Welcome to another Thursday UNFILTERED blog post, the only blog that recently saw a commercial for an above-ground pool. It was 30 seconds long. The reason? That’s the maximum amount of time you can depict yourself having fun in an above-ground pool.
If you’ve read much of my work, you are aware that I believe that the two enemies of the gospel in the first-century were legalism and libertinism.
And those two enemies are still with us today.
The libertine believes, “We are under grace, so we can do whatever we want. God’s cool with it. He’s love, you know.”
The legalist believes, “My personal convictions reflect God’s opinions, so if it’s wrong for me, it’s wrong for you. Oh, and by the way, I’m not a legalist.”
(Clears throat.)
The libertine acts as if there is no God.
The legalist acts as if she/he is God to everyone else.
As I argued in my book Insurgence, most legalists don’t realize they are legalistic and most libertines don’t realize they have perverted God’s grace into license (to quote the New Testament).
Every legalist I’ve ever met lives by a double standard.
“Hey, why are you listening to Adele? She’s an unbeliever so she sings the devil’s tunes.”
Yet the person who utters those words (or similar ones) loves TV shows and movies written, directed, and produced by unbelievers.
Hmmm …
You don’t have to be a walking, breathing Moses to be a legalist.
If you’re a legalist, you’ve created God in your own image because He just happens to hate the same art that you do.
Oh, and those same people who breathe fire and brimstone against those whose taste in art differs from theirs almost always use profanity, which the New Testament clearly condemns. (I’ve addressed this before, but that’s another conversation.)
Interestingly, the New Testaments says nothing about most of the things that legalists renounce.
“So Frank, you’re saying that it’s okay to watch pornography or sing along with songs that say Lucifer is great because they are art?”
That’s the sort of inane, supercilious, lunacy that legalists come up with whenever someone speaks on the problem of legalism.
Dude, there is good art and bad art. I thought that was obvious.
But what YOU pontificate as being bad isn’t the criteria for everyone else.
If you’ve read Insurgence, or listened to The Insurgence Podcast, you know my thoughts on satan and porn (and yes, I deliberately use lower case for God’s enemy).
On that score, in chapter 4 of my book Rethinking the Will of God — which is without charge on the free stuff page — I take dead aim at the problem of legalism using a plethora of New Testament texts.
The message needs to be repeated over and over again because so many Christians – no matter how much they’ve heard or read truth – still haven’t “gotten the joke.”
(That’s another way of saying they keep missing the point.)
The links at the bottom will direct you to more articles on this topic.
I’m keenly aware that those of you who have legalistic blood won’t take the time to read any of this.
But I’m not writing for you, Archie.
If just one person on this email list gets a revelation from it, and they change, it will be worth the time they took to produce.
Enjoy!
8 Signs of a Modern-Day Pharisee
A Subtle Indicator of Legalism
On Legalism: Spurgeon vs. Moody
Legalism, License, Lordship, and Liberty
Rethinking the Will of God (go straight to chapter 4)
For more, check out:
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48 Scriptures on God’s Power