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In “Suspicious Symptoms,” the sixth video in the teaching series The Whole Christ, Sinclair Ferguson reminded us of what Geerhardus Vos said of legalism—that it was a distortion of the relationship between the person of God, and the commandments of God. The commandments of God were turned into depersonalized rules, “rather than the Word of our loving, heavenly Father.” This leads to a distorted view of God’s generosity and kindness, and a contorted sense that He wants us to not only glorify Him, but enjoy Him forever. “He has made us so that we could have fellowship with Him, and He gives us directions, laws, in order that we may live for our pleasure and for his glory.”

Legalism is not simply a mental attitude. It creates an atmosphere in our lives. Like we see in the Pharisees, it creates in us a self-righteous temperament. But modern people have lost the sense of shock and surprise that would have occurred with his audience when Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18. Jesus said the tax collector, not the Pharisee, was justified! “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Ferguson suggested we can recover that sense of the shock in the parable by recognizing how we are more like the Pharisee than the tax collector.

Consider this question to see if you are legalistic. Have you ever, like the Pharisee, looked down on someone else? Remember that you make a decision, you decide to become a Pharisee. Have you ever thought you were accepted by God because of a religious decision you made? “There are people who believe that they are justified because they had decided for Christ, not because Christ died for them on the cross.” That decision becomes the key factor in their justification: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18:11).

Why am I as an evangelical Christian, potentially more like the Pharisee than the tax collector? Because it may have been a long time before I’ve beaten my breast and said, “God be merciful to me, the sinner.”

Jesus compared and contrasted the Pharisee and the tax collector in order to expose the very human inability to understand and trust “in the absolute free grace of God in the gospel.” We tend to slip back into the idea that it was because of something we did, something in us that makes us acceptable to God. Ferguson said Jesus engaged in what he called the grace exposé. He showed it was not the person who thought he was more acceptable in the sight of God because of what grace had done in him. Rather, it was the person who knew he didn’t deserve grace, who walked away experiencing grace.

We see this also in the parable of the prodigal son (See “Ready for the Gospel”). Everyone in the village would have thought the father had lost his senses. They would have said instead of a feast, there should be a service to shame the younger boy; and another one to celebrate the faithfulness of the older son. We see how grace reverses that expectation. And it does something else—it really irritates the older brother. Jesus is making a big thing of showing grace to the undeserving son in order to illustrate, as we see in the older brother, how those who begin to think they are deserving of grace react to the unanticipated favor of God. The parable of the laborers in the vineyard makes the same point (Matthew 20:1-16).

The guys who have been laboring all day long … what really irritates them is they think they deserve more, when it was the employer’s good pleasure to distribute lavishly, graciously, to those who had contributed almost nothing. And it irritated them to see grace being extended to those who were, dare we say it, in their eyes less deserving than they themselves were.

When you hear these parables of Jesus and understand the way in which his audience would have heard them, you can sense the shock of what he said. Many of these people were overawed by the religious show of the Pharisees, but in the parables, they realized the sheer grace of God in Jesus Christ. When you see that you are irritated by that grace, “when someone’s display of their consciousness of their sinfulness before a holy God embarrasses you, that may be one of the signs that this old legalistic spirit has crept back, and you’re resting on what you have accomplished.”

Legalism also creates a spirit of bondage in the Christian believer, because we can never fully keep the law of God. And therefore, the law of God that we think is the determinating fact of our relationship with God is always going to be an irritant to us, a burden to us, and we’re never going to be free from it.

This creates an atmosphere in our lives. Our life shows whether we are trusting in the Lord, have graciously repented of our sin, and know something of the sweetness of His grace. Or it shows if we’re always thinking of whether we’re truly qualified; whether other people have in fact qualified. “Somehow or another it creates the atmosphere of our lives, whether the gospel has really gone deep down.”

Whether we’ve really grasped the grace of God in the gospel or not—yes, it tells in our level of ability to articulate it. But the place in which it really tells is in the atmosphere. In the breath we breathe out every day by the grace of God. So may God deliver us from legalism and fill us with His grace.

This article has been based on “Suspicious Symptoms,” the sixth video in Sinclair Ferguson’s teaching series, The Whole Christ, from Ligonier Connect. Here is a link to Ligonier Connect. The video series is itself based upon his book of the same name. You can review summaries of the Marrow Controversy here and here. If the topic interests you, look for more of my ruminations under the link, The Whole Christ.