When Does Law-Keeping Become Legalistic?

The Scriptures say we are to love God and delight in his law, but when does our lawkeeping turn into a form of legalism? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with my friend Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us right now with your question. at 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673.

You can also email us at questions at corechristianity.com. Well, when it comes to Wi-Fi, sometimes you have to get creative. A P.E. teacher at a California middle school says when his home internet went out, he ended up teaching his class from the parking lot at a Starbucks. Jason Gaducci, who's a gym teacher and longtime wrestling coach at Hogan Middle School in Vallejo, says he's been teaching classes virtually from his home during the COVID pandemic, but he found himself in a difficult spot last week when his internet went out. So Jason drove to his school and discovered it didn't have internet service either. At that point, he says, I went to Starbucks, pulled up in the parking lot, got a signal on my district laptop, and away we went.

The coach live streamed on Instagram and guided his wrestling team through their conditioning exercises from the Starbucks parking lot. I'll start paying teachers more, Bill. I mean, the school didn't even have Wi-Fi, so what's going on with that?

What's the deal? I mean, I use a lot of coffee shop Wi-Fi here in San Diego. There are all sorts of coffee shops nearby where I live, and that's typically what I use for my quote-unquote office when I'm getting stuff done for the church or just in general. I love being in the coffee shop. So thank you to all the coffee shops out there with free Wi-Fi saving the day. So I'm curious.

He was leading his class. Do you ever like, you know, do on your doing your streaming from Starbucks? Do you ever do like exorcisms or something like that when you're online? Yeah, at least two a week, I say so. You know, they sort of died down during COVID. But yeah, yeah, just kidding.

All right, let's get to our first question of the day. This one is a Facebook post from David. He says, I've noticed that over the last few years, a number of Christian worship leaders and artists have renounced the Christian faith. And say they have deconverted or deconstructed their faith. In light of this, what do you think of singing artists songs who have since left the faith?

Yeah, I'm also aware of this trend, and it's it really is heartbreaking. It's tragic, not just for Christian music artists, but also for many young people who are deconverting, as some people have put it. I think of what Paul said in First Timothy, chapter four, verse one, the Spirit expressly says that in the later times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons. It seems like the apostles, one of the things that God's Spirit impressed upon their hearts so clearly there in the days of the early church was that there was coming this this great falling away, this great apostasy that many people were going to turn away from the Lord. Can I just share what I think part of the problem is, we aren't going deep in the things of the Lord. We're so surface level in churches and in youth groups that people aren't really even being taught the fundamentals of the Christian faith. That's another thing we've seen in various polls that have come out and some of the research that's being done is people don't know the basics of Christianity anymore. Back in 2005, there was a sociologist named Christian Smith who talked about the beliefs of young Americans as he labeled them. He identified those beliefs with what he called moralistic therapeutic deism.

Now, I know that that's a mouthful, but you need to get this. Moralistic meaning God wants me to be a good person, do good, be nice, obey. Therapeutic religion is feel good. God wants you to be happy. He wants me to be happy.

He wants me to be happy. And deism, it's the idea that God is out there, but he's not really involved in my life personally. For many young people, for many adults even, that's what they think Christianity is. Be nice, feel good, and God is upstairs working on stuff, but he's not really present in a real way.

You know what the result of that is? The deconversions that we're seeing all around us. We really need to recover the gospel today. Now, to your question, David, there was actually an ancient controversy in the church that I think helps us to think through this, and this is why I think church history is so important.

It gives us insight into some of the things we're wrestling with and thinking about today. It was called the Donatist controversy. It was in the fourth century. There was this terrible persecution that came upon the church, and some Christians, even Christian leaders, pastors, had abandoned the faith. And a very important question was being posed, were these men ever used by God to begin with? And what about, especially for the pastors, what about the baptisms that they performed? Were they legitimate?

Well, here's what was concluded in that controversy. The power of their ministry didn't depend on their personal holiness, whether or not they were going to keep walking with Jesus. No, the power, the efficacy of the ministry depended upon God's word. The baptisms they performed weren't invalidated because they went on to abandon the faith.

