For all the talk of gospel-centeredness, there’s still some fear and trepidation fueled by a common misunderstanding regarding the radical nature of grace. Even amongst the proponents of gospel-centrality, I still hear talk about there being two equal dangers that Christians must avoid: legalism and lawlessness.

Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law, or rules. Lawlessness, they say, happens when you focus too much on grace. Therefore, in order to maintain spiritual equilibrium, you have to balance law and grace. Sometimes, legalism and lawlessness are presented as two ditches on either side of the gospel that we must avoid. If you start getting too much law, you need to balance it with grace. If you start getting too much grace, you need to balance it with law. But I’ve come to believe that this “balanced” way of framing the issue can unwittingly keep us from really understanding the gospel of grace in all of its radical depth and beauty.

It’s more theologically accurate to say that there is one primary enemy of the gospel—legalism—but it comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (you could call this “front-door legalism”).

Other people avoid the gospel and try to “save” themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (you could call this “back-door legalism”).

In other words, there are two “laws” we can choose to live by other than Christ: the law which says “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules” or the law which says “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.” Either way you’re still trying to “save” yourself—which means both are legalistic because both are self-salvation projects.

So, it’s a mistake to identify the “two cliffs” as being legalism and lawlessness. The one “cliff” is legalism but it comes in two forms—what some call license is just another form of legalism. And if people outside the church are guilty of “break the rules” legalism, many people inside the church are still guilty of “keep the rules” legalism.

This is super important because the biggest lie about grace that Satan wants the church to buy is the idea that grace is dangerous and therefore needs to be “kept it in check.” By believing this we not only prove we don’t understand grace, but we violate gospel advancement in our lives and in the church. A “yes, grace…but” disposition is the kind of fearful posture that keeps moralism swirling around in our hearts and in the church.

I understand the fear of grace. As a pastor, one of my responsibilities is to disciple people into a deeper understanding of obedience—teaching them to say “no” to the things God hates and “yes” to the things God loves. But all too often I have (wrongly) concluded that the only way to keep licentious people in line is to give them more rules. The fact is, however, that the only way licentious people start to obey is when they get a taste of God’s radical unconditional acceptance of sinners.

The irony of gospel-based sanctification is that those who end up obeying more are those who increasingly realize that their standing with God is not based on their obedience, but Christ’s.

The people who actually end up performing better are those who understand that their relationship with God doesn’t depend on their performance for Jesus, but Jesus’ performance for us.

People need to hear less about what we need to do for God and more about all that God has already done for us, because imperatives minus indicatives equal impossibilities. If you’re a preacher and you’re assuming that people understand the radical nature of gospel indicatives, so your ministry is focused primarily on gospel imperatives, you’re making a huge mistake. A huge mistake!

Long-term, sustained, gospel-motivated obedience can only come from faith in what Jesus has already done, not fear of what we must do. To paraphrase Ray Ortlund, any obedience not grounded in or motivated by the gospel is unsustainable. No matter how hard you try, how “radical” you get, any engine smaller than the gospel that you’re depending on for power to obey will conk out in due time.

So let’s take it up a notch. Don’t be afraid to preach the radical nature of the gospel of grace. For, as the late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said, “If your preaching of the gospel doesn’t provoke the charge from some of antinomianism, you’re not preaching the gospel.”

Thanks to Tullian Tchividjian

…when men give themselves up to separating and narrow principles, the power of godliness is lost, and all their zeal is laid out upon their petty and private opinions, and so religion is turned into a disputacity…. Observe it where you will, and you shall find that separation and distance from the rest of believers, doth not befriend godliness, but undermine it. A regiment fighting apart from the rest of the army of Christ, is always lost through their own peevishness; at least, they lose great advantages of promoting the kingdom of Christ.

Legalists sometimes defend themselves by claiming that legalism, properly understood, is just what Paul condemned in Galatians 1: the sin of making justification conditional on some work or ceremony performed by the sinner. In other words, legalism is works-salvation. So, they say, if you formally affirm the principle of sola fide and preach that people can be saved without any prerequisite work, you can’t possibly be a legalist, no matter how many rules you make and impose on the consciences of people who are already converted.

No. Legalism is the error of abandoning our liberty in Christ in order to take on a yoke of legal bondage (Galatians 5:1). There are actually two kinds of legalism.

