In our attempt to uncover the roots of legalism, we must look ultimately at our own lives. Incurvitas keeps us from seeing our true need. It tricks us into thinking we are basically good and only need to be better. Legalism is truly damning and rather damaging. Legalism can even catapult us to its opposite, to a life of license and a life, ultimately, of rebellion.

One of Martin Luther’s many contributions concerns the Latin word incurvitas. This sounds like something a dentist might say to you as he pokes and prods in the molars. But it’s not. It means “turned inward.” It means that we are naturally selfish, self-centered, and self-absorbed. While all of those are damning enough, this condition of incurvitas has an even more telling effect. Because we are turned inward, we think we can achieve righteousness entirely on our own. So we strive, white-knuckling it, to achieve a right standing before God.
How many times have you heard someone say that as long as our good deeds outweigh our bad ones, God will welcome us open arms? How many religious systems are built upon works? How many people feel trapped by their incessant failed attempts to achieve perfection? Those are all cases of incurvitas. It’s an epidemic.
Understanding this concept of incurvitas so well, Luther said, “It’s very hard for a man to believe that God is gracious to him. The human heart can’t grasp this.” If we don’t look to grace, we look to ourselves and to our own efforts.
Therein lie the roots of legalism.
The roots of legalism are in the sinful and fallen human heart itself. The heart manifests its sinful condition in our crippling desire to lean on our own merits and our own abilities in the attempt to somehow climb out of the miry pit of sin and reach all the way to heaven. We find grace to be far too bitter of a pill. It tells us we can never be good enough.
Curiously enough, the opposite of legalism also stumbles over grace. The opposite of legalism is antinomianism. This word includes the Greek prefix anti-, “against, in place of,” and the Greek word nomos, “law.” Theologically speaking, antinomians run away from any obligation to law or to any divine command. Antinomians are like James Bond: they have a license to sin. But that is the sad lie of antinomianism. It’s not liberty—it’s license.
The solution to legalism is not antinomianism. The solution to antinomianism is not legalism. The solution to both is grace, that thing Luther told us was hard to grasp. Exploring the roots of legalism further will serve not only to expose it, but also to display the brilliant and stunning contours of its solution, the grace of God.
Legalism in Scripture
The clearest expression of legalism in Scripture comes in the stories of the antagonists in the Gospels, the Pharisees. In fact, thanks to them, we have the term pharisaical, defined as “hypocritical censorious self-righteousness.” Not one of those three things is a good thing. Taken together, we get a really bad thing. Another definition informs us that the term pharisaical means an extreme commitment to religious observance and ritual—apart from belief. Both aspects of the definition are crucial. The first is the striving and white-knuckling it to heaven. The second part takes us back to Luther’s quote and our aversion to grace—it just can’t be as simple as belief.
Christ confronted this tendency to be pharisaical on about every page in the Gospels. One such place is the parable concerning the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18. “I thank you that I am not like other men,” the Pharisee prays. There is the self-righteousness. The Pharisee further protests that he fasts and tithes. There is the external obedience.
In this parable, the Pharisee is contrasted with the tax collector. The tax collector simply prays, “Be merciful to me, a sinner!” There is the cry for grace.
A few verses later, the rich ruler comes to Christ. He too plays the part of a Pharisee. He too protests his self-righteousness. It seems that everywhere Christ goes, He meets Pharisees.
The opposite of legalism is not license. It is liberty.
Ironically, the Pharisees, though they thought otherwise, were not truly concerned with the law of God. They actually set up a whole system of regulations to enable them to get around God’s law. They were experts at setting up loopholes. They had a man-made system of law to avoid the divine law. And they led Israel astray. Hence, we see why Jesus so vehemently opposed them and called them the false shepherds of Israel, as in the series of “woes” unleashed in Matthew 23.
Before his conversion, Paul was one such false shepherd. Paul was the consummate legalist. In fact, you would be hardpressed to find another person so zealous for the law. He had firsthand knowledge when he declared, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight” (Rom. 3:20). He had firsthand knowledge when he lamented, “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse” (Gal. 3:10).
Paul also had firsthand experience with grace. So he joyfully declared, “God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal. 4:4–5). It is impossible to study Paul without coming into contact with grace. So we read in Romans 5 that all our striving comes to an end in Christ. We can only attain peace with God by faith in Christ—the only one who kept the law perfectly.
