Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about the difference between obedience and legalism. If there is one word that is batted around today an awful lot in Christian circles, it's the word legalism or legalistic. I hear it all the time, " Oh, yeah, that group over there, they're really legalistic. " Or, " Well, got to be careful, brother. You may be falling prey to legalism.
" In fact, I would think that the word legalism and legalistic are probably the most misused words today among Christians. So what we're going to do tonight is first look at what legalism is not. Then we're going to see from Scripture what it really is. And in both situations, we're going to notice how it differs from legitimate obedience. To begin with, I want to point out that the word legalism doesn't even appear in Scripture anywhere.
In other words, Christians today are using a term that you think was plastered all over the pages of the New Testament, and it's not even there. And that should immediately tip us off that something is wrong here. Why are we using a word that the Scriptures don't use that God never found a need to talk about? Particularly, like I say, when this word is used so frequently, and surprisingly, I think it's used the most by people who profess to be Bible-believing Christians.
And whatever legalism may be, it is not the same thing as obedience. By that, what I mean is that when we take God's commandments seriously and live by them, we're not being legalistic. Yet that's what obedient Christians are usually accused of, of being legalistic. Well, let's just take a minute and see what Christ Himself said about obeying His commandments. If we obey His commandments, if we take them seriously, are we in danger of displeasing Christ?
Well, he tells us at Matthew 7:21, " Not everyone who says to me, ' Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father. " So was he concerned about people obeying His commandments that that would make them legalistic? He said, " We're not going to enter the kingdom of heaven unless we are doing the will of his Father. " He told his followers in Luke 13:24, " Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many I say to you will seek to enter and will not be able. " Strive.
You know If anyone else said that other than Jesus Christ Himself, they would be accused of being heretical, of not understanding biblical grace, of trying to earn their salvation. But wait a minute. This is Jesus Christ saying this, " Strive to enter into the narrow gate. " He isn't saying we're going to earn our salvation by striving, but he does indicate it's not a passive thing that is just handed to us. Finally, John 14:21, he said, " He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me.
And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. " So all these things of being loved by Jesus, by the Father are conditioned on if we love Jesus Christ. And he says, " If we do love Him, then we will not only have His commandments, we will keep them. " Now, I think it's entirely possible that a person can at least externally keep Christ's commandments. He can look like he's keeping them and yet not love Jesus at all. I think that's quite possible.
But he says it is not possible that you really love Jesus and you're not keeping His commandments. Because if you love Him, you're going to want to do what He told us we should be doing. So that's Jesus Christ right out of the horse's mouth. Now let's look at what some of the other scriptures say. Ephesians 5, verses 5 and 6, Paul says, " For this you know that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
" And then he finishes by saying, " Let no one deceive you with empty words. " Well, it's taught a lot today all over the world that you can be covetous, you can be a fornicator, somebody committing sexual immorality. And if you once invited Jesus in your heart, well, hey, you're going to be in the kingdom of heaven. And Paul says, " No, you're not going to be in the kingdom of heaven if that's the type of person you are.
" And he says, " Don't let anyone deceive you, knowing from the Holy Spirit that people would teach that you could do those very things and still inherit the kingdom of God. " Hebrews 4:11 says, " Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall after the same example of disobedience. " There he set out the example of the Israelites of old, how they were rejected because of their disobedience. And again, the writer uses the word diligent, be diligent, similar to what Jesus said on striving.
Again, this isn't to pile up an accumulation of good works to somehow buy our salvation or earn it. But rather, it means there has to be discipline. There has to be an effort. Christianity is not a passive thing. We cannot be passive and still be obedient to Christ because to be obedient to Him means we have to crucify our flesh. Finally, I want to read James 2:24. And if this wasn't in the Scriptures, if I just said this, I know I would be labeled as a heretic.
He says, " You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith only. " So where do we get the idea that Jesus does not require us to be obedient, number one? And number two, that people who are being obedient are doing something wrong because they're legalistic. And so they're displeasing Christ by striving to obey His commandments when He just told us that's what we need to be doing. And really, if we reflect on it, it would be unreasonable to expect it to be any different.
If you're a parent, when you tell your children to do something, do you expect them to obey you? Are you displeased with them when they obey you? Do you say, " Well, now that's being legalistic. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wow wow What are you doing here? " Let's say that you have two children, John and Bill or William. You tell John, " I'm going to run into town. I want you to wash all the dishes. " And then you tell William, " All right, William, the sidewalk outside needs to be swept off.
It's full of leaves and grass clippings and all of that. I want you to sweep all of that off. While I'm in town, your brother's going to be washing the dishes. " All right? And then you come back from town and you see that the sidewalk is still covered with leaves and debris, that William hasn't done anything. Well, then you go inside the house and you see that John has washed all of the dishes like he told him to. Now, are you going to get mad at John and say, " What are you doing here? You wash the dishes.
