Defining Legalism

Dan Doriani:

Since the charge of "legalism" is tossed around carelessly, we should define the terms and see who does and who does not deserve the label. Let me name four classes of legalists. 

1. Class one legalists believe that they can do something to earn God's favor and even obtain salvation. The rich young man who asked Jesus what he could do to inherit eternal life fits this category (Matt. 19:16-22, Luke 18:18-23). Many of the world's religions are legalistic in roughly this sense. 

2. Class two legalists require believers to submit to man-made commandments, as if they were God's law. Think of the Pharisees who attacked Jesus when he didn't follow their rules for the Sabbath, for washing hands, and for avoiding sinners (Matt. 12:1-14, 15:1-2, Luke 15:1-2). 

3. Class three legalists obey God and do good in order to retain God's favor. Here we think of disciples who believe God's daily favor depends on their daily performance. When something goes wrong, they are prone to ask, "What did I do to deserve this? Is God punishing me for something?" 

These three errors are different from each other, yet each is a form of legalism. Sadly, some hurl the "legalist" label at anyone eager to understand and obey God's law. Let us remember that Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15; see also Gen. 26:5, Exod. 20:6, Psalm 119, John 15:10). 

That said, there is probably one more kind of legalist. It is a borderline case. This person avoids the worst forms of legalism. Yet he so accentuates obedience to God's law that other ideas shrivel up. He thinks of Christian living as little more than obedience to God's law. He reasons, "God says we should tithe, so I tithe. The Bible says we must pray, so I pray. It says submit to leaders, witness, read Scripture, so I submit, witness, and read." We could call this person a Nike Christian. He hears a command and thinks I'll just do it. He reasons, "God has redeemed us at the cost of his Son's life. Now he demands my service in return. This is my duty." 

Class four legalists so dwell on God's law that they neglect other aspects of the Christian life—the love of others, the nurture of character, the pursuit of noble but optional projects, and more. They may forget why we obey God. They don't see that the law is more than a command, that it reflects God's very character. That is, we obey, in part, because obedience leads us toward to conformity to him. We don't kill because God gives life. We are faithful in marriage because he is faithful. We tell the truth because God always tells the truth. We are kind to the poor and the alien because God cares for the poor and the alien. 

If we return to the man I met a few weeks ago, we might answer him this way. There are Christians who have tried to love both doctrine and holiness in equal measure. In the history of the church, the Puritans and the early Pietists both hoped to live out that ideal. But given our fallenness, it's hard to get it right. Theologically minded believers can act as if right action will surely follow if we just get our ideas straight. And practically minded believers can avoid the great Christ-denying forms of legalism and yet hurt themselves by wandering into a lesser form of legalism (Nike Christianity). So by all means let us strive to love doctrine and holiness in equal measure. And let us love our Lord all the more, for he loves, forgives, and restores us when we miss that mark.

Read the rest.

Legalism and Lawlessness as Two Opposite Extremes?

Tullian:

Spend any time in the American church, and you’ll hear legalism and lawlessness presented as two ditches on either side of the Gospel that we must avoid. Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law or rules, and lawlessness when you focus too much on grace. Therefore, in order to maintain spiritual equilibrium, you have to “balance” law and grace. If you start getting too much law, you need to balance it with grace. If you start getting too much grace, you need to balance it with law. This “balanced” way of framing the issue has kept people from really understanding the Gospel of grace in all of its radical depth and beauty. 

It is more theologically accurate to say that the one primary enemy of the Gospel—legalism—comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (you could call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (you could call this “back-door legalism”). In other words, there are two “laws” that we typically choose from: the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules,” or the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.” Either way, you’re still trying to save yourself—which means both are legalistic, because both are self-salvation projects. “Make a rule” or “break a rule” really belong to the same passion for autonomy (self-rule). We want to remain in control of our lives and our destinies, so the only choice is whether we will conquer the mountain by asceticism or by license. So it would be a mistake to identify the “two cliffs” as being legalism and lawlessness. What some call license is just another form of legalism. And there’s always and only been one solution to our self-salvation projects: God’s salvation project in Christ.

Read the rest.

