INTRODUCTION: THE GOSPEL
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the message of the salvation by grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

1. SALVATION BY GRACE:
   There are three aspects of salvation by grace:
   1. FROM DEATH TO LIFE.
      1. DEATH: Death separates man's spirit from God (spiritual death). This is man's condition from birth since Adam (Rom. 5:12). Death also separates man's spirit from his body (physical death).
      2. LIFE: Spiritual life is knowing God personally (John 17:3) and having fellowship with Him. Jesus Christ is this life because we are made alive to God in His resurrection (Eph. 2:5).
      3. RECONCILIATION: Reconciliation is a thorough change in man's relationship to God restoring man to fellowship with God (Rom. 5:10), hence reconciliation is salvation from death to life.
   2. FROM SIN TO RIGHTEOUSNESS.
      1. SIN: Sin is any decision not in conformity with trust in the true God (Rom. 14:22). Idolatry, trust in a false god, is the basic sin (Ex. 20:3). A false god is any substitute for the true God and the slavemaster of anyone who chooses it as his ultimate criterion of his decisions. All have sinned choosing a false god because they are spiritually dead, not knowing personally the true God (Rom. 5:12d "because of which [death] all have sinned"; Gal:4:8).
      2. RIGHTEOUSNESS: Righteousness is a right personal relationship to God. Since trust and faith in the true God relates man rightly to God, faith is righteousness (Rom. 4:3, 5).
      3. REDEMPTION: Redemption is deliverance from sin by the death of Christ; it is salvation from sin to righteousness. And redemption is salvation from sin to righteousness because of reconciliation, salvation from death to life.
   3. FROM WRATH TO PEACE.
      1. WRATH OF GOD: the wrath of God is God's opposition to sin. The wrath of God is not opposed to God's love; it is the opposition of God's love to that which is not good for man, sin. God's wrath is specifically directed against idolatry. Sin is the cause of God's wrath.
      2. PEACE WITH GOD: peace with God is the opposite of the wrath of God. "No sin -- no wrath", peace with God.
      3. PROPITIATION: propitiation is the turning away of God's wrath; O.T. sacrifices turned away God's wrath by covering the sin; Christ's death turned away God's wrath by taking away the sin, the cause of wrath. Propitiation is deliverance from the wrath of God to peace with God; it is salvation from wrath because of salvation from sin, redemption.

2. THE LAW AND LEGALISM:
   The law as God's covenant with Israel has been misunderstood and distorted by legalism.
   1. WHAT IS THE LAW?
      The law of God is God's conditional covenant with Israel; it is different from the unconditional covenants of grace with Noah and Abraham. The law was given to clarify man's relationship to God and his fellowman. The law intensifies wrath (Rom. 4:15) and gives knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20), but it cannot produce righteousness because it cannot make alive (Gal. 3:21); it therefore cannot take away sin. The law of God was not given for salvation.
   2. WHAT IS LEGALISM?
      1. Legalism is a distortion of the law of God and a misunderstanding of it.
      2. In its fullest form it consists of four distortions of the law.
         1. Legalism absolutizes the law of God by making the law into ultimate reality. This may be done either by making the law stand by itself apart from and above God or by identifying God with the law.
         2. Legalism depersonalizes the law of God by making the law into a thing that is over man and between God and man.
         3. Legalism quantitizes the law of God by attaching to the law's commands and prohibitions various quantities of merit and demerit.
         4. Legalism externalizes the law of God by making the law regulate the outward acts and conduct rather than the inner decisions and orientation of the will.
      3. Legalism misunderstands sin as just a breaking of the law or falling short of a standard of moral perfection.
      4. Legalism misunderstands God's wrath as necessary divine retribution.
      5. Legalism misunderstands death as the necessary penalty for sin.
      6. Legalism misunderstands salvation as something earned by meritorious works;
         but meritorious works are opposed to grace (Rom. 4:4; 11:6).
      7. Christian legalism misunderstands the origin of sin: the doctrine of original sin - imputation of Adam's sin and a inherited sinful nature. This doctrine was developed by Augustine during the Augustinian-Pelagian controversy to explain why man can not be saved by meritorious works.
      8. Christian legalism misunderstands salvation as either grace infused by the sacraments in order to be able to earn eternal life by meritorious works (Roman Catholic doctrine) or as the imputation of Christ's righteousness, the merits earned vicariously by the active obedience of Christ (orthodox Protestant doctrine).
      9. Christian legalism misunderstands Christ's death as a penal satisfaction, a paying of the penalty of sin to satisfy God's justice by the passive obedience of Christ.

