Analysis of Legalism
W. Carl Ketcherside
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This is a significant declaration. From it we learn four things: (1) The covenant consisted of that which was announced orally to all Israel; (2) It embraced the ten commandments with their preamble; (3) It was written upon two stone tablets; (4) It was limited to the content of the oral message which was subsequently engraved upon the two tablets, for the Lord added no more. When they had heard the words of God the people were so frightened that the heads of the tribes approached Moses and besought him, "Go near, and hear all that the Lord our God will say; and speak to us all that the Lord our God will speak to you; and we will hear and do it."
The Lord agreed to this, and instructed Moses to go and tell the people to return to their tents. However, he told Moses, "You stand here by me, and I will tell you all the commandments, and the statutes and ordinances which you shall teach them." There was a difference between the covenant which established their relationship as the elect of God; and the statutes, commandments and ordinances, which regulated them within that relationship. The apostle recognized this when he wrote, "They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises" (Romans 9:4).
The covenant made at Sinai, by which national theocratic status was conferred, was of such a nature, and to fulfill such purposes, as to require a definite written legal code to accomplish its design. The law is personified as a child conductor or custodian (Gal. 3:24), and as a guardian or trustee (Gal. 4:2). Those who were under its jurisdiction were regarded as children, or minors, and thus possessed of no more freedom or independence than slaves (Gal. 4:1). Now, just as one would not intrust children to the care of another who was immature, so the law had to be complete from the inception of the nation. Accordingly, the Lord revealed the law in its fullness--precepts, command-
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The epistles addressed to the followers of Jesus were written to individuals or communities as circumstances arose which called for them. Some were letters of thanks for favors received; others were letters of correction, admonition, and warning. One was written as a baptismal certificate for a runaway slave and to make a room reservation. In others occur personal notes as to the health and status of the writer, a prescription to correct stomach distress in the recipient, a request to pick up and return an overcoat, or to bring along books and writing materials. These letters do not always contain all the writers wished to say. "Though I had much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink, but I hope to come to see you, and talk face to face" (2 John 12; 3 John 13). "About the other things I will give directions when I come" (1 Cor. 11:34)). This is not the language of legalism.
No congregation had access to all of these epistles for more than a hundred years. There was a considerable dispute as to which ones should be included in the sacred canon, and they were not collected, collated and compiled until a century after the royal priesthood was instituted. The primitive community of God had nothing to weld and cement it together but the fellowship of the Spirit. It was not a community based upon a written code; it was a community composed of believers in the Living Word. Its rule of action was a personal faith in a personal Lord; its motivating force was love. The governing message of ancient Israel consisted of the words of the law written in a book by the hand of Moses (Deut. 31:24). Not so, with us, "For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." Such a message befits a covenant graven not upon tablets of stone but upon tablets of the heart.
It is important that we understand the nature of a system of law as opposed to a system of faith for justification. Failing to do so, we will but substitute one law for another, and this is a fatal error Any person who seeks to be justified by law must keep such law to perfection. The slightest deviation from it brings condemnation. One cannot set up in his heart a system of justification by law and then expect God's grace to rescue him in his failures, for grace operates through faith, and not through law. If we are now under
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The question naturally arises, "Why then the law?" It is not a new query, being first propounded in Galatians 3:19. The inspired answer is found at the same place. "It was added because of transgressions, till the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made." But justification did not come by the law, "for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose" (Gal. 2:21). It is plainly said, "By works of the law shall no one be justified" (Gal. 2:16), and again, "Now it is evident that no man is justified before God by the law" (Gal. 3:11). The law was powerless to make alive. It could only, in its ultimate, produce death. Since justification by law demands absolute conformity to the minutest degree, and since no man could to this extent fulfill the law's demands, "the very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me" (Rom. 7:10). "For if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law" (Gal. 4:21).
The law arouses carnal desires or passions. We must deal with man as he is. Filled with curiosity, the urge to experiment, and the ambition to learn by experience, that which is forbidden often lures him toward destruction. The very commandment intended to restrain all too often incites. The law identifies sin, points it out, and locates it as surely as a "Wet Paint" sign on a park bench warns the passerby. The apostle says, "If it had not been for the law I should not have known sin. I should not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.' But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness." The tragic feature is that the penalty is death, for there is no mercy in law only justice! "For sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me" (Rom. 7:11). This is the inexorable fate of the legalist. He cannot escape it. His own testimony as to his imperfection will condemn him.