" Well, dad or mom, you told me to do it. " Oh, don't you know? I didn't want you to really do that. You're being so legalistic, John. Why can't you be like your brother out there? " He knew he didn't have to do what I told him. I mean, would any of us do that? Isn't that absurd? But that's what we pretend that Jesus is like, that He tells us to do things, and then He's actually going to be mad at us if we do them.
And He's going to praise our fellow brothers and sisters who don't follow His commandments because that shows they're relying on grace, that they're not legalist. We are deluding ourselves if we think that's what Jesus is like and that's what Christianity is about. And that's why I think the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to say, " Let no one deceive you with empty words, " because the Spirit knew there would be a time when such empty words were taught in the church.
Certainly, the early Christians understood that we have to be obedient to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ if we are going to be saved. I mean, the ultimate salvation. I don't mean just the initial conversion in coming into the church, but to endure to the end to be saved. Let me read to you just a few of their quotations. Clement of Rome, one of the very early writings written about the year ' 96. You can find this in volume 1, page 14.
He says, " Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those that wait for him in order that we may share in His promised gifts. " Now, if I had just read you that passage where Jesus said, " Strive to enter the narrow gate, " would you have been bothered by what I just read you? Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number? I think if we're honest, most of us would have been very bothered.
When I first read that, it's quite a number of years ago, I thought, " Earnestly strived, what are you saying? " Then later, when I went back and read my New Testament, I saw, " Ooh, that's the same word Jesus used. " Okay, let me continue. This is Clement of Rome. But how beloved will this be done? It will be done only by the following things. If our understanding is fixed by faith towards God, that's number one.
Two, if we earnestly seek the things that are pleasing and acceptable to him, if we do the things that are in harmony with his blameless will, and three, and if we follow the way of truth, casting away from us all unrighteousness and iniquity. Now I want to read to you from the earliest recorded sermon that we have. It's sometimes called Second Clement. It's written about the year or delivered about the year 150. You can find this in volume 7, page 518 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.
The leader said, " This then is our reward if we will confess him by whom we have been saved. " But in what way will we confess Him? We confess Him by doing what He says, not transgressing His commandments, and by honoring Him not only with our lips, but with all our heart and all our mind. Let us then not only call Him Lord, for that will not save us. For He says, " Not everyone who says to me, " Lord, Lord, will be saved, but he that works righteousness.
" For that reason, brethren, let us confess him by our works, by loving one another. Finally, from Hermas, written about the same year, 150, he says, " Only those who fear the Lord and keep His commandments have life with God. But as for those who do not keep His commandments, there is no life in them. " By that volume 2, page 25. And those are just simply representative samples. There are literally hundreds of similar statements made all throughout the writings of the primitive Christians.
Let me refer you for some more such passages to the message that I delivered some time ago on what the early Christians believed on salvation. And that goes into more detail about their view of what we must do to be saved and to retain our salvation. In fact, it was the Gnostics who disparaged Christian obedience or works, not the faithful disciples of the apostles. They took Jesus very literally when he said, " He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me.
" So today, when professing Christians criticize conscientious Christians of being legalistic because we take the commandments of Scripture seriously, it is they who have departed from historic Christianity, not us. Don't let those kind of accusations intimidate you at all because they're the ones who've introduced something new in Christianity, this idea of cheap grace that we do not have to be obedient to Christ even though he said that we do.
And it's been my observation that most Christians and most churches who criticize others as being legalistic, they simply use that as a smokescreen to justify their own disobedience. Instead of acknowledging, " Yeah, I don't have the faith or the love to live by the teachings of Jesus Christ. " Instead, they say, " Oh, well, you're trying to earn your salvation. You're being legalistic. " See, I understand grace.
And you know Christ is pleased with me for disobeying him, and he's displeased with you for obeying him, as absurd as that should sound to all of us. Okay. So up to now, we've talked about what legalism isn't. It's not being obedient to Christ. That is what we're supposed to be. But now, let's look at what it really is. Now, I've already mentioned that the word legalism or legalistic isn't even used in the Bible. So you have to go somewhere else to find a definition.
My dictionary gives this definition for legalism a strict, often too strict and literal adherence to law. Sometimes the term is used by we attorneys. If we say that, for example, an attorney is being legalistic, we're saying that he's more concerned with technicalities, with the letter of the law, and not with the Spirit or the intent of it. Now, does the Bible talk about anything like that, of being more concerned with technicalities, more concerned with the letter of the law than with the Spirit of it?
Yes, it does. And this is what genuine legalism is. Let me read to you from Matthew chapter 12, verses 1 through 7. And here we see an example of a group of people who were legalistic. It's Matthew 12:1 through 7, where we read, " At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, and His disciples were hungry and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. " And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, " Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.