Books by Tullian:

• Jesus + Nothing = Everything 
• Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels 
• Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different
• One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World

5 Characteristics of Legalism

Michael Patton: 

1. Excels only in the visible aspects of righteousness
2. Focuses on the easier commands of God
3. Follows by the letter of the law
4. Neglects the more important morals
5. Have a distorted view of others due to their legalism

Read the rest for his great explanations.   This helped me repent of my tendency towards legalism.  We are all spring-loaded legalists!

Even if You Are Not Religious, We Are All a Bunch of Moralists

Derek Rishmawy:

Pick a hot subject (gay marriage, the environment, misogyny, healthcare, etc.) and I’ll scroll through my facebook feed to find someone updating vociferously on the subject, trumpeting their position and damning the opposition in bold, apocalyptic terms. It’s not just that people are wrong, confused, and possibly in need of correction, they’re downright wicked. Of course, this phenomena spans generations, but as younger generations increasingly identify as ‘nones’ (no religious affiliation), it’s not that they have no moral or spiritual bearings, but that they find them elsewhere. 

Taking that sense from the reigning Causes linked to the demands of benevolence (“love”, “justice”, “equality”) of the day, is the increasingly popular option, more any explicit religious system. This is why our political arguments aren’t just about the issues, they’re about a much-deeper justification of the Self. If I am defined by my position on health-care and corresponding self-image as a moral, caring (or pragmatic and free) person, then when I argue with you about it, I’m defending my raison-d’etre. You don’t simply have a different opinion on a subject, you threaten my very being. 

What’s more, if supporting this Cause is what makes me righteous and pure, your opposition demonstrates your impurity and wickedness, possibly even your inhumanity. You must be opposed, hopefully only through argument, but if you persist in your perversity, other, stronger means of enforcement may need to be used. This is modern/postmodern ideological moralism. 

None of this is new, of course. Postmodern thinkers have been describing the way we construct oppositional identities like this for years, but what’s been interesting to see is this sort of logic at work in the lives of my peers and contemporaries in today’s debates. Of course, posting aggressive memes on Facebook isn’t exactly coercion, or fanatic violence yet, but the language used, and, at times, the political measures advocated by partisans verges on it. 

Christians reading this might be tempted to take this as a simple condemnation of secularists, saying, “See, look what happens when you don’t have God.” I mean, in a sense, that’s what’s going on. But that doesn’t let religious believers off the hook too quickly. As a friend of mine pointed it, this simply the logic of Holy War, sublimated and secularized. All it does is point out one more way that the whole dichotomy of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ breaks down at the functional level. Get rid of God, and something else fills in the existential vacuum. In other words, at this point, they’re only doing what religious people have done with their gods for years, including Christians. 

Actually, this ought to put believers, especially Christians, on notice to examine whether we’re getting our sense of self, our purity, our wholeness. Is it from the righteousness of our own moral positions, or from the righteousness we have in Christ by grace, apart from our own moral achievements? If the former, we’re in the same boat. If the latter, that sets us in a position to be able to disagree, even forcefully with others, without feeling our entire sense of self threatened. Even if others oppose us, not only on moral issues, but set themselves in vocal opposition to Christianity itself, how can we look on them as totally other than ourselves? For is this not what we ourselves were apart from God’s condescending grace? Enemies of God in need of redemption (Rom. 5:6-11)? And are we not secure, no matter what accusation or charge brought against us (Rom. 8:30-39)? 

In other words, there’s a visible, practical difference we observe in the lives of those who trust in the Christian Gospel as opposed to merely subscribing to its morals. In fact, unless you believe the former, you won’t be able to practice the core of the latter, at the center of which stands the command to love our enemies the Christ has loved us. Moralism, secular or ‘religious’ can only inspire demonization of the enemy. Only the Gospel of grace can lead us to true goodwill towards all.

Well said.

Preaching The Opposite of Grace

Tullian:

In an interview that Jonathan Merritt of Religion News Services conducted with me regarding my new book One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World, one of the questions he asked was: 

What are the ways in which you–yes you, as a clergy person–been complicit in perpetuating this system (works righteousness)? 

