A KILLER IS LOOSE AMONG US!
By Robert R. Meyers
(Minister, Riverside Church of Christ, Wichita, Kan.)

It is accepted that one man will alert another when he knows a killer is abroad. Men of goodwill think it is right to put unregenerate murderers away from an innocent populace, to reform reckless drivers, and to wipe out cancer.

By the same token Christians, who value the spirit infinitely more than the body, worry about spiritual murder. They know that a killer stalks who maims and often quenches the spirit, and they know the name of the killer. It is often called legalism. Paul described its work when he said, “The letter of the Law leads to the death of the soul. . . “ (1 Cor. 3:6, Phillips).

The language is not too harsh; legalism does kill. But of course no one sets out deliberately to become a legalist, so no one ever admits being a carrier. Legalism is an insidious thing; it disguises itself so that its victims do not recognize it. And often angry people call one another by the name with no clear notion of what the word means.

The problem seems to be one of definition. What is legalism? Probably its victims will gladly turn from it if it can be adequately described to them, and those who may be absent to embrace it will turn from it with relief.

One is tempted to use the dictionary definition of legalism as “undue emphasis on law.” But like many dictionary definitions it is rather too simple. By itself it suggests there is nothing wrong with law itself, nor even with an emphasis on law. Only an excessive emphasis on it leads to an attitude called legalism, a distortion and an injurious thing.

But this is misleading when one transfers it from the secular to the religious world. Partly because one enters a world of grace, and partly because the word law is clearly used in at least two senses by Paul, who was more concerned with legalism than any other New Testament writer.

Paul repeatedly denounces law as a way of life. At times he is speaking of Jewish laws and their elaborations, but at other times he is more general and rejects the very principle of law (externally imposed restraints) as the means to abundant spiritual life. The interested student should read Romans with care in the New English Bible and consult a good critical commentary for help in seeing when Paul uses the adjective the to limit himself to the Law of Moses, and when he omits it to refer to the whole principle of law.

One who reads Romans carefully will know that when Paul speaks with approval of the law of Christ (Gal. 6), he must necessarily mean something quite different from what he has condemned. The law of liberty and the law of love are both synonymous phrases for the law of Christ, and none of them mean what Paul meant when he said that the letter of the law leads to death. For Paul, the letter is law in the external sense. The Spirit, which gives life, is law in the internal sense and is so radically different that it can best be described by paradox as the law of liberty.

We may move further with our definition now. A legalist in religion is one who has an overly-strict and overly-literal enthusiasm for codebook law. By giving his primary attention to externals, he tends to neglect more important matters of disposition. As his obsession grows, he begins looking anxiously for more laws, so that he may obey and thus add to his stature. He thrives on them and must have them. He learns to fabricate them from the sheerest gossamer, spinning with marvelous dexterity. To such a man, all of the Bible is a catalog of injunctions. He is quite unable to understand what Paul meant by saying that the letter, or law, kills. He will not believe that his legalism is a hopeless, destructive way of life.

The true legalist is like a father I know. He works very hard to do all the right things a father should do. He joins clubs, plans outings, and seizes every chance to act the way a father is supposed to act. The only trouble is that he has never been able to love and accept his son.

The son has never been fooled. He fears his father and he is in deep trouble at school. He has been rejected, despite all the external signs, and he knows it. Somehow the father needs to be helped to know why he has rejected his son. It happens that he is himself the victim of a tragically broken home, and apparently because of that he cannot accept his own son in a normal, spontaneous, unforced relationship. The result is that everything in that family is souring and infinite tragedy lies ahead, One day the father will say bitterly, “I don’t understand you; I did everything a father could do for you.”

The legalist is in the same predicament. He cannot surrender in natural, spontaneous love for God, but his sense of duty and responsibility make him conscious that something is wrong. He tries, often frantically, to achieve the proper relationship. He races about doing things for which he must have credit so as to solace the insistent whisper inside that something is still wrong. One of the surest signs of the legalist is his urgent concern about proper credit. He is furious with those who are more relaxed, or who question the necessity for some of his rules, for this seems to invalidate his whole structure of security.

