Few Christians have a clear understanding of how to properly live the spiritual life. They would say that God expects them to “be good” as much as possible, and they would admit that sometimes they “do their best,” and other times they simply don’t really worry about “being good.” Such Christians are legalists in their practical living, though they may tell all their friends and neighbors how to be “saved by grace.” Is what the New Testament teaches on how to go about living life as a believer in Jesus Christ obscure and difficult to understand? Does the Bible teach that everything will be all right in our lives as long as we “do our best” to “be good”? Not at all. The New Testament teaches that, like salvation is a product of the grace of God, so too is living the Christian life.

Legalism in its essence is trying to gain the favor of a holy God through one’s own efforts to please him and be what God wants him to be. Particularly related to the believer, it is thinking that the believer can live a life pleasing to God, a life of obedience and holiness, by his or her own efforts, often with the motivation to get something from God. Legalism often involves not just standards that God reveals, but standards of a person’s or culture’s own making that are not clearly revealed in the Bible as God’s standards for the person.

A root error involved are thinking that the believer can be pleasing to God apart from God’s enablement. God is holy and demands holiness from human beings. Those who are believers in Christ have been delivered from sin by virtue of God’s gracious gift of righteousness through the sacrificial death of Christ in place of the sinful human being (Rom 5.9, 18-19). Thus holiness is given to one who believes in Jesus for salvation. It is this same principle of grace by which the Christian life is to be lived. The believer seeks to be holy and please God with the enablement that God alone can provide. Believers still struggle with the force of sin which is resident within all humans. But through the death of Jesus on the cross, the power that sin had over the one who believes is broken, and sin no longer has automatic control over that person.

But when the believer lives under the law, trying to obey God or do what he thinks is pleasing to God (often humanly-imagined standards or requirements that are not clearly God’s) apart from a total reliance on God’s strength and enablement and resources, that believer is living in legalism. As such, he is living under the constant domination of sin, because pleasing God cannot ever be done apart from using the resources that God provides. Also, he will always have a sense of failure, thus living in a state of continual frustration, realizing in his soul that he is not truly being pleasing to God, even though he is trying his hardest.

Often, for those who are aware of legalistic tendencies, the issue is relying on grace in the Christian life to the exclusion of a concern for personal, practical holiness. A person like this is not too concerned with making a proper effort to live in accordance with the standards that God has outlined in the Bible. They may have an awareness of God’s expectations, but they also readily recognize their weaknesses, and thus glibly say, “no one is perfect,” simply forgiving themselves for their weakness rather than diligently pursuing true godliness. This attitude is an extreme which the Scriptures do not teach as being proper for the Christian. God’s grace does not give the believer the right or reason to live in sin all the more (Rom 6.1).

Christians need spiritual discipline in their lives. They need to understand what God requires, and they must in God’s enablement strive to live in accordance with those requirements. God clearly requires holiness from his people, which includes both a dedication to God (being given over to God for his use), as well as a separation from sin and the control sin has over one’s life. 1 Peter, a letter written to the people of God, challenges the Christian that “as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct” (1 Pet 1.15). The standard of holiness of life that Peter asserts is for Christians and it is not to be equated with legalism. Legalism is trying to attain to God’s standards (and sometime man-made standards) relying on the resources that the person has within himself, often with a motive to get something from God. Living a holy life, on the other hand, is relying on the resources that God has supplied in order to conform to the standards of right and wrong according to what the Word of God teaches. This is done in appreciation and gratefulness for what God has already done in that believer’s life.

