legalism

Without Christ a people may always have the freedom to do, but never the power to complete.

To escape the error of salvation by works we have fallen into the opposite error of salvation without obedience. In our eagerness to get rid of the legalistic doctrine of works we have thrown out the baby with the bath and gotten rid of obedience as well.

When everything is a law, nothing is a law.

Law without reason is criminal.

The Christian God seemed the most offensive to people precisely because he was the most godlike. He was too perfect even to be coaxed by human efforts, and therefore sent his son to do the job.

I believe that secularism is not the enemy of spirituality. Our spirits are in fact secular and free. But the enemy of your spirit is materialism which produces legalism. People scramble for the "perfect law" in order fix everything, while failing to see that law only points towards what is material. And so, people find themselves going around in a circle that will never end. The key is to break away from that circle. You have to begin focusing your attention onto what is inside you and what is inside everybody else. This will in turn produce common sense, intuition, and understanding. Then comes strength.

Accumulating orthodoxy makes it harder year-by-year to be a Christian than it was in Jesus' day.

These days when Christians bicker they exaggerate passion into a legalistic belief and prosperity into a lukewarm belief.

To dream in doctrines, how tidy!

Morality often involves tension within the group motivated by competition between different groups.

Law will take over because law always carries with it a sense of security and manipulative power.

We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you lay down the law. To be sure, the Spirit does use both God's law and God's gospel in our sanctification. But the law and the gospel do very different things.

In the end, only God can see the heart of an individual and distinguish the difference between legalistic deadweight and the passion of holy solemnity.

Legal action is but warfare disguised.

What are Christians known for? Outsiders think our moralizing, our condemnations, and our attempts to draw boundaries around everything. Even if these standards are accurate and biblical, they seem to be all we have to offer. And our lives are a poor advertisement for the standards. We have set the gameboard to register lifestyle points; then we are surprised to be trapped by our mistakes. The truth is we have invited the hypocrite image.

Lord, please protect me from Your people.

Do we use the Word of God only as a cue card to commandeer our external behavior?

If thy meditation tends to fill thy note-book with notions, and good sayings, concerning God, and not thy heart with longing after him, and delight in him, for aught I know thy book is as much a Christian as thou (553).