It would do all of us good to prayerfully, thankfully, and tearfully ponder the tremendous force in the following. "While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 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). I take it that the "old written code" was the law given through Moses. But I am
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It is here that the legalist, motivated by fear and trepidation, childishly depending upon fences and barriers to mark the bounds beyond which he dare not walk, timidly enquires, "But will we not lose a lot of brethren if they become convinced they are not under law?" Such a question only reveals the emptiness of his own soul. He is not so much afraid of what will happen to others. He dare not trust himself. In reality, he is affirming that Jesus is inferior to law; that the magnetic power of the divine example is weaker than a code of jurisprudence. The sad feature of it all is that such a person turns back in theory to the former dispensation and voluntarily seeks to place himself again under "guardians and trustees." Of such the apostle wrote, "Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?" (Gal. 3:3).
One will continue in the apostolic teaching as he learns it. He will study and do research therein all his life. He will alter and amend his life as he finds truths he had not discovered. He will not approach the scriptures as a lawyer goes to his statute books, but as an eager disciple to a school taught by a loving Master. Nor will he beat and belabor other students who are not so far advanced as himself. He will regard all who seek to learn from the great teacher as his fellow-disciples.
He will search what is written that he may approach closer to the ideals of Jesus, not to castigate others. Thus it can be said, "And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." Is it too much to say that "the new life of the Spirit is intended and designed to "change us into his likeness" and that, as we walk and live with him, we rise from one degree of glory to another? Many a man who boasts of his knowledge of the Bible, and his ability to quote whole chapters, reveals by his life that he has never really found Jesus. Many an attorney pleading law before the bar is inferior in moral integrity. It is not "a new law" but "a new life of the Spirit" that makes men really free.
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The law could not give life. It could and did bring knowledge of sin. "For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law since through the law comes knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20) The law could and did bring wrath. "For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there is no transgression" (Rom. 4:15). It made nothing complete or perfect. "On the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness (for the law made nothing perfect)" (Heb. 7:18, 19). These features did not militate against the law fulfilling its assigned role. "Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith" (Gal. 4:23,24).
I am personally exercised in this matter because of my own culpability. Many who now regard themselves as administrators of divine law have been influenced by my own past teaching and example. For years I regarded no one as God's child, or my brother, "who walked not with us." Faithfulness to God was measured by loyalty to the party. The milk of human kindness curdled in our hearts, humanitarian love was squeezed into a narrow compress embracing only those affiliated with the party. "The brotherhood" was composed of those who took the right paper, or could obtain clearance from the right key man. All others were outside, regarded as apostates, pagans, and unbelievers. They were treated, or mistreated, as pariahs and untouchables. We were the church, the kingdom of heaven, the elect of God. Such was the bitter caste system of our factional creation.
All of this proceeded from a false philosophy, a rationalization which was Judaistic in concept, a belief that God had merely switched to a new law for justification in this age. Convinced that we were still under law I sought to be "educated according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as you all are this day." There is a sense of pride in being right, in knowing that all who disagree are either sectarians or hobbyists; in realizing that those who dare oppose you are fighting against God because they oppose you. It brings an inward glow of satisfaction to realize that you are sound in the faith, a defender of the truth, while all others are dishonest, insincere, disloyal and unworthy of notice. "My manner of life from my youth, spent from the beginning among my own nation, is known by all. They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee." There are Pharisees among the spiritual seed of Abraham, as there were among his fleshly seed. I know whereof I speak!
But I now know that Jesus did not die for a party in the realm of Christendom. No faction is the one body. The members of no exclusive fragment constitute "the brotherhood." No splinter party is "the loyal church." This is a figment of minds distorted by ignorance of God's purpose.
