THE TRAP OF LEGASLISM

Matthew 5:20 (NIV)
For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

                I am a rules guy. I always have been. When I was a child, I was very conscious of living by the rules. I would get anxious when one of my classmates crossed over the boundaries. In fact, I would often feel guilty about things that I did not do.

                My 5^th grade teacher was Mr. Welsh. He was the first male teacher that I had in school, and I really wanted to please him. Each week we would have a time set aside for music, which usually consisted of singing in the classroom. Several of the boys thought singing was for sissies, so they would not participate. On one occasion, Mr. Welsh laid down the law. If you don’t sing along, you will have to come up to the front of the classroom and sing before the whole class. Mr. Welsh began to song, and I sang with all of my heart. When the song was over, he walked up and down the aisles, surveying each student. He tapped several boys on the shoulder and sent them to the front. When he got to me, I looked up and said, I was singing. His response crushed me. “A guilty conscience needs no accuser. Go to the front.”

                Much later in life, I discovered that I have been “blessed” with something called responsibility. I am very conscientious; taking responsibility for the things I get involved in. Unfortunately, I am also susceptible to taking responsibility for things that are not my responsibility. This sets me up for falling into the trap of being a legalist.

                Growing up in church, I developed a strong sense of “works righteousness.” I believed that I had to keep all of the rules to be pleasing to God. Therefore, I was always the compliant, good kid. The problem was that I also lived with a constant, undefined sense of guilt. Without knowing it, I was becoming a Pharisee.

                In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees were the most respected religious leaders of the community. They dedicated their lives to following all of the rules; and there were plenty. The foundation for God’s law, the Ten Commandments, left much room for interpretation and application. So the religious scholars of the day, known as Scribes, began to meticulously define what it meant to keep the Law. They devised thousands of rules to keep a person from breaking the Law. For example, they looked at the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy by not doing any work on the Sabbath, and they asked, what constitutes work. They determined that carrying a burden was work. But what is a burden? They began outlining all of the things that could be seen as work; so much so that a person could not wear their false teeth on the Sabbath because that was carrying a burden.

                What all of these rules did was make it impossible for the common person to fully keep the Law. The rules were so burdensome that most people just disregarded them. The rules separated the common people from God. Because they could not keep the Law, as defined by the Scribes and Pharisees, they were excluded from full participation in God’s Kingdom.

                When Jesus came, he challenged this approach to being righteous. For all of their good intentions, the Scribes and Pharisees had missed the heart of God’s law. When Jesus was asked to comment on the essence of the Law, he responded with these words. "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'  This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV)

                Jesus was far more concerned with what was going on in a person’s heart and soul than outward conformity to a set of rules. So when Jesus said that our righteousness must surpass the righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees, what he meant was that we had to let go of our legalism and embrace the heart of God.

                Our ability to be righteous does not come from our efforts to keep the rules. It comes from the Spirit of God taking up residence in our lives and guiding us in God’s ways. We don’t create righteousness, we receive it from Christ. Our righteousness is not from legalism, but from faith.  Paul reminds us of this in 2 Corinthians 3.

                Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 2 Corinthians 3:4-6 (NIV)

                Legalism is comfortable because it is clear cut. It allows us to put things in neat boxes. We can measure our spirituality by the number of things we have checked off of our to-do list. But legalism ultimately leads us to spiritual bondage. Following the Spirit is less clear cut. It is confusing and even messy at times. There is no neat check-list that allows us to measure our progress. But following the Spirit leads to spiritual freedom in Christ. We become free to be the people God created us to be.

                The Apostle Paul was the prototypical legalist before he met Christ. What he discovered was that his legalism amounted to nothing compared to the grace he experienced in Jesus. Paul became a champion of grace, in part, because he knew the bondage of legalism.

                 If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
                        But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:4-7 (NIV)