Legalist, Are You Sure You're Not One?

Legalist, Are You Sure You’re Not One?

So I was reading Romans the other day and came across a passage that sparked a lot of thought in my mind some years ago, and sort of re-sparked those thoughts today. Romans 7:5 says, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.”  Read this verse a few times… what pops into your mind? In mine it’s a deep idea that our sinful passions are aroused by the Law. Now, this may not seem huge, but think about it, even in a simple sense, when your mom makes cookies, they smell good, look good, and you want to eat them, and maybe you do have one or two. However, when she says “Don’t you dare think about eating those cookies!” Now what happens? You deeply, extremely, really, really want them! You may even try to sneak one in your mouth without getting caught, and you may even feel a deeper pleasure from doing that. What is that called? Well, that is your sinful flesh, which is being “aroused by the law” that your mom created.

Now, this is extremely important for two reasons and I will briefly tackle both - the first is beautiful for us. Paul goes on in Romans 7 and talks more about the law, and his flesh. Since the law seems to produce in us a desire to sin, the thought could be, “Well then, is the law bad, or even sin?” Paul smashes that and says by no means, it obviously isn’t. The law however does what? It points out our sins, shows us how wicked we are, and the fact that we can’t keep the law to save our lives, we just desire to break it. That means the law is a beautiful thing; do you know why? Because it shows us our deep need for a Savior! The law produces in us a desire to break it, and therefore shows we need Jesus. The Law, specifically the Old Testament Law, points directly to our need for Jesus. Just like everything else in the OT (and I believe almost everything in the world), it points to the fact that we can’t do this alone, and then points directly to Jesus as the answer. We need someone to help our pathetic hearts. Without God, we just fall shorter and shorter. So the Law in and of itself is not bad, it just shows that we need Jesus.

That brings me to my second important reason to understand this verse (and section of Scripture, being Romans 7:4-12). If the Law, or laws in general, just produces in us a desire to sin, or as Paul puts it, our flesh is aroused by the Law, or literally it is turned on by the Law (let your mind think about that for a second!), then why in the world do we think we can defeat sin by putting silly laws in our lives? That makes zero percent sense! So we are struggling with, say, sexual sin, and then the way we try to defeat that is to create man made laws to try to tackle this sin and kill it. According to Paul here our flesh will just leap at the opportunity to break another law, and we will just make it even harder on ourselves to gain victory in that area! Do you follow what I am saying? In our desire to be righteous, we create our own laws, and really just tempt our heart and flesh more!

Now, I am not saying that we should just lay down and do nothing. Jesus is serious when he calls for a sanctified Christian life, but to create our own form of righteousness is silly, and honestly detrimental to our progress. You know what we need to do to kill our flesh? My first point in this blog - run hard to Jesus as the Savior, not only of our souls but in every area of our lives. Obviously he calls us to fight (and a bloody fight too - gouging out our eyes and cutting off our hands!), and fight we should. But we should not create laws in our lives to overcome our weak sinful areas, instead we should lean heavily into Jesus’ grace, and try our hardest to follow the path and plans He has set out for us, and abide in His mercy to overcome our short-comings, while fighting for His glory and pleasure. I know that there is a thin-line between the two (creating our own laws and correctly fighting our flesh), but it is something that we must learn how to do. Let me give you a personal example, and then I would love some comments on this one!

So for a while I really struggled with sexual temptation, and self-pleasure specifically. I knew that this was wrong, and honestly when I found out it was wrong, it only got harder and harder to kill. I would try everything, but always feel back into the same old sins over and over and over, feeling more guilt and numbness each time. Finally one day my best friend and I were holding each other accountable, and I realized this idea of the law and the flesh. I thought back through my times trying to kill this disease and realized that I literally would try to flush this out with simply another sin, legalism. I would create rules for myself (don’t lay in bed for more than 5 minutes after you wake up), and then when I would keep these rules, I would feel proud, pat myself on the back and say I was being a good Christian. When I feel, well, you know the feeling. Until finally I began to realize that I was creating my own rules of religion, do’s and don’ts that I couldn’t keep, killing my spirit! So when Nick and I held each other accountable, things began to change. I recognized that I had victory not through my efforts, but because of what Christ did on that Cross. Not because I was strong enough (I suck), or determined enough (my spirit is willing, but my flesh, weak), or willed enough, but because Jesus has given me victory already, I just must abide in Him. This does mean winning the little victories, like bouncing my eyes and keeping myself out of tough situations, but this comes through a deep love for Christ and Him alone, not a deep love for the rules that I have set-up to try to attain to Him.

This is a very, very, very thin line, please don’t mistake, I am not saying lay down, but I am saying we can’t be legalistic in our efforts to kill sin, or have daily quiet times, or whatever, it has to come from our love and knowledge of what Christ did and the fact that He has grace, mercy, and love for us. Anything else produces legalism, which leads to our flesh just gaining desire to sin because of the laws we set-up, and then guilt. So fight hard, dang hard, in your efforts to murder your flesh, but lean heavily, dang heavily, into Jesus during that process. Thoughts are very welcomed as I need to learn to put this into words much better than I did here in this blog! So write some stuffJ