Dewey owns his Phariseeism. But where did it come from? No one, not even Dewey, wakes up one morning and decides within themselves that from that day forward, they will be a Pharisee.
The root of Phariseeism is legalism. Many think that these two things are the same. But as I study legalism, I believe Phariseeism is merely the practical outworking of legalism.
Not all legalism is about ‘earning ones salvation’. That would be the doctrinal problem with it, the legalism in one’s head. But not all legalism is motivated by wanting to earn salvation itself. A Calvinistic legalist would know better than to think such nonsense.
Legalism in conservative circles
For many legalists, it’s more about their understanding concerning sanctification, and the fervent lifestyle that expresses their ideas about it. It is a legalism of the heart. This legalism is held by those who sit under conservative preaching. They believe that their understanding of sanctification is the meaning behind everything that they hear, regardless of how it may be qualified by the minister.
Some legalists perpetually search for a more ‘conservative’ and ‘purer’ preaching to sit under when the preaching they currently have no longer satisfies their world-and-life view, or no longer helps them stretch their standards to showcase their version of sanctification.
They will also become resistant when the preaching points out their legalism, and calls them to repent and put it away. This draws from them the charge of encouraging works-righteousness. But in many reformed and conservative churches this call to repent rarely happens for the simple reason that no one likes to shut down the zealousness that legalists exhibit.
The innocent beginning
So, as you may have guessed, legalism starts out with good intentions and a committed desire to honor God as found in Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” It begins with a very good thing: zeal. Accidental Pharisees, Larry Osborne, Zondervan 2012, chap 1.
Legalists are usually God’s biggest fans. They are the ones advocating obedience to God’s commands. In fact, they go the extra mile with their obedience. Some call them 200%ers, they are living examples of great personal discipline. They keep, and promote keeping the law.
Now Jesus never rebuked the Pharisees for following the law. Jesus even commended their law-keeping. He held it as the gold standard which one would have to surpass if one wanted to rely on obedience to the law to gain salvation. The surpassing of which Christ did accomplish! So, it is not law-keeping itself that makes one a legalist. The entire New Testament is rife with passages that encourage and commend law-keeping. To accuse those who encourage law-keeping of legalism is to show that one does not understand legalism.
R. C. Sproul Sr. on legalism
Legalism manifests itself in many subtle ways. According to R.C. Sproul Sr., “legalism involves abstracting the law of God from its original context. Legalists conceive of Christianity as being a series of do’s and don’ts, a set of moral principles”. One form of legalism is where one is concerned merely with the keeping of God’s law as an end in itself. Another form of legalism divorces the letter of the law from the spirit of the law. It obeys the letter but violates the spirit. There is a third form but that will be in a later post. From Ligonier.org
Sinclair Ferguson on legalism
Ferguson teaches that legalism goes back to Satan, the supreme legalist. He writes, “… when we consider Legalism, … we seek … to undo what Satan did in the Garden of Eden when he persuaded Man that God was not only a God of moral law, written in man’s being, of [a] positive law expressed in the vocalized commandments of God; but … that the God whom they had come to know and worship, was a God of essentially legalistic and binding tendencies, of narrow and restrictive spirit, shutting man into a way of self-merited justification, with no gracious promise.” The Marrow Controversy part 2, Sinclair Ferguson, P15. Emphasis Ferguson’s.
Ferguson goes on to say that by making God’s law concerning the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil seem unreasonable, Satan misrepresented the original command in Gen 3:1. Satan was “seeking to persuade Adam and Eve that the God who reigns in glory above, is a God who seeks to bind his creatures with a spirit of legal framework in their relationship to him. By this misrepresentation, Satan perverts the free grace of God.” P15.
Ferguson continues
“And so, with this persuasion of Legalism, … the narrow, restricted, restrictive, legalistic heart of God, as Satan sought to pervert it. … was the matter of a legal frame and bondage to a legal spirit. Because at the end of the day, … it is Satan who is a legalist … it is Satan who has taken the gracious promise of God in the Garden of Eden, and turned it into what has sometimes been regarded as the baneful and malignant influences of a covenant of works; [instead of] … a gracious promise of life, a covenant of life. And how often Satan has come … in what has become known as the covenant of works, [and thus presenting] a restrictive and a restricting and a legalistic God”. P15.
“Legalism either distorts the free grace of God in the gospel, or distorts the true nature of God’s grace in the law, or even fails to place the gracious law of God in its proper place in redemptive history”. ~ Sinclair Ferguson.
According to Sproul and Ferguson, legalists of the heart do not understand the covenant of grace, Satan’s temptation, nor the Fall itself. I say perhaps not the antithesis either.
The grace of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
Clarity is found from HCH in volume 1 of Unfolding Covenant History, RFPA, 2000. We read on page 117, “the blessing of this Tree lay in Adam and Eve freely abstaining from it, whereas the blessing of the Tree of Life lay in their freely partaking of it”.
According to HCH, the “covenant did not consist in the commandment attached to the Tree”. P123. It was no contract, nor ‘covenant of works’; (which would be a legal framework). “The covenant bond came into existence by virtue of man’s very creation”. P123.
Also, “Adam already truly knew good and evil by experience, and as taught by God; he could love the good and hate the evil as God’s covenant friend”. P122. HCH says that “by abstaining from this Tree, Adam exercised that other, higher, spiritual side of his life. He would obey in loving friendship and service of the Lord his God, and thus truly live”. P119.
The true purpose of this Tree was for the antithesis; “God willed that Adam would enjoy the covenant [through a life of service] by way of antithesis”. P123. This established the principle of man’s existence … “that man does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord”, Deut. 8:3b.
All above emphasis mine. Chapters 5-6 are very helpful!
Ferguson explains the nature of legalism.
“The dictionary will define it as the doctrine of justification by works, rather than justification by grace. But most errors are not simply the extreme understanding of things. Legalism distorts grace and it distorts the law. … Paul sets out in his letters to Rome and Galatia, for example, to deal a death blow to Legalism, he does not do so at the expense of the Law. Grace does not overthrow the Law. The reverse – grace confirms the law.” P16
“So how does legalism distort grace and the law from its original God-given character and function? Most legalism does not deny grace but mingles grace and works. Legalists do not pretend that their obedience is perfect, but they put stock in it; they rely on it for a title to Life”. P17
Thus, we learn that legalism is embedded in the heart of man. It starts out with good intentions and simple zeal. But it distorts grace, as well as the law. It focuses on the precept, and ignores that God’s covenant love came before any precept. And it reinforces Satan’s lie that God is a legalist; or as Whitten calls God with laws, ‘a big meanie‘.
