The gap between legalism and liberation is minuscule and mighty

If this isn’t a game changer for your understanding of the impartation of grace, I don’t know what will be. There is as subtle yet ever is so significant difference between the legalism that binds our spirituality and the liberation that frees it.

Let me cut to the chase. Suppose two types of people are doing their best to serve God in living their lives set apart for divine purposes alone; ‘holy’ in a word.

As we put them side by side, they look identical, and the production of their works is by method almost indivisible. Hardly anything separates them.

But there is a nuance of difference between them that leaves a stark contrast, and only the discerning can tell them apart.

They themselves will know the difference, if they are honest. People who do their good works because they want to do them, or they do their good works for a reason or reasons that are external to their motivation.

In popular psychology terms, one can be seen as intrinsically motivated and the other as extrinsically motivated.

One person cares about what they do so much that they don’t care about receiving a reward, whereas the other person, deep down perhaps, does their good works for some kind of reward.

That person who does their good works for choice, because they can, out of even some unknown delight and their own volition, does good because their heart has been transformed. None of this is their own doing—it was a grace given to them—but they did agree that they needed and wanted it and they did what they needed to do to receive it.

The other person, and this depicts most religious persons, can rather easily do good works. They know the moral code, they know right from wrong, and they may even know the subtleties of personality politics. They know what is required at a human level. They have a head for a good faith life. And they will generally do what is considered to be the right thing.

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But there is a sharp and stark
difference between those two.

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The first person cannot do anything else but live a transformed life. And they know it. The second person cannot do anything else but do what their moral compass says is right. But they also suspect that something is missing. They somehow know that the first kind of person has more of the grace of God than they have.

A test between the persons is this pertinent: if we cannot help but be instruments of God, and are rather chastened by the Lord’s will continually, to the point where we know our lives are no longer about us, and we keep doing things in faith that become in and of themselves their own reward, we are probably the first person. But if, when we are honest, we seem to be driven by needing things a certain way, and needing others to fall into line, and we don’t centrally desire to do the things of service for no reward that by their very nature offer no reward, we may well be the second person.

The transformed person has been liberated from, and lifted out of, themselves. Even though the self remains, and the witness of selfishness especially, they cannot help but be surrendered to the prevailing will of God that has its way over their life.

The troubled person, on the other hand, remains bonded in chains to both their sin and to the requirements they place on others. Their works are good, but their motives deep down are not to do the good for wholly good reasons. Indeed their reasons will be about pleasing others and staying out of trouble, which are both inherently self-motivated.

The difference between legalism and liberation is minuscule and mighty. The legalistic person and the one liberated may look almost identical, but their hearts are completely different. One knows they still don’t have it, whilst the other cannot help do what God wants.

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash