legalism5
LEGALISM
CONTINUED
by Ray Shelton
What is the grace of God? The grace of God is God’s love in action. God’s grace is more than His favor; it is His love acting to do something good for us. And because He loves us, He has acted to save us.
“2:4But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 2:5even when we were dead in our failures, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Eph. 2:4-5 ERS).
According to these verses, the grace of God is God’s love in action; it is His love acting to do something good for us. The parallelism between the phrase in the second part of verse 5, “(by grace you have been saved)”, and the phrase in verse 4 and in the first part of verse 5, “God…out of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our offenses, made us alive together with Christ”, shows that the grace of God by which we are saved is God’s love acting to make us alive together with Christ. That is, this salvation by the grace of God is salvation from death to life. And since this salvation from death to life is by the love of God, then the grace of God that saves us is God’s love in action to save us. That is, the grace of God is the love of God acting to do something good for us, to save us. Now God’s love in action to save us is more than His favor, And since God’s love in action to save us is more than His favor, then the grace of God is more than just His favor. That is, the grace of God is God’s love in action, not just His favor. And because He loves us, He has acted to save us from death to life.
“God is love” (I John 4:8, 16). This love is not just an attribute of God; it is what God is in Himself. Before God ever created anything outside of Himself and thus created beings for Him to love outside of Himself, love existed in God. Since love is the choice of a person to do for another person that which is good for him, a person cannot love without another person to love. Love involves a relationship to another person. And since God has made Himself known as three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, there is another person in God for Him to love. These three persons of the Godhead love each other (John 3:35; 5:20; 15:9-10; 17:23-26; 14:31). And God is love in Himself because these three persons love each other. God created beings outside of Himself not because he needed objects for His love (these already existed within Himself) but because of the abundance of His love that existed within Himself. Love is creative and this is true in the supreme sense of God Himself. Creation and salvation are the overflow of the love of this triune personal God of love. When man fell from the image of God because of Adam’s sin, God provided a way to take away man’s sin and to restore him to the image of God. This involved God sending His Son to become man to die for man. But God raised His Son from the dead. And in this resurrected God-man, Jesus Christ, the Son of man, who is the image of God (Col. 1:15), man is being and shall be restored to the image of God. God provided this salvation because He is love. This “so great salvation” (Heb. 2:3) is the outflow of His superabundant love.
“4:9In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 4:10In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
(I John 4:9-10 ERS)
The love of God is the source of our salvation from death, from sin and from God’s wrath. God did not have to love; there was no nature or inner necessity that caused God to love. God has freely and sovereignly chosen to be love. His choice determined the good. The good is what God wills. And it is not whimsical or arbitrary because it is God who has willed it. “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven” (Matt. 6:10, etc.) God’s will is not determined by His nature; His nature is His will; He is what he chooses to be (Deut. 32:39; Isa. 45:7; 46:8-11). And God has chosen to be love and He has revealed that choice in the history of children of Israel and supremely in Jesus Christ, His Son (John 3:16; I John 4:9-10). The true God is a God of sovereign love, not of sovereign justice. God does not have to fulfill any condition before He can act in His love to save us; God’s love is truly free and does not have to satisfy a supposed divine justice before He can act in love. God can freely forgive man’s sin because He is not bound by any prior conditions in His nature. And according to the Scriptures He will forgive when a man will repent and turn from his sin (Ezek. 18:21-23,32; see also Ezek. 33:11).
God is the source of salvation. “Salvation is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:9 KJV. See also Genesis 49:18; Exodus 14:13; I Sam. 2:1; I Chron. 16:23; II Chron. 20:17; Psa. 3:8; 9:14; 13:5, etc.). This is so because God is a God of love (Psa. 13:5; 85:7; 86:13; 98:3; 119:41). And since the grace of God is God’s love in action, His grace is His love acting to do something good for us, to save us.
“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.” (Titus 2:11 NIV).
“2:4But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 2:5even when we were dead in our failures, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Eph. 2:4-5 ERS).
Thus the grace of God as God’s love in action brings salvation, salvation from death to life. In Eph. 2:8-9, Paul contrasts this salvation by grace with salvation by works.
“2:8For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, 2:9not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9 NAS)
What is salvation by works? Salvation by works is a salvation that is earned; it is merited.
“4:4Now to the one who works his wages is not reckoned according to grace [as a gift] but according to debt [something owed since it was earned] 4:5But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.” (Rom. 4:4-5 ERS).
The works that are supposed to earn salvation are more than just good works (good deeds or acts); they are meritorious works; they are good deeds that earn salvation. Each good work is regarded as having a certain quantity of merit attached to it; when the good work is done, the merit is imputed or reckoned to the account of the person performing the act. Correspondingly, each evil or bad work is regarded as having a certain quantity of demerit or negative merit (penalty) attached to it so that the demerit is reckoned to the account of the person doing the evil work (sin). At the final judgment each person’s account is balanced — the merits and demerits are weighed against each other. If the merit outweighs the demerit, that person is saved — he has earned eternal life. If the demerit outweighs the merit, that person is condemned — he is punished eternally for his sins. This merit scheme underlies and is implied by all teaching that salvation is by works.
