Take The Antidote
Legalism is the attempt to gain God’s approval and acceptance by effort and rule-keeping. Legalism often involves the tyrannizing quest for acceptance by others - the rule makers - by following “the rules.” The landscape is littered by people wounded by legalism, damaged by legalists, and disappointed by the God of the legalists - God The Cosmic Cop.
Robert Farrar Capon is a theologian, author, and gourmet chef. As a gourmet chef, he well recognizes there is but one life-giving ingredient that liberates us from the power of legalism - God’s reckless grace!
''The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late Medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year, 200-proof grace - a bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel- after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps-suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice and certainly no ginger ale,” Said Capon.
Drink deep draughts of grace!
"In the Reformation there was, through grace, a great deliverance. The groundwork of Christianity was recovered; namely, justification by [grace, through] faith. But though this was recovered, it was not maintained that the old man Adam was crucified on the Cross. Retention of the old man is the weakness of the Reformation." JBS
"The Reformation rescued the Church from the law as a way of justification, but not from the law as a means of sanctification--i.e. spiritual growth." MJS