There are no guarantees in this life. At least, not the kind that keep you healthy, wealthy, and wise. We are all in His hands—father, mother, sister, brother, missionary, or local church member. And He is so trustworthy! I can magnify His worth as I entrust to His care the children He has temporarily entrusted to my care. Fellow mothers, let’s surrender our fears and ambitions for our children and let the Lord write their stories according to His perfect wisdom.

I leaned over my bleeding daughter, adrenaline pumping through my own veins as I obeyed the instructions of my nurse friend and co-worker, Heidi. My sweet 7-year-old Savannah looked up into my eyes from the tile floor beneath the ladder-like stairs and asked, “Why did God let me fall? I was getting toys for the little kids!”
Savannah will always bear the scar in her forehead from the wound that bared bone that day, and my own soul would bleed and fester over the next weeks as I grappled with her question that cut deeply into my mother-heart. It was a wound that would eventually heal but leave its mark on me.
Our Stewardship
Our gracious Father had given three beautiful children to Forrest and me to shepherd and steward, and we had gladly accepted the responsibility. The Lord also made it clear that we would be raising them in a rural province of Cambodia, known among the developing world for its rugged poverty. Our response was always a resounding “God will take care of us!” But what did that mean now? My pain cried out, God, we have given up so much to come here and serve the Cambodian people. Can I not trust you to keep my children safe from harm? I wanted to require God to insulate my family from hurts in exchange for our sacrifice and service. This would not do. I would wrestle with Him, even until the break of day, but He would prevail with a single touch. He is Lord.
I loved to think of how the Lord had taught me to embrace risks for His Name’s sake, tamping down my fear and stepping out, then gasping at the wonder of what He can do with just a little faith. I talk about it to others. I write about it. But the glory takes on an uncertain hue when my risk-taking affects my little ones. Can I pursue activities that promote the Gospel, knowing sickness and danger will encroach on their young lives too?
I can be a good steward as I help my children experience how to invest in eternal things, counting cost according to God’s economic system, not the world’s.
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How can I share the gospel with those who hold to these forms of false teaching? Focus on the biblical teaching about the depravity of the human heart. Since legalism and antinomianism stem from the sinful depravity of the human heart, we can help others move away from these errors by pointing to what the Scriptures teach about our sinful condition. The Bible teaches that all people by nature are “dead in . . . trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1–5). In ourselves, we are unable to do anything spiritually pleasing to God (Rom. 5:6; Eph. 2:12). All our deeds apart from Christ are violations of God’s law, for which we deserve God’s eternal wrath and judgment (Matt. 7:23).

The terms legalism and antinomianism describe two false teachings regarding the relationship between the law and the gospel. Legalism is the insistence that a person is accepted by God on the basis of his law keeping. It teaches that we are declared righteous before God through our own observance of either God’s law or man-made rules and regulations. Antinomianism says that God does not require a believer to obey the moral law (i.e., the Ten Commandments). In its more extreme and perverted form, antinomianism permits immoral behavior based on the leniency of grace.
When did they begin?
Legalism and antinomianism are rooted in the fall of Adam. All mankind is predisposed to these two moral and theological errors. Accordingly, countless forms of legalism and antinomianism have surfaced throughout history. Legalism and antinomianism undergird all forms of false teaching and heresy.
Who are the key figures?
Legalism
Jesus rebuked the religious leaders in Israel for their hypocritical, self-righteous teaching and lives (Matt. 23:4; Luke 18:9). The Apostle Paul stridently defended the gospel against the doctrinal legalism with which the early church was infected (Gal. 1–3; 1 Tim. 1:6–7).
The Roman Catholic Church has long promoted an elaborate system of religious legalism, which is most evident in its monastic asceticism, penitential system, sacramentalism, and emphasis on merit.1 Roman Catholicism denies the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone, teaching that a person is justified by faith in Christ together with his Spirit-wrought good works.
Doctrinal and practical legalism has surfaced in evangelical and Protestant churches over the centuries. By imposing obligations on members to observe man-made rules and regulations, many churches have advanced a form of man-centered legalism (Col. 2:20–23).
In recent decades, proponents of the New Perspective(s) on Paul have taught that a person’s final right standing before God is based on his obedience to God’s commands.
False religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, because they teach a works-based salvation wherein we enter heaven or experience Nirvana because of our good deeds, are non-Christian forms of legalism.
Antinomianism
In the early church, certain false teachers promoted the idea that God’s grace tolerates lawless living (see 2 Peter and Jude). Some wickedly dismissed sexual immorality in the name of grace (Jude 4). The Apostle John contended against antinomian ideas in his first letter (1 John 2:4).
Throughout church history, antinomianism has appeared in less overt and perverse forms than that in which it appeared in the early church. Martin Luther wrote Against the Antinomians to refute the erroneous teaching of the neo-Lutheran antinomian Johannes Agricola. Edward Fisher wrote The Marrow of Modern Divinity to address the undercurrents of legalism and antinomianism in certain streams of the Puritan movement. This book was also at the center of a debate over antinomianism in the Church of Scotland in the eighteenth century.2 In the twentieth century, notable dispensational teachers promoted a form of antinomianism called “easy-believism.”
What are the main beliefs?
In the church, legalism surfaces when people teach or believe these ideas:

