The word I picked for 2024 this year was free. I long to live in the freedom that God’s unconditional love and Christ’s death and resurrection afforded me. But so often, I live in a bondage of my own making: legalism.
I spend my days subconsciously trying to earn God’s love because it’s still hard to imagine that His grace is free.
But as bad as the bondage can be, it still looks pretty innocent. Sure, I’m like a duck paddling hard under the water, stressing under pressure to meet an impossible standard, but I’m still doing lots of good and holy-looking things, so it’s easy to keep moving forward in this bondage I’ve grown used to.
Plus, legalism is so confusing to me. It has always been tough for me to discern whether something I’m doing is genuinely for God or something I’ve twisted. If you’ve ever struggled to identify legalism in your life, keep reading. I want to share some really practical tips from some people much wiser than me that have given me the confidence to notice and root out legalism in my life.
It all started with a sermon my husband preached a few months ago about fences and laws.
In Jesus’ time, there was something called the Mishnah. It was essentially a collection of extra biblical laws and was to act as a fence around the Torah to protect God’s people from breaking the law.
So, in an effort to stay as far away from breaking God’s law, they’d create new boundaries a little closer in. And pretty soon, they couldn’t tell what God’s actual law was and what they added to it. Here’s an example: In the commandments, it’s clear that the Sabbath is a day of rest. Working on the Sabbath was considered a sin. So, just to make sure they didn’t get close to that, they started making rules that they couldn’t lift anything over 5 lbs.
Jesus doesn’t necessarily have an issue with fences. Tyler said he has a problem with them when they are built so that you’re not exposed to God and His character. The problem is when fences become a way for us to avoid God because we think they mean we don’t need God’s grace. Kind of ironic imagery right? The fences were an attempt to keep sin out, but in many ways, they kept God out instead.
I had never heard of this concept of fence laws but it all kind of clicked! No wonder Jesus seemed so disproportionally harsh with the Pharisees. Legalism isn’t some respectable sin. It’s a way we replace the gospel and grace with another gospel that doesn’t need to bother God because we’re consumed with staying so far from sin that we couldn’t possibly need Him.
So my question for us today is this: Do we have fences that we think are laws?
What things in our lives do we see as hard and fast rules that aren’t God’s true laws? And how much time are we spending trying to keep ourselves (or worse others!) following what WE think should be law?
Some examples of this I’ve seen are the accounts whose sole purpose is to call out sin or sin-adjacent things. I’ve read people cancel wise teachers because they were in a room with someone who was a false teacher. I totally get being careful of who people endorse and closely associate with but where do we draw the line? And can we acknowledge that the extra line, wherever we choose to place it, is not a brick wall but a wire fence? I got sucked into a rabbit hole a while back, and by the end of it, the only authors I could trust were the Bible and maybe my mom.
Legalism is exhausting, and truthfully, it might be the reason so many of us are stressed out. We’ve got this impossible standard that God never gave you the power and ability to stick to. He also never ordained us to be the savior for ourselves. He calls us to be wise and follow Him. The other side of legalism isn’t complete carelessness. It’s grace—where sin isn’t excused or watered down but forgiven by the only one who can forgive our sins.
But back to our question, how do we figure out if we have fences we’ve made laws?
I’ve utilized this visual of the fences ever since I heard it, and it’s been such a swift reminder in moments when I want to understand better if I’m being legalistic about something. However, I want to share 8 thoughts to consider that will really solidify things for us.