Bad Religion (Part I)

LEGALISM AND WORKS SALVATION

My journey of faith includes a long struggle with embracing God’s grace. In my early life, as a young child and on into adolescence and young adulthood, I was taught and embraced a legalistic system of salvation. Texts like Romans 3:28, Galatians 2:16 and Ephesians 2:8-9 gave me no pause during those years. In a sense, the salvation I believed in was gracious and free-free from the need for perfect performance of righteous living. I didn’t have to “earn” my salvation by works that made me worthy or deserving of salvation. But, my salvation did depend on my works. Works of obedience to certain commands in the New Testament (i.e., immersion, certain worship practices, etc.). If I failed to do these works perfectly, then I was not saved—no grace for me. It put inordinate and intense pressure on getting these certain obligations right (“You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel,” Matthew 23:24b). But, as long as I got these select works right, then I could be saved by grace and not works (you see the problem, right). Additionally, if I failed to act in accordance with any New Testament command, example or necessary inference, then I believed my salvation would be forfeited unless I obeyed a second set of requirements (the 2nd law of pardon) for restoration to God’s good favor. I would tell myself, “Ryan, you’re not a legalist because you know that you could never earn your salvation. It’s just a matter of attitude. The works I do are works of obedience, not works that I believe make me worthy or deserving of salvation. After all, I could never do enough works to deserve the gift of God in Christ Jesus! Right?”

Works-salvation and legalism are NOT the same things. I had collapsed together both of these false paths to salvation.

WORKS-SALVATION
Paul speaks of a man who works to earn wages. He says, “When a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation” (Romans 4:4). I do not believe I ever thought that I had earned enough wages to put God in my debt. In other words, I never dreamed that God was obligated to grant me salvation because of my works. But did I trust God for my salvation? Paul says in the next breath, “However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness”(v. 5, emphasis-RC). The issue is whether I trust God for my justification “apart from works” (v. 6).

LEGALISM
Legalism is what Paul addresses more directly in his letter to the Galatians. He says, “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4). I began to see a difference of nuance. The Judiazing teachers who were “trying to pervert the gospel of Christ” (1:7), were not teaching a wholesale works-salvation. They did not expect believers to keep the whole law perfectly. They only required circumcision (See Acts 15:1b). But, Paul says, “I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law” (5:3). In doing this, Paul says, “Christ will be of no value to you at all” (5:2).

TWO PATHS, ONE PROBLEM
Works-righteousness and legalism are different in that the former requires keeping all of the works of the law perfectly, but the latter requires only keeping a select set of laws (often fulfilled in mere external/formal obedience).

Works-salvation just doesn’t work. It fails to answer the human problem of sin and weakness through the flesh (Romans 1-7). It does not understand the principle noted in James 2:10: “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” Listen to what Paul says, “Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe” (Galatians 3:21-22). The problem with works-salvation is that no one can keep the law perfectly in every point! There is no grace under law. Let me say that again: THERE IS NO GRACE UNDER LAW.

Legalism is an attempt at “cheap” grace. I may not have ascribed to a system of works-salvation in the past. But, I was clearly a legalist. I thought that I had to keep a certain list of laws (strange how that list differs from person to person). I can remember reading from Robert Shank’s book Life in the Son and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book The Cost of Discipleship, and thinking that I was on the same page as these guys. How naïve I was. In the case of Bonhoeffer, I was totally missing the point. He was challenging a nation of German Christians to live out their faith in the face of Nazi fascism. As I think about it now, I am amazed at how I could read that book and not be convicted. I was doing exactly what so many pre-World War II German Christians had done—trusting my salvation to an external obedience to a certain set of religious duties. I’d have to admit that the kind of Christianity I espoused during those years had little in it to stand against the “powers” of a third Reich. But, that’s the seduction of legalism. It’s like tricking yourself into thinking you’ve found a legal loop-hole. “If I just get these things right,” you say to yourself, “then I’ll be saved” (the result is often an external and weak religion). And, in the final analysis, the legalist trusts in works of law (law-keeping) for salvation no less than the person who embraces wholesale works-salvation. Both works-salvation and legalism are paths to salvation that depend on law for justification. And, there’s the rub…