Quotes & Sayings About Legalism

No man is such a legalist as the good Secularist. — G.K. Chesterton

Most moms and dads think they are either the best or the worst parents in the world. Both are wrong. — Kevin DeYoung

Legalism is looking to something besides Jesus Christ in order to be acceptable and clean before God. — Timothy Keller

There is a gap between our love for the gospel and our love for godliness. This must change. It's not pietism, legalism, or fundamentalism to take holiness seriously. It's the way of all those who have been called to a holy calling by a holy God. — Kevin DeYoung

Absolute excellence is rarely to be found in any legislation. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Ecclesiastes 7:20 clearly sounds the futility of legalism: There is not a righteous man on earth / who does what is right and never sins. — Beth Moore

Apart from our union with Christ every effort to imitate Christ, no matter how noble and inspired at the outset, inevitably leads to legalism and spiritual defeat. But once you understand the doctrine of union with Christ, you see that God doesn't ask us to attain to what we're not. He only calls us to accomplish what already is. The pursuit of holiness is not a quixotic effort to do just what Jesus did. It's the fight to live out the life that has already been made alive in Christ. — Kevin DeYoung

We live in an age so legalistic, we find it hard to imagine someone wanting to obey their God simply because they love their God. — Criss Jami

Legalism always breeds compliance over purpose. — Ravi Zacharias

Innovation is the lifeblood of an organization. Knowing how to lead and work with creative people requires knowledge and action that often goes against the typical organizational structure. Protect unusual people from bureaucracy and legalism typical of organizations. — Max De Pree

Jesus Christ lived a radical, counter-cultural life. He obeyed God the Father and transformed the world. He overcame the power of the enemy. Jesus relentlessly resisted sin, opposed legalism, and confronted hypocrisy. He loved unconditionally, he forgave freely, and he sacrificed himself completely. He spoke the truth boldly, exhibited humility, and lived with — David Fiorazo

Rather than trusting God, many will doggedly hold onto the belief that there is a divinely-designed formula or biblical methodology that can ensure their child's salvation, and then guarantee the child's sanctification. That debatable belief often leads to finding special methods in Scripture that come with a promise of success. Soon, though, the parents are no longer trusting God, because they no longer need to - they are trusting the methods instead. Those methods, then, can too easily become rules, and then legalism, and then a reliance on works that replaces a life of faith. — Clay Clarkson

People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated. — D. A. Carson

Today's zealots are mostly those pretending to be anti-religious. — Criss Jami

According to Aquinas, effort may not be the best measure of our virtue. — Jen Pollock Michel

Legalism is when we try to obtain the result of obedience by our own means and strength. It is self-righteousness, as opposed to God's righteousness covering us, and the two are as different as spirit and flesh. — Kelly Minter

Do we use the Word of God only as a cue card to commandeer our external behavior? — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

We have a crippling tendency to forget what God has done for us. For a while, we're humbled. Then, if we do not guard our hearts and minds, we begin to think we must have done something right for God to have been so good to us. Therein lies another road to captivity. It is the road of legalism. — Beth Moore

Also, unless you critique moralism, many irreligious people won't know the difference between moralism and what you're offering. The way to get antinomians to move away from lawlessness is to distinguish the gospel from legalism. Why? Because modern and post-modern people have been rejecting Christianity for years thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism. Non-Christians will always automatically hear gospel presentations as appeals to become moral and religious, unless in your preaching you use the good news of grace to deconstruct legalism. Only if you show them there's a difference - that what they really rejected wasn't real Christianity at all - will they even begin to consider Christianity.2 — Tullian Tchividjian

Legalism is nothing but a leader's way of avoiding suffering. — Gene Edwards

[There are, in us] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength, death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of everything that paganism, naturalism and legalism pin their trust on. — William James

(Pastor Chuck) Smith told his elders in no uncertain terms that if the church had to turn away young people because of bare feet and clothes that they would be better off ripping up the carpet and replacing the pews with steel folding chairs. — Larry Eskridge