For him it is simply true that he has not fallen in love with Christ, nor invited the Holy Spirit to be resident in his heart. What should flow naturally from a state of being is sought through artificial turnings and twistings, but it never comes right. His life sours; he may even crack up.

To enlarge the definition again, legalism is a philosophy which teaches that one can attain to righteousness and favor with God through keeping laws. It cannot be said too often that this is not the same as claiming that righteousness has nothing to do with laws. But the matter is one of priority and emphasis, and even of a difference in the nature of two kinds of law.

The gospel of grace holds that there are not enough commandments on earth to make a man righteous, even if he kept them all. Righteousness is a gift from God, an expression of mercy, an outpouring of divine love. Man enters into such a relationship only when he trusts God and accepts him, humbly grateful that God gives him a status he has not earned and could never earn.

After God’s favor is given to the man who accepts him in trust, eager to know His mind and discover His purposes, there comes such joy that one can hardly think in terms of law, anymore than the lover can who seeks to learn how he may please his beloved. How often have parents been amazed to see a child whose obedience has been reluctant and grudging suddenly turn into the most ardent slave when he falls in love with the girl next door. From constant and plaintive “Do I have to’s?” he begins asking, “Mom, how do I show Mary how I feel. Tell me some ways.” The difference between his first attitude and his second is the difference between legalism and the contact of life with life.

It is not that the man who accepts God in a non-legalistic way is indifferent to His will. Matthew 7 shows how foolish this would be. As a matter of fact, such a concern goes beyond law. This is the very point of Matt. 5:20. The boy who behaves within the requirements of the law toward his school playmates is not the same boy who falls in love with one of them, accepts her love in return, and then does everything but stand on his head (and sometimes that) to show her how much he cares.

The basic error in legalism is simply that it does not lead to the right relationship with God. Since Christ has defined Him as Father it is no longer possible to know him adequately as Governor. Doing the will of God is not to be viewed as a way of winning His favor or of escaping His wrath. We must not believe that if we refrain from a stated number and kind of taboos we will automatically grow spiritually strong. We may touch no taboo objects through a lifetime, yet never fill the vacuum inside. What is worse, we may grow so proud of our clean fingers that our empty heart does not dismay us. This is the ultimate horror of legalism.

But I feel even as I write that all such attempts to define abstractly are poor things. We may do better to seek the concrete, living examples that teach us dramatically what legalism is. We rightly begin with Christ. In watching His reaction to legalism we may come to know what it is.

The healing of man on the Sabbath in John 5 makes a good beginning. It had been debated with solemnity in the rabbinical schools whether a man with a wooden leg could walk on the sabbath without violating that holy day. Since the leg is a burden, some argued that he must not; they cited a rule that no one was to carry burdens on that day. Others argued that the leg was now part of the man, hence no burden. This kind of ever literalness and hair-splitting always lies close to the heart of legalism. It is one symptom by which the disease can be identified.

Jesus demonstrated that God’s requirements are not all equal. Compassion may take precedence over meticulous Sabbath-keeping. Love may set aside the lower requirements of ritual. In Luke 13 Jesus healed on the Sabbath a woman eighteen years sick. In Mark 3 He healed a man with a withered hand. He ran into trouble in each case because he violated the technicalities of Sabbath observance. He insisted that love for people in need transcends rigid literalism. In the Mark incident He looked with anger upon the stony-hearted legalist who condemned his action as a violation of God’s law. He clearly saw it, in these contexts, as a fulfillment of God’s law.

In Luke 14 He healed a man with dropsy on the Sabbath. In Matthew 12 His disciples plucked and ate grain on the Sabbath. Again, in both cases, He was attacked. The point he was trying to make constantly was that the Sabbath was made by God as a gift to be used, and to be used rightly. But it was made for man (Mark 2:27) and not man for it. It was meant to serve, not to enslave. When any supposed requirement enslaves man instead of freeing and maturing them, it must be reexamined.

If we would understand from these examples that Jesus was concerned with principles rather than with rules, we could avoid the aridity of legalism. Principles are alive. Their roots go deep into permanent realities, but branches and leaves accommodate themselves to changing environments. Take for example, Paul’s admonition that women should not wear gold, pearls, or costly garments (1 Tim. 2:9). Legalistically interpreted, this quickly carries us into nonsense in a rime when most of the splendid Christian women we know violate the letter of this comment.

