Speaker 1
Sometimes the simplest questions are the most difficult to answer unless we get the clear answer from Scripture. Welcome to Focal Point as we join Pastor Mike Fabarez to do just that in a grace-filled edition of Ask Pastor Mike.
Well, thanks for joining us on Focal Point with Pastor Mike. I'm Alfa Barez. I'm Dave Drury. And we're setting aside time, as we do each week, for an informal Q and A session with Pastor Mike. To post a question of your own, go to focalpointradio.org.
Today, we're addressing an honest question about legalism. What does it mean to be legalistic, and aren't laws overruled by God's grace? Great question. Let's find the answer as we step into the pastor's study with Focal Point's executive director, Jay Worton.
Speaker 2
Well, thank you, Dave.
Pastor Mike, we have been talking on the radio about the goal of Scripture's many rules, and I wanted to have a discussion on a question regarding this topic that a listener asked. The listener says, isn't rule keeping just being legalistic?
Speaker 3
Yeah, I suppose. Just ripped out of any context. You might be able to say, doesn't that seem legalistic? Although we should define that term. Let's talk about that for a second.
Legalism. I mean, really, there's two things that people generally mean by legalism that I think are valid. One is that someone is trying to keep rules to earn God's favor and to get some kind of approval from God so that they might go to heaven when they die. That's the kind of legalism that the book of Philippians talks about. And Paul says, no, it doesn't work. We recognize that our righteousness is derived not from rule keeping but by faith. So I'm all against that legalism, and that's fantastic.
The other kind of legalism that people are referring to these days is the kind when Jesus spoke of people taking the traditions of men and exalting them to the place of the commandments of God. And if they call that legalism, I...
Speaker 4
Guess I'm all for that too.
Speaker 3
And I may not use that term, but fine. I can't say that you got to wear a collared shirt. And if you don't, that's sin. I mean, that's man's rules. And they certainly can't be raised to the level of God's commands.
Unfortunately, the way people use legalism in a third sense that is unbiblical is, hey, here's a Christian, loves God, trusting in Christ for salvation. But now they're setting about their sanctification. And they are those who care about what the Bible says regarding whatever it might be. I mean, I think of this couple that talked about the grief they got from their friends because this dating couple, they weren't willing to sleep together, and their friends called them legalists. And I think, well, wait a minute. The Bible is very clear about that. Sex is reserved for marriage.
And here's a couple saying, we're not going to do that. You can't call someone a legalist because they love Christ, they trust in Christ for salvation, and now they're keeping the rules regarding their own sanctification, which 1 Thessalonians is very clear. So that's not an accurate use of the word legalism.
One of the goals for Scripture's many rules is to guide us in our sanctification. In other words, what does it mean to walk with Christ and to be holy? And so when we open our Bibles and we see that we ought to attend church, we ought to give, we ought not commit sexual immorality. These are things that are in the Bible and to do what it says, because I love God and I'm saved by grace through faith, that's not legal. Isn't that called obedience? And that's what's expected of every Christian in the Bible.
Speaker 2
What do you think is going on in the mind of the person who is calling a Christian trying to do what pleases God? A legalist?
Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, think about going to church. I mean, that's a small example, but someone who says, "I'm a Christian, I'm going to church," invites another guy who claims to be a Christian, "Come to church with me." And they go, "No, that's. You're just a legalist going to church all the time."
Well, maybe a dumb illustration, but clearly you could assume that the motive of the person who doesn't want to go to church, saying to the person that says, "You should go to church because the Bible says you shouldn't forsake the assembling of yourselves together," is going to be saying that because they don't want to do it and they don't want to be bound by that.
Whether it's giving, whether it's evangelism, whether it's discipleship, whether it's prayer, Bible study, whatever it is, these are things the Bible directs Christians to do. And if someone says, "Hey, you're a legalist for telling me to do that," I think we can safely assume in most of those situations they're just trying to appease and pacify their own conscience.