First is the one recognized and despised even by the fundamentalist with his thick rule-book. It’s the legalism of the Judaizers. The Judaizers wanted to make circumcision a requirement for salvation. They had fatally corrupted the gospel by adding a human work as a requirement for salvation. That is certainly the worst variety of legalism, because it destroys the doctrine of justification by faith and thereby sets up “a gospel contrary to the one you received” (Galatians 1:8-9).

But another kind of legalism is the legalism of the Pharisees. It’s the tendency to reduce every believer’s duty to a list of rules. This is the kind of legalism that often seems to surface in our comment-threads. At its root is a belief that holiness is achieved by legal means—by following a list of “standards.” This type of legalism doesn’t necessarily destroy the doctrine of justification like the legalism of the Judaizers. But it does destroy the doctrine of sanctification, and it is certainly appropriate to call it what it is: legalism—i.e., a sinful misapplication of law; an attempt to make law do work that only grace can do. Like the Judaizers’ brand of legalism, it brings people under a yoke of bondage Scripture has not placed on them.

As a matter of fact, that is exactly what Jesus said about the legalism of the Pharisees: “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders” (Matthew 23:4).

Pharisaical legalists are not content to live life in the power of the Spirit, cultivate discernment, and avoid things that are clearly profane or immoral; they make lists of rules that prohibit Christians from practically everything but church activities. It’s not enough to avoid gambling; they insist that good Christians will avoid card-playing altogether. They’re not content with doing things in moderation and with self-control, they make rules that call for strict abstinence from everything doubtful—and they try to impose those rules on other Christians—saddling people with a yoke that they imagine exists somewhere in the white spaces of Scripture.

You want rules? Here’s a good one to start with: When it comes to the question of spiritual duties, where Scripture stops speaking, we should, too.

The Pharisees’ sin was making rules that went beyond what Scripture actually said. For example, they read in the law that it is a sin to take God’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7), so they expanded the rule to forbid the use of God’s name at all. They invented euphemisms to be used in place of God’s name (Matthew 23:22).

The Pharisees saw the stress that was laid on ceremonial cleanness in the Old Testament, so they invented all kinds of extra washings and required people to observe those as well. In fact, Matthew 15 tells how the Scribes and Pharisees tried to condemn Jesus for not making his disciples observe their extrabiblical traditions: “Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ‘Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat’” (Matthew 15:1-2).

There was no biblical commandment requiring people to do any ceremonial washing before they ate. The priests were supposed to wash their hands before offering sacrifices to God, but no law required everyone to wash up before every meal.

Jesus’ response to the Pharisees was a stern rebuke: “He answered them, ‘And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?’” (Matthew 15:3). In other words, He rejected their tradition because it was not what the Word of God taught. Even though we all know that washing before meals is good hygiene, and a good idea, He flatly rejected their notion that it is “sinful” not to do it.

He said their legalism transgressed the Scriptures. Legalism always has an anti-biblical tendency. You cannot go beyond Scripture without ultimately setting yourself at odds with Scripture.

That is precisely what happened in the fundamentalist movement, and one of the major reasons that movement has failed so notoriously. Legalism diverts people’s attention from sound doctrine, so that the typical fighting-fundie legalist is doctrinally ignorant, reserving his or her “convictions” for a silly man-made system of rules. Ask the typical self-styled fundamentalist to define the difference between imputed and imparted righteousness, and he will not be able to do so. Suggest that it’s OK for women to wear pants, or for people to use another version besides the KJV for Bible study, and the same fundy will lock and load his angry dogmatism, ready to do battle or even die for some ridiculous man-made “standard.” Thus, as Jesus said, they have nullified the Word of God for the sake of their man-made traditions.

Let me say this plainly: It is a sin to impose on others any “spiritual” standard that has no biblical basis. When God gave the law to Israel, He told them, “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2). And, “Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it” (Deuteronomy 12:32).

The same principle is repeated in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul was rebuking the Corinthians for their sectarianism, saying “I am of Paul”; “I am of Apollos,” and so on.  His rebuke to them includes these words in 1 Corinthians 4:6: “I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written.”

That is a good guideline for how we should exercise our Christian liberty: Don’t go beyond what is written in Scripture. Don’t make rules to impose on others; don’t devise rituals and forms of worship that are not authorized; and don’t speak on such matters where God has been silent. That’s the whole principle of Sola Scriptura applied to Christian living. If we really believe Scripture is a sufficient rule for the Christian life, then we don’t have to add anything to it.