The Bible very clearly teaches that salvation is not by works ( Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:5). Salvation is the gift of God, by His grace received through faith. Man cannot be saved by his meritorious good works; he cannot earn salvation by his works. This is the clear and explicit teaching of Scripture. Salvation by grace and salvation by meritorious works are mutually exclusive and opposing ways of salvation.
“But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would longer be grace.” (Rom. 11:6)
Now, if we ask why man cannot be saved by his works, that is, what is the reason man cannot earn salvation by his meritorious works, the usual answer given to this question is that man apart from God’s grace is not able to do good works by which he can earn salvation. Man, it is usually said, is not only not able to do good works, but he is able only to sin apart from the grace of God.
Now, the curious implication of this answer is that if a man were able to do good works — able not sin — then he could earn salvation and be saved by his meritorious works. Salvation would then be by works. This implication is made explicit in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church since the time of Augustine in the early fifth century, that by the grace of God, which is infused into a man at his baptism, and renewed by the sacraments, he is able to do good works by which salvation (eternal life) may be earned. Accordingly, salvation is ultimately and fundamentally by works even though the grace of God makes possible the meritorious works.
It was this teaching that the Protestant Reformers opposed. They rejected the idea that grace was something infused into man to make it possible for him to earn salvation. Grace, said the Reformers, is God’s unmerited favor, and salvation (eternal life) was a gift to be received by faith. But, the Reformers also said, that eternal life was earned by the active obedience of Christ during His life on earth. This “merits of Christ” is imputed to the believer’s account when he first believes in Christ. Thus salvation is still ultimately and fundamentally by meritorious works. It is true that they said that it was not by our works and it was a gift received by faith. But salvation was still by works — not by our works but by the meritorious works of another, Jesus Christ. Christ by his active obedience has earned for us eternal life. It is a vicarious salvation by works. This explanation of salvation like the earlier Roman Catholic explanation mixes grace and works, which Paul says that cannot be done or grace will no longer be grace ( Rom. 11:6). And as it turned out in the history of Protestantism, the strong dynamic concept of God’s grace as God’s love in action is reduced to the weak idea of grace as unmerited favor.
The doctrine of the sinful nature was introduced into Christian theology by Augustine in the early fifth century A.D. to explain why man can not save himself by his meritorious works. Instead of denying that salvation has anything to do with meritorious works, Augustine assumed that salvation is by meritorious works and he taught that since the fall, because of his inherited corrupt or sinful nature, man cannot do meritorious works to earn salvation apart from the grace of God. The grace of God which is infused into man’s will by the sacraments enables him to earn eternal life. But Augustine’s assumption is wrong. According to the Scriptures ( Eph. 2:8-9; Rom. 4:4-5), salvation is not by meritorious works, eternal life is not earned by meritorious works, and the doctrine of the sinful nature is unnecessary to deny that man can save himself. According to the Scriptures, man cannot save himself because he cannot make himself alive, not because he cannot do meritorious works. The law cannot deliver one from death or sin, neither can the law produce life or righteousness.
“Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not; for if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” (Gal. 3:21)
There is no salvation by the law. The sinful nature is not needed to explain why man cannot save himself, because the law was not given by God for salvation. God gave the law, not for salvation from sin, but for the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20b); that is, to show what should be man’s right personal relationship to God and to his fellow men (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:37-40). This knowledge does not save man but only shows man what he ought to be but it cannot make him to be that. Salvation is only through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, not by the law and not by human self-effort (the flesh). Jesus Christ is Life, and he who has Him has life and is alive to God (I John 5:11-12).
One of the implications of Augustine’s doctrine of the sinful or corrupt nature of man is that salvation is entirely the work of God (monergism), since man, because of his sinful nature, is totally unable to do good works in order to earn salvation by them. According to Augustine, not only is the grace of God the work of God but so is faith, since salvation is “by grace through faith” ( Eph. 2:8). According to Augustine, the faith that receives the grace of God is also the work of God. This monergism totally eliminates the human will from any part or place in salvation. Augustine understood the human will, not as a choice between sin and righteousness, but choice according to one’s nature: the choice of sin if one’s nature is sinful, the choice of righteousness if one’s nature is good. So accordingly all men’s choices are sin because their nature is sinful. And the grace of God must enable the will of man if he is going to do meritorious works to earn his salvation. This efficient grace is received through the sacraments. Thus salvation is a monergism, where God does all that is needed to earn salvation, not a synergism, where God’s act of grace enables the will of man to earn salvation, as was taught by the later Roman Church.
Furthermore, in Augustine’s teaching, grace is reduced to something that enables the human will to do good works so that it can earn salvation. These views of Augustine concerning salvation follow from his view of human nature as sinful or corrupt. The Calvinist Reformers denied this view of grace and sees the grace of God as the unmerited favor of God in which God gives to the elect the righteousness or merits earned for them by Christ’s active obedience. That is, God in Christ has earned for them the salvation that they themselves cannot earn because of their sinful nature. But the Calvinist is wrong; righteousness is not merits but is a right personal relationship to God through faith.