I answered, in part, by saying: 

I’m so embarrassed by many of the sermons I preached early on. I wish I could go back and apologize to all the people who heard them. My primary concern at that time was to get people to do more, try harder, and change. The end result was stunted spiritual growth for our people because I was causing them to fix their eyes on themselves rather than on Christ. 

Read the rest here.

"Sometimes, if we needed to take the edge off a rough morning, we’d tempt fate and chug a little Vitamin D."

Well said.  

Kevin DeYoung:

Parenting has become more complicated than it needs to be. It used to be, as far as I can tell, that Christian parents basically tried to feed their kids, clothe them, teach them about Jesus, and keep them away from explosives. Now our kids have to sleep on their backs (no, wait, their tummies; no, never mind, their backs), while listening to Baby Mozart and surrounded by scenes of Starry, Starry Night. They have to be in piano lessons before they are five and can’t leave the car seat until they’re about five foot six. 

It’s all so involved. There are so many rules and expectations. Parenting may be the last bastion of legalism. Not just in the church, but in our culture. We live in a permissive society that won’t count any sin against you as an adult, but will count the calories in your kids’ hot lunch. I keep hearing that kids aren’t supposed to eat sugar anymore. What a world! What a world! My parents were solid as a rock, but we still had a cupboard populated with cereal royalty like Captain Crunch and Count Chocula. In our house the pebbles were fruity and the charms were lucky. The breakfast bowl was a place for marshmallows, not dried camping fruit. Our milk was 2%. And sometimes, if we needed to take the edge off a rough morning, we’d tempt fate and chug a little Vitamin D. 

As nanny parents living in a nanny state, we think of our children as amazingly fragile and entirely moldable. Both assumptions are mistaken. It’s harder to ruin our kids than we think and harder to stamp them for success than we’d like. Christian parents in particular often operate with an implicit determinism. We fear that a few wrong moves will ruin our children forever, and at the same time assume that the right combination of protection and instruction will invariably produce godly children. Leslie Leyland Fields is right: “One of the most resilient and cherished myths of parenting is that parenting creates the child.”

Read the rest.

Get the book here.

How To Overcome

How dare you approach the mercy-seat of God on the basis of what kind of day you had, as if that were the basis for our entrance into the presence of the sovereign and holy God? No wonder we cannot beat the Devil. This is works theology. It has nothing to do with grace and the exclusive sufficiency of Christ. Nothing. 

Do you not understand that we overcome the accuser on the ground of the blood of Christ? Nothing more, nothing less. That is how we win. It is the only way we win. This is the only ground of our acceptance before God. If you drift far from the cross, you are done. You are defeated. 

We overcome the accuser of our brothers and sisters, we overcome our consciences, we overcome our bad tempers, we overcome our defeats, we overcome our lusts, we overcome our fears, we overcome our pettiness on the basis of the blood of the Lamb.

- D.A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus (Re:Lit), 103

Attacking Legalism

The problem we face is this: “When could it ever be appropriate for us to speak to people with the severity of Jesus?” This is a very difficult question to answer, for unlike him, each one of us has a Pharisee in our own heart, a Pharisee who needs regular rebukes. This sad reality of our own inner lives should mean that our severity to the self-righteous and to the legalists around us must always be tempered by compassion borne of our own failings in these matters. Our severity should also always be tempered by the agonized prayer of the tax collector whom Jesus quoted: “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Is our denunciation of self-righteousness and legalism motivated by our own pride that “we are not like the self-righteous Pharisees of our time, and we are not legalists”? Or is our denunciation of these obstacles to the gospel motivated by a passion for truth and by compassion for the Pharisees?

Having made these necessary qualifications, we still must sit at Jesus’ feet and recognize that legalism is an implacable enemy of the gospel of grace. And we need to be prepared to fight against it, rather than bow to it or allow it to govern the life and outreach of our churches. Indeed, we may regard it as a principle: the more legalistic a church is, the less genuine outreach there will be.

