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One of the greatest dangers facing Christianity and Messianic Judaism is Legalism. What is Legalism? It’s treating obedience to the laws of any religious system as the way to become right with God and then continue to live a righteous life – rather than by having faith in Messiah and living in His Spirit. Legalism is elevating external observance above inner transformation by the Holy Spirit and substituting a living relationship with God with a system of rules – even when those rules include biblical commands.
Messiah Yeshua encountered Legalism throughout His ministry. In the first century, many Jewish religious leaders had reduced Judaism to rule-keeping and ritual performance. Applying the words of the prophet Isaiah to the religious leaders of His day, Yeshua declared, “These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.”
Nowhere is this criticism more concentrated than in the six woes Yeshua pronounced against the religious leaders and Pharisees. They shut people out of God’s kingdom rather than leading them in. They traveled great distances to make converts, only to produce disciples who were “twice the children of hell” than they were – spiritually lost, separated from God and heading toward Hell. They created elaborate and misleading oath systems that revealed how far their hearts had drifted from God. They carefully tithed even the smallest herbs while neglecting the weightier matters of the Law that revealed a transformed heart – justice, mercy and faithfulness. They strained unkosher gnats from their water yet swallowed unkosher camels. They cleaned the outside of the cup while greed and self-indulgence filled them within. Like whitewashed tombs, they appeared beautiful outwardly while inwardly full of corruption and death – as these religious leaders were on the inside. They honored the prophets their ancestors killed while preparing to kill the greatest prophet of all – revealing minds that were hostile to God.
This is what Legalism produces – a religion that appears sincere, disciplined and devout outwardly while rebellion, corruption and spiritual death remain within.
The Legalism Yeshua confronted in the first century has not disappeared – it has simply changed form. Today, Legalism shows up in churches, Messianic congregations and religious movements that claim to follow Messiah while moving the focus away from a relationship with God and inner transformation and onto external observances and law. These laws may come from the Bible, or from a mixture of God’s commandments and man-made laws and traditions.
Who is guilty of the very serious sin of Legalism? Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, “Torah Observant Messianic Judaism,” Seventh Day Adventism, Sacred Name groups and others.
But aren’t we supposed to keep all of the commandments we find written in the Bible? To answer that question, we must understand God’s covenants. A covenant is a contract established by God with an individual or a group of people. According to the Word of God, God made covenants with individuals and groups of people like the nation of Israel. Each covenant required specific responsibilities (laws, commandments) for those who were included in those covenants.
The covenant God made with Abraham included circumcision as its sign, which is still observed by the Jewish people today. Another covenant is the Sinai Covenant, made specifically with the nation of Israel. It contains the commandments God gave to Israel, traditionally counted as 613 laws. The Sinai Covenant was given specifically to Israel, not to the other nations of the world.
This does not mean that the laws of the Sinai Covenant have no value for us today. They still teach us about God’s holiness, wisdom, justice and moral character. Rabbi Paul let us know the Law is holy, righteous and good. The problem is not the Law itself, but the misuse of it when its laws and covenantal responsibilities are imposed on people who were never part of that covenant.
Well, what about the Ten Commandments? Surely Christians must keep the Ten Commandments. And if the Ten Commandments include the Sabbath, doesn’t that mean Christians are required to keep the Sabbath? The Ten Commandments were given to Israel as foundational laws of the Sinai Covenant. They revealed God’s holiness, righteousness and moral standards for His Sinai Covenant people. The Sabbath command was part of that covenant structure and served as a special sign between God and Israel.
Under the New Covenant, believers no longer relate to God through the Sinai Covenant, but through Messiah Yeshua and the Spirit and the New Covenant. We pursue righteous living not through covenant obligations given at Sinai, but through union with Messiah and the transforming and empowering work of the Spirit.
This does not mean God’s moral standards have disappeared. The New Testament repeatedly reaffirms commands against idolatry, murder, adultery, theft, coveting and false witness because these reflect God’s unchanging moral character. But the New Testament never commands Sabbath observance. Instead, we are warned not to judge one another regarding Sabbath days.
The first followers of the Messiah faced the problem of Legalism and what they decided is authoritative for us. At the First Jerusalem Council, recorded in Acts 15, the apostles, the Lord’s hand-picked representatives, along with the most authoritative leaders of Messiah’s community, gathered to answer one question: Must Gentile Christians observe the laws of the Sinai Covenant to be saved and live a life pleasing to God?
