The baby being discipline and the bath water being legalism. I don’t know when it happened. I remember a popular book in my college days called “The Pusuit of Holiness”. Sometime after that the popular book became “Grace Awakening”.
Subsequent to the advent of the grace awakening the suggestion to develop disciplines for the pursuit of holiness in the Christian life was met with the phrase “let’s not be legalistic”. A certain cynicism has set in with regard to any kind of structured religious habits. This has happened to the degree that we rarely see pastors encouraging their parishoners to discipline themselves unto godliness via the tried and true disciplines of prayer, meditation, fasting, study, etc.
Maybe I’m overstating the case… please point me to a broad evangelical call in this area if I’ve missed the boat.
The problem here is that it’s incorrect to describe a disciplined effort to put to death the deeds of the flesh with the label of legalism. We are required to make this effort by the scriptures. We are not procuring our justification by this effort. If we were then the term legalism would apply.
Unfortunately since the word legalism has such a pejorative tone it’s a useful word when one feels judged by the disciplined efforts of the community around them. Rather than being convicted that regular bible reading is a necessity for the believer who would fight the good fight tis much easier to cry “legalism” and make no effort to discipline oneself unto godliness.
Thoreau said “Thus men will lie on their backs talking about the fall of man and never make the effort to get up”. Now of course we know that first Christ by His grace must impute his righteousness to us and put us on our feet. From that point on because of our union with Christ we are to be putting to death the deeds of the flesh through the Spirit – if indeed the Spirit of Christ lives in you.- making a concerted effort to wage the good warfare against our sinful flesh.
Legalism No – Discipline, effort, striving against sin to the point of shedding of blood… we must… otherwise we are not what we claim to be.
Sorry for not getting back to you on this sooner. I whole heartedly agree with your thoughts on this. But it’s not something that I would have agreed with say 10 years ago. There are some younger guys (30′s) in the “God Blogshpere” who seem to have a disciplined attitude, and I envy them for that. However, until recently, I would most certainly have been one to cry out legalism. As you point out, it’s much easier to cry foul than to honestly weigh the merits of discipline when we know that this means we must work.
Wait a minute, work?? But I’m not saved by my works! hehe
It’s good to have you back mon frere. It looks like it’s only you and I here at the Requiest.
I also would not have agreed with what I’ve written 10 or so years ago. I was a full fledged member of the “let go and let God” club.
Remember we’re not talking justification. There’s a lot more here to discuss I realize.
What is the role of fasting? What does “deny oneself” mean? I don’t want to go off the asectic deep end but our current evangelical culture doesn’t seem to be in any great danger of making that mistake.