Legalism

The ancient church father Tertullian is reputed to have said, “Just as Jesus was crucified between two thieves, so the gospel is ever crucified between these two errors.” What are these errors to which Tertullian was referring? The theological terms are legalism and antinomianism. Another way to describe them could be moralism and relativism (or pragmatism).

These two errors constantly seek to corrupt the message and steal away from us the power of the gospel. Legalism says that we have to live a holy, good life if we want God to love us. Antinomianism says that because we are saved, we don’t have to live a holy, good life.

This is the location of the “tip of the spear” of the gospel. A very clear and sharp distinction between legalism, antinomianism, and the gospel is often crucial for the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit to work. If our gospel message even slightly resembles “you must believe and live right to be saved” or “God loves and accepts everyone just as they are,” we will find our communication is not doing the identity-changing, heart-shaping transformative work of Christ. The gospel is the good news that God has accomplished our salvation for us through Christ in order to bring us into a right relationship with him and eventually to destroy all the results of sin in the world.

“Moralism/legalism” stresses truth without grace, for it claims we must obey the truth to be saved. On the other hand, “relativism/antinomianism” stresses grace without truth, for it claims we are all accepted by God, and we each have to decide what is right for us. We must never forget that Jesus was full of grace and truth (John 1:14)

Legalism is to fall back into rule-keeping - we lose our freedom. Falling into permissiveness means we abuse our freedom.

Gospel freedom is freedom that both takes away the guilt of sin and eats away at the motivation to sin.

The gospel neither leads us to live a guilty life (since God has lovingly accepted us), nor an unholy life (since the God who has accepted us is perfectly holy). To forget the first is to fall into legalism, and lose our freedom; to forget the second is to abuse our freedom. Both mean we lose grasp of the gospel.

Legalism

• Legalism kills love for God (Revelation 3:14–22).
• Legalism places human tradition above God’s Word (Mark 7:5–9).
• Legalism hinders our vision of God (Matthew 23:13–15).
• Legalism overlooks the needs of others (Luke 10:25–37).
• Legalism is a source of selfish pride (Matthew 18:1–4).
• Legalism produces rivalry and deception (Luke 20:9–20).
• Legalism causes us to view others with contempt (Luke 18:9–14).
• Legalism denies our freedom of conscience (Mark 2:23–28).
• Legalism emphasizes externals (Mark 12:38–40).
• Legalism makes us Pharisees and hypocrites (Mark 10:1–12).

Religious Legalism refers to a complex set of attitudes and beliefs organized around the conviction that certain laws must be obeyed in order to establish and maintain a relationship with God. These laws are usually considered divine in origin and therefore immutable. They may encompass any area of life, with no aspect of human activity considered too insignificant or private to warrant possible exemption from regulation.

A belief in a moral code is not ipso facto religious legalism. However, legalism results from such a belief when strict obedience to the code is conceived as being the sole or primary means of gaining and keeping the favor of the deity. Legalism thrives on a distorted sense of obligation.

The theological roots of modern-day religious legalism may be traced to the intertestamental period, when a fundamental change occurred in the role of Old Testament law for the Jews. The concept of the covenant as the condition of membership in the people of God was replaced by that of obedience to the law. This obedience became the basis of God’s verdict of pleasure or displeasure toward the individual. The sole mediator between God and humans became the torah, and all relationships between God and people, Israel, or the world became subordinated to the torah. Justification, righteousness, and life in the world to come were thought to be secured by obeying the law (Ladd, 1974).

This attitude was prevalent during the time of Christ and influenced the biblical precursors of twentieth-century legalism: Pharisaism, judaizing theology, and Gnosticism.

Pharisaism attempted to represent the true people of God by obeying the law and in doing so hoped to prepare the way for the Messiah. The Pharisees observed all the legal prescriptions of Scripture in fine detail; they also held to the authority of the halakah, the body of legal descriptions that interpreted the law. The regulations increased in number and complexity to the point of pedantry. For example, because food could not be cooked on the sabbath, a debate arose between two groups as to whether water alone or both water and cooked food could be placed on a previously heated stove without committing a violation (Muller, 1976). The regulations became so difficult to obey that they proved a stumbling block to those who could not keep them all and who thus felt they were outside the kingdom of God. Christ spoke to that tragic situation in his scathing denunciation of Pharisaical legalism (Matt. 23:4).

A variant of this form of legalism was introduced into the churches in Galatia, prompting Paul to write his famous letter on Christian liberty to the congregations in that province. The Judaizers, as they became known, infiltrated the churches, claiming that full salvation was impossible apart from observance of Jewish law and ritual. They were especially adamant that Gentile Christians be circumcised, since this was the symbol of membership in the new Israel. Paul’s theological and emotional antipathy toward this form of legalism is quite evident in his sarcastic suggestion that those who argue for the necessity of circumcision should take the next logical step and castrate themselves (Gal. 5:12).