Legalism in History
As we turn to the pages of church history, we see the church’s focus on grace eclipsed by legalism. This happened on a grand scale after the controversy between Augustine and Pelagius. In the aftermath of that controversy, the seeds were sown that would eventually result in a full-blown system of works as the medieval church’s view of salvation. A key here is the shift from the biblical teaching on repentance to the church’s teaching of penance.
Repentance is illustrated by the tax collector in Christ’s parable. The repentant one simply prays to God, “Have mercy; I’m a sinner.” Penance is the list of things to do that will put you right with God. By Luther’s time, the list had grown rather long. So, Luther vainly tried to reach God by being a good monk. Luther even went into the monastery as a sorely misguided attempt to please God.
Only one thing resulted from Luther’s ardent work: he found himself even further away from God and mired in anxiety. Later in life, he even suffered physically from his earlier attempt to attain righteousness by these efforts. But in His grace, God reached down to Luther. We can’t grasp grace naturally. That’s why grace grasps us.
One branch of the Reformation initially celebrated this glorious truth of grace and then departed from it. In Zurich, there arose the Anabaptists. In addition to their other beliefs, they advocated withdrawing from society and living in segregated communities. They would soon develop a dress code and rules for how they would live and work. They called themselves the Mennonites, as they followed the teachings of Menno Simons (1496–1561). In 1693, Jakob Ammann broke from the Mennonites over the practice of “the ban”—shunning those who transgress rules. His followers would be known as the Amish. They went beyond the gospel to regulations and traditions.
The same dynamic occurred in the twentieth century in various pockets of fundamentalism. I remember walking into a church in the 1970s and being confronted with two large diagrams showing acceptable hair and clothing guidelines for men and for women. Christianity was reduced to lists, mostly of what not to do.
As Christ confronted legalism on nearly every page of the Gospels, you can find legalism throughout the pages of church history. So, too, you can find the opposite. Antinomianism thrived during the Reformation. It also thrived and continues to thrive amid pockets of fundamentalism. Sadly, we can tell the whole story of mankind’s misguided quest for God by tracing these ever-present threads of legalism and antinomianism.
Legalism in Life
The opposite of legalism is not license. It is liberty. Luther called Galatians his “Katie.” “I am betrothed to it,” he would say. That is a compliment that goes two ways. It reflects how deeply he loved his wife, and it reflects how deeply he loved the message of Galatians. It is the “Epistle of Liberty.”
In our attempt to uncover the roots of legalism, we must look ultimately at our own lives. Incurvitas keeps us from seeing our true need. It tricks us into thinking we are basically good and only need to be better. Legalism is truly damning and rather damaging. Legalism can even catapult us to its opposite, to a life of license and a life, ultimately, of rebellion.
The reality is that we are not good. How ironic that part of the “good news” of the gospel is that we are not good at all. And because we are not good, we could never look to ourselves but must look to the One born of a woman, born under the law. He is the only righteous One. He kept the law and bore its punishment for those who trust in Him. God pours out His grace freely upon us because of what Christ has done for us. Christ has set us free (Gal. 5:1).
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In the days of Jesus, it was not the Lord who disturbed the peace and purity of the Old Covenant Church, but it was pharisaical practices and deceptive use of language that disturbed her. Likewise in our day, it is not those who insist on the plain meaning of language who disturb the peace and purity of the church; it is those who seek to skirt around the “plain and common sense of the words” (cf. WCF 22:4) who trouble Israel.

I was reared Lutheran (ELCA). In my experience growing up and attending several different Lutheran congregations, the worship was fundamentally the same.[1]
Regardless of whether we attended a relatively conservative or relatively liberal congregation, the order of worship essentially did not change. It did not even matter whether we went to the “Contemporary Service” or the “Traditional Service,” for both shared the same basic structure. This was not because the various congregations shared the same theology or worldview, but because the congregations all followed one of the various “settings” in either the Green, Maroon, or Blue Hymnal along with the lectionary.
As a young person, it seemed to me the ELCA was united by a shared worship experience or order of worship. This observation held up even across worship styles and the theological spectrum.
In the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), our unity comes not because we share one common liturgy; we have no prescribed liturgy that comes from a denominational publisher or is imposed by the “Headquarters” (and according to some, there is no PCA Headquarters).