Because someone is saying they should do something they know in their own hearts they should do, but they don't want to do. And so they're just going to name call and say, "You're a legalist," and that helps them get out of it. I guess it helps them sleep at night.
Speaker 2
In the same context, you'll hear people say, hey, I'm under grace, I'm not under law. What do they mean by that?
Speaker 3
Well, what they usually mean by that when I listen to their words is not what Paul meant when he spoke in these terms in Galatians or in the Book of Romans. You know, the idea of Christians keeping God's moral commandments is what the Bible has set up from the beginning in the Old Testament and certainly through the Testament or covenant of grace in the New Testament. There's no distinction. If God tells us we should or shouldn't do this or that and it's a moral command, well, then clearly it's not legalism. Grace is in concert with keeping God's moral law. In other words, as the Bible says, grace is given to us and it calls us, it directs us to forsake godless or unrighteous behavior and to pursue righteous behavior.
That's not at all what one could ever mean. If they're using that phrase in a biblical sense now in the New Testament, you've got to understand they're coming out of a background. These Jews, as converted Christians, now have got a group of ceremonial laws. And Paul is saying, listen, that's not what we do as New Covenant believers. God has fulfilled the ceremonial laws. And that's a different set of laws in the Old Testament that no longer apply.
As I like to illustrate that, it's like putting on the dress and the tuxedo at a wedding. Sure, that's part of what you do in this ceremony. But then the ceremony is over and the reality of marriage initiates. Now, you don't need those things. You don't have another ceremony every day because the reality has come to fruition. You're now married. And so we don't put on the tux, if you will, of the Old Testament sacrificial system. We don't have, you know, the church put on the wedding dress of the Levitical laws, but we still keep the rules that define what it means to be in fellowship with God, the moral laws of God.
So to say I'm under grace, I'm not under the law. You're right, you're certainly not. And we don't earn our favor before God—never have, Old Testament or New. In our case, distinct from the Old Testament, we're not under the ceremonial obligations to keep the ceremonial laws, but to lie, to cheat, to steal, those things are clearly moral laws that are applicable in both the Old and New Testament. We keep them because we love God and we have his favor. So we never earn his favor. We don't keep his favor by those things.
By favor, I mean saving favor. And I guess this is another distinction I should make because some people use those phrases just like I did. And by that, they mean I can never displease God. Well, sure you can. As a Christian, you can displease God. Don't say you can never displease God. I can never be disowned by God because I'm in covenant with God and God has adopted me as his child. But just like an adopted child taking residence in a new home, to say I can never displease my parents—well, you can't, I suppose, to the point with God of being expelled from the family. But you certainly can displease God by what you do, how you act, and how you talk to your parents. All those things are realities.
So when I say favor, we don't earn our favor with God. What I mean by that is there's not saving favor or saving grace that is given to us because of any rule keeping. But now that I'm a Christian, I have an opportunity, as Paul said to the Philippians, to please him by the way I go about living for him, which is always going to be shown to us and described to us by what the moral laws are.
Even in the Bible, it says my ultimate motive and direction comes from loving God. I don't have to sit there and get a checklist like, you know, a pilot before taking off in his plane at the airport. It's that I'm loving God, which just naturally out of that grows the obedience to the law. But if I want to check that ever, if I love God in this relationship, I love God in this job, if I love God in this church, I can look at the moral laws of God. And it helps me recognize that I'm right on track. Because I love Him, I keep his commandments.
And that's, I guess, the best summary of what we should say when we talk about what it means to be sanctified, to be a growing Christian. The laws matter, but they are not things that get me in right relationship to God. They're things that express and define even how I'm living my life in loving God and living for his glory in this present day.
Speaker 2
Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. I'm sure that's going to be a helpful conversation for our listeners, especially in relation to what we're talking about on the radio.
And we're going to complete our time here together with a message you gave called "But What About Grace?"
