Quotes About Legalism

So the call to discipleship is a commitment solely to the person of Jesus Christ, a breaking through of all legalisms by the grace of him who calls.

You didn't learn the Bible as a Fundamentalist. You learned fragments of Old Testament legalism mixed with Behaviorism & Nietzschean ethics

Too many of us focus on the outward structure of character and conduct without taking the time to build the inward foundation of devotion to God. This often results in a cold morality or legalism, or, even worse, self-righteousness and spiritual pride.

Remember that I have been a legalist. We are the ones who throw stones. We are quick to judge without knowledge. We feed rumors and incline our heads to hear more. We label the messy people and gossip about the sinners and shake our heads in disgust. And when you have been a legalist in ministry, it's not pretty. And it's not ministry. And it couldn't possibly be what the Jesus had in mind when He said, "Go and teach them about me.

Not only are drinking, smoking, swearing, dancing and going to movies not issues... they simply do not matter. They matter to fundamentalists, of course, but to anyone else outside the church, they could care less whether we smoke or attend movies. Absolutely no one gives a tinker's damn whether I say 'tinker's damn' or not.

Message of the Legalists: without law, power lost its shape.

Religious people love to hide behind religion. They love the rules of religion more than they love Jesus. With practice, Condemners let rules become more important than the spiritual life.

Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes a person's noblest impulses.

The best that can be said for ritualistic legalism is that it improves conduct. It does little, however, to alter character and nothing of itself to modify consciousness.

We need to make sure we are doing what Jesus said and not what we thought Jesus must have said. The textbook case against Christian activism can be made in one word—Prohibition—the word that would have made the Lord Jesus at Cana into a moonshiner felon. We did a great job there of setting aside the Word of God for the sake of our tradition

Though we may not be so extreme, many of us do have certain Christian activities (church attendance, tithing, Bible studies, and so on) that we feel we must do to be good Christians. These activities themselves are obviously not wrong, but a performance-oriented perspective is wrong.

Apparently, some have forgotten that God, who killed sinners in the Old Testament, died for them in the New Testament. Unfortunately, legalistic Christians love spiritual law enforcement too much to make good New Testament believers. Legalism has never drawn a lost soul to Christ, and it never will. Love does! "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8).

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin.

I've about given up on the fundamentalists, who have become so legalistic and letter-bound to the Bible.

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: I feed on your energy.

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy.

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy.

Bahram smiled to himself as he listened: the arguments were marvellously simple yet irrefutable. Really, there was no language like English for turning lies into legalisms.

Law is a Bottomless-Pit, it is a Cormorant, a Harpy, that devours every thing.

The law, in so far as it leads men to put their confidence in it, consigns them necessarily to death. The

They attend with Pharisaical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.

A legalistic commitment to duration can kill one's prayer life.

Every attempt to produce holy living by applying Moses to the conscience is an attempt to give Moses a job God never intended him to have. It also denies the true bridegroom his full rights as the new husband.

He who was not legalist at any other point, and who was ready without hesitation to pardon prostitutes and disreputable people, was nonetheless extremely strict upon one point: "only one who practices grace can receive grace.