God's favor, but the new life of love and holiness, pursued
00:03:08.160 | with all our might, ready to cut off our hands if we must, is necessary as the fruit which
00:03:15.680 | demonstrates that we are truly in Christ and born again. It is not legalistic to be that serious
00:03:22.560 | about holiness. Number two, it is not legalistic to think of the Christian life as a life of
00:03:29.840 | obedience guided by commands, commandments of Jesus. Those two words, obedience and commandments,
00:03:39.520 | are not legalistic words in the New Testament. Philippians 2, 12, "Therefore, my beloved,
00:03:46.240 | as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence,
00:03:54.560 | work out your salvation with fear and trembling." Or 1 John 2, 3, "And by this we know that we have
00:04:02.560 | come to know him if we keep his commandments." Number three, it is not legalistic for a Christian
00:04:13.200 | to make it his aim to please God by the way he lives. Justification by faith alone does not
00:04:24.080 | exclude this; it empowers it. 2 Corinthians 5, 9, "Whether we are at home or away," meaning in
00:04:33.120 | heaven or on earth, "we make it our aim to please the Lord." Number four, it is not legalistic to
00:04:44.560 | use warnings and threatenings toward professing Christians to stir them up to be vigilant in
00:04:51.840 | their pursuit of holiness in heaven. Colossians 3, 5, "Put to death, therefore, what is earthly
00:04:58.640 | in you—sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry—on
00:05:04.800 | account of these," he's addressing Christians, "the wrath of God is coming." So don't do them!
00:05:11.280 | And Matthew 5, 30, "If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It's
00:05:19.040 | better for you, you disciples, Peter, James, John, it's better for you to lose one of your members
00:05:25.280 | than that your whole body go into hell." It's not wrong, it's not legalistic to use that kind of
00:05:33.120 | Jesus and apostolic language to warn professing Christians to get about the business of putting
00:05:40.560 | sin to death in their life. So then, what would be the meaning of legalism? If that's what it isn't,
00:05:48.160 | and yet many consider to be is, what would it be? What would the New Testament really condemn
00:05:55.840 | that we sometimes and should call legalistic? Here are three meanings of legalism that I hear
00:06:03.360 | used today that I think ought to be used, but they should be carefully explained, which ones being
00:06:10.800 | used and when. Number one, we might call someone legalistic if they are overly scrupulous about
00:06:19.440 | behaviors that are not prohibited or commanded in the New Testament. This is what Romans 14
00:06:27.040 | is mainly about. It goes like this, "Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains,
00:06:35.760 | and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats." So that despising and that
00:06:45.520 | judging would be legalistic on this definition. Number two, we might call someone legalistic
00:06:53.680 | if they fail to see that the mosaic system of sacrifices and priestly ceremonies and rights of
00:07:02.240 | purification and food laws and rituals that distinguish Israel from the nations are not
00:07:08.160 | binding any longer on the Christian. Hebrews 8, 13, "In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the
00:07:15.280 | first one obsolete," or Romans 7, 4—actually, just verse 6, maybe, both of them say almost the same
00:07:24.880 | thing—"We are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in
00:07:32.160 | the way of the Spirit and not the old way of the written code." And finally, number three,
00:07:38.000 | we might call someone legalistic if they treat the law or any moral behavior as the ground
00:07:47.520 | of our full acceptance with God instead of seeing Christ's blood and righteousness as the only
00:07:57.120 | ground of our acceptance and faith in Him as the only means of having what He died to obtain.
00:08:06.400 | So Romans 8, 3, "God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do." What?
00:08:16.560 | "By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, He condemned sin." So our condemnation is
00:08:24.400 | over because He did in the cross what we could never do by law-keeping. Or Galatians 5, 2—this
00:08:31.760 | is even clearer, I think—"If you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.
00:08:40.160 | I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep
00:08:47.920 | the whole law." Which means if you're going to use circumcision as part of the ground of your
00:08:57.280 | acceptance with God, you've got to go all the way and be a perfect person in law-keeping. So you
00:09:02.160 | just better get rid of that notion and bank everything on Jesus Christ for your acceptance
00:09:08.080 | with God. Now, my answer is yes, a person can be legalistic about legalism. Yes, you can.
00:09:17.280 | And here's the easiest way to see it, I think, is what I see anyway in our day. Watch a person
00:09:23.200 | who thinks another Christian is being overly scrupulous about behaviors that are not
00:09:31.360 | prohibited or commanded in the New Testament. Perhaps praying at meals, having personal
00:09:38.320 | devotions every day, having family devotions in the evening, abstaining from alcohol,
00:09:45.360 | refusing to watch movies with nudity, etc. None of those is mentioned in the New Testament.
00:09:50.320 | And then you see this legalism-rejecting, so-called free person become overly scrupulous himself
00:10:00.400 | about doing the very behaviors that the overly scrupulous Christian avoided. You see him
00:10:09.600 | turn those very behaviors into necessities in order to show that he's not legalistic, he's free.
00:10:19.440 | So he's just got to do those things that this other generation didn't do or not do what they
00:10:27.040 | did when in fact the freedom may be just as much a bondage to be different, a bondage to be
00:10:35.440 | different as the so-called legalism they are rejecting may be a bondage to tradition.
00:10:41.360 | So yes, it is possible to be legalistic about legalism, but the big challenge, as I see it,
00:10:51.040 | is to know what we're talking about when we use the word legalism and that we measure it
00:10:59.600 | by the scriptures. Yeah, sobering. God save us from this. Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:05.040 | Well, we are going to break now for the weekend, and that means plenty of time for you to subscribe
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00:11:13.360 | difficult question you're facing in life. You can do all of that, of course, through our online home
00:11:17.040 | at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. And Lord willing, by the time that you hear this, Pastor John will
00:11:25.920 | have just embarked on an international trip to Hong Kong, and we will have more details for you
00:11:31.360 | about this trip on Monday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the podcast,
00:11:34.640 | and we'll see you on Monday.
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