Get in by grace; stay in by law keeping. While most forms of legalism in the church deny strict merit in the sense that they affirm the necessity of grace, almost all insist that an individual’s good works are necessary for his final justification before God on judgment day. Roman Catholicism teaches that a person is initially justified at baptism;3 however, his final right standing before God is dependent on a life of continued adherence to religious rituals and Spirit-wrought good works.
Meriting righteousness. Legalism teaches that people can cooperate with God in order to gain a right standing by their works. Though this view does not involve strict merit, it still reflects a meritorious scheme of salvation. Legalism is often accompanied by a self-righteous spirit in those who advance it.

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Moses stands as a gleaming example in the dark storms of modern self-aggrandizement, reminding us that to sit at the feet of the Lord—even when spiritual tragedy surrounds us—is good and proper. It is a reminder that the spiritual disasters around us are not, properly speaking, our problem. The battle belongs to the Lord. He may send us down the mountain to be a spiritual leader in critical times (Exodus 32:7), but never before filling us with His grace, peace, and Word. The events or tasks causing that tension in your chest and anxiety in your heart cannot be solved by you. If those things are to be done well, they must be according to the Lord’s plan. 

Christians and non-Christians alike constantly talk about the need for “self-care” these days. I wonder if farmers, working 80 hours a week in 1950s America, thought about “self-care.” That is a rhetorical question. Of course, they did not. The reason, I suspect, is not that hard-working farmers did not need to take care of themselves. Instead, we talk about it today because of new demands in how we live.
We talk so much about it (there are books, YouTube videos, and even people dedicated to this topic), and people of yesteryear did not because times have changed for us. We are in a new place that makes divine demands on all people. Society expects us to be “on” all the time. We must respond to instant messages instantly. We must be aware of tragedy in our city, state, nation, and world. We must keep up with the news, the latest book, the newest post, the latest show, the best restaurant, and what everyone we know is thinking as they stream it live onto social media.
In other words, society expected 1950s farmers to grow crops. Today, on the other hand, society expects us to be God. We have the world’s information in our pockets—we must be omniscient. We can respond to everything everywhere—we must be omnipresent. We have incredible technology that can solve “all” our problems—we must be omnipotent. For an example of the latter point, consider a billboard I recently saw hawking services to people with cancer: “Take control of your cancer! Call us today.” As if dealing with cancer is a matter of “taking control.”
Moses begs to differ. In Exodus 24, Moses went up the mountain of the Lord. When on the mountain, God conversed with Moses from Exodus chapter 25 to 31. In chapter 32, we read that the people begin to commit idolatry—the infamous golden calf “incident.”
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