Breaking Legalism Addiction

"One of the challenges of ministry is helping legalism addicts. They flit about from place to place, but they can’t 'rest' until they find it."
--Mike Cope

I've been teaching from Galatians in our Sunday morning Bible study and the process has taught me a lot about legalism. I used to think of it as something that Pharisees and modern-day traditionalists had exclusive rights to, but not according to Paul's definition.

In talking about Jewish Christians who demanded the circumcision of Gentile Christians, Paul makes it clear that the real issue isn't whether or not following rules is a good thing. I've always had a problem with human authority, so I'd love it if Paul was blatantly condemning all rule-following, but that's really not his point for writing the letter. He says right out that it doesn't actually matter whether or not you're following certain rules (Galatians 5:6).

Paul takes issue with the idea that following these rules is what makes you acceptable to God. He says over and over again in the letter that it's faith in Christ that does that (especially in Chapter 3; check out Galatians 3:2-5 for a good example). If you replace Christ with rule-following, you've changed God's message and have removed Christ from the picture (Galatians 1:6-9). That's serious stuff.

But rule-following can take many forms. It's not just the tobacco/alchohol abstinence that was the focus of so many congregations I grew up in. It can also be the pressure to attend group worship every week. It can be daily Bible-reading and/or prayer time. It can be a particular kind of worship experience or worshipping with a particular group of people (usually ones who think most like you do) . It can be as simple as communing with God in nature. None of these are bad things to do in themselves. In fact, they can all be very good things and some of them are outright examples of obedience (which I'll talk more about in a second). But none of them save us. None of them make us acceptable to God.

If you feel like you need to be surrounded by nature to feel close to God, there's a problem with your relationship with him. If you don't think you're okay with God unless you're at church every week, that's a problem too. If not reading your Bible for a few days makes you feel like you've fallen from grace; if you have to experience a particular kind of worship with a particular kind of people to be connected to him... something's wrong.

Paul says that there's only one thing we need to do to have a relationship with God and that's to trust that he wants one with us. When we believe that; when we have faith in that, we're okay with God. We're accepted by him. We're saved.

It's as simple as that, which is why most people have a hard time with it. We want to complicate it. We want to have to do something. We want it all spelled out and written down so that we can see whether or not we've obtained it. Legalism (that is, attempted-salvation-by-rule-following) is by definition a lack of faith.

Which is not at all to say that obedience is unimportant. We're accepted by God solely on the basis of whether or not we trust him to save us. But that trust can be measured. My relationship with God isn't just something that I speak into being. It's got to be real. My saying that I trust in God isn't the same as my actually trusting him. If I really do trust him - if I really do have a relationship with him - that's going to make itself evident in the things I do. As Paul says, we were called to be free, but that freedom makes itself known as love and service (Galatians 5:13-14). If we're not obedient to God, then that says something about our faith; about our trust in him.

But it's absolutely vital that we get the order right. Obedience doesn't save us. The relationship does.