Hideous and Deadly Legalism

Turn with me in your Bible to the Book of 2 Corinthians.

I begin this morning with this: Brace yourself, this is not going to be a happy, happy, joy, joy sermon. I am fairly certain that all of us are likely to walk away this morning with some spiritual bruises. The topic is familiar, but we are all very adept at applying this topic to other people and not to ourselves. Most are deaf and blind to our struggle in this regard.

2 Corinthians 6:11-12

Let’s pray.

My initial plans for this morning’s sermon were quite different. I had the sermon title ready. I printed the CD labels and had already been dwelling on the subject and principles that I felt the verses were communicating to us. And then I sat down to start pulling everything together and get my manuscript typed out, so I started to reread the passage and was stopped in my tracks after the two verses that I just read to you.

I am sure that my thinking was influenced by the passage that I have been teaching in the daily Facebook Live devotions to a great extent, but a principle taught in these two simple verses leaped off the page on Friday morning – something that I had never seen in these verses no matter how many times I have read them throughout my life.

Let me read it again before I reveal what startled me and we begin to unearth the treasure that is contained in these words.

2 Corinthians 6:11-12

Those of you who watch the video devotions that I offer on Facebook each weekday morning may now see what I saw. If not, and if you somehow missed the opening slide with the title of this message, Paul is confronting legalism in these two verses before he goes on to teach about the believer’s need to remain separate from the world. Paul knows that once you begin to implement commands and mandates in your life, our zeal for following such will often turn these commands and mandates into something more than was meant.

That final phrase, “you are restrained in your own affections” penetrates to the heart of why legalism is so hideous and deadly, and it reveals the pervasiveness of legalism and how easily it can grow and spread and permeate our lives and the life of a church. It feels good and right and even holy to follow the path of legalism.

R. Kent Hughes relates in his commentary on 2nd Corinthians, “It is of utmost importance that we understand and believe that the greatest danger to the church is not from without but from within. This is a truth that has been repeatedly demonstrated in church history. Perhaps its most dramatic demonstration was in the German Protestant church in the last century. German Biblical criticism had so undermined confidence in the Bible that few pastors saw it as the infallible Word of God. Liberal theology was in the driver’s seat and pulpits catered to the cultured despisers. There were remarkable exceptions, of course, like the courageous pastor Martin Niemoller, who in 1933 preached on the occasion of Martin Luther’s four hundred and fiftieth birthday about how tragic it would be if the devil filled German minds with the delusion that what they needed was not the grace of God but the courage of Martin Luther. Niemoller said, “There is absolutely no sense in talking of Luther and celebrating his memory in the Protestant church if we do not stop at Luther’s image and look at Him to whom Luther pointed”—to a Jew, a rabbi of Nazareth.”

“The next evening, in eerie fulfillment of Pastor Niemoller’s words, 20,000 Christians under the umbrella of the German Evangelical Church, led by bishops and church officials in full regalia, gathered in the new Berlin Sports Palace. After a fanfare of trumpets and the singing of “Now Thank We All Our God,” a Berlin pastor, Joachim Hossenfelder, announced that he was implementing the infamous Aryan paragraph in his diocese that dismissed all Christian Jews from church office, effective immediately. During the evening it was also announced among other things that Niemoller was suspended, that the Bible was to be reexamined for all its non-German elements, and that a proud, heroic Jesus must replace the model of the suffering servant. The speech was interrupted again and again by applause. Pathetically, not one of the bedecked bishops or church leaders stood up to disagree. Clearly, the state church had imploded from within.”

On a much smaller stage and scale, individual churches across this country and around the world continue to implode from within because of legalism. The grace of God cannot coexist with legalism, yet church after church chooses legalistic ways over the grace of God without a second thought. We will quickly and gladly restrict this and censor that with self-righteous indignation, nit-picking each other’s perceived sins, condemning how other folks choose to live their lives in the perfect freedom that Jesus paid for, and mandating conformity to rules, regulations, laws, and church traditions.

The church attempts to ban this and regulate that with the rationalization and justification that we are only trying to protect people from sin. The church twists Scripture to fit our way of thinking. The church legislates morality because in our minds God simply forgot to be clear in His Word about certain topics. The church proclaims hymns only, KJV only, and strict order in our worship services. The church determines all manner of liturgy that is acceptable, and we frown inwardly, if not outwardly, on those who don’t fit a certain mold.