" But he said to them, " Have you not read what David did when he was hungry? He and those who were with him? How he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and yet are blameless? Yet I say to you that in this place, there is one greater than the temple.
But if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless. There are similar passages in the Gospels of when Jesus healed on the Sabbath and the Pharisees accused him of violating the law. I mean, doing an act of ministry, an act of love to your neighbor, they imagined was violating the law. The Pharisees would be, I think, a prime example of a group of people who were legalistic.
The problem wasn't that they were obedient to God, said they were disobedient, and they hid their disobedience by focusing on the letter of things and not the spirit of it. Romans 7:6 says this, " But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
" Very similar passage in 2 Corinthians 3:6 where Paul says, " Who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. " Now, I need to explain to you something about the translation of those two verses. Which sharing it read, there's no translational issue. There's only an ambiguity when I talk about the Spirit. Now, most of our Bibles translate those passages. When it talks about the letter, they use a small L.
But when it talks about the Spirit, they put a capital S saying that this is talking about the Holy Spirit. And that's how I had always understood it until reading the early Christian writings and I discovered that they were understanding Paul to be saying, it's not the letter of the law that or rather it's not the letter of the law that we need to follow. It's the spirit of the law. We need to serve in the spirit of it. The letter of the law kills. The Spirit gives life.
And that makes a lot of sense because that is the expression that we use. That was an expression they used in ancient times. Well, yeah, I'm not following the letter of it, but I am the spirit of it. Or yeah, you're following the letter, but you're violating the Spirit. See, to contrast the letter of something with the Holy Spirit doesn't really make sense. But in Greek, at this period, everything was written in capital letters.
So you don't know if he's talking about the Holy Spirit or talking about the Spirit of things. I think that early Christians are probably reading it the way that Paul intended it. Methodius wrote this, " According to the apostle, the law is spiritual. It contains the representations of future good things. " So then come and let us take off the veil of the letter that is spread over it and consider its plain and true meaning. Getting to the heart of it, what is this really all about?
Why did God give this commandment so we can obey in the spirit of it and not the letter? A person can violate the letter of the law, either man's law or God's law, without violating the spirit of it. An example would be when the apostles were plucking heads of grain as they walked through a field. Now, they weren't out there with sickles cutting down grain and building a fire and roasting the grain and all that.
They were just putting their hand out, grabbing some as they were walking along and rubbing it in their hands and you know chewing on it like that. Yes, that violated the letter or perhaps it did. God just said there not to work on the Sabbath. He didn't define what work was. So I'm not even sure if it violated the letter. It arguably could, but not the Spirit. He wanted them to have a day of rest was the point of it. As Jesus said, the Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath.
And they weren't violating what the Sabbath was all about. Now, at the same time, we can adhere to the letter of the law and violate the Spirit of it, and that's what the Pharisees did a lot. So now I want to talk about four things that characterize genuine legalism. And starting with number one, a legalistic person, as we've just been saying, is more concerned with the letter of the law than with the spirit of it.
In contrast, a spirit of obedience sees the Spirit, the intent behind a commandment, and is more concerned that the point of the commandment is adhered to, that the spirit of it, not just the letter. And you can adhere to the letter of something and really violate its spirit. Let's take, for example, Jesus teaching that we should love our enemies. Now, actually, today, most people who profess to be Christians don't follow either the Spirit or the letter.
Or they violate the letter of it that they'll go to war and kill others. And they'll say, " Oh, well, that was in love, though. " I mean, they're just kidding, no one but themselves. But other people who are conscientious of saying, " No, I want to follow what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount. I want to love my enemies, and therefore, I will not go to war. " Well, that's wonderful. That's fine. You're following, I think, the letter of what he says and the Spirit there.
But then sometimes those same people have no burden whatsoever for the lost. They won't do anything to save the rest of mankind from eternal punishment or to help open the eyes of their fellow Christians. And so I think they need to ask themselves, am I only following the letter and not the Spirit?
Because if you're not interested in bringing eternal life to the enemies of Christ, then you maybe have done more wrong to them than somebody else who goes to war, but at least also tries to share the gospel with the lost. And obviously, where we want to be is following both the letter and the spirit of it, being obedient in all things. Let me give another example. The scriptures say that we're to clothe ourselves with humility.
Well, I've met people who will dress only a certain way because they feel that to dress another way would not be showing a course of either modesty or humility. And that's commendable. But I've met people who are very proud of the way that they dress humbly. And so they've missed the whole point. And I'm not just talking about groups like the Amish who have a uniform type of dress.
I'm talking about, as well, just a lot of evangelical young people primarily who often very purposely dress really scruffy, kind of dirty. Their clothes are dirty, unkempt, and all of that. And that would maybe be fine if that reflected a heart that was really humble. But often inside, these people are full of pride. And so again, they're trying to clothe themselves with humility by putting on some kind of actual clothes and ignoring what the whole point of it is of really being humble inside.
