God To Legalists: 'You don’t love me or each other as you did at first'

Sadly, there are evangelical Christian churches that have good doctrine and are passionate about evangelism, but fall into overbearing legalism. This results in a church culture that is rigid, strict, and lacking in grace, patience, and tolerance. The end result is that they become like the Ephesus church in Revelation 2:1-7.BY STEVE CHA PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVEEditor’s Note: This article is the last of a two-part series on “Is Your Church Guilty of Legalism?” Part one can be read here.

The Message to the Church in Ephesus“Write this letter to the angel of the church in Ephesus. This is the message from the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven gold lampstands:“I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don’t tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars. You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.“But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches. But this is in your favor: You hate the evil deeds of the Nicolaitans, just as I do.“Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I will give fruit from the tree of life in the paradise of God.”

The Apostle Paul teaches that the church will be full of people with different convictions on "silent issues" or gray areas. No Christian is to judge or exclude others - whether they be the weaker or stronger brethren - because he or she has differing beliefs and understandings of non-moral or undisclosed issues in the Bible.In other words, these silent issues must be left to the individual conscience. If the Christian is wrong and he does things in a way that causes others to stumble, then he will give an account to God at the Bema Seat Judgment (2 Corinthians 5:10). We can encourage, pray for, or give a reason for why we believe differently on these issues, but to say, "Thus sayeth the Lord," on those issues and play judge by peer pressuring, excluding, getting upset at, or church discipling another believer is something that Scripture forbids. This is especially true if the Christian's activities do not cause others to stumble and if done with no malicious intentions. These practices include watching certain movies, listening to certain music, drinking a glass of wine every now and then, maintaining social media, length of a courtship, boy/girl interactions within the church, holiday celebrations, eating certain foods, etc.With that said, true legalism is manifested in three ways.1. Legalism to gain salvation: This is the most severest form of legalism that is found in most every religion in the world. It teaches that people need to keep God's law and some high standard of conduct and rituals in order to gain eternal life. People need to earn their way into heaven by living a good life. This is a heretical teaching and the kind of legalism that Jesus constantly rebuked when challenging the Pharisees. It adds an extra-biblical expectation to God's way of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Works are upheld as necessary for salvation because faith itself is not sufficient, according to people in this category.In Matthew 23:15, Jesus says, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves." Moreover, Paul teaches in Romans 3:28, "For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law." The Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 also affirms the validity of salvation by faith apart from works of the Law. The gospel teaches that man is saved by faith in Christ, a salvation which cannot be added or taken away by personal merit. Those who teach otherwise teach a works-based salvation. This is seen in many "Christian" cults around the world that do not affirm the doctrines of grace.2. Legalism to maintain salvation: Believers are taught to keep the Law of God diligently in order to maintain a right standing with God, which can be forfeited by a lack of obedience. This is another heretical teaching that contradicts the gospel message, especially as it relates to justification by faith. Ephesians 2:8-9 teaches, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." No person can work to maintain his salvation by following a set of laws, because if that were the case, people would lose their salvation already.Romans 3:10 testifies to the depravity of us all and shows us our inability to keep the law to gain or to maintain salvation. James 2:10 also teaches us concerning the perfection of the law, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all." Christians live out the law of God as an act of worship to God, not as a means to maintain eternal life. When done with the wrong motives, works become meaningless. That is the point behind the judgment of the false converts in Matthew 7:21-23, when Jesus condemns so-called Christians who boasted in their achievements. It is not because works are bad, but that they were falsely trusted in rather than in the gospel.3. Legalism to testify of salvation: Believers are taught to follow extra-biblical commandments and traditions in order to uphold a holy way of life, sometimes going so far as condemning believers who do not follow these rules. When Christians do not abide by these rules, they are peer pressured, criticized, or excluded from fellowship. They are judged as disobedient, unholy, and sometimes unfit for membership at the local church. This category of legalism is displeasing to the Lord because it is overbearing and often times judgmental. This is the kind of legalism you will see in hyper-fundamentalist churches or churches that place heavy emphasis on social or cultural traditions.The principle is most clearly expressed in Romans 14:1-12. It teaches, "Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgments on his opinions. One person has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only. The one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who eats, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God, and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God..."Legalism can occur on the leadership level in how they govern and create the social structure of the church, or on the layperson level in how one believer treats another. In any case, Christians are called to be dogmatic on biblical commandments, but not on preferences. Commandments are those statutes that are given to us in Scripture which we are called to follow, and if we do not, it constitutes sin and can be the basis for church discipline (Matthew 18:15-20).However, wisdom issues and preferences do not necessarily constitute sin, and God is the ultimate judge on those issues of personal conscience and convictions.When the church elevates those wisdom issues and preferences to the level of commandment in that they judge by getting upset at, condemning, or casting people out of positions in the church, then the church becomes legalistic, and is guilty of lording it over the flock (1 Peter 5:3).Steve Cha is the teaching pastor of Grace City LA.READ MORE FROM STEVE CHA

Hot Button: Has ‘Evangelical’ Become a Dirty Word?

