Colossians 2:16-23 Why Legalism is Useless

May 28, 2022

Jeff Harrington

As Americans, we will fight for liberty over tyranny in almost every area of life save one - our Christian Liberty. In some misguided notion of “going along to get along,” we often allow legalists to infiltrate our churches and take them over. Whenever that happens the freedom we have in Christ is soon crushed. Someone has said, "Misery loves company" and that is the legalists' official motto. All legalists share two traits in common: They like to be in control. They like to make comparisons. And the way the legalist gets to be in control is by getting others involved in their game of making comparisons. Now typically when I preach on this topic of legalism I recite all of the absurdities by legalistic types that have been suggested as signs of true spirituality over the ages but there’s really no need for me to go into all that for we all know the sorts of things that have been long debated amongst Christians, particularly in more modern times…things like should Christians be teetotalers or is the moderate consumption of adult beverages okay, should Christians go to movies or watch certain television programs, should Christians wear short skirts and fishnet stockings (although in our present culture this is now sadly debated as to the men) and so on. Paul says when we start to compare ourselves and judge one another by the comparison made we have headed off entirely in the wrong direction.