And that's part of this first aspect of legalism. It's seeing the law or a commandment as an end in itself rather than seeing what the purpose of the commandment is. Now, because we see the purpose of it and the spirit of it, it doesn't mean that we don't also follow the letter of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying when we see the law as an end in itself, we probably have become legalistic.
An illustration would be the prayer veil or head covering, which my wife and daughter wear because the Scriptures in 1 Corinthians 11 says that a woman should not pray with her head uncovered. And that's wonderful. But you know over the last 10, 15 years, I've met a lot of wives who wear a head covering and aren't the least bit in subjection to their husbands. Their husband is not the head of their house. They are.
And they somehow think by wearing a head covering, that means that they're showing respect for headship when they're not. I mean, it would be far better to not wear one and to actually be in subjection to your husband to actually appreciate and support God's arrangement of headship than to wear one and not be. But again, the ideal, not just the ideal, what is expected of us is to follow the letter, to wear a head covering, and to have the spirit that that head covering is supposed to represent.
Okay, so that was point number one. I'll say it again. Legalism is more concerned with the letter of the law than the spirit of it or the purpose of it. The second aspect of legalism is that it tends to multiply God's commandments to add to what the Scriptures say. If God gives one commandment, a legalistic person wants to branch it off into about 10 or 12 different things. This is what the Pharisees did.
Now, even worse than that, legalistic persons often elevate their man-made rules to the point that they're viewed as commandments of God. Jesus tells us what the Scriptures do in Matthew 15:1 and 2. It says, " Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus saying, " Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread. " Well, did the Mosaic law said you have to wash your hands before you eat bread?
See, they were all upset because the disciples of Jesus weren't following their traditions, as though the disciples were sinning because they didn't wash their hands. They had lost sight of what was a commandment from God and what was a tradition of man, what was an application, perhaps, on a principle that God had given. But this had been the whole approach of the Pharisees. The Pharisees didn't start off as bad guys, or at least they were trying to uphold and protect the law of Moses.
And so they had a system, a saying of, " We want to put a hedge around the law. " Okay? For example, let's say the law says that you shouldn't work on the Sabbath. It does say that. All right. What constitutes work? We'll see. God didn't define that. So there's latitude there for people to do various things that perhaps do or don't constitute work.
Well, the Pharisee thought, " This is dangerous because someone might be violating the Sabbath and not realizing it because they're just a little bit too liberal in their application. " So they said, " All right, let's put a hedge around the law. We'll give some explanations. We'll add some additional commandments to protect the law. " And then if someone violates our commandments, well, they still haven't necessarily violated the law. But this is like a moat around a castle.
It'll make it harder to violate the law because you know we've got this outer defense that will help protect the law itself from being violated. And on the surface, that doesn't sound like a bad idea. Like say their motive, I think, was, in the beginning, fairly pure. And so they said, well, if you travel so many well, of course, they didn't use miles, but for our illustration, if you travel, let's say, five miles on the Sabbath, well, hey, that's work.
You know We can't say where exactly work stops and rest stops and work begins, but five miles, come on, that's work, okay? So they defined how far you could go on a Sabbath day without working. And then even if you went a little bit beyond what they said, well, hopefully, you still hadn't violated the law. And if we had looked at the Pharisees back in, say, the year 100 BC, we probably would not have picked them out as being the ones that Jesus would so strongly denounce when He came.
We'd probably say, " Hey, these are the good guys. They're trying to keep the law when so many people are ignoring it. " But see, there's a danger there. I'm not going to say that that approach doesn't have its place. I'm just saying there's a danger there that if we're going to use that approach, we need to have some safeguards so we don't fall into the same trap as the Pharisees. Let me just give an illustration. Certainly, one of the things that leads to a lot of mental or spiritual corruption is television.
And it has been a snare to a lot of people. If you regularly watch television, you're imbibing. You're taking in all kinds of views that are worldly, that are different from God's views. And when enough professing Christians take that all in, then they begin thinking this is God's way of doing things. They start thinking just like the world. And yet, most churches have no teaching whatsoever about television. They've done nothing to guard the flock against the dangers it could have.
And yet, on the other hand, you have churches that say, " We will not allow our people to have a television at all. If you're going to be a member of this church, you can't even own one, even if you're only going to watch family movies on it. " All right. That's going perhaps a bit far, but in itself, because of the great danger there, I could say, " Yes, I see some reasonableness to having this rule.
" But where you cross the line is saying, " Oh, because you have one, even if you don't want things on it that bring dishonor to God, you're sinning by just having one. " Okay, whoa. Now see, we've gotten to where the Pharisees were. We put a hedge around it around what? Around our drinking in the thoughts, the views of the world. And that's a genuine biblical principle to keep separate from the world. And see, now we've put a hedge around that. Well, this will help you keep separate. And perhaps that's wise.
