Legalism
Serious error
Treating obedience to God's law, or to human rules, as the ground of a person's acceptance with God.
Also called: legalist, legalistic, legalists
What it means
In the strict sense the site uses, legalism means looking to one's own law-keeping to be made or kept right with God. It can be open, as when a church teaches that baptism, good works, or obedience earn salvation. More often it is quiet: grace is said to start the Christian life, but standing before God is thought to depend on performance from then on.
The word is also used more loosely for adding human rules to God's commands and binding consciences with them. That is a real danger too, and the site records it under holiness codes.
The apostle Paul confronted legalism in Galatia, where teachers required circumcision for salvation. The Reformers confronted it in the late medieval church. The historic Protestant confessions teach that we are justified by faith alone, apart from works, and that our best works, though pleasing to God in Christ, are too imperfect to merit anything.
What Scripture says
A person is justified not by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.
Those who seek to be justified by the law have cut themselves off from Christ.
Salvation is by grace through faith, not by works, so that no one can boast.
God credits righteousness to the one who trusts him who justifies the ungodly, not to the one who works.
Human regulations have an appearance of wisdom but do not restrain the flesh.
What is wrong with it
Scripture teaches that no one can be justified by keeping the law, because all have sinned and the law demands perfect obedience. Christ alone kept the law perfectly, and his righteousness is credited to all who trust him. To look to our own obedience is to treat his work as incomplete. Paul does not call this a lesser form of the gospel; he calls it a different gospel.
How it undermines the truth
Legalism undermines justification by faith alone and the sufficiency of Christ's work. It also distorts sanctification, because obedience offered to earn God's favor is driven by fear rather than gratitude. And it undermines assurance, because no one who looks honestly at their own performance can ever be sure it is enough.
How it can harm a church
Legalistic churches tend to produce two kinds of people: the proud, who think they are keeping the rules, and the despairing, who know they are not. Both are kept from resting in Christ. Struggling believers hide their sins instead of confessing them, and hypocrisy grows.
Those who leave such churches often carry deep wounds and can come to resent the very law of God that, rightly used, would have led them to Christ and guided them in freedom.
This page describes a teaching, not the faith of any person who holds it.
Where it comes up
Confessions: WCF 11.1; WCF 16.5; LBCF 1689 11.1; LBCF 1689 16.5
On this site: Law & gospel
Related terms
Justification by faith and worksOutside historic orthodoxy
The teaching that a person is made right with God by faith together with his own good works, obedience, or participation in sacraments.
Justification by faith aloneHistoric orthodoxy
God declares sinners righteous in His sight not because of anything they do, but only because of Christ's righteousness, received through faith alone.
AntinomianismSerious error
The teaching that God's moral law has no binding claim on the lives of believers.
Three uses of the lawHistoric orthodoxy
The Reformation teaching that God's moral law restrains evil in society, shows sinners their need of Christ, and guides believers in grateful obedience.
Holiness codesA view held among orthodox Christians
Written or unwritten rules of conduct, such as standards on dress, entertainment, or alcohol, that a church expects of its members beyond what Scripture explicitly commands.