This is due – at least in part – to our Puritan heritage; the Westminster Assembly opted not to produce a “Prayer Book” dictating the forms of worship across the Three Kingdoms. Instead, the Assembly produced the Directory for the Publick Worship of God, which set forth “the general heads, the sense and scope of the prayers, and other parts of publick worship…” The Directory described generally what was to be done in worship along with the manner, focus, and general content of each part of the worship.
The unity in the PCA regarding worship, then, flows not from the imposition of a liturgy or lectionary, but a shared theology regarding worship and ministry, which is reflected in our mutual agreement to follow the rules and prescriptions set forth in our Book of Church Order.
In short, unity in the PCA is not the result of every elder and every congregation doing everything the same way (i.e., absolute conformity), but because of our shared theology and our compliance with the same theological rules and principles to govern our practice. We are bound together by our vows to uphold the same theological standards, and so our unity is nonetheless expressed in our diversity.
This system works well when elders and church courts operate in good faith and with sincerity and integrity in their words and dealings with each other. As Postmodernism seeps into the Church and impacts how even Christians understand and use language, this arrangement is becoming increasingly tenuous.

Jesus and the Pharisees

In the days of Jesus’ earthly ministry, the Pharisees were respected by Jewish society at large and admired for their careful preservation of Jewish culture. The Pharisees were revered for their reputation of strict obedience to the Law of Moses. But Jesus exposed their true nature as latitudinarians, as men who want broad license when it comes to (dis)obedience.
Jesus warned His disciples about the Pharisees: they were religious hypocrites.
Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. (Luke 12:1–3)
The Pharisees were one way on the outside: strict, pious, and sanctimonious; they gave off the appearance of grave concern for compliance with the Law of Moses and the Traditions of the Fathers. But Jesus foretold: the hidden guile of their hearts will be revealed.
Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for twisting the plain reading of God’s Law in order to circumvent it:
And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that is, given to God)—then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” (Mark 7:9–13)
The Pharisees contrived a system whereby a person could be excused from aiding his father or mother if he had stipulated that upon his death all his possessions would be dedicated to God (Corban). Sinclair Ferguson describes the result:
The ruling of the Pharisees was that nothing could be done, even to alleviate sickness. The tragedy was that the Pharisees actually led those they advised to breach one of the great commandments. Under the guise of religious faithfulness, they encouraged disobedience to the law![2]
Pharisees of the First Century excelled at appearing religious while concealing the latitude, broadness, and license with which they approach the Truth. Pharisees defy God’s Law while at the same time appearing to be scrupulously devoted to it.
Pharisees did this not only with God’s Law, but with their own promises. The Gospels show us how Pharisees used language with both nuance and precision to minimize their duties. Many were taken in by their ruse, but the Lord Jesus Christ exposed them:
Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? (Matthew 23:16–19)
Do you see how clever the Pharisees were with their use of language? If they happened to make a vow they didn’t want to keep or had an obligation they did not want to fulfill, they could simply claim the latitude to disregard it by asserting the vow was not by the gold of the temple or the gift of the altar. They created new rules, new distinctions to undermine the fundamental principles of the Law.
Jesus rebuked this line of thinking in His Sermon on the Mount and commanded people instead to submit to the plain meaning of words: Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. (Matthew 5:37)
The King’s words issue a strong warning for those who play fast and loose with language. The latitude the Pharisees presumed for themselves by words was explicitly condemned by Jesus as, comes from evil.
Far from being strict and rigorous in their devotion to God, the Pharisees abused language to give themselves a license to disregard God’s word, enrich themselves, and enhance their personal ministries.
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[1] In the Lutheran congregation of my baptism and formative years, we used the Green and the Maroon; when we moved to Ohio we were part of several congregations. It didn’t matter whether we were at the hip church plant in the high school cafeteria, or the liberal congregation in Mentor or the relatively conservative Finnish Lutheran Congregation in Fairport Harbor, or even the awkward-college town congregation, the worship was pretty much the same. The hymns and tunes might be different, but what we did in the worship service was largely the same. The liturgy of the various ELCA congregations we attended largely followed the “Settings” contained in the Lutheran Book of Worship (Green) or one of the later hymnals such as the very creatively entitled, Hymnal Supplement 1991 (Maroon) or in the With One Voice (Blue).