Attacking legalism is necessary to bring about the salvation of the legalists themselves by humbling them before the Lord, before his truth, and before his grace. Attacking legalism is also necessary in setting people free from the rules that the legalists impose upon them. We are to proclaim liberty: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). This proclamation of liberty from legalism is one of the great friends of true proclamation of the gospel, both to the church and to the world.

- Jerram Barrs, Learning Evangelism from Jesus, p. 177

Pharisees Today

The religious elite had created a sys- tem of moral respectability that only the wealthy could ever hope to maintain. Only the rich had the time and money to do all the required ritual cleansing. You can’t be ritually clean in a slum. This was bourgeois spirituality. We can do this too. Our expectations of clothing, behavior, literacy, and punctuality can exclude the poor. These verses also speak to a professionalized church ministry—a life seen as the epitome of godliness, but all but impossible for those not in full-time ministry. 

The teachers of the law created a system that allowed them to feel superior, and then lifted not one finger to help others. Think how this might play out today. Today’s Pharisees might condemn the poor for their dysfunctional families, but lift not one finger to help. Today’s Pharisees might condemn the poor for their excessive drinking, but lift not one finger to ease their pain. Today’s Pharisees might condemn the poor for their laziness, but lift not one finger to provide employment. Today’s Pharisees might condemn the poor for their abortions, but lift not one finger to adopt unwanted children. I’m not defending dysfunctional families, drunkenness, and so on. But we can’t condemn these things at a distance. That’s legalism. We must come alongside, proclaiming and demonstrating the transforming grace of God.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table, p. 22

Religious Legalism or Radical Living?

David Platt answers this objection.


Books by David Platt:

• Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
• Radical Together: Unleashing the People of God for the Purpose of God
• Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live.

Stop asking the wrong question

Guest post by Aaron Armstrong

Sometimes when I look at the world's problems—especially the problem of poverty and the need to care for the poor—I find myself asking the question, “Am I doing enough?” But in my study of the Scriptures, I’ve come to the conclusion that this may not be the right question. In fact, it might be exactly the wrong one. Here's what I mean:

“Doing enough” can be overly simplistic. One problem with “doing enough” is that it tends to focus us on the wrong goal. We pick a dollar amount, or an income percentage, or a number of hours per month. We construct a set of checkboxes to see if we’re meeting the output criteria we have set for ourselves. Some suggest, for example, that if we all give just one percent more financially, global poverty can be wiped out forever. All we have to do, they say, is track the progress, allocate the resources, and we’re set.

When “doing enough” becomes primarily a matter of numbers, we can be sure we are focusing on the wrong thing. Alleviating poverty is about more than a certain amount of giving, whether of time or money.

“Doing enough” is legalism. Worse, this “doing enough” mindset is textbook legalism—the effort to be pleasing to God through our external behavior. And encouraging people to be active in helping the poor can promote legalism like few other activities. Unless God cuts someone to the heart and instills a compassion for the poor, exhortations to “choose your fast” or “just give more money” either will be ignored or will feed one’s “inner legalist.”

If our focus is whether we are doing “enough,” it may be that our hearts are as dead as those to whom Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel preached. “We have all become like one who is unclean,” Isaiah said, “and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment" (Isaiah 64:6).

(From Awaiting a Savior: The Gospel, the New Creation and the End of Poverty, pp. 58-59)

An Unmistakable Sign of a Legalistic Spirit

Legalism has been defined in a number of ways, but here is my attempt: Legalism is the tendency to regard as divine law things that God has neither required nor forbidden in Scripture, and the corresponding inclination to look with suspicion on others for their failure or refusal to conform. . . . 

2. Do you elevate to the status of moral law something the Bible does not require? . . . 

Hold your conviction with passion and zeal, but do not seek to enslave the consciences of others who may disagree with you. . . . 

One unmistakable sign of a legalistic spirit is the tendency always to be looking for what’s wrong in other people’s lives in order to judge them, instead of looking for what’s right in order to encourage them. . . . 

Legalists feel good when they can identify another person’s errors. It reinforces their feelings of superiority. They actually think themselves more spiritual, more godly, and more favored and loved by God.

