SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/27/2017
10:08 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1
Legalism
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossian
2:16-17
Message of the
verses: “16 Therefore no one is to act as your judge
in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a
Sabbath day- 17 things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the
substance belongs to Christ.”
I have mentioned earlier that I am reading a book by John
MacArthur entitled “Slave” and that book has taught me a lot about the fact
that in reality a believer is a slave to God.
Now there is a picture in the Old Testament of what all people are which
is slaves to sin. The children of Israel
when they were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years by ruthless dictator’s shows us
what a person is when they are born, and that is being a slave to the cruel master
of sin, which is called the sin nature.
We are as bad off in our relationship with God as we can be because
being born with the sin nature making us slaves to sin. When Moses, through the
work of God who showed the rulers of Egypt that He was indeed the One True God
because of the miracles that He did caused the people of Israel to be free from
their bondage of their sinful masters the children of Israel actually became
slaves to the Lord who is a completely different kind of Master. I believe that this pictures the new birth
when a person accepts the salvation that Christ offers through the good news of
the gospel and so we are no longer slaves of sin but slaves of God. I realize that the word “slave” or “slavery”
is a word that brings about a lot of difficult thoughts, but being a slave to
God is the best thing that a person can be.
As mentioned this happens through the word of Jesus Christ on the cross
who has provided complete salvation, complete forgiveness, and complete victory
as we learned when we studied verses 11-15 in our last section. Now if we have been completely saved,
forgiven, and have complete victory in Christ why would we want to add
something to this, and when we add something to this it is called “legalism”
which is what these two verses speak of.
John MacArthur states “Legalism is the religion of human
achievement. It argues that spiritually
is based on Christ plus human works. It
makes conformity to man-made rules the measure of spirituality.” Paul argues this in these two verses.
John MacArthur quotes a man named Gardiner Spring in his
commentary, and Spring is a man that I have read in the past in my study of the
books of Thessalonians when MacArthur quoted from him there. Gardner Spring writes the following and with
that we will end this SD.
“A merely moral man may be
very scrupulous of duties he owes to his fellowmen, while the infinitely
important duties he owes to God are kept entirely out of sight. Of loving and serving God, he knows nothing. Whatever he does or whatever he leaves
undone, he does nothing for God. He is
honest in his dealings with all except God, he robs none but God, he is
thankless and faithless to none but God, he feels contemptuously, and speaks
reproachfully of none but God. A just
perception and the duties which result from those relations constitute no part
of his piety. He may not only disbelieve
the Scriptures, but may never read them; may not only disregard the divine
authority, but every form of divine worship, and live and die as though he had
no concern with God and God had not concern with him. The character of the young man in the Gospel
presents a painful and affecting view of the deficiencies of external morality
(see Mt. 19:16-22). He was not
dishonest, nor untrue; he was not impure nor malignant; and not a few of the
divine commands he had externally observed.
Nay, he says, ‘All these have I kept.’
Nor was his a mere sporadic goodness, but steady and uniform. He had performed these services ‘from his
youth up.’ Nor was this all. He professed a willingness to become
acquainted with his whole duty. ‘What
lack I yet?’ And yet when brought to the
test, this poor youth saw that, with all his boasted morality, he could not
deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Christ.”
3/27/2017 10:44 PM
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