Me: Howdy Prodigal! It is so dark out here.
Prodigal: Wow, I did not even notice how dark it was around me.
Me: Yeah at the end of the day the darkness can creep in and we adjust to it and it takes another person to make us pay attention.
Prodigal: I guess that it is what just happened.
Me: Speaking of darkness, I found some information about our hearts that I think as Christians we tend to ignore much like the darkness.
Prodigal: Please begin then!
Edward Welch describes a problem with all of our hearts.
Legalism is more common than you think. It is another one of those human instincts that you will find lodged in every heart.
Have you ever said, “I just can’t forgive myself’?
Is your life one long, “If only….”?
Have others called you driven?
Are you burdened by past sins?
Do you believe God is chronically disappointed in you?
Do you believe that God likes you more when you are really good?
Do you make deals with God: “If you…I will…”?
Can you hear within these questions the conviction that your relationship with God rests more with you than with him?
Now consider what you might add to the gospel. Life is found in God + __________.
Serving in church
Reading my Bible
Not being too mean
Being relatively honest
Not getting drunk
Being sexually careful
Notice that these are good things. What makes them ugly are the motives that drive them. If you do these things to find favor before God, they are worthless. When they become activities in which we trust, they are abominations because they replace God. We make these additions to the gospel because they allow us to feel good about ourselves apart from God. They also give us a basis for judging others. If we have successfully gone through a day and measured up to our new law, we are a success (however temporarily). And we are now entitled to judge others who don’t measure up. Even God himself doesn’t escape our judgment. “I have been a good daughter even though I have had to live with a messed-up father. Why is God doing this to me?” If we have done the right thing, we feel we have a right to get something in return, and we can become angry or depressed when we don’t get it. With this in mind, add some other signs of legalism.
After all I have done, this is the thanks I get?”
Life isn’t fair
There are small, short-lived payoffs to legalism, but the emotional cornerstone of legalism is a lack of joy (Gal 4:15). Could you expect anything else? If you believe that your most important relationship is dependent on appeasing an angry or irritated God, no matter how much you do, you will never be sure it is enough. In reality, whatever good deeds we do are intended to be a response to what God has done, not a cause of it. God’s grace and love to us precede our own good works. He loved us before we loved him or even acknowledged him. Given this fact, why do we now think that we can earn his approval?
I want to say that I am sorry. Legalism has been in my heart and my actions. Truth being told, I can remember sad times I have judged others with reason only to puff up my own pride. I am sorry. I am sorry for condemnation that you may have sensed and any hurt that may have been from me. God is challenging me to grace with his children he loves. God has instructed me that those that come to me, I will give nothing but grace and I plan to be obedient. I am to share with them all the grace that God has given to me.
Hebrews 4:16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