- Sam Storms, Tough Topics: Biblical Answers to 25 Challenging Questions, 311–12, 314–15

(HT:  Andy Naselli)

Missional! Radical! Legalistic!

The conclusion of Ed Stetzer:

In other words, let's be missional and radical. Let's be careful about making it legalistic. But let's not be afraid to tell a consumer-driven church that has commodified the gospel that the Christian life is rooted in much more than personal comfort.

Read the rest.


Books by Ed Stetzer:

• Planting Missional Churches 
• Compelled: Living the Mission of God
• Subversive Kingdom: Living as Agents of Gospel Transformation
• Transformational Church: Creating a New Scorecard for Congregations
• Lost and Found: The Younger Unchurched and the Churches that Reach Them
• Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too
• Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community
• Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series)

Addressing Christian Activism That Can Easily Lead to Moralism

"I took an abstinence pledge hoping it would ensure a strong marriage. Instead, it led to a quick divorce."

This is the spirit of our age. How would you respond?

I see this article riddled with wrong assumptions about sex and marriage but her story of "purity pledges" is almost as tragic in its gospellessness.  Her past legalism has led her to a new licentiousness.  Sadly, this is so often the case.

What would you say?  Many people in your churches are wondering (maybe silently) about these matters so it's very important for us to think through an article like this.

If you have kids that are approaching the teen years it could be a really powerful exercise to walk through this article and talk about the assumptions about sex and marriage.  It would be also powerful to deconstruct our flimsy culture of "purity pledges" that easily creates little legalists with a powerless avoidance ethic which is not founded on the gospel of grace.

Of course seeking to follow God's sexual ethic is a good thing!  But the "why?" behind it is more important.  If abstinence is just another law that have to keep it will be powerless.  It's clear that this author was never taught the "why" from a gospel perspective.  It was all fear, guilt, and shame.  No love, no gratitude, no faith.

Tragic.

Sean the Bachelor and "Born-Again Virginity"

Lisa Velthouse reflects on the term "born-again virgin" as it was tossed around on the recent airing of The Bachelor:

On my wedding day, I was a 27-year-old virgin. So was my husband. In this way, we had obeyed part of the biblical sex ethic together—by remaining celibate before marriage. I will even add that we had obeyed with plenty of room to spare. In earlier parts of our lives, each of us had practiced celibacy for reasons other than joyful obedience. My husband had done so out of a strong commitment to moralism. I had done so because I thought good works were essential for my salvation. In this way, we had both missed the deeper purpose of virginity. It wasn’t until each of us began understanding God’s good news, that obedience in purity became something we could delight in. Because, theologically speaking, a virgin honeymoon was never supposed to be the point—not if Christ’s purity and all it means for us is left out of the picture.

Are you an unmarried virgin? Practice purity. Are you an unmarried non-virgin? Practice purity. Are you married? Practice purity—which will now take the form of fidelity. If we’ve made too much of “virginity” in its technical definition, it’s time now to return to the heart of the matter, the very “why” behind virginity in the first place. Choose purity with gratitude, knowing that neither your label nor your obedience earns you more or less standing with God. That work has already been accomplished, by the only One pure enough to do it.

Read the rest.  

The Enemy Within

“The persecution of the true church, of Christian believers who trace their spiritual descent from Abraham, is not always by the world, who are strangers unrelated to us, but by our half-brothers, religious people, the nominal church. It has always been so. The Lord Jesus was bitterly opposed, rejected, mocked and condemned by his own nation. The fiercest opponents of the apostle Paul, who dogged his footsteps and stirred up strife against him, were the official church, the Jews. The monolithic structure of the medieval papacy persecuted all Protestant minorities with ruthless, unremitting ferocity. And the greatest enemies of the evangelical faith today are not unbelievers, who when they hear the gospel often embrace it, but the church, the establishment, the hierarchy. Isaac is always mocked and persecuted by Ishmael.”

John. R. W. Stott, The Message of Galatians (London, 1968), page 127.


(HT:  Ray Ortlund)

How To Spot a Legalist

And as you are spotting legalism... Just be sure you don't turn into a Pharisee.  It's easy to be the "Thank God I'm not like that idiot who doesn't have their grace-filled theology straight like I do" guy and not even realize it.  Humility will be your refuge.