We can’t really blame Donald Trump and Roy Moore for pushing Evangelical Christians off the cliff, or can we?The question is part of the discussion that’s trending (and I don’t mean in a Santa video kind of way) right now. In an opinion piece posted at The Washington Post last week, Eugene Scott wrote that after Roy Moore lost Alabama's special Senate election, “despite running a campaign on what he called Christian values, some evangelical voters seem to be considering that their label has been co-opted.”“There's a growing concern that aligning with people such as Moore and President Trump has hurt evangelicalism in the public eye. But others connected to the movement say evangelicals, particularly white evangelicals, had a perception problem long before Trump and Moore became the faces of the community’s politics,” Scott reports.The question has been so much in the forefront of the Christian community and even the community at large that The New Yorker gave Timothy Keller its platform yesterday to answer the question put this way: Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump and Roy Moore?In typical brilliant Tim-speak, Keller writes:

In the nineteen-forties and fifties, Billy Graham and others promoted the word to describe themselves and the religious space they were seeking to create between the cultural withdrawal espoused by the fundamentalist movement, on the one hand, and mainline Protestantism’s departures from historic Christian doctrine, on the other. In each of these phases, the term has had a somewhat different meaning, and yet it keeps surfacing because it has described a set of basic historic beliefs and impulses.

He continues:

When I became a Christian in college, in the early nineteen-seventies, the word “evangelical” still meant an alternative to the fortress mentality of fundamentalism. Shortly thereafter, I went to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, to prepare for the Presbyterian ministry. It was one of the many institutions that Graham, Harold Ockenga, and J. Howard Pew, and other neo-evangelicals, as they were sometimes called, established. In those years, there was such great energy in the movement that, by the mid-nineteen-nineties, it had eclipsed mainline Protestantism as the dominant branch of the Christian church in the U.S. When I moved to Manhattan to start a new church, in 1989, most people I met found the church and its ministry to be a curiosity in secular New York but not a threat. And, if they heard the word “evangelical” around the congregation, a name we seldom used, they usually asked what it meant.Today, while the name is no longer unfamiliar in my city, its meaning has changed drastically. The conservative leaders who have come to be most identified with the movement have largely driven this redefinition. But political pollsters have also helped, as they have sought to highlight a crucial voting bloc. When they survey people, there is no discussion of any theological beliefs, or other criteria. The great majority of them simply ask people, “Would you describe yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian?”

Keller concludes that evangelicalism as a movement may or may not abandon or demote the prominence of the name, “yet be more committed to its theology and historic impulses than ever.”Should followers of Jesus simply trust Keller on his positive outlook on the Church’s direction?Perhaps it’s equally important to be aware that there is a fissure that appears to be widening.In the article, Young U.S. Christians Fear Trump Is Turning 'Evangelical' Into a Dirty Word - and Israel Is Paying the Price, published at Haaretz, the writer makes the claim that “a new generation has emerged that questions the literal beliefs of the Bible and rejects the politicization of their religion by some on the right.”Brandan Robertson, 25, who is the lead pastor of “a progressive Christian community” in San Diego, California, and has made a substantial impression in both the political and faith communities as a gay advocate, told Haaretz that he thinks “evangelicalism is in a real crisis right now.”Shachar Peled, reporter for the piece, writes: “Despite growing up learning about the Chosen People in what he calls ‘the hotbed of Christian Zionism,’ modern technology and globalization led Robertson and his peers to question those teachings.”“Because we live in such an interconnected globalized world, as students we were able to go on Facebook or to easily travel to a different part of the world and see that the things we were being told – based on, in my opinion, antiquated theology – didn’t live up and match up to the reality of what was happening to the world.”Before throwing out the “antiquated theology” with the baby and the bathwater, perhaps those who are so eager to oust “evangelical” from their vocabulary (or reasoning) should consider, as studies from Pew Research Center and others show and as Keller points out, “evangelical churches that resist dilution in their theological beliefs and practices are holding their own or growing.”Keller adds, “And if evangelicals—or whatever they will call themselves­—continue to become more multiethnic in leadership and confound the left-right political categories, they may continue to do so.”Getting into solution is so much better than obsession with the blame game.READ: How American Evangelicals Are Taking the ‘Christ’ Out Of Christianity