The Gospel in Real Life

Becoming a legalist isn’t that hard. It’s actually pretty easy because I think most of us have a bent toward it to one degree or another. If you practice legalism, you are already a legalist. One dictionary defines legalism this way: “Strict adherence, or the principle of strict adherence, to law or prescription, esp. to the letter rather than the spirit.” A second definition describes legalism as, “Strict, literal adherence to the law or to a particular code, as of religion or morality.” It provides us with a third definition of legalism specific to theology as, “the judging of conduct in terms of adherence to precise laws.” These are all accurate descriptions of legalism.

For a legalist, the world is black and white with no shades of gray. By that I mean there is a list of rules to be adhered to and as long as I am adhering to the list, life is good and I’m doing ok. There are things you do and there are things you don’t do as a legalist and the list of “don’ts” is often much longer than the list of “do’s.”  For example, failure to adhere to strict rules like don’t go to movies, don’t drink alcohol, don’t smoke that occasional cigar, don’t (if you’re a woman) wear pants or jeans, and don’t listen to rock music tend to be more important to the legalist than whether or not I am growing in Christ. For the legalist, spiritual growth cannot be completely accomplished apart from strict adherence to the list of don’ts.  Things like praying, sharing my faith, reading Scripture, spending time with people, and being a Biblically faithful husband, wife, mother, or father, all get trumped by the don’t list anytime the don’t list is violated.

You might be wondering why I reference Ephesians 4 in all of this. I mention it because of Paul’s repeated commands to put off something related to the old self, in favor of putting on something different in its place, something related to the new self. Ephesians 4 is one of the places in Scripture where Paul tells us to put off something that is left over from our old nature before conversion and to put on something that is unique to the new nature we’ve been given in Christ. Let me provide some examples. First, Paul provides this backdrop:

But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:20-24)

The remainder of Chapter 4 and even into chapter 5 provide specific things to put off, related to our old self, and specific things to put on, related to our new self. For example,

• Put off lying (the old self) and put on truthfulness (the new self) – Ephesians 4:25
• Put off consuming and uncontrolled anger (the old self) and in its place, practice the new self by dealing quickly with anger before it becomes sinful . – Ephesians 4:26-27
•  Put off stealing (the old self) and put on honest work (the new self) so that you will be a blessing to others. – Ephesians 4:28
• Put off corrupt speech (the old self) and in its place, put on words that build others up, are gracious, and that don’t grieve the Holy Spirit by tarnishing the reputation of the gospel in you (the new self). – Ephesians 4:29-30
• Put off bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander (the old self). In its place, put on kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness in the same way that God in Christ has forgiven you (the new self). – Ephesians 4:31-32
• Put off filthy joking and foolish talk (the old self) and put on thanksgiving (the new self). – Ephesians 5:4

Do you see what Paul is doing? He’s not just giving us a stale list of do’s and don’ts. Nor is he just giving us a list of don’ts. He’s giving us gospel-saturated ways in which we can overcome sinful habits from our past lives and replace those sinful patterns with God-honoring and lasting change. This is not a to-do list, but we can easily turn it into one if we remove it from the context of the gospel. The reason I can put off these bad habits of my old self and put on the new habits of the new self is because I’ve been given a new self. I am a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) and as a result, I am no longer a slave to sin (Romans 6:14), meaning that God has empowered me to change through the gospel. But the new self only exists through believing the gospel. If I take the gospel away from this wonderful chapter in Ephesians, I also take away the new self and what I am left with is the old self trying to reform or reshape itself into something new on its own power, and it will fail miserably because it is powerless to produce real and lasting heart change. The old self can’t fix itself. The old self can only be put off in a real way if there is a new self to be put on in its place and the new self is a product of the Holy Spirit at regeneration.

This is the failure of legalism. Legalism thrives on the negative. Legalism has a preoccupation with putting off, at the expense of putting on. Legalism gets high marks for its ability to put off and to make long lists of things it thinks should be avoided, but it fails miserably at understanding the importance of putting on the new self, which is the source of true righteousness and holiness. Legalism thinks that putting off the old self is true holiness, but Paul disagrees (Ephesians 4:24). If I come away from Ephesians 4 viewing it as a bucket list of what I need to avoid, I am one step closer to self-righteous legalism. If all I do is put off, put off, put off, without putting on, I am moving in the direction of the legalist.

Let me close with a gospel reminder. Even though I have been empowered through the Holy Spirit to put on the new self, I am still inconsistent and many times, I still fail miserably. It is at those low moments when I need to remind myself of the gospel and look, not to my own miserable performance, but at the cross and Jesus’ perfect work for me. In our struggle to lay aside the old self and put on the new self, we will fail and sometimes, we will fail sinfully. The Apostle John anticipated this and he reminds us that when we do fail, we have one who is successfully pleading our case before the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one:

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:1-2)