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10 Signs You Might be a Legalist

In previous posts I have written that Legalism is the biggest threat to church unity, and that you are better off being a sinner than a legalist.

So since legalism is so serious, it is important to know whether or not you are a legalist.

Here are 10 Signs you Might be a Legalist

If you believe there is a sin you think God cannot forgive, you might be a legalist.
If you believe there is a limit to the grace of God, you might be a legalist.
If you believe that God’s blessings are reserved only for the obedient, you might be a legalist.
If you believe that certain behaviors disqualify a person from joining God’s family, you might be a legalist.
If you believe that the presence of ongoing sin in a person’s life causes them to lose their eternal life, you might be a legalist.
If you believe that the presence of ongoing sin in a person’s life proves that they never had eternal life in the first place, you might be a legalist.
If you believe that God loves us more if we obey Him more, you might be a legalist.
If you believe that all Christians must believe and act like you do, you might be a legalist.
If you believe that our standing with God is based on how well we keep the Ten Commandments, you might be a legalist.
If you believe that people who accept evolution, love homosexuals, and vote democrat cannot be true Christians, you might be a legalist.

Have any to add? Want to object? State your opinion in the comment section below!

4 Reasons Sin is Better than Legalism

By Jeremy Myers

45 Comments

You might be surprised to learn what is the biggest threat to Christianity.

Despite what you might hear from some churches, It’s not gay people.

Despite what you might hear from some politicians pandering for votes, it’s not democrats (or republicans). Not Obama either!

Despite what you might hear from some preachers, it’s not Muslims.

Despite what you might hear from some men, it is not women preachers.

It’s not greed or gluttony. It’s not sports. It’s not Hollywood. It’s not Wall Street. It’s not Russia or China.

No, the biggest threat to Christianity is the one that is probably present in all of the lives and congregations which say the things above, and which Jesus primarily concerned Himself with during His ministry.

The biggest threat to Christianity.

I’ve written on this before, but I’m doing so again because legalism is such a threat that I am firmly convinced that if we had to choose between self-righteous religious legalism and committing sin, we should choose sin every time.

Why? Here are four reasons:

Legalism is the Worst Kind of Sin

It’s doesn’t look like sin! But at it’s core, legalism fosters pride, arrogance, judgmentalism, and self-righteousness.

So in other words, sin is better than legalism because at least sin admits it is sin. Legalism is still sin, but masquerades as righteousness. That makes legalism not only sin, but sinister as well.

Legalism is of the Devil

Literally. Satan is a legalist. We often think that Satan temps us to sin, but I think that sin is only “Plan B” with Satan.

Satan’s primary goal is to turn us into legalists. Rather than turn someone into an outright sinner, Satan would much prefer to have everyone think they are completely obedient to the Laws of God, and are here on earth to get others to obey God also.

Satan wants us to think that because of our obedience to the law of God, we are making God happy. That if we can just conform our lives to a set of rules and behaviors, then we are right with God.

If you gave Satan a choice between an army of religious legalists and an army of Satan-worshiping anarchists, Satan will choose the religious legalists every time. Religious legalists do more damage to the cause of Christ than any anarchist has ever done. Worse yet, religious legalists perform their evil in the name of God, which makes it infinitely more evil.

If you sin, and sin blatantly, at least you will recognize you have sinned, and can fall before God in repentance and confession. God would rather have this than self-righteous, devilish legalism.

Legalists are Far from the Kingdom

Jesus said that tax collects and prostitutes were closer to the Kingdom of God than were the legalistic religious leaders of His day.

The same thing is true today. So called “sinners” know something about themselves and about God which no legalist will ever understand. “Sinners” know that they are sinners and that if God loves and forgives them, it is not because of anything good or Godly in themselves, but is purely out of God’s grace.

Though legalists always pay lip service to grace, they don’t actually believe it. Though they may believe that they were originally saved by God’s love and grace, they believe that God’s continuing love and grace for them is based on their own personal godliness and holy lifestyle.

But since life in the Kingdom of God is based on understanding God’s love and grace, then people who think they are living in the Kingdom according to strict observance of law are not actually living within the Kingdom.