Because, brothers and sisters, God is the one who works through His word, and His work doesn't depend on our perfection, on how holy you are. Similarly, and this is, I think, the answer to your question with Christian singers who deconvert, if the song that they wrote or the songs that they wrote are in line with Scripture, if what they teach is good, true, and beautiful, if they're Christ-centered, well, I think they're still fair game. Sometimes we can think, oh, that person fell away, maybe there was something wrong with the song. Well, if the song is biblical, if it directs our eyes to the Lord and to the truth of God's word, I would say still sing it. Now, if it wasn't, whether they claim to be a Christian still or not, don't sing it. You know, avoid that kind of music and worship. But no, I don't think there's anything wrong with singing these songs still, so long as they're in line with Scripture.

Thank you for your question. You know, Adriel, there's a Christian pop group that I really enjoy, and their lead singer the last year or two has said that he has left the faith. And he's actually a really good guy, and his songs are really solid. But I find when I'm listening to his music now, I just I have this real sense of sadness. There's nothing theologically inaccurate in the music. It's just that I have a sense of sadness that he says he's no longer a follower of Christ, no longer believes in God, even though there was a time where his faith was very much alive.

Or at least it appeared to be. Yeah, that's why I said earlier, you know, this is so heartbreaking. And I think each of us, I mean, not just with, you know, music artists who have turned away from the Lord, but even people in our own lives who we know who maybe at one point were in the church and seem to be walking with Christ and love setting the Scriptures, but now have have gone off. And, you know, one thing it might be is just a reminder for us to pray for these individuals, for you even, Bill, to pray for this person in particular. And I think that that's what the Lord calls us to do.

But it is so sad. And we long to see Jesus, the Good Shepherd, bring back his sheep into the fold. And we know that he is the Good Shepherd, that he pursues us when we wander, when we stray. And so there is hope.

And so we ought to pray. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. If you have a question for us, here's the phone number to call. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Yes, my name is Ruth. I'm from Media, Pennsylvania. And my question is regarding the word elect. They talk about God's elect and certain people that are drawn to God.

So I'm wondering just how does that fit together? Has God ordained certain people at birth who are elect and chosen? Thank you.

Thank you for that question. I remember years ago reading through the Psalms and coming across this verse in Psalm 65, verse 4, where the psalmist David said, Blessed is the one you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple. And I remember just thinking, that's so interesting that the scripture puts it that way. That David puts it that way. Blessed is the one you choose and bring near to dwell in your courts.

And this is something I spent a lot of time thinking about, Ruth. I mean, the word elect simply means chosen or selected in scripture. And it is a biblical word, one passage of scripture that I think is really helpful. And again, on this program, our goal is to be biblical. We want to search the scriptures and embrace what the scriptures teach. And Paul, in the book of Ephesians, in Ephesians chapter 1, beginning in verse 3, listen to what he said, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. And that word chose there is the word elect, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven, and things on earth. And then he says, finally, in verse 11, in him, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him, who works all things according to the counsel of his will. I want you to note something there, Ruth, the focus on this election on God's choice is that the result would be God's praise. A lot of people want to argue about the doctrine of election and predestination. Well, scripture says it shouldn't lead to argumentation, but adoration, to worship. And you just think again of what he says as he begins there, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, you also see this call to praise in the context of thinking about this doctrine of God's choice in Romans chapter 11, where Paul is just bursting forth in praise as he thinks about God's marvelous plan. And you note also in this passage, Ruth, the basis for this choice.

It isn't our works. It was before the foundation of the world, Paul told the Ephesians. It was his loving will. I think it was Charles Spurgeon who said, I'm glad God chose me before the foundation of the world, because if he had seen how I would be a little bit later, I'm not sure he would have chosen me.

I'm not sure if he actually said that. But in one sense, this is meant to be massively comforting, because we realize that God's choice doesn't depend on how good we are, how righteous we are. It isn't on the basis of my own merit or righteousness.

And maybe this is why you're asking this question, Ruth. All of this poses then the response, well, what about those who aren't quote unquote chosen? If Paul says here in Ephesians chapter one that he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, well, what about everyone else?