But there is a principle behind Paul’s remark, and that principle will always have relevance for those who honor Christ and His men. The principle is that Christian women should not so dress as to bring into disrepute the great cause they represent. I can imagine no time or place in which this principle would not make sense. A literalistic reading of the New Testament as a catalog of rigid rules can make that book grossly unsuited for any age but the first century — and only a part of that!

Take another example. When Paul told Christians to greet with a holy kiss, an obstinate insistence upon the imperative force of his words would rule that this must still be an “item” of worship today. But Christians more sensibly sought the principle of which this rule was momentarily a flowering. When the rule became a problem, they changed the rule but hung on to the principle. They substituted a handshake as the external showing of brotherhood and love. This violates the letter of Paul’s quadruple order (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and 1 Thessalonians), but not its spirit.

This is what I mean by saying that principles have enduring relevance, because they find their proper expression in each age. Loyalty to a principle may actually mean having to apply it differently in different times. One may have to violate the letter to keep the spirit. This is difficult, of course, and we must have help beyond our feeble selves. So Christ gave help in the form of the Holy Spirit. Because we are sons, He sends that Spirit into our hearts crying out a recognition of God’s Fatherhood. And the man whose heart cries “Father!” is in a new relationship, and in a fair way to interpret and apply principles wisely to the new situations he faces daily. If he is not, who is?

Theodore Ferris speaks magnificently to this issue: “Jesus, knowing these things, did not promise to leave his disciples a book of rules which would tell them what to do in every conceivable situation. Neither did he promise to leave them a code of laws, nor a final court of authority. He promised to give them a spirit — the Spirit of Truth — and that spirit would guide them into all truth.

“He took for granted that situations would arise which neither he nor they could foresee. No lawbook would be sufficient. He did nor go around the law; he went above it to something infinitely higher, to the reality of God himself to which each human being must respond in each new situation with all the vigor and spontaneity of which he is capable.”

He adds this comment about modern times: “The church has always been in danger of forfeiting this invaluable bequest of Jesus. A system is so much safer than a spirit; it is more definite, more certain. Put a man on an assembly belt of an ironclad system and, provided no major catastrophes shake him off, he is safely and surely on the way to salvation, with all directions given. Endow him with a spirit, and tell him to surrender his mind and soul to it, to be ready for every new intimation and every fresh advance; tell him that he does not yet know all truth, that he may have to make revisions and corrections in what he already believes; tell him these things and you lead him into dangerous ways. Tell him anything else and you lead him into the way of certain and final death.”

Legalism is forever doomed to failure. This is true, first, because there cannot be laws given for every conceivable situation. The legalist must often look in vain for specific rules. He has learned to rely on them and to turn to them in crisis; when they are lacking he must seek help from some more skillful legalist. He “calls the preacher” to learn what the rule is for a given situation. That a divine spirit indwelling might, if cultivated and consulted, guide him in these circumstances, he refuses to believe.

Legalism is hopeless, second, because even if laws had been given for every possible situation, no man could remember them all. Or keep them if he could remember. Paul learned this and disclosed it so poignantly that it is a wonder we could ever forget it. The law, he argued, may define sin and reveal penalties for violation, but it has no power within itself to help a man do the right thing. In fact it works the opposite. The definition of sin and the threat of punishment work on human psychology in such a way that they actually incite to sin. One wants to test the definition, to defy the threat. With no countering force within him, he is doomed to just this kind of rebellion.

Paul was elated when he discovered the countering force, the presence within him of the mind of Christ. Everything he had had before he now counted as refuse compared with this treasure. Instead of endless, dreary codes he found a living spirit. Instead of constant guilt over inability to know or keep all the rabbinical laws, he found the humbling experience of accepting Christ’s love, grace and forgiveness. Instead of supposing arrogantly that he had kept the law, or moaning in despair that it was impossible to keep, he found health in saying, “I am a sinner, but Christ dwells in me and I am being transformed.” His attitude toward others changed dramatically. He no longer had to kill those who did not see things as he did. It was quite a step.

