What is legalism?

Question 7071.

Religious legalism is the instinct to add something of our own to what Jesus has already finished, and it is remarkably persistent in the human heart. I have never met a Christian who was entirely free of it, including the one writing this. We know that we are saved by grace, we say it, we sing it, and then we quietly build a small private system of rules by which we measure ourselves and, rather more enthusiastically, other people.

The word never appears in Scripture, but the thing certainly does, and Paul spent a great deal of ink on it. So let me define it carefully, because a definition that is too broad turns every call to obedience into legalism, and a definition that is too narrow lets the real problem walk straight past us.

A working definition

Religious legalism is any attempt to gain, keep or improve standing before God by means of rule keeping. That standing might be understood as salvation itself, or as ongoing acceptance, or as spiritual respectability within a congregation. The mechanism is the same in each case: performance is treated as the ground of favour.

Note what this definition excludes. It does not make obedience legalistic. Jesus expects His people to keep His commands, and the New Testament is full of imperatives. Nor does it make careful conviction legalistic. A Christian who has concluded before God that a particular practice is unwise for them is exercising conscience, not building a ladder.

The dividing line runs through motive and function. Am I doing this because I am accepted, or in order to be accepted? Same action, opposite religions.

Religious legalism in its saving form

The first and gravest form attaches works to the gospel itself. The Judaising teachers in Galatia did not deny Jesus. They affirmed Him and then added circumcision, and Paul’s response is the most ferocious writing in the New Testament. He calls it another gospel, which is to say no gospel, and he asks in Galatians 3:3 whether people who began by the Spirit intend to be perfected by the flesh.

Why the ferocity? Because the addition is not a small error of proportion. Jesus plus anything as the ground of acceptance means Jesus plus nothing has been rejected. The cross either finished the work or it did not. If a single stitch of my own is required, then the garment Jesus provides is inadequate, and if it is inadequate at one point it is worthless at every point.

This form of religious legalism is alive in every system that makes sacraments, rites, denominational membership or moral achievement the basis of salvation. It is also alive in the quiet assumption of many decent people that God will take their general effort into account. He will not. He offers grace, which by definition cannot be part payment.

Religious legalism in its sanctifying form

The second form is subtler and far more common in evangelical churches. Here the gospel is believed genuinely, and then the Christian life is conducted as though maintenance were down to us. Acceptance was by grace; approval is by performance. The result is a believer who is theologically orthodox and emotionally exhausted.

Paul addresses exactly this in Colossians. Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, according to human precepts, in Colossians 2:20 to 23, and his verdict is that such regulations have an appearance of wisdom while being of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. They look serious. They achieve nothing.

I have watched this variety do enormous harm. It produces Christians who cannot receive comfort because they have not earned it, who read every sermon as an indictment, and who find the presence of God oppressive rather than restful. Grace is confessed on Sunday and functionally denied from Monday.

How the two forms feed a third problem

Religious legalism rarely stays private. Once a standard has been built, it must be enforced, and other believers become either rivals or projects. Paul saw this in Rome, where the strong despised the weak and the weak passed judgement on the strong, and he refused to let either party make its conscience into a law for the church.

This is why legalistic congregations feel the way they do. There is a great deal of watching. Conversation runs to who is doing what, how often, and with whom. Conformity is high and honesty is low, because admitting struggle costs standing in a system where standing is earned.

The Greek word for law, nomos, is not the villain of this story. God’s law is holy, righteous and good. The villain is the use to which we put it when we make a mirror into a ladder.

The mistake of over correcting

Having said all that, I want to guard the other flank, because the word legalism has become a convenient accusation. Any call to holiness, any exercise of church discipline, any pastor who says a particular course of action is sin, can be dismissed as legalistic by somebody who would rather not hear it. That is a rhetorical trick, not an argument.

Grace does not lower the standard. It raises it and then meets it. The New Testament asks more of me than Sinai ever asked of Israel, and it asks it of a heart that has been given the desire to comply. The opposite of religious legalism is not laxity. I have written separately about antinomianism, which is the ditch on the other side of the same road.

The test is not how demanding a teaching sounds. The test is what it does with the cross. Legalism says the cross was a good start. Licence says the cross made holiness optional. Both are answered by the same doctrine of charis, God’s undeserved favour, which pardons freely and transforms thoroughly.

How grace actually cures it

Religious legalism is not cured by trying less hard. It is cured by looking somewhere else. When I am persuaded that God’s verdict over me was settled at the cross and will not be revisited, the frantic quality goes out of my obedience. I still obey. I obey as a son rather than as an applicant.

That is why I keep returning congregations to the same ground. Read Romans slowly. Notice that eleven chapters of doctrine come before a single chapter of duty, and that the duty begins with therefore. The order is not accidental, and reversing it is the whole of the disease.

See also the distinction between cheap grace and costly grace, and the wider relationship between law and grace, both of which sit close to this question.

Where I find it in my own ministry

I have to watch for religious legalism in the pulpit as much as in the pew, because preaching is a trade with particular temptations. It is easy to press application in a way that leaves people feeling measured rather than sent, and easier still to preach against the sins my congregation does not commit while leaving my own untouched.

The tell for me is what I find myself commending. When my illustrations of a faithful Christian always resemble a person of my temperament, reading habits and social class, I have begun legislating my own preferences. That is religious legalism in its most respectable dress, and congregations absorb it faster than they absorb doctrine.

The other tell is how I handle the person who has failed publicly. If my instinct is to protect the church’s reputation rather than to restore the fallen, I have adopted a system where standing is earned and can therefore be forfeited. Galatians 6 tells us to restore such a person in a spirit of gentleness, watching ourselves lest we be tempted, and the watch on ourselves is the part we skip.

The freedom that grace gives back

What replaces religious legalism is not indifference but liberty, and liberty has a particular texture. It looks like a Christian who can hold a conviction firmly and hold it as a conviction rather than as a test of fellowship. It looks like a congregation where somebody can say they are struggling without losing standing.

It also looks like enjoyment. Legalistic religion is joyless by construction, since any system of earning generates anxiety, and anxiety and delight cannot occupy the same space for long. Paul told the Colossians that the substance belongs to Jesus, and the substance is better company than the shadows.

Romans 14 gives us the working principle for living together with different consciences. Whatever you do, do it to the Lord, do not despise the brother who differs, and do not make your liberty a stumbling block. That verse has kept more churches together than any constitution.

So, now what?

Try a small piece of self examination this week. When you fail, what do you instinctively do first? If your reflex is to repair the relationship by improved behaviour before you dare approach God, you have found a strand of religious legalism in yourself, and you can bring it to the cross like any other sin. If your reflex is to assume it does not matter much, your problem lies in the other direction, and the same cross addresses that too.

And if you have been on the receiving end of a legalistic church culture, be careful how you carry the injury. Bitterness has ruined as many believers as rule keeping ever did. What you actually need is not a lower standard but a better foundation. Do you know, tonight, that God’s acceptance of you does not move?

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)