What is legalism?

The thing that makes this tricky is that there is no Hebrew word in the Old Testament,

no Greek word in the New Testament for legalism.

So whenever anyone uses the word, you have to do two things.

You have to find out what they mean by it.

And then you have to find out if their meaning corresponds to something in the Bible.

Or are they making use of the Bible in a way that's inappropriate?

And that makes it a little trickier.

When the Bible uses a word like love, say you can go to a given text and say what does

love mean there?

But the Bible doesn't have any word for legalism, so we can't go to any particular place and

say there it is right there.

So I'll tell you what I would mean by using it and what in the Bible I think would warrant

that kind of use.

And then you can decide whether you think it should be used that way or not.

But mainly check out the way people use it and measure it by things in the Bible to see

if this is so.

Legalism is the conviction that law keeping is now after the fall, the ground of our acceptance

with God.

We'll say that again, legalism is the conviction that law keeping is the ground of our acceptance

with God, the ground of God being for us and not against us.

So if you ask, how can I get God to be for me and not against me?

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