We forget that Paul’s “new life” in Christ, that blessed condition about which he exults so rapturously, was new because it was at the opposite end of the pole from his former legalism. All his life had before been bound up in externals. A Pharisee of the Pharisees, he knew the rules better even than his colleagues. The catastrophic thing that happened to him was that he learned how futile is a religion which puts main emphasis on externals, and how soaring is the music of a new spirit.

This is why he could be ecstatic about “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). What can such a statement possibly mean to a legalist? What liberty has he, this man enslaved by fear that a misunderstanding of some ritual, however honest, will damn his soul forever?

Paul found out that his zeal for the letter of the law had led him to commit murder in good conscience. The spirit of the gracious Christ could never murder his enemies, or plan any form of retaliation. Paul saw that with the spirit of Christ in one, he could be saved from cruelties which the letter of the law might allow him.

The failure to learn this has caused men of legalistic minds to bathe the world in blood through adherence to their code. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” said the law. So came the European witch hunts and the Salem insanity, all in the name of religion. Men lacking the spirit of Christ were unable to know what to do with that statement. Men with the spirit of Christ would have known that whatever it may mean, it cannot be used to justify murder of old women.

Men lacking the spirit of Christ put Latimer and Ridley to death; their counterparts tortured and killed Jesuits during the reign of Elizabeth. All parties cited law. All parties quoted scripture. Law can be used, abused, twisted and rationalized by men lacking the guiding influence of a spirit of compassion. No one, in fact, is more terribly dangerous than the clever lawyer who has at his fingertips more minutiae of commandment than most of us could ever master, but whose heart is cold, unredeemed and inhuman.

It is an eternal story, this battle between those who put primary emphasis on external and those who seek to transform the heart and make it the habitation of God. What must always happen is that the rigid stress on externals robs people of originality and creativity. It stifles initiative. It breeds pride. The heart grows cold and static. It is the difference between a prohibition lying on the shelf and a seed forever exposed to soil and sun and rain. The life of the spirit, like a plant or a fountain, is forever springing forth into new life in every moment.

The law had restrained Paul, the new spirit constrained him. What a world of difference between the two! In outward conduct one might see little difference, but the reason for acting is different and the character takes its color from the difference. A real mother, for example, needs no statute book from the state to keep her from criminal negligence. Her love for her child carries her far beyond any state’s requirements. She does not beat, or neglect, because she loves. And she sits up all night, even though the state does not require it, because she loves.

Have you ever known a child who obediently kept a long list of rules until one day, in an unexpected kind of trouble, he said triumphantly, “You never told me not to!”? This child is still a legalist. He obeys for some selfish reason, not because he loves. When he comes at last to love he will know that not being told is no excuse for neglecting love’s promptings.

Everyone who reads these words will have heard someone say that emphasis on love and the promptings of the Spirit is soft. Legalism, it is implied, is hard and demanding; only the noble Christian can rise to it. Nothing could be more false. Exactly the reverse is true. You have seen already that the mother who loves responds far beyond the call of anyone’s duty list.

Actually the way of the legalist is popular because it is easier than the way of the creative and loving spirit. It is simpler to submit to an arbitrary code of rules than to go through birth-pangs and come into a demanding, sacrificial relationship with God’s love. The rich young ruler had kept all the rules, he said. He may have been over-confident. Christ, willing to show him the condition of his heart, imposed a new condition. It was one which the law did not demand, but which love prescribed for the young man’s particular illness. The rule-keeper, proud as he was of his status, could not find the courage to go beyond the law. He turned away. This should forever silence the legalist’s charge that those who denounce legalism do so only because they are too soft for its demands.

What is pleasing about legalism is that it appears to have recognizable limits at any given moment. Every child likes to be told precisely what he must do, so that he may tick off the requirements and then go out to play with a relieved conscience. Christianity is not so easy as that. You cannot tick off the laws, or know the limits of duty, because with every changing situation your response and duty may change. This is why only a living spirit, like an eternal fountain, can flood with water every sterile desert one stumbles upon in the long journey.

