Best 69 quotes in «legalism quotes» category

I had escaped the snare of certitude that I welcomed so avidly at first and entered, via the name of Jesus, the wide and comprehensive company of Jesus.

I had the faith of a sermon, but not the faith of his son. – John Wesley

I listened to make sure I was meeting the minimum requirement to stay out of jail, so to speak.

Is one being a legalist if he works hard unto the Lord? Or can a Christian cruise and coast through this life?

In America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.

Lord, please protect me from Your people.

...it is a mistake to reduce every decision about Christian living to a "Heaven-or-Hell issue." For example, some ask if the Bible specifically says a certain action is a "sin" or will send them to "Hell." If not, they feel free to indulge in that action unreservedly and ignore any scriptural principles involved. But this approach is legalistic, which means living by rules or basing salvation on works. It treats the Bible as a law book, focusing on the letter and looking for loopholes. By contrast, the Bible tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, not by our works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace teaches us how to live righteously, and faith leads us into obedience. (See Titus 2:11-12; Romans1:5; Hebrews 11:7-8.)

Men promise freedom while establishing laws; God promises laws while establishing freedom.

Men raised in a culture of blood revenge do not change in a day.

Moral obligations verses Legal obligations. Legally, you must abide by the laws of the land or face the consequences of being fined, imprisoned or both. Moral obligations tend to lean more towards a spiritual nature of a person. Some people perform immoral acts because legally there are no consequences. Morals birth in the heart of the individual. Moral characteristics are developed at an early age and continue into adulthood. It's a disgrace to neglect having good moral character.

Morality often involves tension within the group motivated by competition between different groups.

Must we always comment on life? Can it not simply be lived in the reality of Christ's terms of contact with the Father, with joy and peace, fear and love full to the fingertips in their turn, without incessant drawing of lessons and making of rules?

Most martyr stories – sacred and profane – contain an element of superiority. This self-denying hero or heroine is "rewarded," at the very least, by capturing the admiring focus of the narrative, while everyone else recedes into the background.

Most moms and dads think they are either the best or the worst parents in the world. Both are wrong.

No man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.

Our cultural conditioning is so ingrained in us that we often see these customs and taboos as inherent to the fabric of the cosmos. We spiritualize them. Legalize them. And when someone else doesn't follow them, it can feel to us like an attack on our very personhood. This kind of cultural blindness affects how we order creation.

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”).

Now a theist, he thought he should behave like one, even if it meant him during "the fussy, time-wasting, botheration of it all! the bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing," and, worst of all, the hymns and organ music.

Opportunities have often felt like obligations to me.

Perhaps it is true that, by some definitions, Satan is more religious than God. Many of the particularly proud sinners are deceived into thinking that Satan is anti-religious, that he likes seeing people do immoral things simply because he likes immoral things. Doubtful; Satan likes for people to do immoral things so that he can blame them for doing immoral things. The Father of Lies laughs not with his teammates, but at them.

(Pastor Chuck) Smith told his elders in no uncertain terms that if the church had to turn away young people because of bare feet and clothes that they would be better off ripping up the carpet and replacing the pews with steel folding chairs.

Our religious institutions are not giving very many men access to credible encounters with the holy or even with their own wholeness. We largely give men mandates, signposts, scaffolding and appealing images that tend to create religious identity and boundaries, but from the outside.

Past and Present have different customs; new and old adopt different measures. To try to use the ways of a generous and lenient government to rule the people of a critical age is like trying to drive a runaway horse without using reins or whip.

Security is by far the city's predominant business.

Religion to me almost like when God leaves – and people devise a set of rules to fill in the space.

Religions find lasting utility in terms of prescription or parameter, rules for the conduct of human affairs.

The law repels, the gospel attracts. The law shows the distance which there is between God and man; the gospel bridges that awful chasm, and brings the sinner across it.

She was just too curious to stay in a self-imposed mental straight-jacket for very long.

So many of those who take Christ into the world, whether it be it's missionaries or artists, are tied by those who look over their shoulders. There is a lot of peer pressure within churches and Christian movements to dot all the i's and cross all the t's of a precise and perfect faith.

Some days you feel like you're the worst of sinners; others like you're the most righteous person on earth. I am convinced that the former is when you're closest to God.

The knowledge of God’s Word without love is a destructive force because it puffs us up with pride and legalism.

She was artificially narrowing herself, amputating every humane and tender piece that didn’t fit into a rigid frame.

Today's zealots are mostly those pretending to be anti-religious.

There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.

The road itself tells us far more than signs do.

The onslaught of scruples is a problem well attested in the spiritual life, especially among the young, where religious observances must be done perfectly to achieve a certain result.

There seems to be something in our human nature that draws us away from a life-giving relationship with Jesus because it feels more comfortable to focus on what to do and not do. That tendency robs us of real joy and peace.

We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other but what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred for the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity's to the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon someone who never lived at all.

To me, many of what seemed to be Bible contradictions only pointed to the grace of Christ. It is not so much a rule book on how to be holy as it is a prophecy of the One who can make you holy. In this, I see God as the least bigoted of all in existence: While men always, in their hearts, delight in vengeance for being wronged, God is the only Being who wants to free you from the penalty of His own laws.

Too often, we fall into the trap of preach­ing the gospel to adults and the law to chil­dren: “God wants you to be good boys and girls.” It is not that there is no truth in that state­ment, but with­out the right con­text and qual­i­fi­ca­tions it is a recipe for hope­less­ness.

Trying to know God and serve Him before we come to love Him is exhausting.

We live in an age so legalistic, we find it hard to imagine someone wanting to obey their Lord simply because they love their God.

We live Law to ourselves. Our reason is our Law.

We're very comfortable thinking, good parenting in, good children out.

When everything is a law, nothing is a law.

We suggest our new brothers and sisters who are somewhat freaky in dress, hair, and general appearance to ask the Lord in prayer for a balance. We do feel that beads, bells, and various astrological signs, along with the "no bra" philosophy of the Hip scene should be forsaken. We do not believe that a shave and haircut make a Christian any more than long hair and sandals.

What are Christians known for? Outsiders think our moralizing, our condemnations, and our attempts to draw boundaries around everything. Even if these standards are accurate and biblical, they seem to be all we have to offer. And our lives are a poor advertisement for the standards. We have set the gameboard to register lifestyle points; then we are surprised to be trapped by our mistakes. The truth is we have invited the hypocrite image.

What we fail to realize is we often become like Pharisees in our ruthless attempts to identify Pharisees (and impostors). While indeed some people use the old laws of religious pride to tear down men of God, others use the new laws of anti-religious anger to tear down men of God.

with the police doing all the killing, who do we call when our hero's are the villain

Without Christ a people may always have the freedom to do, but never the power to complete.