But then we start thinking because someone violates our man-made rule, our application, that that means they're a sinner. So it's the exact same pitfall the Pharisees fell in. It was okay to say, " Look, you really shouldn't walk more than five miles on the Sabbath because you're going to be working if you do that, or at least in danger of it. " All right? Maybe that's fine. But then when somebody walks five miles, two feet and three inches or something, " Oh, this is a terrible sin. Look what you've done.
" As though your application of not working was somehow divinely inspired. See, it got so ridiculous with the scribes and Pharisees that things that aren't even remotely in the mosaic law, washing your hands before you eat. I mean, it's a good custom of hygiene, but there's no spiritual law that says you should do that. But see, they got all upset with Jesus ' disciples because they could no longer tell what was their man-made rule and what was from God.
So I am not against churches having standards because I've seen that churches that don't have standards invariably go downhill very quickly. You look at the Baptists or the Nazarenes. Now, when I was growing up as a kid, everybody knew the Baptists as people who wouldn't go to movies or wouldn't dance. And again, those are applications of biblical principles. There's no direct law in the New Testament on either one of those things.
And likewise, the Nazarenes, I mean, they were seeing the ones I knew growing up, I thought of them as sort of odd because they tended to dress very modest, and their moms always had very long hair and things like that that was different maybe for a woman of that age. I understand some of those things a lot better now than I did when I was a boy. But look at those churches today. They don't do things hardly any different from the world when it comes to dress or entertainment.
And so that's a problem when we don't have standards as a church. It's very easy to just slip totally into the world. And certainly, shepherds have an accountability to God to keep this from happening to their flock. And so what I see, and this is just my own editorial. I see we basically have two options if we're leading a church. I think raising up ungodly churches is not one of the choices, one of the options that we have before God.
But the two things I see that we can do is either one, that the elders or pastor vigorously and consistently preach against things that are going to lead to the spiritual downfall of the members of the congregation, such as, for example, television watching, going to movies, et cetera. And maybe there's some exceptions that can be made there that will protect the principle of not becoming like the world, thinking like them, and that. But we need to preach consistently so the congregation is made aware.
This is a snare. It's a great danger. Now, the only problem with that approach, and there was a period in history where that was the normal thing. I see that as the general approach of the early church. Very strong condemnation of a lot of the forms of dress and entertainment of their day. But today, it's generally the congregation is certainly in most evangelical or charismatic or Pentecostal churches. Usually, it's the congregation who hires and fires the pastor.
And so if he's going to preach against things that they're doing and really stay on that point, they're going to probably get rid of him. And so it doesn't happen. Pastors are afraid to teach things or divorce would be an even better example. They're afraid to teach things that are going to step on the toes of a large part of their congregation. But anyway, that's one of the options is for the pastor, the elders to vigorously and consistently teach against things and warn the congregation about them.
The second option is that we can have what are called standards or rules as a congregation. And even though I'm not always totally comfortable with standards, I have seen that the only churches who have still held to many of the lifestyle teachings, teachings on dress and entertainment, for example.
The only churches that still hold to what at one time all Bible believing Christians, all sincere born-again Christians believe, are the churches that have standards where the church makes an application and says, " This is how we are going to apply these Bible principles. " And if you want to be part of this church, then you're going to have to agree that you're going to live by these applications, these standards that we have made. And like I say, today, that seems to be the only system that works.
Now, because something works, does that make it right? Well, not necessarily. I think we have to look at and judge the fruit of there. But again, this is my own editorial. This isn't from the Lord. I have seen good fruit that comes from that. And I see the bad fruit from other churches who just let one teaching, one commandment of Scripture after another fall to the wayside as it becomes too touchy to really preach against it.
But if we're going to have standards, things that are not in the Bible, where we are making applications of Bible commandments and principles, then I think we need to take some steps to avoid falling into the trap of the Pharisees. I mean, we need to realize, " Okay, we're on dangerous ground because the Pharisees tried the same thing, and in the end, they're the ones that Jesus came down the hardest on. " But I think we can make standards in a church without becoming Pharisees.
But if we don't even realize there's a danger there, we probably will become Pharisees in the process. So here are some steps. Number one, I think we need to always maintain a clear distinction between what the Scriptures actually command and the application that we have made of that commandment. Don't mix the two together as though they're one and the same. To keep separate from the world is a biblical principle. But boy, there's a lot of area of how to apply that.
And some Christians think if you drive a car, you're being worldly. If you have electricity, you're being worldly. Other Christians would say, " No, you could drive a car. That's not being worldly. " But if it's a two-tone car, then that's being worldly. You can have electricity. That's not worldly. But if you have a music system, that is worldly. See, there's a lot of room there to make application.
