Vol.14 No.1

By Joe McKeever
stop majoring on the minors
How Legalism
Betrays Christ,
Violates the Gospel,
and Destroys People
“Then some Pharisees and scribes
came to Jesus from Jerusalem saying,
‘Why do your disciples transgress the
tradition of the elders?’ … And He
answered and said to them, ‘Why do
you yourselves transgress the
commandment of God for the sake of
your tradition?'” (Matthew 15:1-3).
“The letter kills, but the Spirit gives
life” (2 Corinthians 3:6).
Historians tell us the Pharisees
started off well, as revivalists in a
way, calling the nation back to
faithfulness. Eventually, however, their
insistence on righteousness settled down
into a code of laws and rules. They went
from being encouragers to harassers,
from lovers of God to bullies and legalists.
The legalist is someone who says, “I know
the Lord didn’t say this, but He would
have if He’d thought of it!”
The legalist is smarter than God. He
helps the Lord by completing His Word,
by filling in the gaps where the Lord
clearly forgot to say something, explain
something, or require a thing.
The legalist drives the rest of God’s
people nuts. He is forever finding rules
we overlooked, requirements we clearly
missed on purpose, and laws the rest of
us should be keeping. He insists his way
is the only one and can play the morerighteous-than-thou
card when we do
not agree with him.
The legalist claims to love the Word more
than you. Typically, he takes a single
saying of Scripture and builds an entire
system around it, then demands that
everyone else obey it. If you refuse, you
don’t love the Lord, are in rebellion
against God, and unworthy to be a leader
or teacher of this church.
When told “The letter of the law kills, but
the Spirit gives life,” the legalist will
accuse you of taking a truth out of
context. He prides himself in stressing
the letter of the law. He likes to say that
“Scripture says what it means and means
what it says.” That sounds so good, even
to the faithful, that few stop to consider
that Scripture often uses various ways of
saying something. And translating a
teaching from one language to another
often presents difficulties. So, it’s not
always that simple.
The legalist likes it simple.
Woe unto you if the
legalist in your church
happens to be your pastor.
His sermons will be harsh
(he will call it “preaching
against sin!” and many
will applaud him for it),
grace will be missing from
his messages (“cheap
grace” he will call it), and
the people he attracts to
your church will be clones
of him. It all goes downhill
from here. Soon, he will
be pulling the church out
of the denomination (they
no longer preach the
Word!) and disassociating
himself from any pastor
or church unwilling to
abide by such strict
adherence to the rules.
The fact is, the
denomination is often led by men and
women of greater understanding of
Scripture than he with his legalistic
demands and harsh interpretations.
In former days, such pastors loved to
harp on the length of women’s skirts and
hair, to require no makeup and jewelry,
men’s wearing facial hair, and people
dancing, smoking, attending movies, and
reading novels. In earlier days, they
railed against the radio and then the
television, followed by the computer.
If a legalist cannot find something to be
against, he will make it up.
There is something about legalism that is
attractive to a lot of people. It reduces the
Christian faith to a list of rules. No more
of this “search me, O God, and know my
heart; try me and know my anxious
thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful
way in me” (Psalm 139:23-24). No more
of this “The sacrifices of the Lord are a
broken spirit; a broken and contrite
heart, O God, thou wilt not despise”
(Psalm 51:17).
It’s rules. Laws. Regulations.
Requirements. Demands.
Legalism condemns those not agreeing,
those who take liberties the legalists
forbid, and those who insist that the
whole message of Scripture should be
considered, not just a verse here and a
verse there.
The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were the gold
standard of legalists. But their
descendants are many, vocal, and everpresent.
It was a Sunday night service in
Columbus, Mississippi’s First Baptist
Church, where I was pastoring sometime
in the late 1970s. We had a good crowd
that night, including several guests from
other churches for some reason I’ve long
since forgotten. I was excited and felt
great about the service.
The next evening at the deacons’
meeting, Deacon Atwell Andrews said
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