Speaker 4
Well, if you travel or you spend much time interacting with people from other cultures, you know that you have to be careful to avoid misunderstandings, especially those that are created from the cultural divide. I think at the time I was in England and I said to my host family that I'd gotten something on my pants, not knowing that the word "pants" in England stands for underwear. See, they weren't real interested in hearing about that.
Reminds me of the story of these businesses that try to do business in other cultures. Like when Chevy brought their little Chevy Nova to South America, tried to market it down there, the little go-fast economy Nova. You know, the problem is down there, "Nova" means "no go." They quickly had to change the name of their car. And sometimes you just need somebody in your life to stand up and say to you, "Hey, I don't think that word means what you think it means."
Some of these misunderstandings, they're humorous and they're harmless, but there are some misunderstandings that are, you know, they're not so funny, and they certainly aren't harmless. Like when there's a rumor circulating about you and it's based on some misunderstanding of something you said or somewhere you went or, you know, the way you said something, and people now start to talk, and it's very destructive, and it's hurtful and it's painful and it's a misrepresentation of you.
It's amazing how quickly and how conveniently people take what they hear, even though they don't ever come to you and ask for clarification, and they just pass that message along. Has that happened to you? That's just irritating. It's like you want to get all those people in a room, do you not? Have you had this experience and you just want to say, "Hey, you want the story about what happened? You talked to me. I was the one you're talking about. Listen to me. I'll clarify this for you."
Which, by the way, is the way I think God must feel most of the time, right? I mean, you want to talk about people assuming they know what God means by what he says. And yet very few people seem to go to the word anymore to clarify exactly in context, from a biblical perspective. They have a hard time looking into exactly what God meant.
For instance, Romans 6:15, where Paul is going to try to clarify something that obviously had careened out of control in the thinking of people. It was something that I think you can agree, if it was a problem in the first century, it's ten times the problem now. It seems to be the predominant view of this topic that has been discussed earlier in the book that he now wants to say, "Now wait a minute, I want to make sure you understand what grace is all about."
The phrase is, if you look at verse number 15 of Romans chapter 6, it's this little phrase in the middle of this question when he says, "What then shall we sin? Because here comes the phrase, we're not under law, but under grace." Now that phrase right there is a phrase that gets tossed around. Everybody says, "Well, that's what God says, God's word." And you know, I know what the truth says. The Bible says we're not under law, we're under grace.
Now there's the phrase. And people often give their quick, convenient definitions of what they think that means. Unfortunately, the corrective in this very verse helps to say to people, "It's not what you think it means." If what you think it means is that sin is something that's not quite a big deal anymore. If obedience is not really the requisite concern of our daily Christian living, it is a concern, and in no way should it lower the bar in terms of sin or in some way minimize obedience.
Look at what he says. Here's the answer. By no means, what shall we say? Shall we sin because we're not under the law, but under grace? By no means. If your definition of this phrase "not under the law but under grace" somehow takes sin and says, "Well, it's not so big of a problem then," then you're misunderstanding it. And he uses the strongest negation he could come up with here. "For may it never be, no way, by no means don't think that."
And now he explains. Take a look at this. Verse 16. "Don't you know that when you offer yourself to someone to obey him as slaves, that you're slaves to the one whom you obey? Whether you're slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience," that's a big word, "which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and you've been set free from sin."
And have, look at this. If you want the corrective to the question in verse 15, here's the answer in verse 18. "You have become slaves to righteousness." Because if, in your understanding of this phrase, "we're not under law, we're under grace," it means some kind of freedom and autonomy from any instruction list or any kind of directives or commands from God. If obedience now is really not the concern of my life because I'm under grace, not under law, then you need to grapple with that last phrase, because whatever that means, "not under law, but under grace," it can't mean that I'm not a slave to obedience. And that's big.