“4:4Now to the one who works his wages is not reckoned according to grace [as a gift] but according to debt [something owed since it was earned] 4:5But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.” (Rom. 4:4-5 ERS).
And God puts man into this right personal relationship to Himself by His grace, not by vicarious meritorious works that was earned for them by another. The grace of God is not just the unmerited favor of God, but it is the love of God in action to save man from death to life.
“2:4But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 2:5even when we were dead in our failures, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (Eph. 2:4-5 ERS).
Calvinism’s view of salvation like Augustine’s is monergistic, that is, God alone is active in salvation, because it believes that since man’s nature is sinful and man does what his nature is, then all the acts of man are sinful and he cannot do any righteous act to earn salvation. Therefore, God alone must earn it for him. Calvinism, denying the Augustinian view that man does these meritorious acts by the grace of God that man receives from God through the sacraments, asserts that God alone does these meritorious acts through the active obedience of Christ; Christ has earned salvation for us. God alone is active in man’s salvation. Not only is the grace of God the work of God but so also is faith, since salvation is “by grace through faith” ( Eph. 2:8). According to Calvinism, the faith that receives the gift of God is also the work of God. The Calvinistic doctrine of Irresistible Grace teaches that God gives the elect a new nature by which they can believe and thus be saved. Thus not only is salvation by grace but so also is faith the gift of God. But the phrase in Eph. 2:8, “and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God”, refers not to faith but to salvation. In the Greek of this verse, the demonstrative pronoun translated “that” agrees in gender (masculine) with the verbal participle translated “have been saved”, and not with the noun translated “faith” which is feminine. Salvation is the gift which God has given and is received by man’s faith. And this faith does not earn this salvation by meritorious works. For faith is not a meritorious work.
“2:8For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that [salvation] is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 2:9not as the result of works, that no one should boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9 ERS)
Salvation is not by meritorious works, not because a man is not able to do them, but because God does not deal with mankind on the basis of the merit scheme. As Jesus made clear in his parable of the householder (Matt. 20:1-16), God does not act toward us on the basis of our merit but on the basis of His generosity. And because God does not treat mankind according to their desserts, but according to His love, He often puts the least deserving before the more deserving. “The last will be first and the first last.” (Matt. 20:16; 19:30; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30)
The Apostle Paul in opposing salvation by works refers to meritorious works as “the righteousness of the law” (Rom. 10:5; Phil. 3:6, 9) and as “the works of the law” (Rom. 3:20; 4:2-5; Gal. 3:2, 5, 10). The law was legalistically considered to be the standard by which the merits of good works can be determined. This is a distortion of the Mosaic law and is a characteristic of legalism.
The Protestant Reformers rejected medieval Catholic teaching that grace is given by the sacraments to enable the will of man to earn his salvation by meritorious works and taught that salvation is by grace through faith and that the grace of God regenerated the believer, giving him a new nature, by which he can do good works, but not to earn salvation and eternal life (Christ had earned this for them by His active obedience), but to show that they are saved and regenerated. According to their teaching, the believer has two natures, a sinful nature and a new nature, and the experience recorded in Romans 7 was interpreted as the struggle between these two natures. This legalistic explanation of salvation and of the Christian life leaves the believer under the law, and under the dominion of sin ( Rom. 6:14). And this legalistic explanation of Romans 7 also leaves the believer with no deliverance from this struggle, contrary to the clear teaching of Scirpture that there is deliverance:
“7:24O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body this death? 7:25aI thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:24-25a KJV).
John Wesley (1703-1791) in the 18th century recognized that there was deliverance from the Roman 7 experience, and he put forth the teaching that there was a second work of grace (the first work of grace was conversion), which he called entire santification, that would eradicate the sinful nature, cleansing from inbred sin and enabling those experiencing this work of grace to live without conscious or deliberate sin (Christian Perfection). But his explanation of this deliverance as the eradication of the sinful nature assumes that the struggle of Roman 7 is caused by the sinful nature. This assumption is wrong; the cause of the struggle is not the sinful nature, but being under law. According Rom. 6:14, sin has dominion over the believer when he is under the law and the deliverance from the dominion of sin is to be under grace.
“For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law, but under grace.” (Rom. 6:14)
The grace of God, God’s love in action, delivers the believer from the dominion and slavery of sin by placing the believer back under the grace of God. God does this by not condemning the believer who is in Christ Jesus.
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8:1).
Under the law, the law condemns those who sin; it does not deliver those under the law from the dominion of sin. But God does not condemn them but places them back under grace and delivers them from the dominion of sin (“the law of sin”) and of death (“the law of death”) by the operation of the Spirit (“the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”).
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” (Rom. 8:2 NAS).
The law separates the believer who is under law from God; this is practically the same as spiritual death. Thus the believer that is under law sins because he is practically spiritually dead; the law has separated him from God. For the Christian to place himself under law is like placing oneself in spiritual death; the law has taken the place of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and it has the same results as spiritual death — it produces sin.
