A couple of different listeners in the past month have written in to ask, essentially,

the same thing.

And it's this.

Is it possible to become legalistic about not being legalistic, Pastor John, what would

you say?

My short answer would be simply yes, but that won't have much meaning until we provide

some definitions and biblical content for the word legalism.

Just a startling fact that more people need to take into account and they need to become

more careful in their use of the language.

There is no word for legalism in New Testament Greek.

The English word legalism never occurs in any modern translation of all the Bible.

It's not in ESV and IV and ASB, New King James.

What this means is that the incredible frequency and confidence with which we use the word

today in a negative way to criticize other people stands on very shaky ground.

Not shaky because such a thing may not exist, but shaky because we may know what we're

talking about.

And if we do know what we're talking about, it may not be in the Bible, may not be a

biblical idea, but everybody just slings this word around, unbelievably common and with

such amazing confidence.

So we need to look at the scriptures and decide what the English word legalism might refer

to in the Bible.

So let's mention three or four things that are often called legalism, which the New Testament

...