GOOD LEGALISM AND BAD LEGALISM
Anyone who has read any part of Leviticus has been bewildered by the mystery of the Mosaic Law. It no secret that these detailed, fussy laws are impossible to understand with the rational mind. Moreover, if they are impossible to understand, it is impossible to obey them. With this realistic view, only a fool would try to base his or her righteousness on obedience to the laws of Moses.
And yet, Jews do their very best to try to obey all aspects of the written law. To compensate for their lack of understanding, Jews added to it with more laws they call the “oral law.” The same is true for Christians who have added their own versions of oral law when creating religious doctrines. In doing this, both religions have stumbled in their efforts to show God that they are serious about being obedient to his word.
Except for token respect for the ten commandments, Christians ignore books of the law altogether with the belief that Jesus is all they need. Surprisingly, they do this ignoring three facts:
The law. therefore, presents major theological problems for Christians. Because they know that there is some value in the Old Testament laws, they do not want to ignore them altogether. The solutions developed to deal with this problem limit their affirmation of the law to the ten commandments while observing a few other Biblical traditions such as the following:
Even though Christians like to think that they are not legalistic, rigid consistency if these practices are, inn effect, religious laws for Christians. Finding scriptural prescriptions for these activities, they consider that they, as followers of Jesus, have fulfilled the law like Jesus did. And still they do not like to think that they are legalistic. They are so self-righteous about their religion that the difference between faith and religion is not at all in view for them.
While observing these religious laws, Christians hypocritically condemn Jews’ hyper-legalistic obedience to traditional religious laws based on the Law of Moses. They take pride in their enlightened righteousness that sets them above Jewish legal practices without realizing that the multitude of Christian religious practices are also legalism. Full of pride in their faith, they fail to recognize that what they call faith is really religion.
In God’s eyes, only thing that sets Christians apart from Jews is that their forms of legalism are different. Nevertheless, most Christians would like nothing more than to see Jews reject their traditional legalism in favor of Christian legalism. They are blind to the fact that salvation for all religious nations, including Christianity, is through the Jews.
Thus they are thoroughly confused by these scriptures such as these that deal with the law:
The net conclusion that Christians draw from these scriptures is that legalism is bad. And so they avoid the kind of religious legalism based on the Law of Moses while following their own styles of legalism based on the New Testament. They do not see that religion is religion regardless of the basis for it. And even if that religion is based on literal New Testament writings, it is still an Old/First Covenant religious idol that man fashions as necessary like a physical idol is created to suit an idolater’s needs.
STUDY TIP: Read more about covenant in Two Covenants Part 2.
Read more about idolatry in Religion is Idolatry and Wood (trees), Gold, Silver, Stone.