Key Life Network

Guest (Male): Hey, what in the world is legalism? The answer to that and other questions on this edition of Key Life. Key Life exists to communicate that the deepest message of Jesus and the Bible is the radical grace of God to sinners and sufferers. Life's hard for everyone, so grace is for all of us. But there's a lot of confusion about how grace applies to real life. So here's seminary professor and author Steve Brown and Pete Alanson from Forged Truth to answer your questions.

Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew.

Guest (Male): Hey, happy Friday.

Steve Brown: Happy Friday to you. We have just come out of a Key Life board meeting.

Guest (Male): I know, right?

Steve Brown: You know, if I get to heaven and Jesus calls a meeting, I'm in the other place.

Guest (Male): Oh my goodness.

Steve Brown: I love those guys on the board. I really do. And you know, they've been friends for years. You've been friends for, and you've been on the board forever. But I still don't like meetings.

Guest (Male): You know, it's interesting, if anybody doesn't like meetings more than me, it's you.

Steve Brown: But we both went.

Guest (Male): We did. We did.

Steve Brown: Listen, do you think we can get to heaven on works?

Guest (Male): It's close.

Steve Brown: It's close to the topic of today, legalism. We'll talk about it. That's Pete Alanson. Be sure and go to forgertruth.com and you'll be glad I told you about it. Pete comes in and we answer questions on Fridays, and we take you and your questions seriously. You can ask a question 24/7 by just picking up the phone and dialing 1-800-KEY LIFE. That's 1-800-539-5433. Or you can send your question to Key Life Network, Post Office Box 5000, Maitland, Florida 32794. In Canada, it's Key Life Canada, Post Office Box 2060, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 6J8. And you can send your question to Steve at keylife.org. And those are places where should the spirit move, you can stand with us financially. I don't we don't harp on it, but we do depend on your contributions. And God has made sure that we are faithful to those contributions. We're not wasteful. We're very careful. We've just been at a board meeting where we've gone over finances, and it's amazing how much we live close to the bone.

So if you can help us, I promise we'll be faithful with your gift, and we'll squeeze every dime for the glory of God. And if you can't, we understand. But think of us occasionally and pray for us. It wouldn't hurt. Pete, lead us in prayer and we'll get to these questions.

Guest (Male): You got it. Let's pray together. Our great Father, we come to you today, so thankful that we can call you Father. And Lord Jesus, because you came into this world and lived 33 years here, fulfilling the law perfectly, and then taking our curse for us on the cross. And so we honor you for your obedience, passive obedience and active obedience to the Father. And so thankful, Lord Jesus, for your death, burial, and resurrection for us. And your session at the right hand of God and sending the Holy Spirit into our lives.

And we praise you. We worship you. Lord, we have a lot of needs though at the end of this week. We know how tired we get, how mentally weak we are sometimes and morally. We pray you'd forgive us our sins and that you'd continue to allow your grace to unearth areas of our life that need to go that are not pleasing to you, and that you would bring your righteousness into our lives. Lord, thank you for your goodness. Thank you for the fact that you through your word renew us every day. And so we pray that that would happen this weekend even in church. We pray for our pastors and teachers and priests and leaders, worship directors, all those that are going to work together to draw us into the worship of the Triune God. Receive praise and honor from us now and in this time of Q&A as well as we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Steve Brown: Amen. Pete, this is an email. What's your best and clear definition of legalism? And just before we went on the air, you made a, that I hadn't thought about it. That's the issue that created Key Life.

Guest (Male): Yeah.

Steve Brown: I mean, we were not mad, but we just felt people were going so far depending on being good so that God would respond positively.

Guest (Male): Mm-hmm.

Steve Brown: And that's not true biblically.

Guest (Male): Right, right.

Steve Brown: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Guest (Male): Yeah.

Steve Brown: And so that needed to be spoken clearer and so there was a time when we were one of the few speaking that particular message. Today, thank God, there are many that are speaking it. And I, I would stand up and rejoice over that. But we still have that message. How would you define legalism?

Guest (Male): Yeah, no, I, I would say that legalism is those who are trying to follow laws to earn righteousness, and therefore stand approved in the presence of God.

Steve Brown: That's right.

Guest (Male): And, and that's the very thing that the Pharisees were doing, and, and Paul tried to do. He said, he said, as to the standards of the law, I was blameless.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Guest (Male): But when he met Jesus, he saw he wasn't.

Steve Brown: I'm the chief of sinners.

Guest (Male): Chief of that's right.