So we need to make sure we avoid the problem, the problem that he's trying to correct, because it's a huge problem in the Bible. As a matter of fact, let's put it this way. It's an abuse of the doctrine of grace, and you and I ought not do it. Jot this down. Number one, don't abuse the doctrine of grace, because that's what's happening here. He's responding to an abuse of the doctrine of grace.
Now, grace is what the book of Romans has been about, and that is that you can't do enough good things to ever have God say, "Great, now you're qualified." God will not grant you forgiveness because you're better than the next guy, or you're trying real hard. You can't earn forgiveness. It has to be gifted to you. You have to embrace it because it was earned for you by Jesus Christ. That's what grace is all about.
But if in that understanding of grace, it leads you to think that obedience is not that big of a deal and that sin is a problem, and I don't need to worry about that anymore, then you don't understand the doctrine of grace. Because grace, in the definition provided for us in the Bible, does not allow for much of the New Testament. Certainly, the Epistles are trying to deal with this problem. The little book of Jude, one chapter. Look at verse number three.
Jude, verse three. When he says, "Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share," and that would have been an interesting book to read, I wonder what he would have said. "I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith." You know what contend means? What does contend mean? Fight. Right. To fight for the faith, not with the sword. This is a logical fight, a fight of arguments, a fight of ideas. Fight for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.
Now, I've said this to you before, but please make note of it. While our apologetic friends always like to use this as their banner verse, this is not the context of this statement. We don't see the next section now on the existence of God or the veracity of the Bible, or the problem of evil, or the deity of Christ. We don't see any of that. What we see in fighting for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints has to do with our understanding of sin and righteousness. That's what the book of Jude is all about.
Look at the next verse. He says in verse four, "For certain men and not good ones, because here's the next phrase whose condemnation was written about long ago." God's already said, "You're going to have these people and I'm not happy with them. As a matter of fact, I condemn them and I will condemn them." So God has predicted this problem. Paul predicted this problem. Jude is predicting this problem. And he says it's already happening.
He says, "They've secretly slipped in among you." Now you'd think people that are going to be condemned by God would be easy to find in the church, right? Not so. They're going to secretly slip in among you. And there are people today who sneak into churches and we don't know them right away. And they start getting into positions where they influence small groups or Bible studies or discussions after church on the patio. And they start talking about a Jesus Christ. And we think, "Well, they're on our team," but the Jesus they're talking about does not have the right or the authority to tell me what to do.
Because they're all trying to muffle this thing with the doctrine of grace. And the Bible says that's a bad heresy. And it comes really from not godly men, but godless men. And God will punish that. It is a New Testament heresy. You want to know why we need to avoid abusing the doctrine of grace, number one? Because it is a damnable heresy. If you're taking sub-point notes, that would be a good one to jot down. The abuse of the doctrine of grace is something the Bible says God will judge and he'll weed out his church one day in judgment.
Speaking of judgment, drop down to verse 14 of the book of Jude. He now quotes this extra-biblical book, the Book of Enoch, which is a well-known book in the first century. And here are the statements that he quotes from Enoch. He says, "Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied about these men." He's already described what kind of people they are. He says, "See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy angels to judge everyone."
Now here it comes. Are you ready? You want to know if God is concerned about our behavior? You want to know if grace gives us permission to be disobedient? Look at this. He says, "Christ is going to come back. The Lord is going to come and he'll convict all the ungodly of the ungodly acts that they have done in the ungodly way. And all the harsh words, ungodly sinners have spoken against him." Do you think he's uptight about ungodliness? Right, he is. And he's coming back to judge it.
And he's never going to take kindly to people that take grace and turn it into some kind of permission slip to say, "Well, God will forgive me. Obedience, not a big deal." That's legalism. "I'm into grace. We're not under law, we're under grace." They don't want to say no. They don't want to be in self-denial. They don't want to restrict their fun or their behavior. And so they want Jesus and they want to have a life that gets them to do whatever they want to do.