The apostle also had to combat legalism in the form of incipient Gnosticism at Colosse. This syncretistic heresy taught that the goal of life for gnostic adherents was to obtain true knowledge (gnosis), which would eventually allow them to leave the prison of the body and merge with the composite whole. A number of Colossian Christians apparently were seeking heavenly visions as part of their rite of passage into a knowledge of the divine mysteries. They were informed that such visions could come about only by a rigorous discipline of asceticism and self-denial. Abstinence from food and drink, observance of initiatory and purifactory rites, and possibly a life of celibacy and mortification of the human body (Col. 2:21, 23) were all prescribed as part of the regimen necessary to obtain fullness of life (Martin, 1978).

While each of these ancient forerunners of present-day legalism differed from the other in certain respects, all three attempted to legislate certain behavior as the primary means of obtaining “salvation,” whether that was defined as hastening the advent of the Messiah, gaining membership in the new Israel, or seeking the eventual release of the soul from the confines of the body.

These forms of legalism did not die; they merely altered their appearance and continued to plague the church throughout the centuries. A study of church history suggests that too often religious legalism has been the norm rather than the exception. Evangelicalism in the United States continues to wrestle with legalistic tendencies within its ranks, partly due to its Puritan roots and fundamentalist legacy. The Puritans, for example, at one time decreed that one could dress a baby on the sabbath but not kiss it; they also allowed that a man could comb his hair on that day but not shave his beard (Brinsmead, 1981b). Fundamentalism, while it is usually not as extreme, continues in a similar legalistic framework with its absolutizing prohibitions that do not have sufficient scriptural warrant.

An examination of the phenomenon of religious legalism reveals some striking similarities to obsessive-compulsive disorder (which includes characteristics of both obsessional neurosis and obsessional personality disorder; the former is usually more dysfunctional).

Religious legalism often infects the practitioner with a sense of moral superiority and a concomitant critical, condemning attitude toward those who do not conform to the same standards of conduct. This type of attitude is graphically illustrated in the biblical story of the Pharisee who stood in the temple thanking God that he was not like the terrible sinners around him. Christ warns that this type of self-exaltation can prevent a person from being justified before God (Luke 18:10–14). Similarly the obsessive-compulsive individual claims moral superiority and will often show an air of condescension to those around him or her. The manifestation of moral superiority most often hides feelings of inferiority and self-hatred that are then projected onto those who are deemed inferior. Just as the legalist must obey all the laws perfectly, so too the obsessive-compulsive person strives for perfection, avoiding tasks that might cause him or her to fail. Failure for the obsessional is equivalent to breaking the law for the legalist. Absolute perfection is the minimum acceptable standard for both.

Both types of persons have great difficulty with the gray areas of life. The legalist wishes to legislate every area of life and thus tends to concentrate on behavioral and religious minutiae. The obsessive-compulsive is characterized by aversion to ambiguity and a tendency to put all of life into neat, black-and-white categories.

Anxiety and fear are primary motivators for both the legalist and the obsessive-compulsive. The practitioner of legalism is driven to obedience by an overwhelming fear that God will punish or reject those persons who do not obey perfectly. The person caught in obsessive-compulsiveness is driven to obey rules, obsessions, and compulsions by the unceasing threat of internal punishment meted out by the perfectionistic and hypercritical superego. Although the rules of conduct may differ for both types of person, they serve a similar function of assuring that catastrophe, whether spiritual or psychological, may be averted as long as the laws are obeyed or the compulsions followed.

Legalism is caused by biblical and doctrinal distortions and misunderstandings. Obsessive-compulsiveness can be traced in theory to a basic anxiety (Horney, 1950), defined as a feeling of profound insecurity, apprehensiveness, and helplessness in a world conceived as potentially hostile. Thus they are not the same phenomenon. However, the affinities between the two are such that they can exist closely with each other. The intertwining of legalism and obsessive-compulsiveness creates a hybrid that is resistant to alteration through counseling or psychotherapy.

Counseling of the legalist/obsessive-compulsive must be grounded in the therapeutic triad of empathy, genuineness, and unconditional acceptance on the part of the therapist. The importance of acceptance cannot be overstated. By accepting the client just as he or she is, the therapist models, although imperfectly, a loving, accepting Christ whose love is not contingent on one’s being perfect, since he died for us while we were yet sinners (Rom. 5:8). At the same time this unconditional acceptance will help mitigate the destructiveness of the critical, perfectionistic superego.

An examination of the cognitive elements of the disorder will decrease their power over the person as he or she learns to look at the world, self, and God in a new light. Individuals with this type of problem usually have negative concepts of God stemming from doctrinal distortions and/or an equation of the heavenly Father with the person’s punitive, rigid earthly father. Helping a person to gain insight into these aspects of the problem can prove both spiritually and emotionally liberating.

Lastly, the Reformation principle of sola fide, justification by faith alone apart from works or obedience to the law, can provide an antidote to the poison of legalism/obsessive-compulsiveness. Bruce (1977) notes that Paul’s statement that Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10:4) means that since Christ has come law has no place whatsoever in one’s approach to God. “According to Paul,” he adds, “the believer is not under the law as a rule of life—unless one thinks of the law of love, and that is a completely different kind of law, fulfilled not by obedience to a code but by the outworking of an inward power” (p. 192).