James, the Lord’s brother and leader of the Jerusalem community, gave the decisive answer: Torah observance was not require. All that was required was faith in Messiah Yeshua along with four prohibitions: do not eat food offered to idols, do not participate in sexual immorality, do not eat strangled animals and do not consume blood.
These four prohibitions were not chosen arbitrarily. After the flood, God made a covenant with Noah and all his descendants, which includes every nation on Earth. That covenant included moral laws meant for all humanity. By grounding their requirements in the covenant God made with Noah rather than the Sinai Covenant, the Jerusalem council was making a theological statement: Gentile Christians are required to do what God requires of all people and are not required to observe the laws of the Sinai Covenant given exclusively to the Jewish people. The rest of the New Covenant writings consistently affirm this decision.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians confronts Legalism head-on. Its message is clear: we are saved by God’s grace through faith, and we continue to live by faith. We do not return to law-keeping as a means of becoming right with God, staying right with God or growing spiritually. What begins in the Spirit must not be completed through human effort, rules, regulations, commandments, holidays, Sabbaths and dietary requirements.
Returning to law-based living pulls us away from faith and leads us back into spiritual slavery. Paul states this clearly: Messiah has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the Law. Paul did not treat law-keeping as a harmless doctrinal disagreement or a mere difference of opinion among believers. He called Legalism “a different gospel” – a false message that places people under God’s curse.
Why such strong language? Because adding laws, even biblical laws, to salvation by grace through faith, destroys salvation by grace through faith altogether. The moment laws and human works are added as a requirement for acceptance with God or for spiritual growth, the true gospel is abandoned.
Legalism can also be understood by distinguishing between primary and secondary issues. In Romans 14, Paul teaches that primary issues are non-negotiable – things every believer must hold to: the Trinity, the divine inspiration of the Bible, salvation by grace through faith, Messiah’s resurrection and the reality of Heaven and Hell. Secondary issues center on observances in which there is room for disagreement. One person eats anything; another eats only vegetables. One regards a certain day as holy; another regards every day alike. Paul’s point is clear: there is freedom in these areas and believers must not judge, condemn, criticize or reject one another because of them.
Another way to understand Legalism is through the issue of spiritual completeness. Paul teaches that when we are joined to Messiah, we have every spiritual blessing. We are complete. We lack nothing. Legalism says, “In addition to faith in Messiah, you need other things.” The Word of God says, “You are already complete when you are united to Him.” To require additional laws and observances is to undermine the sufficiency of Messiah Himself, to say, in effect, that He is not enough.
Paul put it another way: Messiah in you, the hope of glory – not Torah observance in you, the hope of glory; not holidays and Sabbath and keeping kosher in you, the hope of glory. Messiah in you – that is your salvation and your certain expectation of eternal life. Messiah alone is enough to bring you to glory.
Paul also explains the issue of Legalism through the difference between shadows and reality. In Colossians he wrote this: Don’t let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating certain holy days or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths. For these rules are only shadows of the reality yet to come. And Messiah Himself is that reality. These practices are called shadows. Think about what a shadow is. It is real because it is made by something of substance. But no one, seeing the shadow of a friend on the ground, tries to shake hands with it. No one pours out their heart to a shadow. You do not cling to the shadow once the person himself has arrived. The shadow has done its job. It told you someone was there. But the shadow is not the goal. The man is.
The dietary laws, the holy days and the Sabbaths were real. They were cast by Messiah, pointing toward Him, announcing that He was coming. But now that He has come, to remain fixated on the shadows while the living Lord stands before you is to miss the point entirely.
The true focus of the believer’s life is not external conformity to shadows and rules, but internal transformation: living in the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit and producing the fruit of the Spirit – a life flowing from a living relationship with the Three-In-One God.
To be filled with the Spirit is to be full of God’s presence. To walk in the Spirit is to live in moment-by-moment dependence on Him. To live in the Spirit is to remain close to God, responsive, sensitive and alive to Him. This kind of life does not come from what we eat or do not eat, or which days we observe or do not observe. The Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
When we stay close to God, our hearts are transformed, our desires are molded by His Spirit and we are empowered to love God with all our heart and love our neighbors as ourselves. This is how the Law is fulfilled in us.
External observances can have their place, but they are not the source of spiritual life. The Spirit is.
Messiah is enough. His Spirit is enough. God’s grace is enough. Faith is enough.