The church attempts to create clones. And as Christian recording artist wrote in the lyrics for one of songs, “Cloneliness is next to godliness, right?” And “Everybody must get cloned”.

While we fight and continue to fight against such here at Grace Church of South Park, we are probably not as careful and thorough in our battles as we think we are. How often do legalistic thoughts go through your mind? When even in our minds we are critical about Bible translations or music or how people are dressed for church, or that we should mandate this or that at Grace Church, or a million other things, we are dabbling with or are fully engaged with legalism.

This vital thought that Paul introduces in this phrase, “you are restrained in your own affections”, also leads into what he teaches next about the importance of being separate from the world and not being bound together with the world, which we will begin to examine next week, but it is just as damaging if not more so to turn our affections into legalism. We have a fine line to walk because of our human tendencies. So, we will focus on our legalistic ways this morning and then what it means to be separate from the world next time.

Turn with me in your Bible to the Gospel of John. I have been working through chapter 9 in the daily devotional videos that I mentioned earlier, and it is a classic example of legalism. For those who watch these videos, I’ll be repeating some of what you have already heard in these lessons. I will read the entire chapter so that we can see the full context and also capture the hypocrisy and the utter lack of compassion in the legalistic ways of the Pharisees.

John 9:1-41

First off in this account, the Disciples of Christ reveal some legalistic tendencies in them by assuming that this man who was born blind had sinned, or his parents had sinned. They viewed afflictions as punishment from God for sin. So, they were of the mindset that you had to be perfect in your obedience to Scripture or suffer the consequences. But the passage is primarily about the legalism of the Pharisees and other religious leaders of Israel.

Through the 400 years of silence from God, the period of time between Malachi and the appearance of John the Baptist, when Israel was without a Prophet of God, the rabbis and scribes and Pharisees had literally bludgeoned the Sabbath day law to the point that it was completely unrecognizable as God had given it to Moses. They had added hundreds, and I mean hundreds of additions and interpretations and refinements to what constituted keeping the Sabbath. The Sabbath went from a day of rest and focus on worshiping God to a day of each that most Jews dreaded.

One could not go for a walk to enjoy God’s creation and pray to Him. There was a very limited number of steps you could take. You could not light a candle or start a fire for cooking. You could not carry a handkerchief or a garment from one floor of house to another floor. In Israel today, buildings have what is known as Shabbat elevators that automatically stop and open at every floor of the building on a continual cycle because you can’t push buttons on the Sabbath.

In this passage in the Gospel of John, Jesus violated several of these man-made Sabbath day laws. By their rules Jesus was guilty of working on the Sabbath by making clay. There were actually rules against healing someone on the Sabbath. A doctor could perform what was necessary if a person’s life were in danger, but nothing else. If you had a toothache, you were stuck with the toothache until Sabbath was over. If you sprained your ankle on the Sabbath, it was forbidden to pour cold water over the sprain. So, of course, the Pharisees were enraged that Jesus had healed and that He had made clay in the process to heal. And the man born blind should have refused to have been healed of his blindness.

We laugh at such nonsense, but are we really any different at times?

The sin of legalism was one of the most common if not the most common sin that Jesus confronted throughout the Gospel accounts, which means that it is likely the sin that Satan tempts us with the most often because we are so easily tripped up by it. It is so very subtle because we feel so very righteous when we engage in legalistic words and actions. But our feelings are self-righteous because there is absolutely nothing righteous and holy about legalism. And we rarely recognize our words and actions as being legalistic – we believe with our whole heart that we are right and even in good standing with the Bible.

In many cases, our legalistic ways have good intentions – we typically are attempting to help others (and ourselves) avoid sin even if we are going overboard to do so. For example, the Bible is replete with warnings about the dangers of consuming alcohol, but God has never forbidden the drinking of wine, or even strong drink. The commands are abundantly clear that you must not drink to excess or to the point of losing control of your faculties in drunkenness, but never is complete abstinence commanded other than for those in the Old Testament who took the Nazarite vow.