Well, let me just say a few things. One, God isn't necessarily obligated to save anyone. He doesn't owe us anything. He's perfectly righteous and holy. We've sinned against him.

And yet, there's a second thing I want to say. God does call everyone to repentance, and the free offer of the gospel goes out without discrimination to all people everywhere. Jesus commanded us to preach the gospel to all creatures. And we're responsible for embracing or rejecting that gospel, and there's a mystery here, and I think, Ruth, that we have to embrace that mystery. God is absolutely sovereign, and yet you and I are totally responsible. No one's going to stand before the Lord on the day of judgment and be able to say, God, it's your fault. No, we're responsible for our actions, for our sins, and God is calling all people everywhere to repent, to turn to Jesus. And those who believe, we can say, man, this was the work of God's sovereign grace, and it should lead us to praise and worship, to adoration, to absolute humility, knowing that if it wasn't for God's mercy, we would be completely lost. And so, Ruth, I want to emphasize here as we think about this, this word, this word that you've brought up, this word that we see in the scriptures, it should humble us. It should cause us to love God, to worship him because of his great plan of redemption that wasn't based on our own righteousness or goodness. And it should encourage us, get this, to pray for others, knowing that God is sovereign, knowing that by the work of his Spirit, he's able to open the hearts of those who do not know him. We should pray for our loved ones and for our family members that they might know the Lord and love him too.

Thank you for your question, and if you want to follow up, please reach out to us again. I really appreciate you thinking about this and searching the scriptures. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and we are really excited to tell you about a new Bible study that we are offering right now. Yeah, I mean, talking about these really key doctrines, like this one we were just speaking about with Ruth, you know, a lot of these doctrines are unpacked in the book of Romans. And so we have this Bible study.

It's a 10-week study. It's a great way to grow in your knowledge of the Lord, your knowledge of the gospel. And so I'm really excited about this new resource.

It's available as a physical study, or you can also get it as a PDF download. And there are leader's guides available for all of our studies as well. Head over to corechristianity.com forward slash offers to get your copy of our new Bible study on Romans. It has had such an impact on my own life and on my ministry as a pastor even, and that's why I'm really excited about this new resource. And by the way, this Bible study would be great for a small group. So if you're in a small group ministry through your church, you might want to recommend it to your small group leader or lead it yourself or tell your pastor about it. You can call us for that resource or any one of our resources at 833-843-2673.

That's 833 the core. Adriel, here's an email question that came in from Jeff. He says it says in the Bible to love your enemies. My enemies are alcohol and pornography because those were my favorite sins. But now I hate them. I have a hard time loving the people that manufacture these two things because they destroy lives every day. How am I to handle this if I'm to love and forgive them for what they're doing?

I struggle with those two things for 30 years. Jeff, well one, I just praise God for His grace in your life and the fact that you are conscious of and sensitive to the reality of sin and the need for sin to be set aside, put to death, how destructive it can be. Jeff, you should hate your sin.

We all should. Frankly, I think we don't take our sins seriously enough. Jesus said, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. There's a violence we need to have, not against other people, but against our sin. And of course, Jesus, as He's speaking there, He's not saying literally cut off your hand.

He's using hyperbole. He's talking about just the extreme nature with which we should deal with the sin in our lives. And yet so often we don't do that. We treat our sins as these little pets that we want to keep and feed and not let go of, that kind of a thing. And that's dangerous.

That's devastating. Paul said in Romans that by the Spirit we mortify the sinful deeds of the body. That means we put them to death. John Owen, the Puritan, he said famously, be killing sin or sin will be killing you.

There's really no other option. There's no neutrality with sin. Either you are fighting your sins every day, you're putting them to death by the grace of the Holy Spirit or sin is growing, taking territory.

It's always waging war against us. And so we have to be vigilant. You're completely right, brother. We have to take this seriously. And we also have to distinguish between hating our sin and hating people.

You see how lust and drunkenness have hurt you. You should hate those things, but you should be compassionate to those who are still enslaved to them. And sometimes the very people who manufacture those things are enslaved.

