THE FEAR OF LEGALISM
2 Kings 22:11 (NIV 1984) When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes.
When Christians hear the word "law" we tend to get a negative vibe that leads us to a defensive posture. From there we may resort to using our New Testament to justify our exemption from its demands. You know the verses, those that remind us that we are not under the law (Rom 6:14) or that the letter of the law kills (1 Cor 3:6). Yet we see a different approach when looking at the response of Josiah. This young Jewish king wanted to lead the nation in a Godly manner but did not have all the information he needed to make that happen, for the law had been tucked away and hidden for years by wicked leaders whose goal was to accelerate the national drift toward idolatry and all kinds of evil. Upon this discovery, Josiah was moved, convicted, and sorrowful to the point of tearing his clothes; they did that back then. His first response was not to feign ignorance to justify his exemption, but rather, in great anguish, he devoted himself to putting what he was hearing into practice and public policy.
I wonder what our response is when we discover a command of the Lord, a verse of scripture, or hear a sermon that teaches some expectation of the Lord that we have not yet heard about? Do we recoil in bitter anger, assume a defensive posture, and start quoting our “grace” verses to justify why we are exempt from such demands? Or are we delighted, maybe even a bit horrified, that there are commands from our loving Savior of which we are still unaware? Yes, we are not under law but under grace, and as a result sin shall not be our master (Rom 6:14), but grace is not the opposite of law, rather it is the inward empowerment to understand and fulfill the law. Can we forgo the debate for a moment as to which of the 613 Old Testament laws Christians should or should not follow? And can we look instead at the fact that we have a New Testament containing even more commands, many clearly stated by both Jesus and the Apostles? By quoting our grace verses we cannot speak our way out of the responsibility that Jesus places on us to love Him and obey His teaching (Jn 14:23), and we cannot dilute the command to hear His word and do what it says (Jms 1:22). For sure Christians are not meant to pursue obedience in a legalistic fashion, and no doubt legalistic Christianity is very detrimental to the kingdom of God, but so is the fear of legalistic Christianity. In reaction to legalistic Christians, many go to the extreme where they cite Christian freedom as an excuse to ignore the clear commands given by our Lord, commands that are meant to be understood in our minds, imprinted on our hearts, and obeyed in our lives, all a result of God working in us to will and to act (Phil 2:12-13), a working definition of grace. The opposite of law is not grace, but “lawlessness”. I fear that in our desire to get out from under legalistic Christianity, we do not embrace true grace, but lawlessness in disguise; and in the name of Christian liberty we, like pagans, do anything we want. When we hear teachings from the scripture with which we are unfamiliar and require something new of us, may we not recoil in anger, and may we not try to justify our exemption from them, rather may we, like Josiah, decisively run toward them, desiring to know and do all that they require of us.