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Even the divine law, ordained by angels in the hands of an intermediary, was "weak through the flesh." And all law, either human or divine, must fall into that same category. The only hope of the fulfillment of the divine purpose, is for fleshly men, through some great transforming experience, to rise above the pale of law, to transcend the very domain of law, that is to be on a purely spiritual plane, and not in the flesh. How can this be possible? "But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God really dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him" (Rom. 8:9)
Fellowship and unity present no problems to the Spirit of God. They are problems only to those who seek to solve them by law. There is one Spirit. If that Spirit dwells in me, He will seek out all others in whom He dwells, and being thus united in one Spirit, we can work out the knotty problems of interpretation. The legalist disdains and discards the divine helper. To him the holy Spirit is the written word, and his only approach to unity is through debate and argument. But what saith the word? "So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind" (Phil. 2:1, 2). Note that agreement and full accord do not come by laying down the law to each other, but by encouragement in Christ, the incentive of love, fellowship in the Spirit, affection and sympathy. Fellowship in the Spirit is not a fruit of agreement, but precedes and produces it. The legalist always reverses this process. He demands that we be of the same mind and in full accord (with his position) as a prelude to fellowship, but God establishes a fellowship or participation in the Spirit first, and in that atmosphere we labor to complete or grow toward a unity of mind and heart. We have been training lawyers, instead of developing disciples!
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That we be not misunderstood, let us give a clearcut case of how the legalistic spirit operates in defiance of the intent of heaven. Remember that this spirit always first places an interpretation upon some portion of revelation, then exalts the interpretation to the status of revelation. Our blessed Lord, upon the night of his betrayal, instituted the Lord's Supper. Since the act of eating and drinking together was considered a visible manifestation of fellowship by the world of mankind; in conformity with that view, he took bread, blessed it, gave it to his disciples and told them to eat it. In like manner he took the cup, and having given thanks, told them to drink of it. A supper required two acts, eating and drinking. These require two ingredients, a solid and a liquid. The solid selected was bread, the liquid was the fruit of the vine. The divine requirement was to eat bread and drink the fruit of the vine in communion or fellowship, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he come."
It was not the eating and drinking which made them members of one body, but because they were members of one body, the covenantal community, they ate and drank together. This did not create fellowship or establish them in the fellowship. It demonstrated that they were in the fellowship because they jointly participated in the body and blood of Jesus. "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the same loaf." One purpose of Jesus in giving the Supper was to guard the fellowship against disintegration, by making it possible for his disciples to come together, or assemble as a church (1 Con 11:17,18). Is it not peculiar that men have taken the very ordinance given to exemplify our fellowship and used it to destroy the communion it was intended to preserve? What an appalling and tragic picture it is to see the disciples of Jesus quarrelling over how to eat and drink, driving each other forth, creating factions and multiplying schisms, in defiance of the very purpose of the Supper!
Jesus gave no orders as to what kind of bread must be used, or how it should be broken or served. He gave no law as to the state of the fruit of the vine, or how it should be distributed. His only commands respected action--they were to eat the bread, drink the fruit of the vine, and do so in remembrance of Him. But men are not content to allow it to remain so. Those who depend upon law for justification must make laws where God has not made them. To them, the only way to serve acceptably is to serve legally. They must thus prescribe in every minute detail. Those who do not conform are not "loyal" nor "faithful" to God. These brethren are not, by nature, mean, uncharitable, or illiberal. They are not so much vindictive as they are victimized by their philosophy of salvation by law through partisan conformity, rather than by grace through faith. But this does not negate the terrible butchery in which they indulge on the body of Jesus. Those who first killed our Lord, said, "We have a
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There are those who make the law that the bread must be unleavened. They would actually refuse to eat with children of the Father who use leavened bread. They reason that Jesus chose unleavened bread, then make this a law. But Jesus did not choose unleavened bread. He had no choice. Being a Jew, he simply took the kind of bread in common use in every Jewish home at that particular time, the bread which was their staple fare for seven days. And the reason the Jews ate it was to remind them of the haste in which their fathers fled from Egypt, their speedy exit allowing no time for the yeast to rise. Not once does the sacred scripture use the word azumos, unleavened bread, in connection with the Lord's Supper. It is always ortos, a loaf, whether leavened or not. Then to draw apart from those who use leavened bread, to refuse to eat with them, and to count them as unfaithful to God, is to create "an unleavened bread party" on the basis of a man-made law! "Who made thee a judge and a lawgiver?" "These are they which set up divisions, worldly, having not the Spirit."