Wesley, while recognizing that there was deliverance from the Roman 7 experience, misunderstood that deliverance as an eradication of the sinful nature. He did not recognize that the cause of the Roman 7 experience was being under the law, not the sinful nature. And he did not recognize this cause because his explanation of the need for salvation was legalistic (all men are under the law and have sinned by transgressing that law) as was the explanation of Augustine and of the Prostestant Reformers. And his explanation of salvation was also legalistic: he believed that the passive obedience of Christ’s death paid the penalty of men’s sin and the active obedience of Christ’s good works earned for us eternal life which is imputed to our account when we believe. Also his concept of Christian Perfection and Holiness was also a legalistic misinterpretation of the Christian Life as sinless perfection.
In chapter 7 of his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul discusses the Christian’s relationship to the law. This discussion actually began with the statement in Rom. 6:14 (“you are not under law, but under grace.”) which raised the question in Rom. 6:15 (“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?”) and its answer in Rom. 6:16 through 6:23. Then Paul says that the Christian is not under law because he has died with Christ to the law (Rom. 7:1-6).
Then Paul discusses the experience of the one under the law. The man in Romans 7:7-24 is the Christian under law. This is not where the Christian should be — he is not under law ( Rom. 6:14) because he is dead to the law ( Rom. 7:4, 6). The Christian life depicted in Romans 7 is an abnormal (or subnormal) Christian life; there is no mention of the Holy Spirit in Rom. 7:7-24; the law has taken the place of the Holy Spirit. Such defeat and despair are not characteristic of the normal Christian life depicted in Romans 8 and elsewhere in the New Testament.
For the Christian to be under law is for him to be under the dominion of the law and to be a slave of the law ( Rom. 7:25b); this slavery to the law would be equivalent to an idolatry of the law which is basically what legalism is. The Christian becomes entrapped in this legalism when he believes the legalistic teaching that a Christian’s relationship to God depends upon his submission to the law and he has accepted the legalistic claim that the law is the way to be delivered from the dominion of sin. But the law does not deliver from the dominion and slavery of sin, but rather the passions of sin are aroused or energized by the law.
“While we were in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.”
(Rom. 7:5 ERS)
The law is not thereby sin (Rom. 7:7), but sin finding opportunity in the commandment “Thou shalt not covet” works all kinds of covetousness (Rom. 7:7-8). The law, instead of delivering from the dominion of sin, leads instead to the enslavement to sin (7:14, 25b). Instead of leading to life as legalism promises, the commandment leads to death (7:10). Sin uses the commandment as an opportunity to come alive or active (7:9, 11). The man under law wants to do what is right, but he cannot do it (7:18). Thus legalism leads to the moral dilemma: the contradiction between what man is and what he ought to be (7:19). The end is defeat and despair. In verses 21 to 23 of chapter 7 of his letter to the Romans Paul gives the conclusion of his analysis of this dilemma.
“7:21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil is present with me. 7:22For I delight in the law of God according the inner man, 7:23but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin which is in my members.” (Rom. 7:21-23)
There are three laws operating in this experience.
1. The first law is the law of sin (verse 21).
Since sin is not what man under law wants to do,
he concludes that sin must dwell in the members of his body
rather than in his real inner self (7:17-20).
2. The second law is the law of God (verse 22),
which the man under law delights in,
which he agrees with his mind is right, good and holy (7:12, 16);
this law is “the law of the mind” referred to in the next verse.
3. The third law is the “another law” in verse 23. The Greek word heteros, translated “another”, means “another of a different kind”; not allos, “another of the same kind”. This is a law different from the first two laws; it wars against the law of the mind, which is the law of God, and brings the man who is under law into captivity to the law of sin.
What is this third law? In the next verse we find a clue.
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” (7:24) The law of death is this third law, this other law. And this is confirmed in Romans 8:2 which says,
“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.”
The law of death brings the man under law into captivity to the law of sin. Death leads to sin; that is, because of death all have sinned (Rom. 5:12d, “because of which [death] all sinned” ERS.). The law separates the man under law from God; this is practically the same as spiritual death. And the man under law sins because he is practically spiritually dead. For the Christian to place himself under law is like placing himself in spiritual death; the law has taken the place of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus and it has the same results as spiritual death — sin. Romans 7 is not the normal Christian life but the abnormal or subnormal experience of the believer who is under law. But if the Christian falls into this legalism, there is deliverance. “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (7:25a). In Romans 7:25b through 8:4 there may be found three steps for deliverance from legalism:
“7:25bSo then, I myself am a slave to the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin. 8:1There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. 8:2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 8:3For what the law could not do, in that it is weakened through the flesh, God Himself, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh, 8:4in order that the righteous acts of law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (ERS)
Step 1 – The recognition that legalism is the problem (Rom. 7:25b).“So then, on the one hand, I myself with my mind am a slave to the law of God,
but on the other hand, with my flesh to the law of sin.” (ERS)
To be delivered from legalism one must first recognize that he himself is a slave to the law and a slave to the law of sin, that is, that he is under the law and sin has dominion over him ( Rom. 6:14).
