I preached out of 1 Tim. 4:1-3 this past weekend (sermon available here).  Its a passage where Paul warns Timothy about certain prevalent heresies which involved the forbidding of marriage and abstinence from certain types of foods.  Paul explains that these heresies had supernatural origins.  They were the deceptive and influential teachings of demons.

Among a few other things, this passage serves as an opportunity to address the ever-recurring problem of legalism within various religious sects.  A few examples:

• Hinduism—don’t eat meat
• Islam—don’t eat pork
• Jehovah’s Witnesses—don’t celebrate holidays
• Latter-Day Saints/Mormons—don’t consume caffeine

At this point everyone was nodding along in agreement.  Its easy to see the error of other people’s ways.  However, as Christians we certainly are not immune to this sort of extra-biblical ‘prohibitioning.’  We do the exact same thing, only in our own little Christian way.  So many Christian groups (including my own SBC) have this perfect picture of what a good Christian is supposed to look like:

• You can’t listen to rock, country, or rap music—only gospel music
• You can’t drink alcohol
• You can’t smoke cigarettes
• You can’t get any tattoos
• If you’re a man, you must have short hair
• If you’re a woman, you must have long hair
• Etc.

As you can see we certainly have our own brands of legalism.  And taken to extremes I believe, along with the Apostle Paul (see 1 Tim. 4:1), these legalistic doctrines are the “teachings of demons” as they influence and trickle their way through parishes and congregations all over the world.

If you’ve got a church where someone is a liar and everyone knows about it and just sort of accepts it, but a woman who is addicted to smoking cigarettes walks in to your church and is looked down upon….you’ve got a problem.

If you’ve got a church where its unspoken and understood that a certain group of persons love to gossip and everyone just quietly sweeps that issue under the rug, but a guy walks into your worship service with long hair, tattoos up and down his arms, and he’s sporting a t-shirt with a big, bold Budweiser logo across the front—if the first thing you think is, “Well, we’ve got to either get this guy cleaned up so that he looks more like us or else we’ve got to get him out of here”…..then you’ve got a problem.

And the problem is legalism.  Consider what legalism accomplishes:

1. It robs the Bible of its authority
   →Instead, it says “Here, let our way of doing things tell you what to do.”
2. It steals the conscience of its purpose
   →And replaces it with “Well, I’ll tell you what is right and wrong.”
3. It denies the Holy Spirit of his life-changing power
   →In its place is the line, “If you were serious about your walk, you would force yourself to do this or not do that”
4. It strips the gospel of its message of salvation by grace
   →And instead argues subconsciously that “You can save yourself if you’ll dress a certain way, if you’ll learn to talk a certain way, if you”’ only listen to a certain type of music, only pay attention to these particular preachers, and only read from one particular version of the Bible, etc.”

Legalism is bad stuff.  And I’m afraid that its everywhere.  What else would you say legalism accomplishes? I’m sure there’s more.  I’ve only listed four things.