That being said, these ten points from Greg Stier are very important.

1) They cheapen grace by focusing on what we must do rather than on what Christ has done.

2) They’ll say non-sensical things like, “Salvation is free but it will cost you everything you have.”

3) They are “fruit inspectors” and hypothesize how much spiritual fruit a person must produce in order to truly be saved.

4) They focus on things like turning, trying and crying instead of faith alone in Christ alone for salvation.

5) Their “gospel” could never be falsely accused of being a license to sin (like Paul’s was in Romans 3:8!)

6) They scare others with assertions that, if you preach too much grace, people will run amok.

7) They conveniently avoid or mis-exegete large portions of gospel-centric New Testament books like Galatians, Romans and John.

8) They blend justification passages with sanctification passages and then try to get us to drink a heresy smoothie.

9) They bake the same works-based righteousness cake that Mormons and Muslims do but cover it with evangelical frosting.

10) They use the phrase, “You mean to tell me…” a lot. Then they create worst case salvation scenarios of those who claim to be Christians but abuse the grace of God. “You mean to tell me that someone can be saved and still….?”

Read the rest of the post.

The Treadmill of Merit

Tullian:

I recently read this testimony from a guy who grew up in the pop-Evangelical culture of the late 20th century and who, for 7 years, was a full-time staffer at a large, well-known Evangelical para-church ministry. Sadly, I’ve heard this same kind of testimony from numerous people who grew up inside the church. As you can see from how he describes his experience, distinguishing law and gospel is not simply a theological exercise. Perhaps you can relate:

I experienced what happens when the Law and the Gospel are not understood and therefore distinguished. My Christian life, truly begun in grace, was now being “perfected” on the treadmill of the Law. My pastors did not end their sermons by demanding that I recite the rosary or visit Lourdes that week in order to unleash God’s power; instead, I was told to yield more, pray more, care more about unbelievers, read the Bible more, get involved in church more, and love my wife and kids more. Not until I came to the [theology of the Reformation] some 20 years later, did I understand that my Christian life had come to center around me and my performance: my life, my obedience, my yielding, my Bible verse memorization, my prayers, my zeal, my witnessing, and my sermon application. I had advanced beyond the need to hear the cross preached to me anymore…What had my Evangelical training done to me? The Gospel was critical for me at the beginning, critical for me to share with others, and still critical to get me to heaven, but it was of little other value. The “evangel” in Evangelicalism was missing. My training had me on a treadmill of merit.

A High View of The Law is Essential

Tim Brister:

...a high view of the law gives us a truer and deeper understanding of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. God is always more holy than we can perceive him to be, and we are always more sinful that we perceive ourselves to be. On the contrary, a low view of the law obscures beauty and brilliance of God’s holiness and gives damning comfort and false security to the sinner.

A low view of the law produces legalism, because the bar is so low that sinner’s feel justified in attempting to be made righteous by keeping it. A low view of the law also encourages sinners to substitute their own laws for the law of God, making self-righteous standards to live by, and judging others when they fail to live up to their own laws. Therefore, a low view of the law is the breeding ground for moralism where God is an utility to our self-righteous ends of moral justification (i.e., God helped me, not God rescued me).

A high view of the law leads Christ-centered, grace abounding salvation. With a clear view of God’s holiness and man’s sinfulness, there is a deep recognition and awareness of our need of reconciliation and redemption that can only come through the law-fulfilling life and sin-substituting death of Jesus Christ. You diminish the holy character of God and sinful nature of man, then the cross of Christ is depreciated and the gospel is cheapened. When there is a high view of the law, there is a corresponding high need for God to do for you what you are incapable of doing yourself–being made right in the eyes of God through grace.

If your desire is to be a part of a church that is saturated with gospel-loving, Jesus-treasuring, cross-exulting Christians, then it is incumbent that there be a high view of the law. A low view of the law leads to gospel substitutes. A high view of the law leads to gospel enjoyment and celebration. Don’t miss the relationship of law and gospel!

Read the rest.

On this topic, I would recommend this book.