Jesus has charged the religious leadership with the spiritual crimes of hypocrisy and heartless worship. But there is one more charge He quotes from Isaiah 29:13, “Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.” This is the most devastating of indictments. Jesus charges the religious leadership with legalism. Legalism is the reduction of God’s glory, for it takes worshipful living and reduces it to following a large and odious collection of rules. It trades the freedom and abundant life of following God for a restrictive and narrow life of being right in the eyes of one’s peers. Rather than multiply God’s glory or even add to it, it reduces God’s glory.
When our hearts are conflicted, we often try to live the Christ life under our own power. Refusing to acknowledge our brokenness and come to God in repentance, we tell ourselves we’ll just do it better. Effectively, we try to worship God half-heartedly. The end result is legalism. We are no longer following God out of our desperate love for Him. We are doing something because we desperately want Him to love us. But such behavior cannot bring about the Lord’s favor, and woe to us if we teach that it can.
Christ came to establish God’s Kingdom, and to do that He was anointed to, “…preach good news to the poor, […] proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, [and] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Legalism does the exact opposite. It is not good news to know there are many restrictive laws you have to follow. As a system set up to ultimately appease human leadership instead of God, legalism is anything but freedom. It blinds the people to the wonder and joy of simply hearing and obeying God, and because it is not of God, it lacks His power to release anyone from their bonds. In that respect, legalism leads into slavery instead of away from it. Instead of freedom on account of our experience of love for Him, we find bondage on account of our fear of other people.
In some ways legalism is worse than no relationship with God at all, for it inoculates against expecting God to be anything more than a demanding tyrant. The Bible does not reveal God as that. It reveals God as a loving Father and a gracious King. A Father does not place unreasonable demands on His children, and a gracious King does not burden His people unnecessarily. In fact, the whole of the Jewish history was one of God being gracious, kind and longsuffering to the patriarchs, and delivering Israel from the tyranny of Egyptian slavery. God is wonderful, and wonderful to all who follow Him.
We do well to remember the most important thing; “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” If we struggle with half-heartedness, we must give our half-heart to God rather than fall into legalism. He can heal us. Proverbs says, “My son, give me your heart and let your eyes keep to my ways,” and the Psalmist prophetically wrote, “I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart.” So let it be. Amen.
Legalism never produces genuine holiness. It only creates fear and encourages hypocrisy.
Tokunboh Adeyemo
APPLICATION: Worship
Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom – freedom to worship Him, and freedom to obey Him unreservedly.