[2] Sinclair Ferguson, Let’s Study Mark (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1999), 105.
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Each cell in every boy declares his masculinity, “I am male!”  And each cell in every girl of her femininity, “I am woman!”  And no amount of medical mutilation and diplomatic manipulation from without can muffle these voices within our society’s collective conscience while our children’s blood always will be crying out about our mutually inherent and lovely differentiated binary sexual biology.

On the April 15 airing of SNL’s “Weekend Update,” the show’s first openly nonbinary cast member, Ms. Molly Kearney, though still using her singular female name yet celebrated being referred to by obliging backstage staff with the neuter pronouns “they” and “them” (reflecting “their” references to her elsewhere).[1] In so doing she not only defies her God-given and biologically determined female identity but also denies the obvious reality that she is not plural—exposing the arbitrarily ludicrous LGBTQ+ agenda being pushed to new schizophrenic heights.
While there is no mistaking Kearney’s unoriginal attempts at being the female version of Chris Farley in the segment, there also is no missing her intention to exit with the air of angelic authority being lifted up with ropes as she declared,
If you don’t care about trans-kids’ lives, it means you don’t care about…kids’ lives.
… They got my pronouns right [nonbinary “them” instead of “her”]! Let’s go!
What’s happening kids is wrong and you don’t need to be scared. Our job is to protect you and your job is to focus on being a kid…There’s a bunch of dudes asking you about your crotch and controlling when and where you’re allowed to pee. But if you just hang on you’ll look up and realize, you’re flying kid!
Trans rocks!
First of all, let’s hope parents in fact care enough about their precious boys and girls to guard their vulnerable worlds from being rocked by viewing SNL, let alone not to permit them to be confused and brainwashed into risking psychological harm and physical abuse in bathrooms and locker rooms or mutilation on operating floors.
The damage could go beyond corporal and emotional repair (see firstthings.com/article/2004/11/surgical-sex and firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/07/mutilating-our-bodies). And the truth is that rather than seeking to protect children, societal predators like Ms. Kearney are grabbing at their underaged zippers and pulling them by their immature ears to turn our minors into suicide bombers of political warfare and cultural launchpads for rocketing queer careers.
My wife, who is very thankful to be liberated from what she laments as her native land’s more deeply and widely infested culture of sexual degradation and transgender disfigurement, recently shared an Instagram video with me of a Brazilian woman whom I would have otherwise never questioned to be a man by all outward appearances. I couldn’t help but admit it was impressive how much mankind, made in God’s image, can so convincingly disguise sexual identity with modern technology. A mastectomy and hormonal manipulation had flattened her chest; broadened her face, neck, torso, and appendages; grown dark bristly hair on her tattoo-graffitied arms and shoulders; deepened her voice; and even topped her off with a receding hairline. (My understanding is that other methods were used to demolish and erect new pretend anatomy underneath her unmentionables.) It was shocking to see pictures of her feminine beauty before her deformation; she had even been a professional model. (One wonders if she tired of being objectified in a fallen man’s world, especially in her country.)
But with all the rejections of binary biological classification, a person’s maleness or femaleness can never be modified inwardly. Crossdressing homosexuals and spayed and neutered transgendered folk will never be able to reproduce themselves other than by Pied Piper child trafficking that deceptively coerces adoption of their dogmatists while stealing away unadulterated childhoods.[2]
Not only does one’s soul truly know what his or her body and organs and hormones testify outwardly, a man or woman’s DNA cannot be denied by his or her heart of hearts. What may be manipulated crudely from without can never be actually altered within. Every one of our estimated 60 to 100 trillion cells (amidst 200 cell types) would need to have an X or Y chromosome replaced; yet this utter impossibility would still not recreate functional physiology opposite from how one was born.
Rev. Terry Johnson appeals to our reason:
Follow the science…The culture is willing to do anything but follow the science…how about the normalizing of transgenderism and that you can be a woman trapped in the body of a man and a man trapped in the body of a woman? What does the science tell ya? The science tells ya that every single cell in every single body is either male or female. Your genes are either male genes…or they’re female genes. The science would say you are in terms of gender what you are in biology and that’s all anybody in the human race in all of recorded history has ever understood until the recent, like five minutes ago…[3]
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