Grace and Legalism

The difference between legalism and grace is the latter is Christ like and the former is not. To be a Christian is to love others, help others, and to spread the Gospel. Christianity is not obeying rules with a false hope that in some way rule abiding will get us into heaven or that we will find favor with God through obeying the law. When Legalism is ruling, egos start to inflate and increase while our view of Christ begins to slowly deflate and wither away to the point where our relationship with Christ takes a back seat to our own selfish desires. When we allow Legalism to take over we no longer preach the gospel we no longer yearn for Jesus, again we search only for ways to build up ourselves and not the church. A young pastor from Texas named Matt Chandler once spoke at a conference and gave a message concerning the generations and what happens when we stop preaching the gospel and we start adopting rules with no explanation or biblical background. He stated, “we grew up in this do this, but don't do this, but thats moralistic deism at its best! It doesn’t transform” (Chandler). Chandler’s point was that if we give rules for the sake of giving rules, that we will raise up Pharisees who are more interested in external views instead of internal transformation.