Legalism Quotes

“Legalism says God will love us if we change. The gospel says God will change us because He loves us.”
― Tullian Tchividjian

“Legalism breeds a sense of entitlement that turns us into complainers.”
― Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything

“I endeavored to renounce society, that I might avoid temptation. But it was a poor religion; so far as it prevailed, only tended to make me gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless.”
― John Newton

“Law without reason is criminal.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“My belief is that, morally, God and Satan are vaguely on the same page. According to the common understanding of Satan's origins, 'holiness' is, metaphorically, frozen stiff in his veins: and at that a corrupted formula - i.e. legalism. The vital difference is that God is willing to offer grace for our sins; he delights in grace. God is the one and only holy and just punisher of sin, yes, but that is partly so because punishment for the sake of punishment is not something he loves. Whereas Satan, as the accuser, and as it is written, actually seeks God's permission to punish; he, being a seasoned legalist, delights in finding wrongs and will defy his own morality just to expose immorality. This is why both the anti-religious soul and the violently religious soul are, whether consciously or unconsciously, and sadly enough, glorifying their biggest hater: Satan is not only a lawless lover of punishing lawlessness, but also the sharpest theologian of us all. He loves wickedness, but only because he loves punishing wickedness.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“You win over people just like you win over a dog. You see a dog passing down the street with an old bone in his mouth. You don't grab the bone from him and tell him it's not good for him. He'll growl at you. It's the only thing he has. But you throw a big fat lamb chop in front of him, and he's going to drop that bone and pick up the lamb chop, his tail wagging to beat the band. And you've got a friend. Instead of going around grabbing bones from people... I'm going to throw them some lamb chops. Something with real meat and life in it. I'm going to tell them about New Beginnings.”
― David Wilkerson, The Cross and the Switchblade

“Thus, dear friends, I have said it clearly enough, and I believe you ought to understand it and not make liberty a law...”
― Martin Luther

“The main thing between you and God is not so much your sins; it's your damnable good works. ”
― John Gerstner

“I believe that secularism is not the enemy of spirituality. Our spirits are in fact secular and free. But the enemy of your spirit is materialism which produces legalism. People scramble for the "perfect law" in order fix everything, while failing to see that law only points towards what is material. And so, people find themselves going around in a circle that will never end. The key is to break away from that circle. You have to begin focusing your attention onto what is inside you and what is inside everybody else. This will in turn produce common sense, intuition, and understanding. Then comes strength.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“In America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“What are Christians known for? Outsiders think our moralizing, our condemnations, and our attempts to draw boundaries around everything. Even if these standards are accurate and biblical, they seem to be all we have to offer. And our lives are a poor advertisement for the standards. We have set the gameboard to register lifestyle points; then we are surprised to be trapped by our mistakes. The truth is we have invited the hypocrite image.”
― David Kinnaman, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity... and Why It Matters

“In the end, only God can see the heart of an individual and distinguish the difference between legalistic deadweight and the passion of holy solemnity.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Accumulating orthodoxy makes it harder year-by-year to be a Christian than it was in Jesus' day.”
― Brian D. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy

“People will do the basest things on account of their so-called honour.”
― T.H. White, The Ill-Made Knight

“Christianity is at its purest a philosophy about a person, Jesus Christ, and at its dirtiest a philosophy about requirements and law.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Without the infinite personal God, all a person can do, as Nietzsche points out, is to make systems. In today's speech we would call them gameplans. A person can erect some sort of structure, some type of limited frame in which he lives, shutting himself up in that frame and not looking beyond it.”
― Francis August Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture

“God is not a God of confusion, although at times one's judgment, for a period, may become clouded in the mi(d)st of one's growth process. I stopped fooling myself into thinking that Christ is always for the cool kids and never for those upright and uptight religious people everybody hates.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“These days when Christians bicker they exaggerate passion into a legalistic belief and prosperity into a lukewarm belief.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“This is so whether the said body of citizens or its prevailing part does this directly of itself, or commits the task to another or others who are not and cannot be the legislator in an unqualified sense but only in a certain respect and at a certain time and in accordance with the authority of the primary legislator. And in consequence of this I say that laws and anything else instituted by election must receive their necessary approval from the same primary authority and no other: whatever may be the situation concerning various ceremonies or solemnities, which are not required for the results of an election to stand but for their good standing, and even without which the election would be no less valid. I say further that it is by the same authority that laws and anything else instituted by election must receive any addition or subtraction or even total overhaul, any interpretation and any suspension: depending on the demands of time and place and other circumstances that might make one of these measures opportune for the sake of the common advantage in such matters.”
― Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of the Peace

“Liberty is not a middle position between legalism and license; it is another thing entirely. We have a hard time with this. Liberty is not moderate legalism or moderated license. Liberty is stricter than legalism, and liberty is freer than license.”
― Douglas Wilson, Why Children Matter

“On my arrival I was told to come to this place at this time. That is what I know.”
The least thing that is known shall govern your acts.
This was the course of evidence for the Gowachin. McKie's response put a legal burden on his questioner.”
― Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment

“The antinomian principle, that it is needless for a man perfectly justified by faith to endeavor to keep the law and do good works, is a glaring evidence that legality is so ingrained in man's corrupt nature that until a man truly come to Christ by faith, the legal disposition will still be reigning in him. Let him turn himself into what shape or be of what principles he will in religion though he run into antinomianism; he will carry along with him his legal spirit which will always be a slavish and unholy spirit.”
― Thomas Boston, The Marrow of Modern Divinity

“He saw before him two roads, both equally straight; but he saw two; and that terrified him—him, who had never in his life known but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory. One of these two straight lines excluded the other. Which of the two was the true one?”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The believer mortifies sin, because God loves him; but the legalist, that God may love him.”
― Ralph Erskine

“Man is no longer attracted at all by the good. He finds himself in a state of total indifference with regard to good & evil... the intervention of an external element is necessary. Obedience to the law is what defines the good, for example. "It is good because the law requires of it of me" instead of "The law requires it of me because it is good”
― William of Ockham

“ADM Jabalpur remains a monument to cowardice dressed up in legalisms.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“We praise the eye because it can see, and we condemn the hand because it cannot see. We have nothing to do with the choice of the gift. Remember the parable of the servants and what they did with the talents.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, The Liberty of Obedience

“Grace is the steady ground beneath us when traditions feel heavy.”
― Gord Penner, Uncovered: What Paul Really Meant About Head Coverings and Christian Freedom

“Holiness becomes the fruit of grace, not the result of pressure or performance.”
― Gord Penner, Uncovered: What Paul Really Meant About Head Coverings and Christian Freedom

“The journey toward freedom can be slow, painful and beautiful.”
― Gord Penner, Uncovered: What Paul Really Meant About Head Coverings and Christian Freedom