And I think there are people who genuinely love God, who are truly born again, whose lives are committed to Jesus Christ, who have different views on where the line of application should be drawn. But I think it's all right for a church to say, " Look, we as a body are going to make this application. " But then we make a clear distinction. Now, this is our application. We say, " You are not allowed to own a television set. " Now, the Scripture says to keep separate from the world.
We're not saying the Scriptures say you cannot own a television set. I mean, in our mind, it should be clear. This is what the Scriptures say, " This is how we are applying it as a church. " Or another example. The scriptures teach that Christians, and particularly women, are to dress modestly. But the Scriptures do not define a certain type of dress that you have to wear or a certain type of covering you have to wear in order to be modest.
But many churches have made standards concerning that because they've seen that without standards, pretty soon everything goes and modesty being one of them. And so in a lot of the plain churches, what are called plain churches, they have a standard that their sisters have to wear what's called a cape dress, which is a very modest dress. And men are not normally going to be staring at you lustfully when you're dressed that way. And so it has worked very well.
But if a congregation starts thinking that unless you are wearing a cape dress, you are violating what the Scriptures teach. Well, see, now that they've crossed the line, they're becoming Pharisaic because you can dress modestly in other kinds of dress, like a jumper, for example, without wearing a cape dress. A cape dress is a legitimate application, but everyone in the congregation should understand, " Yeah, this is the application that we've made.
The Scriptures do not command we have to wear this particular dress. " Clear enough? Okay. Number two, very similar to number one, is that we should never equate our man-made applications with sin. Watching television may violate a church covenant, and it may be a sin if you've made a covenant that you're not going to have one in your home and then you have one, then yes, you've sinned because you've gone back on your Word.
But to act like the Scriptures say it is a sin to have this device in your house, even if it's to watch, as I said, home videos, Christian videos, things like that, we'll see you're sinning. Well, now we've gone to where the Pharisees were, where we equate our man-made applications with being the line of where sin is defined. Number three, our man-made rules should never be the basis of whom we will consider as a brother or sister in the Lord.
Now, they might be a basis of who we are going to allow in our church, that we see the peril that is out there, and we want to maintain the teachings of Christ and the historic beliefs of Christians. And the only way that we have seen that this can be done effectively is for the church to have a covenant or a compact and say, " Look, this is how we're going to dress. This is what we're going to do for entertainment, and that's fine.
" As long as we realize that's something you need to do to be a member of this congregation, but it's not something you have to do to be a member of Christ's Church. But if we start equating our rules, our applications as defining who really is and who isn't a Christian, then again, we have crossed the line and we are being legalistic. We are being Pharisaic in our approach, and we are alienating ourselves from Christ because it's very clear that he detested what the Pharisees had done.
I know some very sincere Christians won't even give another person a Christian greeting unless they're following the standards of their particular congregation. And I said, " Why do you do that? " I said, " Well, what if we greeted someone and it turned out that they weren't really a brother or a sister? " " Well, what of it if you did that? " I mean, what did Jesus say in Matthew 5:47? He said, " If you greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?
I mean, what would be the great sin of greeting somebody as a fellow Christian? " And you find out later, no, they really weren't. Did he sinned in doing that? I mean, Jesus said we should greet everybody. We don't want to fall into the trap of saying, " If you don't follow our outward customs and applications, then we're going to assume you're not a Christian. " And then you have to prove that you are one. We don't have any biblical basis for treating other professing believers that way.
Okay, we've looked at two traits of legalism. We said one is following the letter, not the Spirit. The second trait is the tendency to multiply. The Scriptures say this, but we add a lot of things to it. A third trait of legalism is that a legalistic person tends to be scrupulous about minor commandments and yet ignores the weightier ones. This fit the scribes and Pharisees so well.
Jesus said, " Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, 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. Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. So that's what happened to the legalistic Pharisees. They worried about all these little tiny things. They had the big things about being just, being merciful. That was the whole point of the law.
Well, those were the things they violated. Well, Jesus had no patience with that whatsoever. The weighty things of Christianity, the most weighty, is love. It's the greatest commandment, loving God. And the second is loving our fellow man. And so you could do all of these other things, and you don't have love. As Paul said, it is a total waste. It doesn't matter how plain you live. It doesn't matter how simple you live, how much of your riches you give to other people.
If you don't have love, it's not going to profit you at all. Now, Jesus didn't tell them that they should neglect the little things. He said, " These you should have done without leaving the others undone. " So because we follow what the Scriptures say we should do, let no one accuse us of being legalistic. That is what Jesus said we should do. We should follow every commandment. He didn't make any commandments that were safe to ignore that he didn't think were important.