If we add rules that Scripture doesn’t make, —especially if we try to impose our man-made rules on other people’s consciences as a standard of spirituality —we are guilty of the same sin as the Pharisees and worthy of the same harsh rebukes Christ leveled at them.

Thanks to Phil Johnson at TeamPyro

A group of false teachers in the Colossae region went around making people feel guilty because they didn’t keep a list of rules not found in Scripture.   To them, even if you had received Christ, you weren’t saved if you didn’t keep their pet menu of rituals and regulations and routines.  External standards are always tempting.  Unconverted phonies can conform to them, so they don’t provide a suitable basis to judge someone’s conversion.  Salvation is by grace through faith, but spiritual bullies desire to coerce others into their own criteria for spirituality, causing confusion and doubt to a church.

So Paul tells these churches at Colossae and Laodecia not to restrict themselves solely because of these false teachers that want them to cramp their lifestyles to earn their way to righteousness (v. 16).  This contradicted the sufficiency they had in Christ (vv. 9, 10).  He wasn’t, by the way, saying to them that they could do whatever they wanted.  Colossians 2 isn’t the only passage in the Bible on liberty.  There are huge chunks of text on this in Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians as well.  For instance, he wasn’t requiring them to jump through the salvation hoops of the Essenes, but in other passages he does tell the church to look out for the welfare of the weaker brother.  They didn’t have liberty to sin, to be worldly, to be a stumbling block, to be a bad testimony, to let their good be evil spoken of, to disobey church leadership, or to cause disunity in the church.  But he didn’t want them to be bullied by the onerous self-serving dicta of genuine legalists.

You aren’t a Christian because you show up for church work day, men’s prayer time, and for both times of door-to-door evangelism.  You aren’t a Christian because you are a regular kneeler at the front during invitations and you shout “amen” louder than anyone else in the church.  You aren’t a Christian because you don’t go to the movie theater, don’t subscribe to Sports Illustrated, your hair doesn’t touch your ears, you don’t have a Christmas tree, and you’ve never read a Tolkien novel.  You’re a Christian only because of Jesus Christ, because of His work on Calvary, because of His resurrection, because He intercedes for you on the right hand of the Father, and because of the righteousness with which you are robed in Him.  That will all look like good works and holiness and love for God and others.  However, nothing that we can do will add anything to the fulness that is in Christ.

The problem represented by Paul’s warning in Colossians 2:16-17 can raise its ugly head in any church, but I know it to be a particular one for separatist churches.  The churches often have high, scriptural standards of holiness.  People in those churches can replace actual salvation and spirituality with the rules of the church.  Those rules don’t even exist, but they do in the minds of some.  Some church members might live a double life buoyed by their ability both to wear the Christian uniform and nitpick others who don’t wear it like they do.  Inside they hold evil thoughts and an ugly spirit.  They’ve really developed their own religious system separate from the Bible and true godliness.   This kind of culture can spread, either causing major difficulties in a church or verging on taking over.  Paul says don’t let it happen.

Don’t let spiritual bullies have their way in a church.  I know they latch hold of one thing that I say in a sermon.  I might say that I don’t eat at some restaurant because of the prominent bar and they take that as “anyone who goes there isn’t saved.”  They themselves aren’t devoted to God but they won’t go to a restaurant that maybe they don’t go to anyway, and they’ll condemn anyone  else that goes there because they haven’t kept the rules of the church.  I’ve found that they do very little to help anyone else.  They will even bully the pastor into regulating himself for fear of the campaign they might start due to his inability to keep their ways.  And yet they expect to be thought highly of because they know how to look and they keep all the regulations they know are important.  Some of those standards might be helpful, but they don’t exist as a bar for measuring spirituality.

The Lord Jesus set us free from bondage through His death.   Jesus delivered you from the captivity of Satan and his demons.  Let’s not be bullied into another type of subtle, insidious imprisonment after all that the Lord has done.

