I recently discovered Readwise, an app that has a neat feature—it sends a daily email with a randomized selection of highlights from books in my Kindle library. This has proven an interesting way to encounter information I have read but long-since forgotten. A few days ago Readwise surfaced a quote from a book I read years ago, Derek Thomas’s How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home. And, wouldn’t you know it, it was just the quote I needed that day. Here is Thomas explaining when to use the oft-used but oft-misused term “legalism.”
The word legalism is overused. Sometimes I tell my students at the seminary where I teach that they may use this word once a year and no more. All too often legalism is employed whenever we consider obedience inconvenient. Legalism then becomes a “scare tactic word” masking an underlying indifference or mistrust of radical holiness.
What does legalism really mean? It is the proper word whenever ever one of the following is true:
I am being asked to obey in order to win God’s favor. A works-based view of salvation is essentially legalistic. I am being asked to obey a command
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