Legalism is acting upon any principle of law (note carefully: not just THE Law) in order to obtain or maintain God's favor - however one defines that - during this dispensation of grace.
The key point is, "principle of law" I define as "Do it or else."
So in other words, legalism means something you MUST do or keep on doing -- some work or works -- else you are under threat the Lake of Fire. That work can be literally anything. But because legalism/law = effort of some kind, faith is precluded as a work. Paul said as much (though some blinded liars say faith IS a work).
Let me play DA for a moment. I more or less agree with that definition, but we don't have Paul vs. James (for centuries now) because of a minor misunderstanding. The issue may be simple in terms of recognizing it (maybe not?) but it is far from simple to define. Maybe more to the point, it is next to impossible to make someone who is a legalist see that. Granted, that is the work of the Holy Spirit, but there should be a good case to make that is objectively clear (even if not everyone has eyes to see). And there is verse after verse about obedience, perseverance and abiding in Christ.
So if one takes the phrasing you used ("Do it or else") and turns to scripture, one finds multiple scriptures to point clearly to the fact that obedience is a necessary part of discipleship :
If ye love me, keep my commandments.
John 14:15
He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
John 14:21
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.
John 15:10
The first thought I have is that in a general way, if this were simply about "obey or else" then why use the Law to prove futility of human effort and righteousness? And if Christ essentially came to enable us to obey the Law, why wait? Men were already willing to obey it centuries before. If He had come to do that, maybe the prophets wouldn't have all been killed as they were and maybe Jesus wouldn't have had cause to rant against the Pharisees :
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,
And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:
That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.
Matthew 23:27-35
The charge of
hypocrite flies freely in the discussions that tend to go on between those that emphasize obedience and those that emphasize grace. The irony is that neither party knows the hearts of men like Jesus did. And what He says about appearance of righteousness will inevitably be true of us. We will never know another person's heart like the Lord does. But one side will say (with some basis of justification, I think) that the legalist is basically the Pharisee of this passage. The hypocrite that claims their own obedience is necessary for God to work. The Pharisees weren't here just claiming lineage (though they were doing that) but they were exalting appearance. Most men will proclaim their own goodness - and that is what the Pharisees were doing (though still realizing they needed someone else's goodness - so they exalted the prophets whom their fathers killed). Yet it will also be pointed out that the Pharisees killed Jesus because they weren't obeying the commands of God. Jesus, after all, said this :
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:17-19
Ergo...you must obey! Jesus, in essence, has said "
Do it or else!". So if you follow this line of thought, John's many exhortations to obey, abide in and love Christ are directed to us and if we don't do that, we will not be saved. Of course, I don't know any that deny the necessity of Calvary - but this line of thought requires great precision to address properly. It isn't simply finding a verse that denies "
Do this or else!" (the passage in Galatians that PJ quoted is great, though!). It's something subtler.
After all, if you stray from obedience, what is keeping you from being an outright antinomian and libertine?
The first response to that statement that the trolls and fools will always make is "Oh, so you don't believe you need to obey God!"
False. Obedience =/= legalism. For a member of Christ, obedience operates on a totally different principle from any law, but the trolls and fools refuse to acknowledge it. They can't. If they did their entire case would instantly fall apart.
Okay. So how do you show the positive (i.e. that obedience operates on a totally different principle from law)? The only answer I've found (and have failed miserably in expressing) is the concept found in God's declaration to Abraham :
After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.
Genesis 15:1
You can go all you like to the verses that say salvation is by grace through faith, that we are saved by His mercy and grace (not by works) and others like them, but none of them express an underlying principle (at least none that I've been able to convey) that (it seems to me) those that tout obedience as paramount are missing. The overemphasis of obedience (and I think a legalist will say you can't overemphasize obedience - but I would say you can have it in the wrong order) is a sign of clinging to one's own abilities. But the marvelous thing about what God promised to Abraham is that God's promise was sure in spite of Abraham's faltering. And in the end, God tied the blessing to His very own Self. It wasn't "
Do this and you will get lands, peoples and eternal life" but that He Himself was Abraham's reward. Everything, then, was tied to Abraham's walk with God. And (this is my thought) Abraham's faithfulness which was counted to him for righteousness was based solely upon God's own faithfulness. IMMEDIATELY after God's declaration in Genesis 15:1, Abraham is prompted to ask for an heir. God shows him the stars and tells him two things :
1. Your heir will NOT come from someone else in your house, but from you directly.
2. Your descendants will be as the stars of the heavens.
IMMEDIATELY (again) the scripture says Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness (Gen 15:6). Nothing had happened yet. And while Abraham would falter in evidencing that belief (Hagar and Ishmael), it is still true that the righteousness was attributed BEFORE he did anything. And when he was asked to sacrifice that son of promise, I believe the statement in Genesis 15:1 was crucial in forming Abraham's faith in God. God had promised to give him an heir (He did in spite of trying to make it happen his own way) and God had promised him descendants. So if God could do all that (Abraham reasoned), then what would be the big deal for Him to resurrect Isaac? After all, there was no life in him (Abraham) to begin with.
I know there's
a lot more to it than just that, but this relationship (in my mind) is the key that I think legalists miss. I say this as one who tends to be pretty strict (though admittedly not nearly as consistent as I could be!). I found this description of one form of legalism in an article by Sproul :
RC Sproul said:
The legalist isolates the law from the God who gave the law. He is not so much seeking to obey God or honor Christ as he is to obey rules that are devoid of any personal relationship.
From :
https://www.ligonier.org/blog/3-types-legalism/
The legalist often divorces the Law from the Lawgiver (and, I would even surmise they do this - more often than not - without realizing it). That's really "all" the Pharisees were guilty of. They just had hundreds of years to "perfect" it.
Sorry...I didn't mean to preach. I just think as simple (straightforward) as some people believe the issue is, the simplicity belies the complexites of the legalist thought.
Feel free to dissect any and all of this.