Thanks to Kent Brandenburg

1. Legalism means treating biblical standards of conduct as regulations to be kept by our own power in order to earn God’s favor. In other words legalism will be present wherever a person is trying to be ethical in his own strength, that is, without relying on the merciful help of God in Christ. Simply put, moral behavior that is not from faith is legalism.  The legalist is always a very moral person. In fact the majority of moral people are legalists because their so-called Judeo-Christian morality inherited from their forefathers does not grow out of a humble, contrite reliance on the merciful enabling of God. On the contrary, for the legalist, morality serves the same function that immorality does for the antinomian, the free-thinker, the progressive, namely, it serves as an expression of self-reliance and self-assertion. The reason some Pharisees tithed and fasted is the same reason some German university students take off their clothes and lie around naked in the park in downtown Munich. The moral legalist is always the elder brother of the immoral prodigal. They are blood brothers in God’s sight because both reject the sovereign mercy of God in Christ as a means to righteousness and use either morality or immorality as a means of expressing their independence and self-sufficiency and self-determination. And it is clear from the NT that both will result in a tragic loss of eternal life. So the first meaning of legalism is the terrible mistake of treating biblical standards of conduct as regulations to be kept by our own power in order to earn God’s favor. It is a danger we must guard against in our own hearts every day. And please know that my old self is just as prone to it as anyone.
2. This is the most common brand of legalism practiced today in modern fundamentalism.  The erecting of specific requirements of conduct beyond the teaching of Scripture and making adherence to them the means by which a person is qualified for full participation in the local family of God, the church. This is where unbiblical exclusivism arises. There is no getting around the fact that the church does not include everyone. We do exclude people from membership because we believe worship should imply commitment to the lordship of Christ, the head of the church. But exclusion of people from the church should never be taken lightly. It is a very serious matter. Schools and clubs and societies can set up any human regulations they wish in order to keep certain people out and preserve by rule a particular atmosphere. But the church is not man’s institution. It belongs to Christ. He is the head of the body, and he alone should set the entrance requirements. That is very important!

The following is a transcript of a seminar given by Phil Johnson (director of Grace to You) at the 2005 Shepherd’s Conference.

Dead Right: The Failure of Fundamentalism

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:1-2

This is a tough thing.  Paul has commanded that we be transformed(μεταμορφόω ) not conformed(σύμμορφος ).

The uses of μεταμορφόω and συσχηματίζω in the NT are interesting.

The former being used 4 times and always to express a genuine change.  μεταμορφόω is transliterated as metamorphoô from which you readily identify our english word metamorphosis.  This is the word that the gospel writers Mark and Matthew used when speaking of Jesus’ transfiguration (μεταμορφόω).  Paul also uses it in II Corinthians 3:18 when speaking of the change (μεταμορφόω ) that results as we “behold the glory of the Lord”.

Now how about conformed (συσχηματίζω)?  I looked at all the NT appearances of συσχηματίζωσ and it’s derivatives and whenever this word appears it always seems to be focusing on externalities.  Paul describes Christ’ physical appearance in Philipians 2:8 as “And being found in human form(συσχηματίζω)”.  Peter tells the dispersed believers to “not fashion(συσχηματίζω) yourselves according to the former lusts”.

So I’m going to make some conclusions based upon some very elementary exegesis.  Paul is not interested in believers assuming an external form of religiosity.  His listeners were no doubt acquainted with the various practices of the religious zealots of their day, and Paul wanted them to understand that external conformity alone was abominable  to God.  God requires and, as we will see in a later post, actually does the transforming work in the believer’s life.

How does this marvelous metamorphosis happen?  Quite simply, it’s a brain transplant.  But that’s for another day.

The erecting of specific requirements of conduct beyond the teaching of Scripture and making adherence to them the means by which a person is qualified for full participation in the local family of God, the church. — John Piper

This is where unbiblical exclusivism arises.  I left a church that admittedly and proudly practices a ’separatist’ philosophy when it comes to extra-Biblical matters.  There is no getting around the fact that the church does not include everyone. Peter refers to us as a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” ( I Peter 2:9).  But exclusion of people from the church should never be taken lightly. It is a very serious matter. Schools and clubs and societies can set up any human regulations they wish in order to keep certain people out and preserve by rule a particular atmosphere. But the church is not man’s institution. It belongs to Christ. He is the head of the body, and he alone should set the entrance requirements.

This is FAR from being an exhaustive look at this topic.  There are entire blogs devoted to the topic.  I’m what would be best described as a recovering legalist.  I’ve come out from it, but am too prone to fall back into my old ways.  There is some sick comfort in it.  A cheap replacement for the real life in Christ.