So, when we take a stand for complete abstinence, it is typically because we know the dangers and have likely either experienced the struggle ourselves or have a close friend or family member that has become addicted to alcohol with tragic consequences, and thus our motives are usually pure in hoping to help others avoid this problem, this sin. Good and honorable intentions, but we are guilty of adding to the Word of God by preaching complete abstinence.

Our freedom in Christ through the grace of God is complete and comprehensive. We must obviously never cross the line into sin, and we must be aware of causing other brothers and sisters in Christ to sin in their conscious while they are still discovering and plumbing the infinite depths of grace, but we must always be on guard of even playing with legalism – it has the power to infect you and infiltrate your mind with the slightest contact.

Getting back to the confrontation between the man who had been healed of his blindness and the legalistic Pharisees, these religious leaders are badgering this man who is now seeing for the first time in his life. They could care less about the impact that this miracle has had on this man and are instead outraged that the healing took place on the Sabbath, which is what legalism does.

Legalism creates and maintains cold hearts. There is no joy in legalism, no grace in legalism, no true worship and praise in legalism. Legalism extinguishes any sparks of passionately living in the freedom of Christ. Instead, you are constantly walking a line that is more like walking on a razor blade with all of the pain and guilt and shame that will accompany the biblical fact that you are not capable of keeping ANY law. Legalism will chew you up and spit you out – it sucks every last ounce of joy out of you and leaves you completely dry in a spiritual sense and completely miserable in an emotional sense.

And beloved, you can always find support for your legalistic ways because there have been many others who have walked the path that you are on. If you can’t find someone in the church or in your circle of influence, the Internet is full of people who believe the way you do, and they will twist and abuse Scripture to support their stance.

So, the Pharisees continue pressing the blind man like a police detective questioning a murder suspect under a heat lamp. They repeat their questions to this healed man, hoping to either trip him up or to have additional evidence to accuse Jesus with. They are so steeped in their legalism that they grasp at and manufacture evidence to go after those who dare think differently than them. Which is another aspect of legalism – it creates bullies, spiritual bullies who feel as if they have been enlisted by God Himself to be His enforcers.

This is the danger. Legalism is not only sin in your life it also leads you to draw others into engaging in your sin with you. And these Pharisees aren’t done. Dissatisfied with where they have gotten with this man, they begin badgering the man’s parents, which we will not take the time to look at.

2 Corinthians 6:11-12

The Apostle Paul has carefully laid out the call of God on each of our lives to be ministers of reconciliation and ambassadors for Jesus Christ. He has shown us that afflictions and hardships and distresses will be our companions because of how unbelievers will typically respond to the grace of God, and now he is telling us that we are not restrained by God’s Law, but we are instead restrained by our own affections.

See this! Please see this! Beloved this is an essential truth for our lives in Christ. Just prior to the confrontation that Jesus was having with the legalistic Pharisees, Jesus proclaimed that “you will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). Paul is now telling us that we are the ones who are responsible for restraining and restricting our freedom in Christ through our legalistic tendencies.

Paul writes in Colossians 2:20-23, “If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as do not handle, do not taste, do not touch! (which all refer to things destined to perish with use) in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.”

We could be here all day unpacking the truth in that passage, but make sure you get the meat of that. Submitting yourself to anything that is a man-made decree, or that has the appearance of wisdom but is not what the Bible teaches, or anything that can be categorized as self-made religion or self-abasement and severe treatment of the body has absolutely no value in your walk with Christ because you have totally missed and are trampling on God’s grace – grace that Jesus suffered and died to provide us with.

Paul also is clear in teaching us that the freedom and grace that we have in Jesus Christ is never an excuse for sin. Romans 6:1– “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”

Legalism leads us to become monsters and spiritual terrorists of our own making. As much as you may attempt to harmonize the love of Christ with your legalistic ways, it will not work. Every act of legalism will cancel out whatever measure of Christ’s love that you try to share with others.

Why do we insist on being miserable? Why do we insist on making everyone around us miserable? Why do we spit on the grace of God? Why do we insist upon adding to what God has decreed? Why do we reject the freedom that Jesus died to give us?

Beloved, comparatively speaking, this church has done fairly well at staving off legalism in any serious manner, but it is always there, lurking in the background. We must be diligent in embracing God’s gift of grace through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let’s pray.