But this is merely "the beginning of sorrows." Congregations of believers have been riven into splinters even over the method of breaking the bread. Leaders have meticulously searched and scrutinized their "law" to determine the exact technical procedure to be followed. Like the scribes of old they have searched the scriptures, and built up traditions out of their interpretations. Some have concluded that the one who presides at the table must break the loaf in two parts before it is distributed. Others have contended fiercely that each participant must break off his own portion as it is passed to him. Parties have been formed, challenges issued, and debates held. A sin-sick world has been treated to the sorry and sordid spectacle of a house filled with bitter partisans, separated physically by the center aisle, and in heart by their legalistic interpretations, fighting over how to break off a piece of bread representing the unity of believers in one body. In my library at this time is a book containing propositions for public debate, offered to the world as if salvation depended upon the settling of such technical and labored questions. Read these.
1. For a church to be Scriptural in its Communion service, the one serving at the table should, after thanks, break off a small portion of the loaf and eat it, before the other disciples partake. We affirm.
2. For a church to be Scriptural in its Communion Service, the one serving at the table should, after thanks, break the loaf in two at (or near) the middle and both pieces should be passed to other disciples. We deny.
In such a discussion both disputants use identically the same scriptures. They quote the same passages. Each claims his own interpretation is the only correct one. Each demands that his interpretation be accepted as the holy will of God. All who do not concur with this canon and subscribe to this rubric are branded, labeled and laughed out of court in scornful derision. They are driven out into the cold, unwept, unhonored, and unsung. This is the frightful length to which men will go under the guise of orthodoxy. They call such action "contending for the faith once delivered to the saints." This is the effect of legalism, carried to its logical culmination, used to destroy and not to save!
In some cities there are "fermented wine" and "unfermented wine" parties. These have nothing in common except their zeal to fight and destroy each other. Childishly they call each other "fermented wine brethren" or "grape juice brethren." But the term "brethren" is drowned either in the wine or the juice. Both search the scriptures diligently with the supreme purpose of bolstering their partisan positions. Men who know nothing of Greek and who could not tell a Hebrew character from a chicken track in the mud, learnedly sound off about the originals for wine. They batter and attack each other with such
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Others are variously designated as "cups brethren" or "one-cuppers" depending upon whether the assembled saints drink in memory of the Lord from one container for all, or one for each. Again the partisan champions all quote the same passages. All force the entire gamut of holy writings to pay tribute to their respective views and the positions they uphold. From the figurative "cups" mentioned by the prophets, to the incidental reference of the Samaritan woman regarding drinking from the well of Jacob, there is a great furore created, and the fellowship of the saints is hinged upon metonymical usages, with a goodly number of those present in debate, neither knowing or caring what the term means, since they have already chosen up sides, and are backing "our preacher." All of this is the result of a false concept of our relationship to God, a failure to recognize the people of God as a covenantal community of believers, and an attempt to convert it into a regimented combine in which original thinking is treason and a divergent opinion is the unpardonable sin.
I can eat the bread and drink the cup with my brethren regardless of their modes or methods, means or manners, because my approach to God is through Christ Jesus, not through law! I will not disown a single one of God's children because of my personal opinion or interpretation. If one group sets me at nought because I love all the rest and regard them as brethren, I shall not be tempted to hate those who thus judge. I will still love them in spite of their action, kindled though it may be by the narrow spirit of partisanship. My evaluation of brotherhood is upon the basis of common Fatherhood. I shall not allow myself to put it upon any other basis.
It is in this spirit I now propose to examine the new covenant which establishes our relationship in this dispensation. It is my conviction, that the new covenant is no more written with pen and ink than it is upon two tablets of stone. It is written on fleshy tables of the heart with the Spirit of the living God. All whose hearts are so inscribed are a part of the covenantal community which God purchased with the blood of His Son. There is not a saved person on earth outside of this community. It is the one body. Besides it, there is no
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Until our next issue when we shall investigate the nature of the covenant which produces the community of saints, we simply say, "Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love undying."