The Holy Spirit has been given to each and every believer as a source of power to give people the strength to be obedient (Eph 5.18, be controlled by the Spirit, Gal 5.16, 22-23, live by the Spirit and allow the Spirit to bear the fruit of holy character). In addition, the believer has various personal responsibilities. One of these is the responsibility to study that which God has included in his Word. It is imperative that the believer have an understanding both of what God expects of him and also of what God has provided for his sanctification. Also, the believer has the responsibility to live in increasingly closer fellowship with God (James 4.8), rather than in close fellowship with the things of the world (1 John 2.15-17). Not only these, but the believer also has the responsibility to exercise personal self-discipline, as Paul alludes to in 1 Corinthians 9.24-27. Paul speaks in an athletic context of punishing his body and enslaving it, rather than giving in to its every wish and demand. Self-discipline, available only under the control the Spirit, is in view here. The believer cannot simply choose to do what comes naturally, or what he feels like doing. What he feels like doing most often will be controlled by the force of sin, a force that will dominate the life of any believer who does not yield himself to God (Rom 6.12-14). The believer must labor with diligence in the energy of the Spirit and under the control of the Spirit to live in obedience to the commands of God.

Another important area of obedience is living in close interaction with other believers. Christians need the encouragement and support of one another in order to fulfill all that God expects of his people, especially maturing together as the body of Christ (Eph 4.1-16). Additionally, believers have a role of admonition with other believers (1 Thess 5.14). When a believer is willingly living under the control of some particular sin and may not be aware of it or willing to deal with it to conform to the biblical expectations of Christ, admonition in love is required. This admonition is not in itself legalism. It is not legalism to hold one another as believers to the standards that are clearly revealed to be God’s requirements of holiness.

Grace-guy: You have been a Christian long enough to know that just giving up and living in sin does not bring the joy that you are looking for, right? But then, living right is not supposed to be a matter of all work and no joy, either. I was wondering, why are you working so hard? There are struggles in the Christian life, but it is not meant to be one big, huge struggle.

Grace-guy: Do you think that by working hard and doing right things, God will be “more gracious” to you? Because God is gracious, he already has accepted you and loves you know as much as he ever will! If you obey in your own strength and with the motivation to get God to love you more, you are being legalistic, which just means that a person is trying to do the right things, but in their own strength and with the wrong motives. The reason why we should obey God’s commands is because we love him, because he loved us enough to give us salvation through Christ’s death on the cross.

Grace-guy: Sure, it sounds a bit dangerous! But we don’t have what it takes to earn anything from God, because we were separated from him by our sin. Yet he offered us free salvation from sin by his grace. So why try to live the Christian life earning things from God? He started out being gracious with us, he is not going to stop being gracious to us now. He already accepts us completely! But when we understand that, we begin to appreciate him enough to have a great desire to serve him and live obediently to his commands. It also motivates us to respect and fear him.

Grace-guy: God has given us the Holy Spirit, and when the Spirit is in control, he gives us the power to live properly. God doesn’t just expect us to “do our best” to obey him. He fully expects us to live a holy life, which on our own is totally impossible! We can’t do it, because we are sinful. But we have the Holy Spirit to give us the strength we need. When we give ourselves over to God, he takes control and helps us to do the right things and avoid the wrong things.

Grace-guy: I would suggest spending time with God by reading his Word and praying to him. The closer you get to God, the more you will appreciate him and want to obey him. Also, it will help you to spend time with other Christians who can encourage you and sometimes point out where you need to make changes in your lifestyle and habits. Speaking of habits, holiness requires that you put off bad habits and put on good, godly habits. That takes work and personal discipline. You may need to avoid hanging out with certain people that have been poor influences. You also should avoid anything in your life that is a hindrance, like certain TV shows or stuff on the internet that you shouldn’t see. Of course, the Holy Spirit will help you.

Grace-guy: As Christians, we need to help and encourage one another to live a holy life, but sometimes Christians develop standards based on something other than the Bible, like their own culture or preference. Your main job is to do what pleases God. You need to get along well with other Christians, but you do not need to conform your life to standards that other people, not God, have placed over you. Don’t let someone else’s standard of what it means to be spiritual determine your true spirituality, which is ultimately determined by God as you do what he requires in his Word.