Again, those who the world considered “sinners” know that if they are to be accepted by God, they can depend on nothing but God’s unmerited grace. This is the position in which we should all approach God, but as long as a person thinks they are obeying God, they will never approach God begging for mercy and grace.

Yes, Jesus said that “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). But Jesus was not calling His followers to become more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. He was saying that when it comes to personal righteousness, you have to be more perfect than the scribes and pharisees, which is impossible! Therefore, don’t even try! Fall upon the grace, mercy, and love of God instead.

Legalists Are Blind

The last reason sin is better than legalism is because no legalist ever believes they are a legalist. This is partly what makes this sin so insidious. While most sinners know they are sinners, no legalist ever recognizes their legalism.

Instead, they are “standing up for truth!”, “defending God’s righteousness!”, “calling on people to return to God!”, “living as salt and light!”, or some other such phrase. As such, they are blind to the true condition of their hearts, and believe themselves to be champions of the truth and defenders of the Gospel, but in reality, they are whitewashed tombs, the blind leading the blind.

In a strange turn of events, the sinner who can see God’s ways and God’s love and God’s forgiveness is better off than the legalist. The legalist, seeing only his own self-righteousness, thinks that in order to gain God’s love, everyone needs to be as righteous as he is. The sinner however, knows without a doubt that he can never attain that level of righteousness, and so despairs of ever achieving God’s love. They are left with beating on their chest and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” which is what God wants anyway (Luke 18:13).

So how can you know if you are a legalist? Tomorrow I will write about 10 Signs You Might be a Legalist.

Is it wrong for Christians to call God “Allah”? You might be surprised at my answer…

By Jeremy Myers

86 Comments

Most think of Allah as the god of Islam. And yet there are many Eastern and Middle-Eastern Christians who call God “Allah.” Is this wrong? Recently a reader sent in this question:

I love your newsletter and also the freedom to comment, so that I can read others people believe too…

Anyway, the reason I sent you this email is that I would like to ask you about something. In Indonesia, there are some Christian people who are trying to tell people it is wrong to call God “Allah.” They say we should use God’s original name, YHWH. The reason they say this is because Allah is the name used by Muslim’s for their god.

Personally, I do not mind using the name Allah, since I know which Allah I am talking and praying too… I pray to the Allah who sent Jesus to redeem us…

Would you maybe talk about this? Have you heard about this before?

As with most of my attempts at answering theological questions, I want to approach this question somewhat backwards.

The Traditional Answer is NO. You cannot call God Allah.

The traditional way of handling the difficult question of whether or not it is okay to call God Allah is by comparing Christianity and Islam, and then saying that since the religions are so different, it would be wrong to name the Christian God Allah.

For example, here is an article where Albert Mohler says pretty much this very thing. Here is a quote:

“If Allah has no son, Allah is not the father of our Lord Jesus Christ…This is no mere ‘discussion and bickering.’ This is where the Gospel stands or falls,” the theologian concluded.

Then there is this informative article which shows all the differences between the God of the Christianity and Allah of Islam.

In some ways, I am in agreement with those two articles. To say that God can be called “Allah” risks causing a lot of confusion in the minds of many people. There are vast differences between the God of the Christian Bible and the Allah of the Muslim Quran.

Furthermore, can you imagine asking a Muslim to name their god Yahweh? Of course not! Imagine the outrage!

Can you imagine asking Muslims to accept the idea that Allah had a son, or became flesh in Jesus Christ? Never!

So if Muslims know and recognize that Allah and Yahweh are so radically different, isn’t it odd that some Christians are willing to call God Allah?

This is the traditional way of answering this theological question about whether or not it is right to call God Allah. The traditional answers have a lot going for them.

And yet….

My Backwards Way of Answering…

(Here we get into the backwards way of answering this question about whether or not you can call God Allah… you’ve been warned).

I often think that one of the problems with a lot of theological debates centers not around the various opinions, but in how the question itself is asked. The way a question is asked often frames the debate.

The question for this debate is asked this way: “Is it wrong to call God Allah”?

Those who say it is wrong point to all the questionable activities and commands that Allah gave in the Quran. They say that Allah could not have had a son. That Allah could not have become flesh. That Allah is not a Trinity.

Hmm…

So let me ask the question a completely different way, to see if we can get a different answer.

Is it wrong to call God Yahweh?

