bondage

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Christian Legalism (Part 3): The foolish ignorance of opposing God’s Grace

Grant Swart

“But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient “ (1 Tim. 1:8-9).

At the heart of Christian legalism is a denial of the truth of the Gospel, and therefore a denial of God’s Sovereignty, of His Son and of the work of His Holy Spirit. It places God’s people into cruel, oppressive bondage and replaces the perfection and completion of the salvific work of Jesus Christ, with sick, depraved human traditions. Speaking out against the error of legalism, as I have done previously in Parts 1 and 2 of this article, by accepting the example set by Jesus, in no way constitutes creating a licence to sin. There are no two things in the world more directly opposed to one another than law and grace.

Righteousness and our acceptance by God can never come by way of legalism. Neither can justification, nor sanctification. By no means do I intend to indicate hereby that true, saved believers are antinomian (against the law), which seems to have become a fashionable term being bandied about with much self-righteous zeal. The boundaries which govern that which constitutes true antinomianism are subject to a million varied interpretations, remain practically undefined and are all subject to human interpretation. However, many legalists seem to be under the impression that every true believer who opposes legalism and works based salvation, or for that matter is found to have committed sin, is by definition antinomian.  Continue reading →

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Christian Legalism: The Dark Side of Christianity (Part 2)

Grant Swart

Although legalism and the error it represents cannot be taken lightly, I thought it might be apt to place this well known bit of humour before Part 2 of this article. It (sort of) addresses legalism, yet it is contradictory as there is no pre-requisite for us to “earn” life eternal in lieu of the perfection of the sacrifice made by the Lamb, our Lord, Jesus Christ.  

Of course, there are those out there who love and cling passionately to their legalism, who would fault the relevance or suitability of even this humour. I am well aware of some of them who do read my articles and in particular, I refer to those of immature contentious spirit who confuse a regard for the severity of sin, repentance and true sanctification with the gross error of legalism.  

A man dies and goes to heaven.  He is met at the Pearly Gates by a Heavenly custodian.

The custodian says, “Here’s how it works. You need 100 points to make it into heaven. Continue reading →

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Demons and Magic

One of the best explanations I have heard on this subject – I pray this brings the truth to many – Elmarie


John MacArthur- Grace to You

January 14, 1973

The subject upon which we will be speaking tonight is one that perhaps has captured the attention of many of us in our particular modern day because it exists, in a certain sense, as a kind of a paradox. This is a very intellectual day. This is a day when men pride themselves on being rational. This is the era that is after the rational era in the sense that we’ve all discovered what logic means and what rationality means. And yet it is the midst of just such…such an era of education and higher learning and rationality and logic and all of these things that there seems to be a tremendous boom in the occult, the mysterious, the mystique, the things which are supernatural and which are irrational, unreasonable, and beyond education. And it’s becoming such a practical thing that it seems as though it hits us in every place in every way.

Continue reading →