The legalist likes the security offered by the fences. There they are, and here he is, and he has obviously not trespassed. He is, then, all right. All right until he is tossed by circumstances into a new pasture, where it is hard to be sure Just where the fence is. Then he panics. This is why legalists so seldom want to have a sympathetic relationship with those who differ from them. In strange pastures, hearing persuasive new arguments, they get a sudden, terrifying vision of fences fading out. Such insecurity they cannot bear, and they eagerly rush back home. Legalism is always eager to inbreed, to isolate the flock, to keep from knowing well the stranger.

Far better are the fences one is always ready to build from the material of his own spirit when the situation demands it. All things may be lawful for Paul, but not all things are expedient. There may be no fence in sight, but his love can build one instantly when love demands it. This is the true liberty about which Paul rhapsodized. Not liberty to do anything one likes but liberty to put the principle of love against any conceivable situation and trust in its potency. No one who experiences it ever goes back to legalism. No wonder Paul was astonished that the Galatians so lightly valued their freedom; clearly, they had not yet understood its merits.

There are by-products of legalism which are almost as bad as the initial error. One of them is the manufacture of rules where none existed or were ever meant to exist. If one gets favor with God by rule-keeping the smart thing to do is to make some more rules, keep them, and get even more favor. This is why legalism, in every religion and in every age, has tended to run into rampant codifying. The Pharisees put burdens to heavy to bear on others, simply because they kept making up more and more laws. Since they kept more than anyone else, they were obviously better than anyone else. It was this fallacy which Christ tried so hard to destroy; it was this fallacy which gives point to the parable of the Pharisee and the publican.

Another by-product of legalism is excessive pride. Believing that he has found more rules, and kept more rules, than anyone else, the legalist judges himself the truest son of God. Those who interpret differently, who fail to follow his ritual forms, who decline to accept his list of taboos en masse, are brushed off as indifferent or dishonest. The legalist walks the high road to that deadliest of all dangers: spiritual pride.

And a third by-product is this: the legalist breeds even more zealous legalists when he proselytes. The blight and the new infection is often more virulent than the old. “You lawyers,” Jesus said, “travel over sea and land to win one convert; and when you have won him you make him twice as fit for hell as you are yourselves.” (Matt. 23:15, NEB). The legalist proselytes to bring prestige to his party; he is not intent upon God, or even upon the convert, but upon strengthening the exclusive cult which feeds his ego. He is so marked by self-righteousness that the attitude is almost inevitably passed on to the neophyte. With natural ties of affection weakened by his new commitment, the convert is adrift. If his guide has been a bigot, chances are he will be an even greater bigot in his search for moorings and security. If his guide has been a legalist, he will seek to outdo his guide in legalism so that he may win approval. The infant legalist must outstrip the adult! How often have I seen recent converts ten times harder and grimmer than the legalist who brought them into their sad predicament with law.

There is hope in the very fact that legalism is not ultimately satisfying. There are searching questions which destroy the security of the legalist. “Am I really content with what I am inwardly? Have I stifled the secret longing, the ignoble thought, the gnawing envy, the searing hate? I memorize rules of external conduct, I quote verses, I go through the rituals — but the poison remains within me. What is wrong?”

What is wrong is that we cannot remake ourselves. Emphasis on external conduct cannot transform us. The direction is not from without to within, but from within to without — and here lies the whole story in summary. Jesus tried to tell us often enough, certainly. Not what goes into the mouth, but what comes out. Not what skill the head or hand may attain, given disciplines to scan and time for practice, but what warmth of love and creativity of spirit the heart may produce if it is truly surrendered to God. Such a heart knows that only God can make a new creature. It yields up all pride in its own accomplishments. It knows Who has done this glorious thing, and its humility lasts and lasts.

“Then, on the last day, the climax of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out: ‘If any man is thirsty, he can come to me and drink! The man who believes in me, as the scripture said, will have rivers of living water flowing from his inmost heart.’ (Here he was speaking about the Spirit which those who believe in him would receive ....) “ John 7:37-39. Living water! Not stagnant ponds held carefully in by artificial banks and slowly rotting, but sparkling, running streams that come from the high places of God’s spirit and go abroad forever seeking to make fresh and green the desert places of the world. Living water!