An honorable brother recently shared a comment...
"Legalism"
creates elitists and defeatists:
1-prideful people who think they "measure" up, and
2- depressed people who just give up.
I applaud this truth.
And furthermore, I asked you to apply huge caution in using this term "LEGALISM"
In the hands of brutal, selfish, prideful, slanderous peoples, the difficult requests & commands of Christ become a ruinous force.
It is written "peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness." Often it is the delivery and the spirit in which information is shared that becomes the crucial point.
Read John chapter 8, verses 31 and 32. In essence Jesus says, it does not matter if you join my team and believe in me. What matters is that you hold to and practice the things that I say... If your behavior remains in line with what I am teaching... Then you will embrace eternal truth. Then you will be set free from human evils, and the ugly heart and mind that is in all people since the fall.
John chapter 8 verses 31 and 32 is a very heavy conditional statement. The presence of the Holy Spirit is the only thing that can cause human beings to go delightfully towards rejection and difficulty and even torture and death. For one person obeying Christ fully seems crazy. To another they are in love... In love with the invisible friend... both a master, and a tender brother who welcomes them into heavenly habitations
Legalism is a very tricky word.
I repeat. Legalism is a very very tricky word.
I constantly caution people not to use it. The darkness and unclean spirits utilize hypothetical situations and labels as a means of attack, especially for the minds of children and those whose faith is weak.
This is precisely the trick of Satan the adversary against Eve's mind. Did God really say that you would die? Is this really an important rule?
See how under a ton of stress Jesus uses each situation precisely in the moment to reveal God, he often is seemingly breaking the rules... when in fact he never breaks the "it is written" commands, that are so difficult to follow. Jesus is both open the written commands of his father, and also the immediate direct command through the Holy Spirit who came over him like a dove a visible sign... His beginning!
This term "legalism" can be used by Satan himself to accuse the tough teachings of Jesus as being inappropriate and unnecessary.
Our amazing God of loving kindness and justice has a remnant. A few people who are so crazy in love with him, who haven't received the actual Spirit of Jesus Christ... And who consider no instruction to be too difficult.
"Legalism" is accused in the introductory statement of causing pridefulness in some people or despondency, sadness hopelessness in others.
There is ANOTHER sort of person. Between the pridefulness people and the despondency people that are mentioned...
There are a few who are so in love with the Holy Spirit, who live so intensely by faith, and who love righteousness so much... That they stand in the glory of obedience, with crazy faith!
It is very easy to BAIT comfortable Americans with the idea that they can politely slander and condemn obedience to God and call it legalism.
When we do not consider the crown of our faith to be torture and assassination and rejection... Just like our master, it is easy to brush away our obedience to his more unusual or difficult words.
I am a former anti religious hedonist. I did not know that God was a pleasant business advisor. I discovered that our Jesus declared that confession and communion in an atmosphere of joy and celebration is the core of the church. In a closed setting of family honesty.
I tell you the truth I have so rarely had true Church...
Why?? Because people think that regular admitting of troubles and weaknesses in a closed family setting is not necessary!
I work with rehab centers. I watch families grieving over children and loved ones dying from drug addiction. This is usually attributable to their living secret lives and communicating things on their devices. Church goers. With hidden lives, and without the sweetness of regular satisfying cleansing and Communion and the utilization of the free voice of the Holy Spirit...
The Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ tells me that these lazy Americans don't feel like being regularly honest with one another, so their children and their loved ones....
some of whom have the greatest spiritual stature are just regularly defiling themselves. And then they are taken out into the realm of death.
Jesus gave all the details of how we are to be the "mobile temple" to the 12 apostles in his resurrection form across 40 days. This is written in Luke 24, and Acts chapter 1. Then the astonishing event of Jesus and the Holy Spirit giving rabbi song all of the exact same details!! Way out in the desert towns of Arabia where there are no synagogues.
Therefore when we are trying to hear from the Holy Spirit and we ignore the warning about disgrace coming over the men... And troubles being brought from the angel realms...
We should pay attention!
The term "because of the angels" is no small thing. Neither is "do not dispute... understand that this is the practice in all the churches."
Beware of using the term legalism. Please be specific, refer to the lives of the first Christians, and do not think that it is impossible to behave like them!
I present these things in love... Because our lives are very short and this world is very strange and evil and tricky.
