Theme: Book of Luke
Purpose: legalism vs. God’s graciousness
Almost every state in our nation still has laws on their books that would surprise most people. For instance,
In Florida, a woman may be fined for falling asleep under a hair dryer.
In Indiana, citizens are not allowed to attend a movie house or ride in a public streetcar within four hours after eating garlic. That seems like a good law.
In Eureka, Illinois, a man with a moustache may not kiss a woman.
And, it’s probably a good thing that I’m not a pastor in Nicholas County, West Virginia because no member of the clergy there is allowed to tell jokes or humorous stories from the pulpit. Or, maybe that wouldn’t apply to the humor I use…
We may laugh, or groan, at these out-of-date laws, because many of them seem absurd and ridiculous. But, if we were to list all the rules, expectations, and laws that are on the books in many churches today, chances are we’d stop laughing pretty quickly. Most of these religious regulations are not written down anywhere but many of us either attempt to keep them, or expect others to do so.
Our spiritual growth can be stunted, or even choked to death by the weeds of legalism. Legalism can be defined as a strict adherence to the law. Specifically, as it relates to faith, a legalist is one who believes that performance is the way to gain favor with God. Legalism is the human attempt to gain salvation or prove our spirituality by outward conformity to a list of religious “do’s” and “don’ts.” It’s often disguised in Christian terms and behavior.
Turn to Luke 6:1-11
Luke addresses this theme in Luke chapter 6 and what Jesus did about it. We know he arranged the stories this way on purpose because v. 1 says “one Sabbath…” and verse 6 says, “on another Sabbath…” So Jesus was breaking Sabbath rules as far as the Pharisees were concerned. Let’s look closer at each incident. Let me just remind us that the Sabbath was the Jewish Sunday—it was a day for worshipping God, spending time in his Word, and resting from physical labors.
Verse 1 says that one Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain fields and the disciples were picking some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands and eating the kernels. In verse 2 we see the Pharisees, the self-appointed men who were the religious rule monitors of Jesus’ day, coming unglued. Jesus, they said, why are you allowing your men to do what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
What was the problem? Theft? No. One could hand pick grain that was along the edge of a farmer’s field and it not be considered theft. It wasn’t trespassing. The Pharisees were bent out of shape because the disciples picked the grain (work) and threshed it (rubbed it in their hands so they could get to the kernel.
God gave Moses the 10 commandments and the command to honor the Sabbath—to make it holy. No one should work—not your animals or your servants either. It is a day of rest and worship. Over the years though, the Pharisees had made many more rules to interpret the command of Scripture.
Jesus challenged the Pharisees by pointing out that David and his companions did the same thing in the Old Testament. They ate consecrated bread when they were traveling once. And then Jesus asserts his divine authority in verse 5: “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
Luke tells us another Sabbath incident in verses 6-11. Jesus is preaching and teaching in the synagogue and a man whose hand was shriveled was there. v. 7 Notes that the Pharisees were looking to see if he would heal on the Sabbath—and thus they could claim he was working on the Sabbath and curb his popularity with the crowds. Luke notes in verse 8 that Jesus knew exactly what they were thinking. If he was concerned at all for man’s opinion, he would not have done what he did next. Stand up, he said to the man, and he did.
Jesus asks the Pharisees the pivotal question in verse 9, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”—and then he healed the man’s hand.
Of course the Pharisees were furious. They could not rejoice in the miracle. They could only fume at the broken rule. So what do we learn about the Sabbath, and about God in these incidents?
1. the church is not bound by the Sabbath
2. nor can we treat it cavalierly
3. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath
4. the Sabbath is made for doing good for others
5. Man’s rules never trump God’s agenda
That was the problem for these Pharisees—and sometimes even for us. It is important to recognize our own legalistic tendencies and allow Christ to transform them. Here are some important things to remember about legalism in our spiritual lives.
1. We tend to think others are legalistic, but that we’re not. The fact is that we’re all legalistic by nature. We tend to judge others by our own standards of what is acceptable and what isn’t. In essence, we think our sins smell better than other people’s. As I’ve said before, we have very little tolerance for people who sin differently than we do.
2. Legalism is highly contagious. While it’s usually less conscious and systematized in our minds than it was among the Pharisees, legalism can spread like a bad virus through an entire congregation. That’s why Jesus reserved some of his harshest criticism for legalistic list-makers in Mark 7:6-8: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.”
3. Legalism can take a vibrant faith and make it dull and lifeless. It can evaporate enthusiasm, jettison joy, and stifle spirituality. Instead of finding freedom through Christ, many believers become burdened by the church.
4. Legalism produces large quantities of self-righteousness, judgment and condemnation. It majors in guilt and misguided sacrifice, urging its followers to evaluate their relationship with God on the basis of standards and scores and expects others to do the same. Superficial spirituality short-circuits the work of grace.
5. Legalism makes us narrow and divisive. The legalist insists that everyone live up to the standard they have adopted. In other words, everyone needs to be like me. When we think this way, we miss the delight of diversity in the church.
6. Legalism makes it impossible for people to see Jesus. There is nothing that pushes a seeker away faster than a list of rules and regulations. We inadvertently portray Jesus as a drill sergeant instead of the Savior.
That’s exactly what was starting to happen in the church at Colosse. The New Testament books of Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews also lampoon legalism. We must be taught over and over that everything is by grace. We’re saved by grace and we grow by grace. Paul argues that if we want to pull the weeds of legalism, we must focus on two truths…
Remember our legal standing (Colossians 2:9-15).