Of course, the idea that a state, any more than a corporation, commits crimes, is a fiction. Crimes always are committed only by persons. While it is quite proper to employ the fiction of responsibility of a state or corporation for the purpose of imposing a collective liability, it is quite intolerable to let such a legalism become the basis of personal immunity. — Robert H. Jackson

Men promise freedom while establishing laws; God promises laws while establishing freedom. — Criss Jami

We must stop using the Bible as though it were a potpourri of inerrant proof-texts by which we can bring people into bondage to our religious traditions ... We must no longer use the Bible as the Pharisees used the Torah when they gave it absolute and final status. Christian biblicism is no different from Jewish legalism. It is the old way of the letter, not the new way of the Spirit. — Robert D. Brinsmead

A sure way to have someone crushed by their doubt is to preach a sermon on how to remove your doubt. — Matt Chandler

It may be better to live under robber barons than omnipotent moral busybodies. — C.S. Lewis

Christianity has always struggled against two pale imitations of itself, each of which seizes on one aspect of the truth and absolutizes it. On the one hand is legalism, which emphasizes the need for separation and distinctive living, for absolute obedience to the law. But legalism lacks the freedom and joy and fullness of life that are key marks of the Christian walk. On the other hand is antinomianism, the attitude that celebrates the freedom of being a Christian. But antinomianism tends to throw off any moral imperatives. — Iain M. Duguid

Rather than experiencing the richness of a dynamic, intimate relationship with the righteous One, you put God in a little box that you can check off your to-do list each week. By settling for rules and religion and feeling pretty good about how much you're doing for the church and those less fortunate, you become blinded to legalism and self-righteousness. — Craig Groeschel

Law will take over because law always carries with it a sense of security and manipulative power. — Richard J. Foster

If thy meditation tends to fill thy note-book with notions, and good sayings, concerning God, and not thy heart with longing after him, and delight in him, for aught I know thy book is as much a Christian as thou (553). — Richard Baxter

Security is by far the city's predominant business. — Ron Suskind

Trying to know God and serve Him before we come to love Him is exhausting. — Beth Moore

If Christ be a fraud, he was among the most peculiar yet brilliant of frauds in saying that only he was the way, the truth, and the life. This is the importance of grace - some people think that simply being nice and not harming others is morality; others think that following rules and tithing are morality. But without Christ, all moral beliefs ultimately boil down to the one sin which perpetually rails against the concept of grace: man's lawful, religious, and futile attempt at establishing his own righteousness. — Criss Jami

We know that to become a Christian we shouldn't try to fix ourselves up, but when it comes to praying we completely forget that. We'll sing the old gospel hymn, "Just as I Am," but when it comes to praying, we don't come just as we are. We try, like adults, to fix ourselves up. Private, personal prayer is one of the last great bastions of legalism. In order to pray like a child, you might need to unlearn the nonpersonal, nonreal praying that you've been taught. — Paul Miller

God is home to us. He is where we were made to be. He is what we were made for. We just forget all that while we are trying to be good and independent. Pretending to be good halts God's movement in our life. Legalism or religion helps us feel better about ourselves, puffs us up, gives us the posture to be critical and judgmental and prideful. Oh, and everything human about us loves that. It feels better to live that way. It feels better to walk independently and all grown-up, not holding hands with your mom on the River Walk when you want to feel cool and like an adult. We want to not need God. — Jennie Allen

Pharisees were the upstanding "conservative evangelical pastors" of their day, strongly convinced of the inerrancy of Scripture and its sufficiency for guidance in every area of life, if only it could be properly interpreted.69 Yet it is precisely such an environment in which a healthy perspective on the Bible can easily give way to legalism. — Craig L. Blomberg

Must we always comment on life? Can it not simply be lived in the reality of Christ's terms of contact with the Father, with joy and peace, fear and love full to the fingertips in their turn, without incessant drawing of lessons and making of rules? — Elisabeth Elliot

Commandments are the railroad tracks on which the life empowered by the love of God poured into the heart by the Holy Spirit runs. Love empowers the engine; law guides the direction. They are mutually interdependent. The notion that love can operate apart from law is a figment of the imagination. It is not only bad theology; it is poor psychology. It has to borrow from law to give eyes to love. — Sinclair B. Ferguson

