t is very common for Christians to define legalism as taking the law of God "too far." The legalist the Pharisee is seen as someone who does not know when to quit. Sure, the law says to do this or that, but why do these guys take it so seriously?
This common understanding is really nothing less than total confusion. When Christ rebuked the Pharisees it was not for keeping the law; He attacked them because they refused to keep the law. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone (Matt. 23:23). Notice the last sentence here. Christ did not rebuke them for tithing out of their spice racks; He rebuked them for having no sense of biblical proportion at all. He rebuked them for keeping (with a great deal of fanfare) the periphery of the law, while trashing the heart of the law.
Because of this, Christ says that His followers were to be much more scrupulous about how they lived. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:20).
We are creatures; our pattern of life must conform to an external standard. Everyone in the world lives according to law law-guided behavior is inescapable. As creatures, we are incapable of choosing between law-guided behavior and non-law-guided behavior. The heart of legalism, therefore, is the substitution of man's law for God's law. God tells us what His law is, and in His Word He describes the relationship of all believers to that law. If by grace we submit to His declaration, it shows that we have been saved by grace, and through His grace we keep the righteous requirements of the law (Rom. 8:4).
If we do not submit to God's law, we will be submitting to the authority of another creature. It does not matter if the substitute for God is self, some Bible teacher, or a counseling guru. It is always the same; those who will not live by God's law are simultaneously submitting to man's law. For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men . . . (Mark 7:8).
We are incapable of turning away from God to nothing. We cannot worship the void because we cannot escape the world in which we were placed. Consequently, all rebels follow the pattern seen in the first chapter of Romans. They substitute. They worship and serve the creature, rather than the Creator.
There are varying degrees of substitution. Some try to rebel against everything God says. For some, salvation (or enlightenment) is the result of the sum total of all a man's work. They make no bones about it: they are going to make it on their own. Once my wife and I were speaking with some Jehovah's Witnesses. One of them, an elderly woman, listened as my wife gave her testimony of how God had graciously saved her. When my wife was done, the woman said, "That's not the way it is with us we have to work for everything we get." Of course, this was a form of legalism substituting the law and gospel of man for the law and gospel of God.
But there are less obvious forms of legalism. Because they are less obvious, and serpents are subtle, these substitutions are found among professing evangelical Christians. Many who profess to follow the Bible (as the Pharisees also professed) in effect substitute their own laws for the laws of Christ.
Some make the substitution for the sake of holiness or sanctification. They say, for just one example, that Christians must not drink anything containing alcohol. But the Bible contains no such requirement, and many examples to the contrary. Why do people who call themselves Christians want to be holier than Christ was? All such attempts are legalistic.
Others substitute their own wisdom for the gospel of pure grace. It is intolerable, the thinking goes, that God would save us out of His gracious pleasure; man must make his contribution. I was once talking with a man who was maintaining that Cornelius was saved because he was worthy of the gospel (Acts 10:1-8). When the leaven of this teaching has done its work, the result is another gospel.
All the commands are summed up in the greatest command, which is to love God without reserve. Because we are sinners, we cannot obey this command apart from the grace of God. But for those who are recipients of this grace, they find that it works in them to accomplish God's good pleasure. And the good pleasure of God is expressed for us in written form in the law. He who loves, keeps the law. He who truly keeps the law is doing nothing more than loving God and loving his neighbor. Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall not bear false witness," "You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:8-10).
Our duty is clear. We are to obey the law in our love for God and man. But all of us are sinners and are incapable of doing this. Because of His lovingkindness, God has provided a means of transforming hearts which hate the law. At this point, our duty is equally clear it is to obey the gospel.
And when God by His grace makes it possible for us to repent of our sin and believe the gospel, we find that we have been set free to love Him, and love our neighbor. Put another way, we have been freed from sin that we may keep the law of God.
As Christians, we must accept no substitute.