But he did say not all commandments are the same. And if you don't understand what is important and what isn't, then you're a baby Christian, and you need to be around Christians who are mature. You need to read more of the New Testament so you can grasp what are the things that really count with Jesus Christ? He's told us some of them, justice, mercy, faith. We already know love. Those are the important things. And if we're not doing them, it doesn't please Christ at all if we follow all of these other things.
In fact, it gives a bad name to Christians who are trying to follow the little things without ignoring the major things. I've heard of churches that will excommunicate somebody because they violate what would be a very small thing. And yet, those same other people can be guilty of very major sins, of being unloving, of being covetous, and things like that. And those people are never disciplined by the church. You know For example, some of the plain groups. I don't know a lot of Old Order Amish.
I have been around them a bit. I had a very good friend who was one. And you know I've heard things like in some groups, if you ride a bicycle, if you have a bicycle, you would be excommunicated. All right. And if that was a covenant you made that you wouldn't own one, okay, that's maybe the business of that congregation. I'll give some leeway there. And yet, the same people, you can go around cussing. You can be materialistic and covetous. Nothing's going to be done to you.
See, when we started doing those things, and we basically created a church that is Pharisaic. All right. Number four, the fourth aspect of legalism, is that legalistic Christians tend to focus more on external things than on internal. The Pharisees were definitely guilty of this fourth aspect of legalism. Jesus said of them, " Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence.
" Blind Pharisee first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. See, that is legalism.
When we want to follow outward things so that we have the appearance of being godly, rather than focusing on inward things that God can see, who knows whether we're genuinely godly or not. Again, in Matthew chapter 23, verses 5 through 7, Jesus said, " But all their works, " talking about the scribes and Pharisees, but all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments.
They love the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called by men rabbi, rabbi. Jehovah's Witnesses have a lot of the aspects of legalism. As I think you all probably know, I grew up with Jehovah's Witness. And for example, one of their peculiarities, they stress a whole lot the need to evangelize. And that's good to stress it. But they go farther.
It becomes a virtual rule that whether that's your gift or not, it is your gift if you're Jehovah's Witness because you're going to be out door-to-door evangelizing. And it's so important to them. It's what has kept their movement going that you have to keep a record of how much time I mean, down to the minute that you spent out knocking on doors, how many books that you sold or left with somebody, how many magazines, things like that. And then you turn that in every week. It's dated.
You fill in each day of the week. Now, I'm talking about the way it was when I was in. I assume it's still the same way. I haven't heard anything different. And then the elders then look at that and they post it to a chart, a record, a permanent record that goes back years and shows you know how many hours you put going door to door, how many magazines you place, that sort of thing. But no record is kept.
You don't turn in any time slip of how long you spent praying, how much time you spent caring for a sick neighbor or a brother or sister. How much time you spent reading the Bible? See, none of those things. It's the outward external thing that was so important. And the internal things I mean, they taught them. But like I say, it shows what was important to them, the fact that you kept record of your evangelism and not of your prayer time.
But that is the aspect that generally predominates with people who are legalistic, that they focus on the external things rather than on the internal. And the external things are often the ones that carry less weight than the internal. Okay. So those are the four characteristics. Let me repeat them to you again. The first one is that a legalistic person focuses more on the letter than on the Spirit of Christ's teachings.
Legalistic people tend to add man-made commandments, and then they equate their man-made application as being a commandment of God. They tend to be more scrupulous on minor things than on major things, and they focus more on the external than on the internal. But now there's an opposite side to legalism that I would say the majority of professing Christians are guilty of.
The very ones who belittle sincere Christians who are trying to live obediently to Christ and call them legalistic, they themselves are legalistic themselves because there is another type of legalism. And that is you follow the letter of the law, not the spirit of it, not just because you're blind in your sight that you don't see beyond the letter, but you're doing it for the purpose of finding a loophole around what the Spirit is. Lawyers are good at doing that. It's clear what the intent of a contract was.
But then when someone's client wants to break that contract, then a lawyer is supposed to go in there and ooh, boy, if I can define it literally enough, I can find a loophole in here. I remember one of the first cases we studied in law school, someone had brought suit against somebody else. I mean, this was back in the 17 or 1600 or something. And they had put in there that this other person had hit and kicked them blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, the other party won because they were able to prove that the assailant only hit the other person. It felt like he kicked him, but he only hit him. So see, he wasn't guilty. Now, law tends to not be quite so legalistic today as it was back then, but it was known for following the letter of things, just totally ignoring the spirit of it. It'd be like if we, as a parent, told our child, " All right. I want you to pick up all the toys in this room.
" And then we come back later, and the toys are still strewn around the room. And we ask our child, " All right. What's going on here? I told you to pick up your toys. " " Yeah, Dad. I picked them up, but then I put them back down. You didn't say I had to put them away. You just said, " Pick them up. " See, that's playing games, but that's what Christians so often like to do. They say that, " Oh, it's because they appreciate grace and that they're not legalistic. " The truth is they are very legalistic.