You didn't learn the Bible as a Fundamentalist. You learned fragments of Old Testament legalism mixed with Behaviorism & Nietzschean ethics — Jeri Massi

Now a theist, he thought he should behave like one, even if it meant him during "the fussy, time-wasting, botheration of it all! the bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing," and, worst of all, the hymns and organ music. — Philip Zaleski

On many occasions I have been asked if I think persecution will come to the Western church. My answer might surprise you. I believe that if you find yourself enslaved inside a controlling church structure of legalism and bondage, then you are already being persecuted! So many Christians seem impossibly distracted from hearing God's voice. Instead of listening to that still, small voice that brings true peace and joy, they blindly follow the voices of mainstream religion. The worst kind of persecution for a Christian is when you are separated from the joy and presence of the Holy Spirit. — Brother Yun

Religions find lasting utility in terms of prescription or parameter, rules for the conduct of human affairs. — Ron Suskind

Authority is essential to society, but what we called in King Lear "transcendental" authority, with an executive ruler on top, depends on the ruler's understanding of equity. If he hasn't enough of such understanding, authority becomes a repressive legalism. Legalism of this sort really descends from what is called in the Bible the knowledge of good and evil. This was forbidden knowledge, because, as we'll see, it's not a genuine knowledge at all: it can't even tell us anything about good and evil. This kind of knowledge came into the world along with the discovery of self-conscious sex, when Adam and Eve knew that they were naked, and the thing that repressive legalism ever since has been most anxious to repress is the sexual impulse. — Northrop Frye

A low view of law always produces legalism; a high view of law makes a person a seeker after grace. — John Gresham Machen

Without the infinite personal God, all a person can do, as Nietzsche points out, is to make systems. In today's speech we would call them gameplans. A person can erect some sort of structure, some type of limited frame in which he lives, shutting himself up in that frame and not looking beyond it. — Francis A. Schaeffer

Moral stupidity comes in two different forms: relativism and legalism. Relativism sees no principles, only people; legalism sees no people, only principles. — Peter Kreeft

Opportunities have often felt like obligations to me. — Kevin DeYoung

Although he didn't care much about any subject for its own sake, he cared a great deal about marks (grades or comparisons). — C.S. Lewis

Legalism insists on conformity to manmade religious rules and requirements, which are often unspoken but are nevertheless very real ... There are far too many instances within Christendom where our traditions and rules are, in practice, more important than God's commands. — Jerry Bridges

It is no wonder humanity has long preferred legalism, which involves much cleaner territory. Give me a rule any day. Give me a clear "in" and "out" because boundaries make me feel safe. If I can clearly mark the borders, then I am assured of my insider status - the position I feel compelled to defend, the one thing I can be sure of. I want to stand before God having gotten it right. — Jen Hatmaker

The main thing between you and God is not so much your sins; it's your damnable good works. — John H. Gerstner

What are Christians known for? Outsiders think our moralizing, our condemnations, and our attempts to draw boundaries around everything. Even if these standards are accurate and biblical, they seem to be all we have to offer. And our lives are a poor advertisement for the standards. We have set the gameboard to register lifestyle points; then we are surprised to be trapped by our mistakes. The truth is we have invited the hypocrite image. — David Kinnaman

Through Jesus, you now have freedom to be the unique creation God designed you to be. You don't have to rely on anyone's opinion of you to find your worth. You are free to pursue Christ with abandon, to throw off the shackles of legalism and let God's glory shine through you. — Daniel Darling

In America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom. — Alexis De Tocqueville

it is extraordinary how few Christians make any concerted effort to keep the commandment of sabbath rest. We have somehow twisted Jesus' pithy rebuke of the Pharisees, "The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27) from a warning against legalism into a license for neglect. We seem to forget that in the very next breath Jesus asserts, "so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath" (v. 28), thus asserting his lordship over - not exemption from or indifference to - this very good gift from God to his image bearers. — Andy Crouch

The onslaught of scruples is a problem well attested in the spiritual life, especially among the young, where religious observances must be done perfectly to achieve a certain result. — Philip Zaleski

She was just too curious to stay in a self-imposed mental straight-jacket for very long. — David Brooks

