Legalism – What it is, and how to tell if you are one

There is something missing in the presentation of the gospel that the legalist presents that leaves me feeling like an important element is missing. 

At this point it's hard for me to find the precise words to describe it but there is a harshness or rigidity that permeates, and I think it can discourage the struggling believer; and which of us isn't struggling? 

Christianity is good, but it needs mixing with humanity before it will have a practical value. If only a little humanity is mixed with it, the product will be dry and tasteless; but if it is combined with the real milk of humanity, and enough of it, the result will be a loaf fit for the tongues of angels. 

The kingdom of God did not, in the beginning, consist in words, but in power – the power of godliness – though now we have fallen into another method; we have turned all religion into faith, and our faith is nothing but the productions of interest or disputing; it is adhering to a party, and wrangling and protesting against all the world besides. 

A character which Christianity does not fructify – does not soften, enlarge, beautify, and enrich – is not benefited by religion – or, rather, has not possessed itself of true religion. 

God loves that which is beautiful and attractive in character, just as much as we do, and it makes no difference where he sees it.   

A Christian sucked dry of his humanity, is just as juiceless and as flavorless as a sucked orange, and I believe that God regards him in the same light that we do.  

  Jesus was not attempting to regulate civil society, nor the church, by minute regulations, but by inspiring the soul with those nobler emotions from which the just rules spring, and which themselves need no laws. He spoke from conscious divinity in Himself to the moral consciousness in man. He was not framing principles into human laws or institutions. Now the Pharisees sought to restrain evil by a microscopic consideration of externals, and so does the legalist.     

 Leo Tolstoy’s wife Sophia records in her diary the tragic hardships of living with a hard religious man of unending moral strivings:

“His sermons on love and goodness have made him indifferent to his family, and it means the intrusion of all kinds of riff-raff into our family life.

And his (purely verbal) renunciation of worldly goods has made him endlessly critical and disapproving of others."

“There is so little genuine warmth about him; his kindness does not come from his heart, but merely from his principles. His biographies will tell of how he helped the laborers to carry buckets of water, but no one will ever know that he never gave his wife a rest and never—in all these thirty-two years—gave his child a drink of water or spent five minutes by his bedside to give me a chance to rest a little from all my labors.” 

Has Christianity given to you the true feeling of brotherhood? As for me, I think we need improvement, to understate it. To many that call themselves Christians, leave me feeling hollow, distant and discouraged. And sadder still, I know at times, I’m guilty as well.   

Inspired by the writings of Jeremy Taylor 1650, Henry Ward Beecher, Timothy Titcomb, Phillip Yancey,