They take the commandments of Jesus, and boy, if I apply this literally enough, if I get down to the nth degree of it, I can find a way to show why the whole thing is void, why I'm not disobeying it. The Pharisees did this very sort of thing. Matthew 23:16 through 18. Here, Jesus said, " Woe to you blind guides who say, " Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing. But whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he's obliged to perform it.
Fools and blind, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? " And he continues, " And you say, " Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing, but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it. Fools and blind, for which is greater the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift. " So see, they were getting around things by saying, " Oh, no. See, you swore by the temple. Of course, Jesus then taught what not to swear at all. Oh, that's okay.
You don't have to do what you said. Now, if you'd sworn by the gold in the temple, you would. See, that's the type of legalism that looks for loopholes and defines things so precise that it's easy to get around them. And that is just as much legalistic as somebody who adds to the commandments and then thinks that we have to live by the man-made commandments. But see, this type of legalism is hardly ever denounced because it hides as being not legalistic as living under grace when really it's living under legalism.
An example of this type of game is with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. We all know what the New Testament teaches that we're to guard ourselves from idols. We know that it is wrong to worship any object. I mean, that was wrong back in the Old Covenant, let alone in the New Covenant. And yet, we've all seen Roman Catholics worshipping before an image of Mary or Eastern Orthodox people burning incense before an icon, a picture of Mary or some saint praying in front of it, giving devotion to it.
In fact, the so-called Seventh Council, which I've discussed that talked about that on another night you may remember the so-called Seventh Council actually denounced as heretical, " If you refuse to venerate the holy icons. " Well, how do they get around the clear teaching of Scripture? Well, they get around it by trying to find a legalistic loophole. They say, " Oh, now the worship that we give to these icons or to these statues is Dulia. " But now the worship that could only go to God is Latria, L-A-T-R-I-A.
Those are both Greek words. Oh, okay. So you're not really worshipping that idol in a wrong way because you're only getting a Dulia, not Latria. Yeah. See, we're not violating the scripture. You know I'd like to go to a peasant in Latin America who's praying in front of a statue of Mary and say, " Excuse me. Could you tell me, are you giving that statue Dulia or Latria? " I mean, do you think anyone understands that? See, it is a loophole. I mean, it's not a loophole that's in Scripture.
Scriptures never make a distinction between Dulia and Latria. Scriptures say, " Don't worship them, period. " But see, this is being legalistic by trying to define what is not defined in Scripture in such a close way that, see, we can violate it and pretend that we're not. A very similar type of legalism is practiced by most evangelicals when it comes to the head covering or prayer veil.
In their books and commentaries, I've read things like, " Oh, that was only because the only women in Corinth who didn't wear some kind of veil were the prostitutes. " And so Paul was saying, " Oh, you need to wear a veil or else people are going to be stumbled. They're going to think you're prostitutes. " Well, in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul says nothing about that. Nothing is said about that anywhere in the New Testament. Nothing is said in the early Christian writings. Nothing is said in any non-Christian writings.
It's something somebody made up out of the blue. But see, that's a legalistic way to get around the clear commandment of God. And of course, they're not fooling God one bit, nor are they fooling people who know what the truth is.
In short, many of the very Christians who condemn others as being legalistic, they're the ones who really are legalistic themselves because they invent loopholes so that they can appear to be following the commandments of Christ when, in fact, they're violating both the letter and the spirit of it. Well, in summary of what we've said then tonight, we've seen that being obedient to Christ is not being legalistic. He didn't give us commandments only to disapprove of us if we take His commandments seriously.
Yet we've also seen that obedient Christians can easily slip into a legalistic mindset if they aren't careful. And again, the four things we talked about were if we focus more on the letter than on the Spirit of the commandment, if we add man-made commandments, and yet we're not careful to distinguish between what is a man-made application or a church covenant and what is an actual commandment of God. A third characteristic is if we're more scrupulous about minor things than we are the weightier things.
And finally, if we focus more on the external than on the internal where it counts the most, this is, again, an aspect of being legalistic, of being Pharisaic. And yet the other side of legalism is looking for loopholes everywhere in the Scripture so that we can justify disobeying Jesus ' commands. In the end, the Christian life isn't easy. It requires being obedience, obedient to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Yet, it's important that we never slip into a legalistic mindset, either by being over scrupulous on one hand or being on the other side, under scrupulous, not even caring about His commandments, finding loopholes wherever we can. And I think it's because of we need to not fall in the ditch on this side or the ditch of that side of falling into this kind of legalism or that kind of legalism, why Jesus said that the road that leads to salvation is a narrow road that few would find.