Hebrews chapter 10. When, as though this wasn't clear in Jude, people take grace and they say, "Well, this is my permission slip to do what I want to do because God's forgiving and I'm all forgiven. And you know, obedience isn't that big of a deal anymore." If the condemnation of God is coming upon them, that means they're not saved. Am I right? So this is not, you know, a really bad naughty little thing. You Christians, you shouldn't be thinking that way. And God will have to give you a slap on the wrist about it.
This here's my second reason. It proves that we're not regenerate, okay? If we clutch a heretical doctrine of grace, it proves that we're not even saved. To not work out our salvation with fear and trembling proves that we're not saved, you see, because our efforts at sanctification, God-induced, God-oriented, I get it. Those prove the reality of our justification.
And when we hold up a banner or a sign that says, "Well, I'm into grace, I'm not into law, therefore it's not for me to be Mr. Obedient Goody Two Shoes," then what you need to recognize is that simply proves that you're not regenerate, you're not born again, you're not a Christian, you're not going to heaven when you die. He says, "You Christians ought to get together and look what we get together for."
Verse 24. "Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and what good deeds." I know churches today have to apologize for that, right? I mean, we get called legalists or whatever else, but, you know, to have churches gathering together, people so we can help one another do good things, that's godly, biblical. That's right. That's what the church is for.
I mean, we understand grace, but grace does not in any way negate our stimulating and stirring one another on and encouraging each other to do good works. And let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing. But let us encourage one another. He's already told us what for. Toward love and good deeds. And all the more, as you see the day approaching, should the church be working more or less at trying to get us to say no to unrighteousness and yes to righteous behavior?
Well, more, all the more, as you see the day approaching. That's what the doctrine of grace does. It doesn't lower the bar on obedience. It helps us to recognize that in response to our regeneration, God would love us to move hard after sanctification, to be holy as he is holy.
It seems paradoxical to some. Why is it? If grace is about forgiveness and free forgiveness, then it shouldn't really conscript me to any kind of obedience. Well, it does. Our passage in Romans 6 ends with this phrase, "slaves to righteousness." Why? Because grace is not antithetical to obedience. Grace contains the call to be obedient. We don't do this to be accepted. We do this because we are accepted.
That is what grace motivates us and conscripts us to do. I know that's a strong word, but the word "slave" is a strong word too, is it not? We're bound to this by grace. Grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness, and it calls us to live upright and godly lives. And in the present age, that's what grace is all about. To abuse it is to somehow lower the bar in obedience and say, "Well, it's all forgiven. Christ died for our sins. It doesn't matter."
It does matter. It matters to God. It matters to the Spirit of grace. It matters to the cross. It matters to the church.
Speaker 1
You're listening to Focal Point as our teacher, Pastor Mike Fabarez, takes a biblical look at God's grace. It's a portion of a series on legalism called "But What About Grace?" You know, so many in our churches today struggle with either being too lenient or too strident when it comes to following God's commands. This study presents the God-honoring balance.
To hear this broadcast again or listen to the full three-day expanded message, go to focalpointradio.org. Obedient, God-pleasing service is not the same thing as judgmental legalism. We want to focus on the former without crossing into the latter. And really, this is a matter of the heart. Are you motivated by a desire to bring life and hope or death and condemnation? All godly acts of service are initiated by the mission of Jesus to reconcile the world to God through His sacrifice. When you stop and think about it, this first act of sacrificial service makes it possible for us to participate in that life-giving process.
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And did you know? Just by letting us know you're listening today, you'll be helping to reach your community with biblical truth. We focus our funds toward communities with active listeners, so step out and be counted today. When you do, we'll send you a free foldout from our friends at Rose Publishing called "What the Bible Says About Money." Request it today by calling 888-320-5885 or go to focalpointradio.org. We can't wait to hear from you.
I'm Dave Droue. So glad you could join us today. Pastor Mike Fabarez returns to our study on contentment after the weekend, so be sure to come back Monday for Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.
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