3. THE GOD OF SALVATION:
   The Biblical view of the God of Salvation has been misunderstood by the Christian legalistic theology.
   1. LOVE OF GOD.
      1. Biblical concept: God's love is unconditioned, not dependent upon our merit or worth. Love is the choice to do good to the person loved. The grace of God is God's love in action to do that good (Eph. 2:4-5). Grace is the "yes" of God's love to save man from sin; wrath is the "no" of God's love opposing the sin of man.
      2. Legalism conditions God's love upon our merit or worth.
   2. RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD.
      1. Biblical concept: The righteousness of God is that activity of God whereby He sets right the wrong; specifically, in salvation, it is that activity wherein he puts man into a right personal relationship with Himself. It is not opposed to God's love; rather, it is the expression of God's love.
      2. Legalism distorts the righteousness of God as that attribute of God which requires Him to punish sin and reward righteousness; that is, it is justice -- a rendering to each that which is due to him according to his merit. Thus God's love is conditioned by His justice.
   3. JUDGMENT OF GOD.
      1. Biblical concept: judgment is the putting down of the oppressor and a lifting up of the oppressed (Psa. 75:7).
      2. Legalism distorts judgment as only condemnation, a pronouncing guilty.
   4. JUSTIFICATION.
      1. Biblical concept: justification is the act of putting man into a right relationship with God through faith.
      2. Legalism misunderstands justification as a legal act of acquittal of man's sin and the imputation of Christ's righteousness or merits to the account of believer.
   5. HOLINESS OF GOD.
      1. The basic idea of the biblical concept of holiness is "to set apart," usually, from common use, to God's use. As applied to God, God is set apart from all creation and He is not one of many gods.
      2. Legalism misunderstands holiness as moral perfection, sinlessness. And God's love is set in opposition to God's holiness; accordingly God is seen as a duality of love and holiness.

4. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE:
   1. SANCTIFICATION.
      1. Sanctification is God's act of separating man from a false god and dedicating him to the true God.
      2. Justification and sanctification are two sides of God's act of salvation.
      3. Legalism distorts sanctification into a progressive conformity to the divine standard of moral perfection.
   2. INTERPRETATION OF ROMANS 7.
      1. Romans 7 is the experience of the man under law; it is not the normal Christian life, but a abnormal (subnormal) Christian life.
         There are two psychological effects of being under law (legalism):
         self-righteousness and/or a guilt complex.
         Being under law leads to the moral dilemma:
         the contradiction between what man is and what he ought to be.
      2. The legalistic explanation of this moral dilemma is the doctrine of the two natures: new nature is what man ought to be and the old or sinful nature is what man is.
      3. The biblical explanation of this moral dilemma is that the law of death leads to slavery to the law of sin; that is, spiritual death leads to sin. There are three laws operating in this experience (Rom. 7:21-23).
         1. The first law is the law of sin (verse 21).
            Since sin is not what man under law wants to do,
            he concludes that sin must dwell in the members of his body
            rather than in his real inner self (7:17-20).
         2. The second law is the law of God (verse 22),
            which the man under law delights in,
            which he agrees with his mind is right, good and holy (7:12, 16);
            this law is "the law of the mind" referred to in the next verse.
         3. The third law is "another law" in verse 23. The Greek word heteros, translated "another", means "another of a different kind"; not allos, "another of the same kind". This is a law different from the first two laws; it wars against the law of the mind, which is the law of God, and brings the man who is under law into captivity to the law of sin. What is this third law? In the next verse we find a clue. "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" (7:24) The law of death is this third law, this other law. And this is confirmed in Romans 8:2 which says, "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law sin and of death." The law of death brings the man under law into captivity to the law of sin. Death leads to sin; that is, because of death all sinned (Rom. 5:12d, "because of which [death] all sinned".).
         In Romans 7, the man under law is separated from God; the law has taken the place of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus. When the Christian is under law, the law separates him from God and this separation is spiritual death.
      4. Romans 7 is not the normal Christian life but the abnormal or subnormal experience of the believer who is under law. But if the Christian falls into this legalism, there is deliverance.
         "Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (7:25a).
      5. There are three steps that may be found in Romans 7:25b through 8:4 for deliverance from legalism:

         Step 1 - The recognition that legalism is the problem (Rom. 7:25b):

         To be delivered from legalism one must recognize that he himself is a slave to the law and a slave to sin, that is, that he is under the law and sin has dominion over him (Rom. 6:14).