The best defense against a performance-based faith is to remember our legal standing before God. If we understand God’s divine decree as a result of what Jesus has done on our behalf, we’ll experience amazing grace and live with the freedom that is ours in Christ. As Jesus said in John 8:36, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
At conversion, God issues four rulings, or decrees.
1. We are complete (9-10). Let’s look at Colossians 2:9-11: “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.” The phrase, “in Christ” shows us that Jesus is the center of God’s saving activity. When we put our faith in Christ, we are included in what He has done. All the fullness of deity lives in Him. If you want to know what God is like, then look at Jesus. The phrase, “lives in bodily form,” means to “dwell permanently.” Jesus is not just a way to God; He is the only way because He is God Himself.
You have everything you need if you have Christ because the fullness of God comes into your life when you receive Jesus. Friend, you do not need anything more than you already have! You merely need to understand and appropriate that which you’ve already been given.
2. We are alive Verses 11-13a establish some parallels between circumcision and our new life with Christ. Let’s read it: “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ.”
God initiated circumcision in the Old Testament as part of His covenant with His people in order to set them apart and identify them as true followers. One of the problems at Colosse was that some legalists were demanding that Christians submit to circumcision and obey the Old Testament Law. These false teachers were a bit different than those Paul refuted in Galatians. In that context, they were insisting that circumcision was necessary for salvation. In the church at Colosse, the false teachers were suggesting that obedience to Old Testament regulations would help them become more spiritual.
Though circumcision was a physical procedure, it had some sacred significance. The trouble was that Old Covenant followers insisted on the physical act without emphasizing a change of heart. It had become a religious ritual. That’s why Jeremiah 4:4 states that believers were to circumcise their hearts. Physical acts are never meant to be the substance of our faith. Instead, a spiritual change on the inside, accomplished only through the redemptive work of Christ, is what God demands.
When we put our faith in Christ, Jesus spiritually circumcises, or cuts away, our sinful nature in order to prove that we belong to Him. Since we are alive, and no longer dead in our sins, Paul next uses the illustration of baptism. The word baptize has both a literal and figurative meaning. The literal meaning is “to dip, or immerse.” That’s what we witnessed last Sunday afternoon when six believers were baptized by immersion. The figurative meaning is “to be identified with.”
It’s important to keep in mind that just as the physical act of circumcision did nothing to change someone’s heart, so too, the waters of baptism itself do not save anyone. When we place our faith in Christ and are born again, 1 Corinthians 12:13 states very clearly that we are “baptized,” or “identified” with Christ: “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body-whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free-and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
Water baptism is a wonderful picture of an inner reality. When we go under the water, we are symbolizing our burial with Christ, and when we come up, we become a picture of what it means to be raised with Christ. The Greek words are very expressive in verse 12. We are co-buried, co-raised, and co-made alive. We died with him, we are raised with him, and we have life because of him. Baptism vividly portrays the death and burial of the believer’s sinful way of life. When Christ died, our old nature died with Him. That’s our spiritual circumcision. When we come up out of the water in baptism, we symbolize that just as Christ was raised from the dead, so too, we will be raised to resurrection life.
3. Our sins are canceled (13b-14). Look now at the last part of verse 13 and verse 14. Here we see that we’re not only complete and alive, but our sins have been canceled: “He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”
Notice that Jesus forgave “all” of our sins. That means every single one, even those that you have a hard time forgiving yourself for. The “written code” is the Law. Jesus not only took our sins to the cross, He also took the Law and nailed it there, forever out of the way. The Law was against us and stood opposed to us because all it could ever do was point out our sinfulness. In Romans 7:7, Paul concludes that he “would not have known what sin was except through the law.”
4. We have victory (15). We have completeness in Christ, we have new life, and we have been completely forgiven. Our legal standing involves one more thing: we have victory. Verse 15 is a wonderful picture of Christ’s triumph over evil: “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” The word for “disarmed” is literally “stripped,” as in stripping a defeated enemy of armor on the battlefield.
The powers and authorities of this evil world stripped Christ of his clothing and popularity, made a public spectacle of him on the cross, and thought they had triumphed over him by putting Him to death. Little did they know that the victory actually belonged to Jesus. Friends, evil no longer has any power over you because Christ has stripped Satan’s weapons from him. He is disarmed. The only power he has is what we give him when we allow him to deceive us and create fear in our lives.
Jesus has turned his captors into captives, displaying them in His victory celebration. The Colossians had participated in that victory, and so have we. We don’t have to follow false teachers and we don’t have to succumb to sin or fear Satan. Jesus is the victor and He has triumphed at the cross. 1 Corinthians 15:54-57: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
As we close this morning, let me ask you, “What is your Christianity like?”
Is it focused on yourself or on Christ?
Are you a list-keeper, or a grace-giver?
Is your faith anchored to personal experiences or on the Word of God?
Has it set you free or tied you up?
Rules are like religious training wheels that keep us from tipping over. But they’re also confining because they keep us from breaking free. A bishop once said to Louis XI of France, “Make an iron cage for all those who do not think as we do, an iron cage in which the captive can neither lie down nor stand straight up.” The king agreed and had it constructed. A short time later, the bishop somehow offended King Louis, and for 14 years he was locked in that same cage.
Friend, have you constructed a cage for those who don’t think the same way you do? Be careful, because you may end up in bondage yourself.
Christianity is not a matter of what you do or what you don’t do. Christianity is what is done for you. Its not spelled D-O but rather D-O-N-E. When Jesus died on the cross, He said, “It is finished.” The price has been paid. The debt has been erased. You are complete in Christ. You are alive. Your sins are forgiven. And you have the victory!
What old laws are still on your books this morning? Are you ready to nail them to the Cross so that you can be set free? Give your list to Jesus right now.
