Evangelical Legalism

“We’ve gotten beyond the Galatian brand of legalism today. We haven’t resurrected circumcision as a requirement for salvation, and we’re clear that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ apart from the keeping of the law. Instead, we have developed another brand of legalism, a brand that is concerned, not with salvation, but with how we live the Christian life. I call this “evangelical legalism”…

...Despite God’s call to be free and His earnest admonition to resist all efforts to curtail it, there is little emphasis in Christian circles today on the importance of Christian freedom. Just the opposite seems to be true. Instead of promoting freedom, we stress our rules of conformity. Instead of preaching living by grace, we preach living by performance. Instead of encouraging new believers to be conformed to Christ, we subtly insist that they be conformed to our particular style of Christian culture. We do not intend to do this and would earnestly deny we are. Yet that’s the “bottom line” effect of most of our emphases in Christian circles today…

…We are much more concerned about someone abusing his freedom then we are about his guarding it. We are more afraid of indulging the sinful nature then we are of falling into legalism. Yet legalism does indulge the sinful nature because it fosters self-righteousness and religious pride. It also diverts us from the real issues of the Christian life by focusing on externals and sometimes trivial rules…

…We build fences to keep ourselves from committing certain sins. Soon these fences – instead of the sins they were designed to guard against- become the issue. We elevate our rules to the level of God’s commandments. “

From Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God’s Unfailing Love by Jerry Bridges