Step 2 – Deliverance from condemnation (Rom. 8:1).“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (NAS)
God delivers from legalism through His word of unconditional love which says that there is no condemnation to those in Christ. This is a word of grace and places the Christian back under grace. Legalism conditions God’s love by our sins. God says that His love is unconditioned by our sins. Therefore, God does not condemn us for our failure under the law but delivers us from under law and places us back under grace. For in His love God delivers us from sin and death (Rom. 8:2) and thus from wrath which is condemnation.
Step 3 – Deliverance from sin and death (Rom. 8:2).“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you
free from the law of sin and of death.” (NAS)
Paul here says that “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” has set him and his readers free from “the law of sin and [the law of] death.” Paul, like other New Testament writers, uses the Greek word nomos (usually translated “law”) in several different ways. The following are some of them.
1. The first 5 books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch (Matt. 12:5; Luke 2:23-24; 16:16; 24:44; Rom. 3:21b).
2. The whole Old Testament (Rom.3:19 referring to the passages quoted in Rom.3:10-18 which are not just from the Pentateuch; John 10:34, quoting Psa. 82:6; I Cor. 14:21, quoting Isa. 28:11)
3. The Mosaic covenant that God made with the children of Israel (Exodus 24:1-12; Rom. 2:12; 3:19; 4:13-14; Gal. 3:17-18).
4. The Ten Commandments, the Decalogue (Exodus 20:1-17; Deut. 5:6-21; Matt. 5:18), sometimes improperly called the moral law.
5. All the commandments of God, ceremonial as well as the Ten Commandments; all statutes and ordinances of the law of Moses (Luke 2:22; John 7:23).
6. Teaching, instruction, guidance (Rom. 2:17, 18, 20, 23, 26); compare this with the meaning of the Hebrew word Torah which has the same meaning. As such it is that content of God’s revelation (the Word of the Lord, Deut. 5:5; Psa. 119:43, 160) which makes clear man’s relationship to God and to his fellow man. It provides guidance for man’s actions in his relationship to God and to his fellow man.
7. Any commandment regulating conduct (Rom. 7:7, 8-9).
8. A principle or power of action (Rom. 3:27; 7:21, 23, 25; 8:2).
This last use is the way Paul uses it here in this verse ( Rom. 8:2). The Greeks and the Romans believed that the law had the power to force compliance with the law (Cicero, Laws, II, 8-10). In their view, the law was a principle or power of action which could by its action bring about what the law prescribed; it was not merely a description of or prescription for some action; the law made the action occur. This is the sense in which Paul speaks of “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” and of “the law of sin” and of “the law of death.” These are not merely descriptions of how the Spirit or death or sin acted; they are powers that act and bring about certain actions. Thus the law of the Spirit of life is the power of the Spirit of God acting to make one alive, and thus freeing from the law or power of action of death and of sin. The law of death is power of death acting to make one dead. The law of sin is the power of sin acting to make one sin. In the next verse ( Rom. 8:3), Paul says that the law of God is unable to make righteous; it does not have that power of action. And, as Paul says in Gal. 3:21, righteousness is not by the law because the law cannot make alive; the law of God does not have that power of action either.
The law or power of action of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus frees us from the law or power of action of sin and of death. Since death leads to sin, the Spirit delivers from sin by giving us life in Christ which is deliverance from death. The law is not able to do this; it is through the death of Christ ( Rom. 8:3) who puts an end to sin’s reign over us (“condemn sin in the flesh”) by His death for us (Rom. 6:6-10). The result is that the righteous acts of the law are fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit ( Rom. 8:4). To walk after the flesh is to try to do the righteous acts of the law by human effort (“the flesh”). The believer must not do it that way. By walking after the Spirit, the beleiver will fulfill the righteous acts of the law. He will love God with his heart, soul, and mind, with his whole being, and he will love his neighbor as he loves himself.
The interpretation of Romans 7 as the Christian struggle with the sinful nature is a legalistic misinterpretation. This misinterpretation considers the normal Christian life as under law and the sinful nature as the explanation why the Christian cannot keep the law and has this struggle. The flesh is considered to be the sinful nature.
But the sinful nature is not needed to explain the struggle and defeat in Romans 7; the Christian cannot live by the law any more than he can he be saved by the law. The law cannot produce righteousness because it cannot make alive.
“Is the law then against the promise of God? Certainly not; for if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” (Gal. 3:21)
Only a real personal relationship to God through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit can produce righteousness, that is, the right relationship to God and to man. The law cannot make alive to God; that is, the law cannot produce a real personal relationship to God of love and trust in God. To try to live the Christian life by the law separates and isolates the Christian from God (spiritual death) and the attempt by human self-effort (the flesh) to live up to standard of the law results in failure and sin. As right and good is the law, God did not give it as a means of salvation nor as the way to live the Christian life by it. So all attempts to do so will fail, as Romans 7 shows. The sinful nature is not the cause of this failure but the wrong use of the law. Romans 7 shows what happens when the law is used wrongly. The solution to this problem is not to try harder, but to abandon this wrong use of the law. And to turn to God’s way of the Christian life; that is, to walk according to Spirit (by faith), and not according to the flesh (human self-effort) ( Rom. 8:4; Gal. 5:25).
