Legalism is the theological mindset that teaches salvation is accomplished as a result of human effort through obedience to divine commands.  The legalist trusts in a level of his own performance to render him acceptable to God.  Although most legalists affirm that God will accept one if he does the best he can, logically consistent legalists will teach that absolute human perfection and complete conformity to the laws of God are possible and mandatory.  These people believe they can reach a level of sinless perfection and are often known to boast about being “totally obedient.”

Problems with legalism are many.  Attention on human performance diverts attention from Christ.  The law becomes the savior, in effect, and the means of salvation is human effort.  Christ becomes almost if not entirely irrelevant to the system.

Of course, this approach to theology is condemned in Scripture, especially in Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  There Paul affirmed that the one gospel is that man is justified by faith in Christ alone, without the addition of obedience to the law of God in circumcision and other particulars, and that those who added human works perverted the gospel, in fact were preaching an entirely different gospel (Gal. 1:7-9).  Paul reaches a profound conclusion in Gal. 2:16 when he wrote: “We…know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.  So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.”

Those who take a dispensational approach, who make a radical break between Old and New Testament, will argue that Paul is speaking about seeking justification from obedience to the Mosaic law code, but that now we are under Christ, we can speak of a “new law,” and obedience to commands of Christ will save us whereas obedience to the Old Testament law code will not because the Old Testament has been replaced by the New.  This argument is a quibble that Paul disarms by using not “the law” as the translators choose to render, but “law” without the definite article.  Paul is saying that law as a principle, any law from God, lacks the power to make a person right with God.  One who looks anywhere but to Christ and Him crucified will not find salvation but damnation, for no one can present himself before God as a perfect law-keeper by his own efforts.  Even if he could do so, what about forgiveness for past sins?

Paul summarizes by these shocking words at the end of Galatians 2: “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law (actually: through law), Christ died for nothing!”  The only way we can be considered righteous is by the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, and that imputation comes in our justification when we put our faith in Christ.  It is, in fact, by faith alone, by faith plus nothing.  As Paul wrote in Rom. 8:3-4: “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.  And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.”

Law continues (Matt. 5:17-19, Rom. 3:31, 1 Cor. 9:21), to provide a rule for life, to reflect our sin to us, and to provide a restraint for us from evil.  Law cannot save us.  Thus legalism, law presented as means to salvation, is a false religion, a gross perversion of Christianity, a total deception for those who embrace it.  Legalism becomes a tool in the hands of power-hungry religious leaders to control people under their authority by fear.  It is bondage and represents what that Christ came to destroy and rectify.  Legalism needs to be exposed, and Christians should be taught to shun it as a work of Satan.

(For further study we recommend that you order the audio series The Cross Plus Nothing: A Study of Galatians and/or Justification by Faith from Engedi Ministries.  –David Lawrence)