You do not become a master musician by playing just as you please, by imagining that learning the scales is sheer legalism and bondage! No, true freedom in any area of life is the consequence of regular discipline. It is no less true of the life of prayer. — Sinclair B. Ferguson

Saint Paul lives in the Christian imagination as the chief sponsor of Christian contempt for Jews, the avatar of law versus grace, flesh versus spirit, works versus faith, Moses versus Jesus, the Old Covenant versus the New. This brutal dichotomizing was attributed to Paul most influentially by Martin Luther, who used a perceived Jewish legalism, materialism, and obsession with externals as stand-ins for the decadence of his nemesis, the pope. "Because the Papists, like the Jews," he wrote, "insist that anyone wishing to be saved must observe their ceremonies, they will perish like the Jews."39 After Luther, both Protestants and Catholics read Paul as the preeminent tribune of Jewish corruption - a misreading that had terrible consequences, especially in Luther's Germany, where the Volk were defined in ontological opposition to Juden. Paul's — James Carroll

God's standard of truth entailed more than merely "not lying." In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "You have heard it said ... but I say unto you." Jesus took the Old Testament laws to a deeper level of meaning and obedience, from the "letter of the Law" to the "Spirit of the Law." Following the letter of the law was the dead "religion" of which Barth, among others, had written. It was man's attempt to deceive God into thinking one was being obedient, which was a far greater deception. God always required something deeper than religious legalism. — Eric Metaxas

Calvinism, in comparison, appears to be more closely related to the hard legalism and the active enterprise of bourgeois-capitalistic entrepreneurs. Finally, — Max Weber

Conceit makes the way God deals with me personally the binding standard for others. — Oswald Chambers

You win over people just like you win over a dog. You see a dog passing down the street with an old bone in his mouth. You don't grab the bone from him and tell him it's not good for him. He'll growl at you. It's the only thing he has. But you throw a big fat lamb chop in front of him, and he's going to drop that bone and pick up the lamb chop, his tail wagging to beat the band. And you've got a friend. Instead of going around grabbing bones from people ... I'm going to throw them some lamb chops. Something with real meat and life in it. I'm going to tell them about New Beginnings. — David Wilkerson

In the end, only God can see the heart of an individual and distinguish the difference between legalistic deadweight and the passion of holy solemnity. — Criss Jami

Abiding time is extravagant daily time with Jesus. This extravagant time is the center of abiding. Not legalism, not dry discipline, not manufactured spirituality, but joyous soaking in the presence of Jesus, lavish spending of time with Him who is most precious, Him from whom all life flows. In a world that is over-connected yet lonely, frantically busy yet accomplishing little of eternal value, super-informed but egregiously ignorant on what really matters, abiding gives Jesus the best of our time, in which He leads us to the best of times. — Missionaries Who Love The Arab World

Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us. — Tullian Tchividjian

There prevails still a subtle form of legalism which would rob the Saviour of his crown of glory, earned by the cross, and would make of him a second Moses, offering us the stones of the law instead of the life-bread of the gospel. — Geerhardus Vos

So many of those who take Christ into the world, whether it be it's missionaries or artists, are tied by those who look over their shoulders. There is a lot of peer pressure within churches and Christian movements to dot all the i's and cross all the t's of a precise and perfect faith. — Steve Stockman

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear. — Marquis De Sade

The only way into a ministry that sees people's lives change, that brings joy and power and electricity without authoritarianism, is through preaching the gospel to deconstruct both legalism and relativism. — Timothy Keller

Only Christ can free us from the prison of legalism, and then only if we are willing to be freed. — Madeleine L'Engle

People will do the basest things on account of their so-called honor. — T.H. White

We're very comfortable thinking, good parenting in, good children out. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

Legalism breeds a sense of entitlement that turns us into complainers. — Tullian Tchividjian

The road itself tells us far more than signs do. — Tom Vanderbilt

I had escaped the snare of certitude that I welcomed so avidly at first and entered, via the name of Jesus, the wide and comprehensive company of Jesus. — Eugene H. Peterson

Moralism and its stepchild, legalism, reduce the love story of God for his people to the observance of burdensome duties and oppressive laws. — Brennan Manning