In fact, every time they're enslaved. Some years ago, our church hired a wonderful organization to help us think through how to create a children's safety policy in the church. I think it's something that every church should do, frankly. The organization was called GRACE. Grace standing for Godly Response to Abuse in a Christian Environment. And they work together with churches to help them think about what's the best way to create a policy in our church that's going to protect the children, that's going to create transparency and make sure that we're doing things in a way that's honoring to the Lord and protects the littlest among us, Jesus' little sheep. So they gave us a few days of abuse training and they talked about the correlation between abuse and people who get into industries like the sex industry.

I remember that being one of the things that we, at least that I learned from some of the discussions that we were having. There's so much pain and we should hate the sin, but pray that God would rescue the people who are enslaved to it. Many of them having experienced all sorts of abuse, both in terms of alcohol and also in terms of pornography. You think of people that were raised in abusive homes where alcohol was abused or who experienced other kinds of abuse and how that deforms us and shapes us in ways that are very difficult to overcome. I'm not making an excuse for sin.

Like I said, we hate the sin because we see how it destroys people. We have to be filled with compassion for those who are broken. And so my encouragement to you, Jeff, is pray. Pray one, that God continues to keep you and guard you against sin. I mean, our Lord Jesus taught us to pray every day, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, lead us not into temptation.

Why? Because it's not just something that we pray for once and then we can forget about it and we're good. No, every single day we need to say, Lord, forgive me for my sins and Lord, protect me. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.

Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart, God, here's my heart. O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

I love that hymn, come thou fount of every blessing. And so, brother, pray that the Lord continues to seal your heart, to keep you, to guard you against sin. And also to guard you against self-righteousness.

You see, that's another area where we have to be careful. We feel like once we get victory, once the Lord has really worked in us, we can start to look at others and despise them and think, oh, gosh, you need to get your act together. No, we should be humble knowing that it's only by the grace of the Holy Spirit that we put to death our sins. And we should be humble knowing that God's mercy is also for those who are still enslaved. And we should pray for them, and you should pray for them. Pray that God would be merciful to those who are destroying themselves through pornography, through alcohol. And I think it's that attitude that you want to have, an attitude of humility, an attitude of hatred and violence against sin, especially the sin that lives in your own heart that we're still every day putting to death, and an attitude of love and compassion to those who are in these destructive practices, longing to see the grace of the Lord Jesus poured out in their lives so that they might come to the knowledge of the truth and turn away from their sins. God bless you, brother. A great reminder for all of us to have empathy and compassion for those who are still struggling, especially with things that we have struggled with in our own lives. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez.

Here's an Instagram post from Dolly. She says, My hope and confidence is in Christ alone. I love delighting in his law and doing good deeds and trying to avoid sin. I really want to be conformed to the image of Christ, and I know it's only by the power of God this happens, but I understand that I also have a responsibility as well. When does law keeping cross over into legalism? Is it possible, like Paul, to beat yourself into submission, or am I simply being hard on myself?

Hey, Dolly, thank you for that question and a really practical question. Like, what is our relationship as Christians to the law? We know that the law, in one sense, it condemns the world. It reveals how much we fall short of loving the Lord, obeying his commandments. Paul talks about this in Galatians. He talked about how the law was given as a sort of pedagogue, as a taskmaster leading us to Christ, showing us our sin, revealing to us our failure. And in that sense, it's very clear that no person can stand before God's judgment seat, pure, innocent, because of how well they've obeyed God's law. Now, law keeping becomes legalism when we think that our obedience, our law keeping, is what justifies us before God. And by the way, one of the ways that we can know that we're doing that, like one of the symptoms of that, is we begin to look down on everyone else around us because we think, I'm so much better than you because of my purity or my righteousness.

Now, that might be an extreme way of putting it, but the fact of the matter is it's subtle, but it's a real issue. Just look at the Pharisees. I mean, they really weren't obedient to the law they thought that they were, and they began to despise everyone around them that they thought were sinners, wicked, evil. And so legalism happens when we think we can justify ourselves by the law. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus came and perfectly fulfilled the law of God for us, and the spirit, Dolly, is what causes us to begin to love and delight in God's law so that in this life, we begin to imperfectly fulfill it. Paul said in Romans chapter eight, verses three and four, For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this podcast, and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.