I wasn’t addicted to crack; I was addicted to religion in a vain attempt to get God to like me, bless me, or at least spare me from hell when it was all over. It’s funny how one can talk a good grace game, but for all practical purposes live by the law. I’ve learned that the ‘grace but…’ mentality is as lethal as anything you can sniff, toke, or shoot up. If it’s grace, there are no conditions and no exceptions. Anything else is only masquerading as grace. Don’t take it – it will kill you. –
Jim Palmer, Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (And the Unlikely People Who Help You).
You want to mess up the minds of your children? Here’s how-guaranteed! Rear them in a legalistic, tight context of external religion, where performance is more important than reality. Fake your faith. Sneak around and pretend your spirituality. Train your children to do the same. Embrace a long list of do’s and don’ts publicly, but hypocritically practice them privately …yet never own up to the fact that that it’s hypocrisy. Act one way but live another. And you can count on it emotional and spiritual damage will occur. Charles Swindoll
Grace comes to us in 2 dimensions, vertical and horizontal. Vertical grace centers on our relationship with God. It is amazing. It frees us from the demands and condemnation of the Mosaic Law. It announces hope to the sinner – the gift of eternal life, along with all its benefits. Horizontal grace centers on our human relationships. It is charming. It frees us from the tyranny of pleasing people and adjusting our lives to the demands and expectations of human opinion. It gives relief–the enjoyment of freedom along with all its benefits. It silences needless guilt and removes self-imposed shame.
Legalism is an attitude, a mentality based on pride. It is an obsessive conformity to an artificial standard for the purpose of exalting oneself. A legalist assumes the place of authority and pushes it to unwarranted extremes.
Legalism: the manufacturing and manipulation of rules for the purpose of illegitimate control. Perhaps the most damaging of all the perversions of God’s will and Christ’s work, legalism clings to law at the expense of grace, to the letter in place of the Spirit. – Daniel Taylor
Quotes from “The Grace Awakening” by Charles Swindoll
13 comments:
People are going to interpret things however they choose.
It's interesting that those who condemn law-keeping never use the term "break" the law when that is exactly what they mean. If we don't keep the law, we break it! But when we look around us, we see the world rife with disrespect and hatred toward parents, murder, adultery, robbery, lying, and jealousy towards others and their possessions. Those who advocate breaking the law apparently love the results gained thereby, but I look at the world around us and think differently. God has shown us how to live, and we live otherwise to our destruction.
7:04 ~ One quick question. If you are on the freeway or interstate, and the speed limit is 65 MPH, and but the flow of traffic, everyone around you, is going 75, do you stick to 65 because that is the law?
One deceives one self when claiming to keep the law - all are sinners and more so at the level to which Jesus elevated it
The only thing worse than raising a kid in a rigid doomsday cult is to bring them up to be a "progressive."
7:04 ~ One quick question. If you are on the freeway or interstate, and the speed limit is 65 MPH, and but the flow of traffic, everyone around you, is going 75, do you stick to 65 because that is the law?
State laws vary, but in the circumstance you describe you are most often required to stay in the rightmost lane to let speeders pass you to the left. If you insist on going 65 in the left lane with a crowd of cars stuck behind you wanting to speed, the lawful solution isn't to start speeding; it's to move to the rightmost lane.
Which makes sense. Otherwise, your argument boils down to, "If everyone around you is committing adultery, do you remain faithful to your spouse because that is the law?"
“Legalism: the manufacturing and manipulation of rules for the purpose of illegitimate control.”
I like that definition. It counteracts the view that some assert that everything involves some kind of law so everything is legalism. Legalism is clearly abuse of what might otherwise be good standards of behavior. Or it might be the crime of proclaiming something is law when it is not but serves some self-interest. These concerns have been around for a while. I think most of us understand these issues and can recognize legalism when we see it. I would like to speak to two other aspects of legalism.
First, legalism is a misrepresentation of God. If someone uses legalism to abuse you, they have convinced you that law has a role in your life that it doesn’t have. This almost always involves recruiting a malformed view of God as the source of authority and power behind what they say. Legalism is a lie about God who “sits” on the throne of grace. Job’s friends were pretty good legalists. They were not the trashy kind of religious martinets obviously working out their feelings of inadequacy. They were pretty intellectual. And as you know, they did not fare well.
Second, some think that legalism is conservatism. They see legalism as a commitment to good, patriotic conservative values. This, I think, is the biggest self-deception afoot about legalism. Legalism isn’t conservative, it is just needlessly picky. Someone needs to be zealous to work out their issues of low self-esteem. And it besmirches the idea of constructive conservatism. Once again, if you read the soliloquies delivered by Job’s friends, you will read a lot of religious “Mom and apple pie.”
But in the end, God said to them, “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.”
Scout
For all the so called “ law keepers “ you do realise that the standard the law demands is perfection ?So are you all saying that you are perfect ? If not then by what standard are you judging another persons righteousness ?
Everyone breaks the letter and spirit of the law daily . No human being is or has ever been capable throughout history of meeting that standard of perfection apart from Jesus . Show some humility and honesty and stop judging people who put their faith and trust in Jesus and not their own works which God just looks upon as filthy rags anyway .All our works and human “goodness” earns us is death.So let’s just be grateful for Gods precious gift of free grace.
"It is by grace you have been saved, through faith." - Ephesians 2:8
.
"Faith without works is dead." - James 2:26
Therefore, you can't have the grace to be saved without doing works.
Simple COG Bible math. Right?
I'm 9:29. Years ago, I heard a well known radio evangelist from the mainstream ask that question as a sort of litmus test as to how serious are we as Christians to be faithful and obedient in all matters. Also, what sort of example are we setting by speeding?
I wasn't saying "Yo! Armstrong sabbath pie! You think you're a badass Christian for keeping the Torah! Are you a hypocrite breakin' the speed limit, man???
For the next several days, I accepted the preacher's challenge, and found that as I stuck rigidly to the speed limit, no matter what lane I was in, I was a hazard and made people angry. Since that lesson, I've stuck with the flow, at least with traffic.
And by the way, you don't refrain from adultery because it's against a law. You refrain from adultery because you love your wife. Can you imagine how lame it is to be thinking, "Oh, I'd really like to sleep with other women, but it's against the commandments, so I just can't!"
Grace (2Peter 3:18
) IS compatible with laws of the new covenant (Heb 8:10
)!
For the next several days, I accepted the preacher's challenge, and found that as I stuck rigidly to the speed limit, no matter what lane I was in, I was a hazard and made people angry.
That's just it! If you stuck to the speed limit in the left lane, with anxious would-be-speeders behind you, you were breaking the law, as the law in most states would require you to move to the rightmost lane to let speeders not get congested behind you. It's not your job to enforce the speed limit on others; it is your job to obey the speed limit and to stay in the rightmost lane so speeders can easily pass by you.
2:28:00 sounds like a Kitchen. Lol
Post a Comment