Before you answer, I invite you to think through all the violent and questionable commands and activities of Yahweh in the Old Testament. I invite you to consider whether or not a Jewish person would think that Yahweh could have a son. I invite you to consider what a Jewish person would think about Yahweh becoming flesh. I invite you to think about what a Jewish person would say about Yahweh being a Trinity.

If we are completely honest with ourselves (and with the Old Testament text), I think the answer we give to the question “Is it wrong to call God Allah?” should be the same answer we give to the question “Is it wrong to call God Yahweh?”

Can I put it bluntly? The God depicted in the Old Testament often seems more bloody, devious, and vengeful than any depiction of Allah in the Quran.

But what about Jesus? What about the New Testament? Jesus looks nothing like Allah!

Yes. that is true. But again, if we are honest, Jesus doesn’t look a whole lot like Yahweh either.

(I should say at this point that I am currently writing a book about how Yahweh looks exactly like Jesus, but only when viewed through the lens of Jesus dying on the cross. But the book is less than half-way finished… and if I cannot prove the thesis to my satisfaction, I see no way out of the dilemma about how to reconcile the love of Jesus with the violence of Yahweh other than to say that in some way or another, the Old Testament is wrong in its portrayal of God. Anyway, stay tuned for more about this book…)

Yahweh vs. Jesus vs. Allah

If we can say that Jesus reveals Yahweh to us when Yahweh looks nothing like Jesus, I don’t have too much difficulty saying that maybe Jesus reveals Allah to us as well, even though Allah looks nothing like Jesus. When it comes to both Yahweh and Allah, I would say that there seems to be both good things and bad things about both, but Jesus came to show us what God is really like… and to help us separate the truly divine nature from the blood-bathed human trappings we have clothed God in.

Does this mean that Yahweh and Allah are the same? No! Nobody can logically make that comparison. Sure, there are a few similarities, but their differences are too vast.

So while I would never ever ask a Muslim to call Allah “Yahweh,” so also, I would never ask a Jewish person or a Christian to call Yahweh, “Allah.”

Is it wrong to call God Allah?

I invite all Christians, whether they are Western, Eastern, or Middle-Eastern Christians, that when they pray to God, they picture Jesus. Why? Because Jesus is the center of our faith and practice, and (more importantly for this question), Jesus reveals God to us!

Jesus says that if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father (John 14:7). Paul writes that Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15) and that in Jesus dwelt all the fullness of God (Col 1:19). The book of Hebrews says that Jesus is the exact representation of God (Heb 1:3).

So if, when you think about God, you picture the God revealed in Jesus Christ, but use the name Yahweh, I have no problem with that. It might be confusing to Jewish people, but we are not asking them to picture Jesus when they talk about ha shem (the way they pray and speak about Yahweh). But if they ask if you are Jewish, you can say no, that you are a follower of Jesus.

And if, when you think about God, you picture the God revealed in Jesus Christ, but use the name Allah, I have no problem with that. It might be confusing to Muslim people, but we are not asking them to picture Jesus when they talk about Allah. But if they ask if you are Muslim, you can say no, that you are a follower of Jesus.

And if, when you think about God, you picture the God revealed in Jesus Christ, but use the generic name “God,” I have no problem with that either. Most people might wonder which God you are referring to, and if they ask, you can point them to Jesus.

What are your thoughts on this? Is it wrong for Christians to call God Allah?

Note: After I wrote this post, I decided to search the internet to see what others might be saying about this topic, and discovered, much to my dismay, that violence is erupting in Malaysia because Christians want to call God Allah. I imagine that maybe this is why someone sent the question in to me…

Ironically, this changes my answer somewhat. Though theologically, I stand by what I have written above, from a practical standpoint, I am not sure calling God Allah is worth dying over… If Muslims are offended by us referring to the God revealed in Jesus Christ with the name “Allah,” but Christians feel it is our “right” to refer to God however we want, I echo Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6:7: “Why not rather be wronged?”

Of course, having said that, many early Christians were killed and persecuted by Jewish people (Read the book of Acts) because they equated Jesus with Yahweh… but the Christians thought the risk of arrest and death was worth it… And yet, the biblical case for equating Jesus with Yahweh is much stronger than the case for equating Jesus with Allah (there is no biblical case for it).