Steve Brown: You know, going beyond that as a formal definition, you know, religion can make you weird if you let it. And so I would see the legalism thing in the way you just described it and agree with that. But also, I would see it as almost a disease that becomes narcissistic, that becomes clearly more concerned with how I do it and what I'm doing. And then you start adding sins on sins, and there are more sins than are even referenced in the Bible. And pretty soon it's a sin to wear a necklace, or it's a sin to wear lipstick, or it's a sin to play golf. And and it goes weird on you. And so that's legalism on steroids, which can be a disease if you're not very careful.

Guest (Male): Yeah, legalism can make you weird. It can, like you said. And and in in many respects, destroy the freedom and joy of the gospel.

Steve Brown: Exactly. Exactly. When you're around a Christian, you ought to be around somebody. I've often said and been criticized for saying it, so live your life with such freedom so that those who are uptight will doubt your salvation.

Guest (Male): Yeah.

Steve Brown: When you're around Christians, they should be the most free people in the room. They should be the most loving. They should laugh more. They should be the people that you think, wow, I wish I had some of that.

Guest (Male): That's right. That's right.

Steve Brown: And they don't look and see our purity and say, oh, I wish I could be pure. They want to run. That's not the basis of our witness. It's in a different place.

Guest (Male): So, so we we we love our Key Life listeners and we're so thankful for them. They get your grace. And early on, you know, in my ministry when I met you, it was helpful to understand that God wouldn't love me more if I preached a good sermon.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Guest (Male): Or or if I built. You know, or if I preach or if I led a great church. He's not going to love me more. Or if I help the old lady across the street, he's not going to love me more.

Steve Brown: And if you don't, he's not going to help you love you less.

Guest (Male): That's right. But grace, once we keep feeding it to ourselves, it's what we need for salvation, but it's also what we need for sanctification for every day. And that's what brings joy and freedom and impact by the way.

Steve Brown: Good stuff. All right, this is a little complicated. Why did God not want Adam and Eve to eat the tree of life and live forever in their condition? He obviously was concerned that this would be very bad for them as he cast them out of the garden and set an impenetrable guard to prevent their return. In what sense could Adam and Eve had had eternal life in their fallen condition by eating or eating again from the tree of life after having eaten from the one forbidden tree?

Guest (Male): Yeah, I think most theologians of a conservative nature would agree with us that that God did them a favor by casting them out of the garden.

Steve Brown: Yeah, he did.

Guest (Male): And because if they had eaten of the tree of life in a fallen condition, apparently they would have been locked into that for eternity.

Steve Brown: And that is not a pleasant thought.

Guest (Male): What a horrible thought, right?

Steve Brown: Yeah, it really is. So there's a sense in which death itself is a gift. Especially when you wed that with eternal life.

Guest (Male): Yeah. So so by casting them out, God God did send them out, but then he made a promise almost immediately in Genesis 3:16, right? That the the the woman would have the seed that would then eventually be able to crush the head of the serpent. And and that was the first sign of the gospel that God, even though he didn't have to save anybody, he said if you eat of this, you're going to die. And then that's it. I can wash my hands of you. But he didn't.

Steve Brown: No, he didn't, because he is love.

Guest (Male): That's right. That's what blows me away.

Steve Brown: Okay. Good, that's good comment. Why in the Old Testament was it okay for men to have more than one wife?

Guest (Male): It was financially doable back then and much easier. So.

Steve Brown: There's a progressive movement of scripture, isn't there?

Guest (Male): It really is.

Steve Brown: And that doesn't mean in the liberal sense that some liberal theologians that God changes his mind. But at the beginning, there were a lot of things that God had yet to reveal and cut some slack for until that happened. And some of them were affected culturally.

Guest (Male): Boy.

Steve Brown: And that's one of them.

Guest (Male): That's one of them.

Steve Brown: Now we know. Don't do that.

Guest (Male): Well, Genesis 2:24 says a man should have one wife. So that was set up, but God doesn't consistently address that just as you've said, down through the Old Testament, he accommodates it in a fallen culture. He allows it to take place, but it it it rarely was a good thing.

Steve Brown: I know.

Guest (Male): You see the wives fighting each other or competing and the kids issues.

Steve Brown: Oh God.

Guest (Male): It's rarely.

Steve Brown: In fact, the whole beginning of this thing was over a problem right at that point.

Guest (Male): That's right. I can't think of one instance where multiple wives and multiple kids and multiple families together like that was actually positive.

Steve Brown: I agree. And so do what God says. It's important that you follow that and don't look for excuses. I'm not suggesting that the person who asked this question is looking for an out, but don't do that.

Guest (Male): Don't do it.

Steve Brown: Because the scripture is very clear about that. I had a man asked me one time, I'm trying to discern God's will about my mistress. And I said, are you a fruitcake? You don't have to, I'll tell you. Gosh, we got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.