QUESTION: We were sitting around talking the other day, and somebody asked, "What is legalism?" So, I thought I'd ask you. What do you think?

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ANSWER: The religious leaders back in the days of Jesus were called Pharisees. They made up rules all the time- rules that weren't even in the Bible- and then made the people obey them. Since they were looking to their own good deeds to make them feel spiritual, they felt better when they could obey more and more rules. Jesus strongly confronted them for doing this.

When we focus more on our outward actions than we do on our inward heart, we get into legalism. I'm not saying that rules don't matter. They do. But our faith and love toward Christ are more important. Real faith always produces action. If you have a heart for God, your actions will eventually line up. A legalist would say the opposite: if you work hard and get your actions right, then your heart will eventually line up (if they even focussed on the heart at all). A legalist would focus more on the outside than the inside.

Christ wants us to have a healthy focus on outward action. We should realize that our outward actions are clues to what is inside of our hearts; therefore, our desire should be to clean up the inward heart and the outward actions, not just the outward actions.