Historians Will and Ariel Durant have written in The Story of Civilization: The Reformation that at the time of Luther, "a gallon of beer per day was the usual allowance per person, even for nuns." This may help to explain why beer figures so prominently in the life and writings of the great reformer. He was German, after all, and he lived at a time when beer was the European drink of choice. Moreover, having been freed from what he considered to be a narrow and life-draining religious legalism, he stepped into the world ready to enjoy its pleasures to the glory of God. For Luther, beer flowed best in a vibrant Christian life. — Stephen Mansfield

Believers have just as much to fear from legalism as from waywardness. The first detracts from the beauty of the message, while the second mars it content. — Max Anders

We also have a new motivation to battle with sin: we're no longer under law, but under grace. This is counterintuitive. People think that law and legalism will best motivate us to strive to do what's right. But it's grace that enables us to live for God. "For — Tim Chester

Legalism is a problem in the church, but so is anti-nomianism. Granted, I don't hear anyone saying, 'Let's continue in sin that grace may abound'. That's the worse form of antinomianism. But strictly speaking, antinomianism simply means no-law, and some Christians have very little place for the law in their pursuit of holiness. — Kevin DeYoung

Thus, dear friends, I have said it clearly enough, and I believe you ought to understand it and not make liberty a law ... — Martin Luther

I can turn every "is" into "ought ". — Kevin DeYoung

We make a big mistake when we conclude that the law is the answer to bad behavior. In fact, the law alone stirs up more of such behavior. People get worse, not better, when you lay down the law. To be sure, the Spirit does use both God's law and God's gospel in our sanctification. But the law and the gospel do very different things. — Tullian Tchividjian

Jesus does what legalism can never do: he gives us a new heart and a new spirit. Without — Tim Chester

The Word and prayer are inseparable. When one engages in prayer without the Word, it can lead to mysticism; when the Word is used without prayer, it can lead to legalism, intellectualism and coldness of heart. — Richard A. Burr

We suggest our new brothers and sisters who are somewhat freaky in dress, hair, and general appearance to ask the Lord in prayer for a balance. We do feel that beads, bells, and various astrological signs, along with the "no bra" philosophy of the Hip scene should be forsaken. We do not believe that a shave and haircut make a Christian any more than long hair and sandals. — David Hoyt

A legalist is not someone who places divine law above all else. A legalist is someone who places human law above all else. — Rob Rienow

One primary enemy of the Gospel - legalism - comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they're told, maintaining the standards, and so on (you could call this "front-door legalism"). Other people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (you could call this "back-door legalism"). — Tullian Tchividjian

Five obstacles block our access to the benefits God wants for us: Unbelief, which hinders knowing God Pride, which prevents us from glorifying God Idolatry, which keeps us from being satisfied with God Prayerlessness, which blocks our experience of God's peace Legalism, which stops our enjoyment of God's presence — Beth Moore

Christianity is at its purest a philosophy about a person, Jesus Christ, and at its dirtiest a philosophy about requirements and law. — Criss Jami

To dream in doctrines, how tidy! — John Le Carre

Law without reason is criminal. — Criss Jami

At its heart, legalism is a desire to appear holy. It is trying to be justified before men and not God. — David Wilkerson

I believe that secularism is not the enemy of spirituality. Our spirits are in fact secular and free. But the enemy of your spirit is materialism which produces legalism. People scramble for the "perfect law" in order fix everything, while failing to see that law only points towards what is material. And so, people find themselves going around in a circle that will never end. The key is to break away from that circle. You have to begin focusing your attention onto what is inside you and what is inside everybody else. This will in turn produce common sense, intuition, and understanding. Then comes strength. — C. JoyBell C.

We live Law to ourselves. Our reason is our Law. — John Milton

The secret impetus behind legalism is its competitiveness. The point is not just to win: it's to beat everyone else. — Mark Buchanan

Our religious institutions are not giving very many men access to credible encounters with the holy or even with their own wholeness. We largely give men mandates, signposts, scaffolding and appealing images that tend to create religious identity and boundaries, but from the outside. — Richard Rohr

To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism. — Thomas Merton