The views of Augustine and Calvinism, as well as Welsey’s, totally depersonalize salvation, grace and faith. The Biblical view, on the other hand, is totally personal and dynamic; the grace of God is God’s love in action to bring man into a personal relationship with God Himself and faith is man choosing to enter into that personal relationship. Spiritual and eternal life is this personal relationship between God and man, where the grace of God is God’s side of the relationship and faith is man’s side of the relationship. God initiates the personal relationship and a man must choose to enter into that personal relationship by faith, receiving God’s gift of eternal life and trusting God and His love. Salvation is not a monergism, nor a synergism, where the grace of God enables man to do meritorious works, nor is the faith of man a meritorious work by which he earns the salvation. Salvation is God’s act of grace which initiates and sustains the relationship and man’s act of faith is in response to God’s act, accepting the gift of God, eternal life. This relationship has nothing to do with earning something by meritorious works, either on God’s or man’s side. Grace and faith are just the two sides of the personal relationship between God and man; grace is God’s side initiating and sustaining the relationship and faith is man’s side in response to God’s grace, entering into the personal relationship through faith.
The Christian life is the continuation of this personal relationship where the believer walks by faith and acts upon the basis of God’s sustaining grace and the personal guidance and empowering of the Holy Spirit. Grace and faith are relational concepts and are not just properties of either God or man. The grace of God is God acting in His love toward man and faith is man choosing to trust God and His love. Because of their underlying legalism, the views of Augustine and the Protestant Reformers, as well as Welsey’s, have obscured and distorted this Biblical view of salvation and of the Christian life.
Legalism is a temptation and an obstacle to the walk in the Spirit by faith. As good and right as the law is (Rom. 7:10), this law is not man’s highest good, and observing the Ten Commandments is not man’s righteousness. God Himself is man’s highest good, and trust in and love for God is his righteousness. This love fulfills the law (Rom. 13:8-10), which a legalistic living by the law does not do. Man’s basic problem is not “Are you keeping the law?” but “Which god are you trusting?” Is it the true God or is it a false one? This is not just the problem of the non-Christian and the unbeliever but also the problem of the Christian. Many psychological problems that Christians have are the result of a divided loyalty. They are trying to hang onto the true God and a false god at the same time. This double-mindedness, this divided faith (James 1:7-8) makes a Christian psychologically and morally unstable and hinders his walk with the Lord.
And strange as it may seem, this is the situation behind the Romans 7 kind of experience of many Christians. As we observed above, the experience of Romans 7 is the experience of the man under law. And if a Christian is having this kind of experience, it is because he has placed himself under law which God says he is not under, for he is under grace ( Rom. 6:14). He is attempting to serve two masters at the same time: the law and the Holy Spirit. And it cannot be done ( Gal. 5:18). Being under law only creates psychological and moral problems: guilt on the inside and sin and failure on the outside. Being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the Christian does not need to walk by the law but by the Spirit. The Christian’s goal is not moral perfection but the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). The Apostle Paul’s question in Galatians 3:3 is particularly relevant and right to the point: “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
Paul’s obvious answer to this rhetorical question is “No“. For “as you… have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him” (Col. 2:6). By faith they have received Christ so they walk in Him by faith in Him. This walk is not the striving for moral perfection. Moral perfection is perfection by the flesh, by the works of the law, and is contrary and opposed to the fruit of the Spirit and the righteousness of faith (Gal. 5:19-21). The weakness, if not the error, of most Christian preaching and teaching is that it is an exhortation of the Christian to perfection by the flesh, by the works of the law. Having begun in the Spirit, the Christian is urged to seek moral perfection. The Holy Spirit is brought into this kind of preaching, if at all, as the source of power to enable the Christian to keep the law. This Spirit-empowered law-keeping is not what Paul means when he speaks of “walking according to the Spirit” ( Rom. 8:4; see also Gal. 5:16, 25). To walk by the Spirit is to be led by the Spirit, and if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law:
“But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.” (Gal. 5:18).
To walk according to the Spirit is to make all one’s decisions with reference to the Holy Spirit as He personally guides, fills and empowers the believer. The walk in the Spirit is the moment by moment walk of faith and personal trust in the God who personally by His Holy Spirit reveals and communicates Himself along each step of that walk. The “normal” Christian life is this walk according to the Spirit and not a legalistic Spirit-empowered law-keeping, but a biblical Spirit-filled law-fulfillment by love ( Rom. 8:4; 13:10).
The following statements will summarize our discussion concerning the Law and Legalism.
