The Root
The root of legalism is in the Fall.
According to Ferguson, “legalism is simply separating the law of God from the person of God. … Eve lost sight of the true God himself. Thus, by abstracting his law from his loving and generous person, she was deceived into ‘hearing’ law only as a negative deprivation and not as the wisdom of a heavenly Father“. The Whole Christ, Sinclair Ferguson, Crossway, 2016, p 83. (All quotes are from this book unless otherwise noted) (emphasis SF)
“What the Serpent accomplished in Eve’s mind, affections, and will was a divorce between God’s revealed will and his gracious, generous character”; p 82. In other words, Satan separated what God had joined together. (emphasis mine)
Subsequently, her “trust in him [God] was transformed into suspicion of him by looking at the ‘naked law’ rather than hearing law from the gracious lips of a generous God and his wise and loving plans for our lives”; p 82. (emphasis mine)
What Eve ignored
She ignored the first part of the very command she referenced in answer to Satan. “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat”, Gen. 2:16. This first part framed the generosity of the Father in regards to the second part where he forbids the eating of the one tree. “Thus, abstracting his [God’s] law from his loving and generous person, she was deceived into ‘hearing’ law only as negative deprivation and not as the wisdom of a heavenly Father”; p 83.
The exchange
Eve exchanged the truth of God’s generous character for Satan’s lie about God. Now, she buys Satan’s lie about God: that God is not generous. Now, to Eve, God is not fair. Rather, he is the ‘hard man, reaping where he hast not sown, and gathering where he hast not strawed’ in Matt. 25:24.
And that lie sprouting from her legalism, has entered the bloodstream of the human race. For Eve, and subsequent legalists, the law becomes only demands and judgement, God’s way of breathing down our necks.
“Thus the essence of legalism is rooted not merely in our view of law as such but in a distorted view of God as the giver of his law. God becomes a magnified policeman who gives his law only because he wants to deprive us and in particular to destroy our joy”; p 83. (emphasis mine)
The lie of legalism
The lie of legalism is “that ‘to glorify God’ is not, indeed cannot be, ‘to enjoy him forever’, but to lose all joy”; p 84.
Legalism divorces God’s glory and our joy. The legalist cannot love the law but only view it in its negative form. But joy in the law is the first principle of the believer’s life. That first principle is that man does not live by bread alone, but from EVERY word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.
Remember what HH taught, “God willed that Adam would enjoy the covenant by way of antithesis”. 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, Matt. 4:4, Luke 4:4. Unfolding Covenant History, vol. 1. P123. All God’s words are life to the believer. (emphasis mine)
“Legalism is a peculiar kind of submission to God’s law, something that no longer feels the personal divine touch in the rule it submits to.” The Self Disclosure of Jesus, (ed. and rev. by JG Vos version) Presbyterian and Reformed, 1953 Geerhardus Vos, p 17.
The Nature of Legalism
There is more to legalism than merely a doctrine of justification by works rather than by grace.
Ferguson states that a few facts cures bare, doctrinal legalism. Facts like ‘we are all sinners’, ‘we cannot justify ourselves’, ‘Christ died for your sins’. And, ‘if you trust in what Christ has done, you are then justified by grace and not works’. So, just stop trusting in your own efforts.
But legalism is multidimensional and multilayered. Legalism affirms that grace is indeed from God. It also affirms that the law is from God, but it is not from his gracious character. Legalism thinks that God is only austere, easily angered, miserly and coldly distant.
Ferguson writes, “The essence of legalism is a heart distortion of the graciousness of God and of the God of grace”; p 88.
Legalism is not only a distortion of the gospel, but in its “fundamental character it is also a distortion of the law”; p 88.
And, “The legalism that distorts grace, is also the legalism that distorts law from its God-given character and function. And beneath that, [it] has distorted the character of the God who gave it. This issue lay at the heart of the opposition of the Pharisees to Jesus”; p 88-89. (emphasis mine)
Paul
Paul explains the proper role of the law within the context of the gospel. Romans 3:31 teaches that the gospel never overthrows the law. The simple reason is that “both the law and the gospel are expressions of God’s grace. Grace confirms the law and its true character”; p 88. (emphasis mine)
The scriptures teach that the law is always God’s perfect will for his people, Ps 19:7-11. The law is God’s gracious will for his people which is perfectly obeyed in Christ his Son, and which believers fulfill as Paul teaches in Rom 8:4.
By distorting the law, the legalist cannot love the law, nor really make it his delight. He cannot see it as a positive, lovable, glorious thing. He must pit it always against the gospel.
“Legalism, then, is almost as old as Eden. In essence it is any teaching that diminishes or distorts the generous love of God and the fullness of his grace. It then distorts God’s graciousness revealed in his law and fails to see law set within its proper context in redemptive history as an expression of a gracious Father. This is the nature of legalism. Indeed we might say these are the natures of legalism“; p 95.
(apologies to subscribers for the wrong picture in the email link)