So what is my NEW final (tentative) answer? It’s this: Follow your own conscience and the leading of the Holy Spirit and the wise counsel from other mature Christians in your local community of believers…

How do you heap burning coals on the heads of your enemies?

By Jeremy Myers

43 Comments

Proverbs 25:22 instructs us to heap burning coals on the heads of our enemies.

But what does that mean?

Initially, this sounds like a terrible thing to do, but this strange command is in the context of giving bread to our enemies when they are hungry and water to our enemies when they are thirsty.

Pastors and other Bible teachers have noticed this connection, and many have gone into great hermeneutical contortions trying to explain how it would be a good think to light your enemy’s head on fire.

I even heard one pastor say that when we were kind to our enemies, but they refused to repent and become a Christian, this would only increase their suffering in hell.

Isn’t that nice?

Aside from the troubling idea that anybody who is not a Christian is our enemy (!!!), what sort of person only serves others so that their future suffering in hell will intensify?!

This is probably an extreme Christian view (I hope so anyway), but most commentaries I have read on this text interpret the burning coals in some sort of figurative way so that it refers to something along the lines of the convicting work of the Holy Spirit, or a searing of the mind with the truth of God’s Word, or bringing upon your enemy a red face of shame, or something like that. Regardless, most Christian teachers believe that heaping coals on the head of your enemy refers to some kind of pain or punishment inflicted upon your enemy.

A while back I decided to study Proverbs 25:21-22 for myself.

Proverbs 25:22 and Burning Coals

As it turns out, heaping coals on someone’s head is not figurative after all. And it is definitely not talking about hell or anything negative.

To the contrary, the statement about heaping burning coals on the heads of our enemies is parallel to the statements about blessing our enemies with food and water. When this Proverb was written, people heated their homes and cooked with fire. But sometimes, a person’s fire would go out during the night, and before they could cook their breakfast, they had to go to a neighbor’s house to get a coal so they could relight their fire.

So Proverbs 25:22 teaches that if the fire of your enemy goes out, and they come asking for a coal to relight their fire, instead of turning them away or giving just one, we should be be extravagantly generous. How? We must keep one coal for yourself, and give all the rest of the burning coals to our enemy.

One commentary that gets it right is the Bible Knowledge Commentary on Proverbs. It says this:

Sometimes a person’s fire went out and he needed to borrow some live coals to restart his fire. Giving a person coals in a pan to carry home “on his head” was a neighborly, kind act; it made friends, not enemies.

Proverbs 25:22 instructs us to give our enemy so many burning coals they have to carry them the way burdens are carried in the Middle East: in a container on the head. Then they can go back and immediately bake their bread without having to wait for the wood to become suitable coals for cooking.

This is quite different than setting someone’s head on fire.

This understanding of the burning coals makes more sense, doesn’t it? Yes, and especially in light of Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon on the Mount to bless our enemies and pray for them. Jesus points that God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous and the sun to shine on the evil and the good and we should do the same (Matt 5:45). And of course, this is exactly how Paul used the passage about burning coals in Romans 12:20-21, where he concludes by saying, “overcome evil with good.”

This reminds me of how Abraham Lincoln responded when asked why he did not seek to destroy his enemies, but showed them leniency instead. He said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

We are to Love Our Enemies

God does not want us to be nice to my enemies so that their judgment will be worse in the end. That is not love. He wants us to show love and kindness to our enemies simply because our enemies are people too and God loves them just as much as He loves us. Though our enemies may never turn to Jesus as a result of our kindness, we are to love them just the same.

This post is part of the February Synchroblog where bloggers were invited to write about the topic of loving our enemies. Here is a list of the other contributors. Go check out what they had to say on the topic!

Todi Adu – Love is War, War in Love
Todi Adu – Love is Your Weapon; Fight for Love
Carol Kuniholm – Circles of Love
K. W. Leslie – Love Your Enemies
Doreen A Mannion – Easy to Love
Liz Dyer – Uncomfortable Love
Mike Donahoe – Love Your Enemies Really
EmKay Anderson – On Loving While Angry
Glenn Hager – The Opposite of Love is Not Hate
Josie Anna – On Love Because I am Loved
Edwin Aldrich – Loving All of Our Neighbors

5 Heartbreaking Search Terms People Use to Find my Blog… (I cry when I see them)

By Jeremy Myers

10 Comments

I sometimes cry at the search terms people use to find my blog.