A. WHAT IS THE LAW?
God’s conditional covenant with Israel; it is different from the unconditional covenants of grace with Noah and Abraham. The law was given to clarify man’s relationship to God and his fellowman. The law intensifies wrath, gives knowledge of sin, but cannot produce righteousness because it cannot make alive ( Gal. 3:21); it therefore cannot take away sin. There is no salvation by the law.
B. WHAT IS LEGALISM?
1. Legalism is a distortion of the law of God and a misunderstanding of it.
2. In its fullest form legalism consists of four distortions of the law.
a. Legalism absolutizes the law of God by making the law into ultimate reality. This may be done either by making the law stand by itself apart from and above God or by identifying God with the law: “God is law.”
b. Legalism depersonalizes the law of God by making the law into a thing that is over man and between God and man.
c. Legalism quantitizes the law of God by attaching to the law’s commands and prohibitions various quantities of merit and demerit.
d. Legalism externalizes the law of God by making the law regulate the outward acts and conduct rather than the inner decisions and orientation of the will.
3. Legalism misunderstands sin as just a breaking of the law and/or falling short of the standard of moral perfection contained in the law.
4. Legalism misunderstands the righteousness of God as justice, that is, as that principle of God’s being that requires and demands the reward of good work (comformity to the Law) because of their intrinsic merit (remunerative justice) and the punishment of every transgression of the law with a proportionate punishment because of its own intrinsic demerit (retributive justice).
5. Legalism misunderstands death as the necessary penalty for sin.
6. Legalism misunderstands God’s wrath as necessary divine retribution.
7. Legalsim misunderstands salvation as eternal life earned by meritorious works;
but meritorious works are opposed to grace ( Rom. 4:4; 11:6) and salvation is a gift by grace through faith, not by works ( Eph. 2:8-9).
C. WHAT IS CHRISTIAN LEGALISM?
1. Christian legalism misunderstands the personal origin of sin in the doctrine of original sin; that is, sin is an inherited sinful nature. This doctrine was developed by Augustine during the Augustinian-Pelagian controversy to explain why man can not be saved by meritorious works, and was expanded by Calvinism as the imputation of the sin of Adam to all his descendants.
2. Christian legalism misunderstands salvation as either grace infused by the sacraments in order to be able to earn eternal life by meritorious works (Roman Catholic doctrine), or as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness; that is, the merits earned by Christ’s active obedience is imputed to the account of the believer (Orthodox Protestant doctrine).
3. Christian legalism misunderstands Christ’s death as a penal satisfaction, a paying of the penalty of sin to satisfy God’s justice by the passive obedience of Christ.
4. Christian legalism misunderstands the Christian life as a struggle of the new nature with the sinful nature, misinterpreting Romans 7 as the normal Christian life. But the Christian life depicted in Romans 7 is an abnormal (or subnormal) Christian life; it is the subnormal experience of a believer under law. But the believer is not under law but under grace ( Rom. 6:14) and is dead to the law ( Rom. 7:4). And if the believer is under law, there is deliverance from this subnormal Christian experience of being under law ( Rom. 7:24-25a).
Christian legalism not only ignores the clear statements of the Scriptures that the Christian is not under law ( Rom. 6:14), but also ignores the equally clear statements of the Scriptures that the Christian is dead to the law.
“Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit to God.” (Rom. 7:4)
“For I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God.” (Gal 2:19)
Not only is the Christian dead to sin but is also dead to the law. Through Christ’s death, the believer has died to sin and to the law, and now in the resurrected Christ he is alive to God.
“But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code
but in the new life of the Spirit.” (Rom. 7:6)
The Christian has passed from under the reign of death and sin unto reigning in life in Christ Jesus (Rom. 5:17). The law was the rule in the dispensation of death (II Cor. 3:6-7); the letter kills and the law condemns. The Holy Spirit is the rule of life in the new dispensation of life (II Cor. 3:17-18). Since the Spirit gives life (II Cor. 3:6), the dispensation of life is the dispensation of the Spirit (II Cor. 3:8), the Era of the Spirit. Since the Christian has passed from death to life, he has passed from the rule of the law to the rule of the Spirit. The law as the rule of Christian life has no place in the Era of the Spirit. And if the law has no place in the Era of the Spirit, legalism as an idolatry and misunderstanding of the law has no place in the Era of the Spirit either.
APPENDIX
Nowhere in the Scriptures does it say that Christ died to pay the penalty of man’s sin and satisfy God’s justice. Not in the three passages (Rom. 3:25-26; II Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13) usually cited to support this doctrine does it say explicitly that Christ paid the penalty of sin or satisfied the justice of God. [1] Propitiation is not the satisfaction of God’s justice; “Being made sin” or “a curse” does not mean paying the penalty of sin. The introduction of these legalistic concepts into the interpretation of these passages has obscured their meaning and interpretation. Apart from the clear and explicit statement of Scripture, it cannot be assumed that this is what these verses mean. Since this legalism is contrary to the clear and explicit statements of Scripture, any interpretation employing these legalistic concepts is suspect. In fact, the Scripture explicitly rejects the principle of vicarious penal sacrifice upon which this interpretation depends.
