Legalism: its Nature and Varieties

One of the doctrinal words that really characterizes the Evangelical church in America over the past few generations is the word antinomianism. That is, the doctrine of being “against law.” In layman’s terms, the kind of faith that emanates from this doctrine has been called “easy believism” or even “carnal Christianity,” or, to use Bonhoeffer’s expression, “cheap grace.”  Whatever words we use, I think we will all recognize the species out in the wild. Who can deny that the one thing the church has excelled at is making everyone feel as though there is nothing to worry about when it comes to God? Nothing to be reverent about. Nothing to take seriously.

Within this context, the word “legalism” is used to put any amount of seriousness in a bad light. Whether it be the teaching of precise doctrine, the prospect of church discipline, or calls to repentance and personal holiness—anything that might bring conviction to our lazy and shallow “spirituality” is met with the charge, “That’s legalism!”

In fact, we have had the “Legalist card” thrown down on the table in front of us so many times that we have often become suspicious of the concept itself. 

Far too many Evangelicals, I am afraid, do not believe that there is such a thing as legalism because of how the idea has been weaponized against genuine Christian faith. The trouble with this is that legalism is indeed a thing. It exists in every human heart. And it spreads like gangrene. It is never a static thing. It is never shy about selling itself to the widest market of moral sloths craving a superficial order. As the first rule of war is to know your enemy, it would be helpful to put legalism under the microscope: to know what it is and in how many forms it can attack. 

Principle Legalism and Performance Legalism

Any modification to God’s law, toward the end of imposing on the conscience, I call principle legalism. This can occur in several ways. It can be by closing perceived loopholes, missing the spirit of a command for its letter, or adding whole new commandments. The Pharisees seem to have been guilty of all of the above in the Gospels. But this can also happen by failing to understand the sense in which the ceremonial law and civil law of the old covenant people have been fulfilled in Christ. It is not merely the modification that is the problem. Anyone can be guilty of that by a simple misunderstanding. It is the imposition of an obligation that God has not in fact obligated. So there is the litany of Do’s and Don’ts that Paul calls “self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body,” which, he adds, “are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:23). Now why is that? It is because of one more element of principle legalism. The letter of the law is only the “outside” of its spirit, since “the law is spiritual” (Rom. 7:14); so that in piercing down to the heart, to expose the real nerve-center of sin, the positive command would have us obey from the heart as well.

Mere external shifts in behavior cannot deal with sin because one’s flesh and bones and circumstances and appearances are not what animates sin. The externals of human action and the ink patterns of the law belong to the realm of sin’s fruit, but not its root. 

Now what is this other kind? Any resting of the Christian’s motive for new moral action, or evaluation of the Christian’s spiritual trajectory—their maturity, faithfulness, and qualification—or the propriety of one’s fullest obedience to God, on the basis of one’s prior performance I call performance legalism. Performance legalism is a devilish repudiation of the triumphant gospel maxim of Paul: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). When is this true? Always! How many times is this true? Every time! Isn’t there any interval in which the Christian just needs to sit it out, maybe wallow in his shame? Never! Unless you are prepared to say that this person is not in Christ, then you are obligated to say the words just prior to that text: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh” (2 Cor. 5:16).

Note that I am speaking of the objective work of Christ and the consequent objective reality of the believer’s legal standing with God. This does not mean that the Christian does not daily confess sin (cf. 1 Jn. 1:9). It does not mean that the Christian is not a sinner constitutionally (cf. 1 Jn. 1:8, 10); but what it does mean is that, legally, the Christian is free and clear to obey Christ at every second.

Anyone attempting to hold a Christian down from obedience on the grounds that they have messed up so badly or so recently has a very bizarre notion of moral seriousness. The King would have His soldiers on the field of battle, not bound in chains of self-pity, as if that could make up for past disobedience.

When we say that Christ’s own person and work is our righteousness before God (1 Cor. 1:30, Rom. 5:18) one of the implications of that is that Christ’s performance is our right, or our legal ground, to get up at every moment, having confessed our sins and been forgiven, to obey God’s call on our lives. 

Individual Legalism and Corporate Legalism

Because the New Calvinism was birthed in late Evangelical pietism, it is no coincidence that even the best teaching against legalism over the past two decades has tended to focus on introspection. “Crucify that legalist in your heart!” “We are all natural born Pharisees!” “Let’s not be legalistic even to the legalists!” That is all true and important as far as it goes. But does it go as far as the Bible does? I would say not. Paul’s letter to the Galatians is a whole book devoted to arresting the development of corporate legalism. Consider just a few passages:

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (1:6-7).

“Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery” (2:4).

“But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel …” (2:14).

“They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them” (4:17).

“But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? ‘Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman’” (4:29-30).

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

“It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ” (6:12).

Exegesis and application of these passages to this subject would be quite an undertaking, though I have done it in a lecture series before. For our purposes, simply take note of the corporate dimension of Paul’s diatribe against the Judaizer error. It was not a private affair. It was causing the whole church to dump the gospel in favor of a surface purity.

So what do I mean by corporate legalism? It is what happens when either one of those brands of legalism mentioned above—principle or performance—gets out of its cage and begins to bind the whole church up in man-made duties, or sideline whole portions of the church that don’t measure up to “that guy” or “that gal” who (insert your impressive saint), we can be sure, is someone less than Jesus. Nothing else can be or do until one has been more like them, or until one has checked all of these boxes to some satisfactory unit of time, space, control of resources, etc, etc, and a whole lot more et ceteras that are nowhere in Scripture.

The fundamental principle that causes legalism to confuse lordship is this: He who makes the rules rules.

Either God will command the conscience, or else the one who adds to the commandments. This is no small matter. As it turns out, not only is legalism offensive to God because it contradicts the gospel. It is not simply “mean-spirited,” which it is of course. It turns out that legalism doesn’t work. Oh, it sells itself on work! It boasts of whipping the licentious into shape. It’ll make us all a lean, mean fighting machine in the realms of religion and culture and the home! Actually, no it won’t. Legalism puts everyone out of work because it has nothing to do with God’s holiness. It has everything to do with appearances. Where it motivates, it traffics in the fear of man, or applause, or the illusion of control. But since all that will come to nothing, the false motive will wear off too. The legalist will burn out, and his disciples will turn from the faith when it becomes clear that the kingdom of merely external appearances is never going to come.