The New Testament does not make appeal for proper behavior on the basis of Old Testament rules. Christians’ behavior throughout the New Testament is shaped and colored by what Christ has done. The law of Christ demands that believers forgive as they have been forgiven (Col. 3:13), accept one another as Christ has accepted them (Rom. 15:7), and place the same value on people that the blood of Christ places on them (Brinsmead, 1981a).

As Luther observed, no good work helps justify or save an unbeliever. Thus the person who wishes to do good works should begin not with the doing of works but with believing, which alone makes a person good; for nothing makes a person good except faith or evil except unbelief.

The impact of William Branham's legalism

The legalistic teachings of William Branham have a decidedly negative impact on believer’s spiritual development. So while there are those in the message that have experienced Christ’s redemptive work, they are weighed down by a theology that is inconsistent with Paul’s teachings regarding the grace of Christ. Paul states that such beliefs can alienate a person from the grace of God – “Those of you who try to be put right with God by obeying the Law have cut yourselves off from Christ. You are outside God’s grace.” (Gal 5:4 GNT)

A man named Simon thought that he could buy the Holy Spirit with money. It appears that some message believers are trying to buy the Holy Spirit by public demonstrations of their own righteousness.

But if the ministry that produced death—carved in letters on stone tablets—came with glory, so that the Israelites11 could not keep their eyes fixed on the face of Moses because of the glory of his face12 (a glory which was made ineffective), how much more glorious will the ministry of the Spirit be?

Paul clearly states that the ten commandments, written in tablets of stone, represented the ministry of death. Paul also was clear that Jesus did not redeem us from the curse of sin but from the curse of the law:

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

The problems of legalism

If you see Jesus as king who rules and prophet who speaks, but not as priest who serves, you will see Jesus as mean, as distant, as cruel, as a taskmaster. And sadly, this is the Jesus of the hardhearted, fundamentalist message. It’s the Jesus of legalism. It’s the Jesus of moralism.

It’s the Jesus who sits on a throne and yells at you, telling you what to do, but never gets off that throne to help you do it. The result of that view of Jesus is either despair or pride, but never worship because, let me explain this to you, if you see him as king who rules and prophet who speaks, telling you exactly what to do, you will try to live as he commands.

You will either fail and become devastated, sad, grieved, or you will think you’ve accomplished, and you’ll become very arrogant and say, “I’m a good person. I obey God.” Neither of which leads to the worship of Jesus. Neither of which leads to humility. Neither of which leads to Godliness. Neither of which leads to joy.

That’s the trap of the message. That’s the trap of legalism. The distant God yells at you and so you try. You try hard.

If you think you did a good job, you become arrogant and spiritually proud. You look down on denominational people as foolish virgin.

If you can't live up to the message standard, you become depressed.

Great options. The end game is depression or arrogance. You kill yourself or in self-righteousness, you kill someone else, if you don’t understand Jesus as priest. He doesn’t just tell you what to do, he comes down and he enables you to do it, he empowers you to do it, he walks with you, he gives you grace that empowers and mercy that forgives and patience that endures, and by Jesus’ strength you’re able to be obedient, which means that leads to humility. Jesus enabled me. That leads to victory. My life is changing by Jesus’ enablement. And that leads to joy. “Jesus really does love me, and he really is with me, and he really does care, and he really is helping me, and I really am glad.”

Those of you who were raised in the message, here is our fear for you: When you need him most, you’ll run from him, not to him. You’ll say, “I’m struggling, I’m tempted, I’ve sinned. Jesus will be very disappointed and he will yell at me. I must run.”

No.You must understand him as not only the king but as your high priest, and you must run to him.

Why did Jesus come? As prophet to speak to us. As priest to serve us. As king to rule over us. That’s why he came. And he’s alive and well today, and he continues these ministries. Speaking, serving, ruling.

Those in the message should ask themselves - "Where am I deficient in my understanding of the ministry of Jesus and why he came?"

And then ask him, “Jesus, I’m gonna start reading scripture. Reveal yourself to me as priest. I don’t get that. I get the king part but not the priest part.”

Pray before you read scripture, asking that Jesus would reveal himself to you through his word. And seek to grow in your understanding of all three of his offices and ministries. I assure you it will change everything. You’ll love him like you’ve never loved him, you’ll enjoy him like you’ve enjoyed him. And the times when you need him most, you’ll run to him, not from him because you will understand that he alone is able to help in your time of need, and he sympathizes. He sympathizes. And so he will receive you in love.

Quotes of William Branham

That's what's the matter with our country today. The reason we got so many loose-leaf things in the earth today, the penalties are not strong enough. If a man was caught running out with another man's wife, they should both be taken out in public and castrated, right, public, and turned loose. That's right. If a man is caught doing anything wrong, down the road, speeding, he oughtn't to be given less than ten years; he's pre-... premeditated murder. See? You put penalties like that on it, you'll slow them down.