“The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.” (Ezekiel 18:20 NAS; see also Deut. 24:16; Jer. 31:30).
If Christ did not die to pay the penalty for man’s sin and satisfy God’s justice, then why did Christ have to die to save man? Why then do men need to be saved? An examination of Scripture (John 10:10; Eph. 2:4-5; Heb. 2:14-15; I John 4:9; etc.) clearly shows that the answer to this question is that man needs to be saved because he is dead.
“2:4But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, 2:5even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),” (Eph. 2:4-5; see Rom. 6:8).
Man is separated and alienated from God (Eph. 4:8). He does not know God personally, and because he does not know the true God, he turns to false gods – to those things which are not God – and makes those into his gods (Gal. 4:8). The basic sin is idolatry (Ex. 20:2; Rom. 1:25), and man sins (chooses these false gods) because he is spiritually dead – separated from the true God.
All men have sinned because they are spiritually dead. This is what the Apostle Paul says in the last clause of Romans 5:12 [ERS]:
“because of which [death] all sinned.” [2] Spiritual death which “spread to all men” along with physical death is not the result of each man’s own personal sins. On the contrary, a man sins as a result of spiritual death. He received death from Adam, from his first parents. The historical origin of sin is the fall of Adam – the sin of the first man. [3] Adam’s sin brought death – spiritual and physical – on all his descendants (Rom. 5:12, 15, 17). [4] This spiritual death inherited from Adam is the personal, contemporary origin of each man’s sin. Because he is spiritually dead, not knowing the true God personally, he chooses something other than the true God as his god; he thus sins.
This is why a man needs to be saved. He is dead spiritually and dying physically. Man needs life – he needs to be made alive – to be raised from the dead. And if he receives life, if he is made alive to God, death which leads to sin is removed. And if death which leads to sin is removed, then man will be saved from sin. Thus salvation must be understood to be primarily from death to life and secondarily from sin to righteousness. And since God’s wrath – God’s “no” or opposition to sin – is caused by sin (Rom. 1:18), the removal of sin brings with it also the removal of wrath. No sin, no wrath. Salvation is then thirdly from wrath to peace with God (Rom. 5:1).
This salvation (from death, sin and wrath) is exactly what God accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son. This is why Christ died, that He might be raised from the dead. Jesus entered into our spiritual death in order that as He was raised from the dead, we might be made alive in and with Him ( Eph. 2:5). And by saving us from spiritual death, Christ saves us from sin. It is by taking away the spiritual death, which leads to our sin, that God takes away our sin. Jesus died for our sins – literally – to take them away (John 1:29). What the Old Testament sacrifices could not do (Heb. 10:1-4) the death of Christ has done. The blood of Jesus (His death) cleanses us from our sins (I John 1:7). We are delivered from sin itself. We were saved from our trust in false gods when we put our trust in Jesus Christ and the true God who sent Him. We “turned from idols to serve the living and true God” (I Thess. 1:9). When we were spiritually dead, we trusted in and served those things that are not God – money, power, sex, education, popularity, pleasure, etc. But when we turned to the risen Christ, we entered into life, leaving behind those false gods. The risen Jesus Christ is now our Lord and our God (John 20:28).
The death and resurrection of Jesus was the means by which God removed death – the barrier to knowing God personally and knowing His love. In the preaching of the Gospel, God reveals Himself to us making us spiritually alive to Himself when we receive Jesus Christ who is the life (John 14:6; I John 5:12). To be spiritually alive is to know God personally, and to know God personally is to trust Him. For God is love (I John 4:8, 16) and love begets trust. The trust that God’s love invokes in us is righteousness ( Rom. 4:5, 9); it relates us rightly to God. Thus by making us alive to Himself, God sets us right with Himself through faith. Life produces righteousness just as death produces sin.
Martin Luther recovered the Biblical concept of the righteousness of God and of the justification by faith. But his followers obscured this understanding of these concepts by the legalism of their theology and legalistic understanding of righteousness and justification. And this legalism not only affected the theology but the whole life of the church. The result of this legalism was dead orthodoxy and a cold, unloving Christianity. To correct these effects of legalism there have arisen in the church various revival movements such as pietism, the evangelical awakening, the deeper life movement, revivalism, etc. None of these movements went to the source of the deadness, coldness and unlovableness but often just reinforced the cause — legalism. The great outpouring of the Spirit starting at the beginning of the twentieth century has been constantly burdened and limited by the frequent relapses into the same legalism.
And the source of the legalism in practice is the legalism of the theology. Practical legalism is the result of theological legalism. The problem is not too much theology but bad theology, legalistic theology. This theological legalism has misunderstood the Gospel of our salvation. With the present move of the Spirit, the time has come to remove the cause of this practical legalism by clearing the theological legalism out of our theology and again recovering the Bibical understanding of the Gospel of our salvation. Such a theological renewal should be the natural accompaniment of the move of the Spirit of God today and could produce a reformation comparable to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. This paper is an attempt to contribute to such a theological renewal and to prepare for the last great revival.