EGALIST. IT'S A DREADED WORD IN SEVENTH-day Adventism, the ultimate criticism of a person's spiritual experience.

I was not raised with the reproach of legalism.

I grew up in a loving, hugging church in a denomination in which "free" grace reigned and obedience was nice but optional. Adventism, on the other hand, has borne the stigma of legalism since its beginnings.

Through the years I've found myself on both sides of the legalism fence, buried in rules at one point, and free-falling without them at another. Now I simply want to live a Bible-based Christianity that reflects the purity of the gospel. Jesus said something about abundant life and fullness of joy, and I want to know how to find them!

So I'm forced to ask, "What is legalism?" Is any form of obedience a legalistic act? Is the law a stumbling block to grace? Or does the grace of God that leads to salvation also lead to obedience? On the other hand, is it possible to so focus on obeying Christ that I miss out on Christ Himself?

It seems clear from Scripture that God desires His people to obey Him. "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice" (1 Sam. 15:22, KJV).* Even in the New Testament, which is often (and disproportionately) presented as the "grace" part of the Bible, Jesus didn't leave any question when it came to discipleship, including obedience. "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments" (John 14:15). "And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments" (1 John 2:3).

Obedience is not contrary to the gospel. The grace of Christ living in my heart will find expression in "good works" (Eph. 2:10, KJV) and "good deeds" (Heb. 10:24, NIV). The Holy Spirit causes me to "walk in [God's] statutes, and . . . observe [God's] ordinances" (Eze. 36:27). The difference between the new heart and the old one is that God's law is written on the new (Heb. 10:16).

So, if obedience to God is a natural part of the Christian life, at what point does it become legalistic? I have discovered three lies that can turn loving obedience into lifeless legalism.

LIE 1: I obey to obtain God's
favor or earn salvation.
That means doing the right thing for the wrong reason. This deception can make me feel pretty good for a while, at least as long as I'm relatively successful in my efforts to be good. But eventually the lie will turn on me.

You see, when I think my good works make God love me more, or secure my salvation, then my subconscious mind also accepts the opposite as true. When I fail or fall into sin, God loves me less, and I have to make up the ground I lost with more good works! And so my Christian life becomes an up-and-down emotional cycle, always trying to stay ahead, and wondering where I stand with God. I work hard to feel secure with God; I can never simply rest, trusting His commitment to me. My life reflects either self-righteous pride or despair. Some people eventually just give up.

The fact is, salvation is an undeserved, unearned, free gift from God. "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works" (Eph. 2:8, 9). He adopts us as His own children, and we inherit a Father-child relationship with our Creator. It's marvelous! We can't do a single thing to make ourselves more worthy of the gift. When we were at our worst, God loved us (Rom. 5:8). We can't make Him love us more or less. His love is everlasting (Jer. 31:3); it has no limits.

This simple truth seems to be one of the hardest to grasp. We are afraid to fully embrace the freedom of believing that God loves us unconditionally. It seems too good to be true when we know our own capacity to fail. But when a person's Christian experience is built on the false foundation that doing things right keeps God's heart soft toward them, it can easily lead to the next fallacy.

LIE 2: I bow to human-made rules.
When your favor and standing with God depend on your performance, you'd better make a whole bunch of rules to make sure you're doing each thing just right! That was the state of Judaism when Jesus walked this earth. Every law God had given was couched in dozens of man-made rules, just to make sure there was no possibility of inadvertently breaking the real one. So when God said to rest on the Sabbath, they made rules about how far you could walk, how much weight you could carry, and a myriad of other things, just to ensure that no one even came close to "working" on the Sabbath.

Sometimes people need to set guidelines for themselves because they know where they are weakest and most likely to compromise. I have a friend who will not ride in a car alone with a woman. He travels quite a bit in his ministry and has set this safeguard to avoid any situation that could lead to unfaithfulness, even emotionally, to his wife.

I admire him for making an effort to protect his marriage. But it's one thing to set personal boundaries and quite another to enforce them on others. It can only lead to a critical, judgmental spirit. It's also easy to treat our efforts to honor the law as if they were the law. We become inflexible in all kinds of little things, for fear of doing something wrong.

I certainly don't mean to diminish the importance of obeying what God has said. But Jesus considered the enforcement of human-made laws to be a form of counterfeit worship. "In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men" (Matt. 15:9).

Some exhaust themselves under the yoke of their own rule book. Some actually limit their obedience by feeling they've done enough when they've checked all the items on their Christian do-list. This constant scramble to keep God's favor shows a person has bought into the third lie.

LIE 3: I judge my spirituality
only by the letter of the law.
That's what the Pharisees did in Jesus' day. And He saved His most scathing rebukes for this kind of self-righteous hypocrisy. He reprimanded them because they were so precise in their tithing but "neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness" (Matt. 23:23).

Sometimes people don't notice that Christ commended them for their tithing. He said, "These are the things you should have done" (verse 23). He is the one who gave the law whatever letters it has, and He certainly wasn't against people obeying the way He said to. What He hated was their hypocrisy in obeying in outward things, but failing to reflect God's character in the ways they related to people.

Questions for Reflection 1. What strategy have you developed to avoid the opposite dangers of legalism on the one hand, and license on the other? 2. Why do you think some people are nervous about freely accepting God's unconditional love? What are the potential pitfalls on either side of this question? 3. In what ways can we teach children to appreciate grace?

They were so careful to avoid the act of adultery, but didn't mind manipulating a woman into it so they could persuade Jesus to stone her. They wore holy symbols on their clothes and prayed out loud, but didn't hesitate to bribe Judas. They attended synagogue regularly, but couldn't stand to see a man healed on the Sabbath. A legalistic experience had deceived them into thinking they were keeping God's law when their hearts were harboring unrighteous attitudes. They had missed the whole point.