         Step 2 - Deliverance from condemnation (Rom. 8:1):

         God delivers from legalism through His word of unconditional love which says that there is no condemnation to those in Christ. This is a word of grace and places the Christian back under grace.

         Step 3 - Deliverance from sin and death (Rom. 8:2):

         The law or the power of action of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus frees us from the law or the power of action of sin and of death. Since death leads to sin, the Spirit delivers from sin by giving us life in Christ; that is, deliverance from death. The law is not able to do this; the law cannot make alive (Gal. 3:21). Deliverance is through the death of Christ (Rom. 8:3) who put an end to sin's reign over us ("condemn sin in the flesh") by his death for us (Rom. 6:6-10).
         The result (Rom. 8:4) is that the righteous acts of the law are fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. To walk after the flesh is to try to do the righteous acts of the law by human effort ("the flesh"). The believer must not do it that way. By walking after the Spirit he will fulfill the righteous acts of the law. He will love God with his whole heart, soul, and mind, with his whole being, and he will love his neighbor as he loves himself.

      6. The interpretation of Romans 7 as the Christian struggle with the sinful nature is a legalistic misinterpretation of Romans 7. This misinterpretation considers the normal Christian life as under law and the sinful nature as the explanation why the Christian cannot keep the law and has this struggle. The flesh is considered to be the sinful nature.
      7. But the flesh is not the sinful nature. The Apostle Paul, like the other New Testament writers, never use the Greek word "sarx" translated "flesh" to mean the sinful nature in the sense of that there is in man that which makes him sin, that is, that man sins because he has a sinful nature. When the Apostle John wrote, "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14), he clearly was not saying that the Son of God became by nature a sinner and had a sinful nature. Clearly he means that the Son of God became a human being, a man.
   3. THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
      1. The convicting work of the Holy Spirit (John 16:8-11) through the preaching of the Gospel convinces man of his unbelief in Christ and makes real to him Christ and His work, delivering him from Satan and bringing him to Christ. This work of the Holy Spirit has been misunderstood legalistically as making one feel guilty for breaking the law.
      2. Sin and the Christian: the Christian is able to sin but does not have to sin. He is dead with Christ to the slavery of sin and is alive to God in Christ (Rom. 6:1-13). He is by faith to reckon this to be so and to present the members of his body to Christ as his Lord.
      3. The law and the Christian: the Christian is not under law and is dead to the law with Christ (Rom. 6:14; 7:1-6). Romans 7 is not the normal Christian life, but life of the man under law. There is deliverance from this abnormal Christian life (Rom. 7:24-25). The Christian is not only dead to sin with Christ but also dead to the law, so that the Christian can serve God not by the letter but by the Spirit. (Rom. 7:4-6).
      4. The Christian life is not "a do-it-yourself project", walking according to the flesh, that is, by human effort to live up to the standard or norm of the law, but a walk according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:4; Gal. 5:16), that is, a cooperation between our will and the Spirit of God (Phil. 2:12-13). To walk in the Spirit is to walk in love, love for God and love for our neighbor. This walk in the Spirit, fulfills the law, not legalistically as Spirit-empowered-law-keeping, but as Spirit-filled law-fulfilling by love, since love fulfills the law (Rom. 13:8-10).
      5. Christ has set the Christian free from the yoke of law (legalism).

         "For freedom Christ has set us free, stand fast therefore,
         and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." (Gal. 5:1).

         Since the Christian is not under the law, he is not a slave to sin.

         "For sin shall not have dominion over you,
         since you are not under law, but under grace." (Rom. 6:14).

CONCLUSION:

Legalism is the cause of many problems in the church. It is the cause of a dead orthodoxy and a cold, unloving Christianity. To correct these effects of legalism there have arisen in the church various movements such as pietism, the evangelical awakening, the deeper life movement, revivalism, etc. None of these movements went to the source of the deadness, coldness and unlovableness but often just reinforced the cause -- legalism. The great outpouring of the Spirit starting at the beginning of the twentieth century has been constantly burdened and limited by the frequent relapses into the same legalism. And the source of the legalism in practice is the legalism of the theology. Practical legalism is the result of theological legalism. The problem is not too much theology but bad theology, legalistic theology. This theological legalism has misunderstood the Gospel of our salvation. With the present move of the Spirit, the time has come to remove the cause of this practical legalism by clearing the theological legalism out of our theology and again recovering the Bibical understanding of the Gospel of our salvation. Such a theological renewal should be the natural accompaniment of the move of the Spirit of God today and could produce a reformation comparable to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. This book is an attempt to contribute to such a theological renewal.