They remind me that there is so much pain and loneliness in the world.

I use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to learn a few things about the people who visit my blog and how they find me, and sometimes, my heart breaks at what I see.

Today, I saw that someone visited my site by searching for the term

Should a man call his wife a fool?

I do not know whether this was a man or a woman searching for this, but I suspect that it was a woman who is feeling hurt and betrayed after her husband called her a fool. Most tragically of all, the day I saw this was February 15, the day after Valentine’s Day.

On a day when a wife should be reminded how precious and lovely she is, here is a woman who apparently was told she was foolish. And apparently, this sort of treatment is so commonplace, she is wondering if maybe it is okay.

So she searches online for whether or not it is okay for her husband to call her a fool.

She found this page: Call Someone a fool and go to hell. Sadly, I went and read that post, and am not sure she found it so helpful. I should rework it to be more encouraging…

As I wrote this post, I went and watched the search terms roll through the real time reporting screen of Google Analytics. Over the course of twenty minutes, I saw these search terms come across my screen:

If I commit suicide will I go to hell?

The person landed on this page: Suicide is not the Unforgivable Sin. I really hope that person found some encouragement and love in that post to give them the desire to keep on living.

Can I be forgiven if I commit adultery?

The person who searched for this landed here: Is Adultery the Unforgivable Sin? I went and read it again and asked myself…. did that post encourage the person to stay faithful to his or her spouse? I hope so. Of course, if they have already committed adultery, it tells them that they are forgiven by God. But at the same time, I don’t want to encourage people to commit adultery. Did I say enough about the damaging consequences of adultery while still emphasizing God’s grace, love, and forgiveness?

You are probably seeing a pattern here on various sins. As I was writing the previous paragraph, I switched over to Google Analytics, and saw this search term pop up:

Is abortion forgivable?

The person who searched for that landed on this page: Is Abortion the Unforgivable Sin? Reading over that post, I think the woman searching for this was probably not helped so much. I say that abortion is forgivable, but I spend too much time on how horrible the sin of abortion is. That may not be as loving as I would want…

If that woman was sitting at my kitchen table with my wife and I, and asked that same question, I imagine there would be lots of tears and hugs, and not much else. That is what she needs, not a theology lesson on the forgivability of murder…

One search term I have seen a lot of recently is this:

Am I possessed by a demon?

Is my _______ [wife, husband, child, mother] demon possessed?

People who search for those terms end up here: Signs of Demon Possession. Do you know the personal and relational anguish someone must be going through to search for that? It breaks my heart.

That is why for me, blogging is pastoral work. Through my blog, I hope to help people all around the world understand how much God loves them, that they are forgiven, that He cares, that He is with them, that they are not alone. I hope people are freed from the bondage, delivered from captivity, and set free from the dark chains of sin.

As I write, I often pray for the people who will read the posts. As I watch these search terms come across my screen, and the tears roll down my cheeks, I pray for the people who are searching for truth, love, hope, and forgiveness, and I pray that they will find such things in Jesus.

And for you who are reading this, I thank God for you as well. Thank you for reading this blog. Thank you for sharing it with others on Facebook, Twitter, Google, and by email. Thank you for interacting with each other in the comments. Thank you for being gracious, loving, and kind. Together, we have a little online community here that is helping tens of thousands of people around the world every single month.

10 Signs You Might be a Legalist

Here are 10 Signs you Might be a Legalist

4 Reasons Sin is Better than Legalism

Legalism is the Worst Kind of Sin

Legalism is of the Devil

Legalists are Far from the Kingdom

Legalists Are Blind

Is it wrong for Christians to call God “Allah”? You might be surprised at my answer…

The Traditional Answer is NO. You cannot call God Allah.

My Backwards Way of Answering…

Is it wrong to call God Yahweh?

Yahweh vs. Jesus vs. Allah

Is it wrong to call God Allah?

How do you heap burning coals on the heads of your enemies?

Proverbs 25:22 and Burning Coals

We are to Love Our Enemies

5 Heartbreaking Search Terms People Use to Find my Blog… (I cry when I see them)

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