The blessings of Christ on the land are really typical of His blessings on His people. It will be fully realized in His dwelling with His people in the new heavens and new earth—a completely renovated habitation in which only righteousness dwells. It is image bearers with which God is most concerned. The environment of God’s dwelling with redeemed mankind is the totality and comprehensiveness of His riches in Christ Jesus.

By the time I turned forty, I had lived in twenty-five different houses in seven different states. Relocating became standard fare for me during what many call “the formative years.” By way of contrast, my wife lived in the same house until she left for college. For the past nine years, I have pastored a church in a military town that has 400 percent turnover. I suppose that my upbringing helped prepare me for weathering the unique dynamics that come with pastoring a church in such a town. Nevertheless, where Christians live is not something incidental or unimportant. The Scriptures actually have a great deal to say about the significance of where we live. Jesus went to the cross to prepare a final home for believers in the new heavens and new earth.

As He approached Jerusalem and the sufferings that He was about to endure there, Jesus told His disciples: “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:1–3). The imagery of “the Father’s house” is drawn from the language about the temple in the Old Testament. Solomon’s temple was the place of God’s dwelling with His people. In the temple, there were rooms for the priests to live in and from which they served. Jesus was eternalizing what the temple had typified and speaking about the implications of it for the believer in the hereafter. He had come into this world to “prepare a place” for believers. He was going to the cross to make room for those He came to redeem by shedding His blood for their sins. By shedding His blood, Jesus made room for His people in the everlasting temple—the new heavens and new earth in which He would dwell with His own for all eternity.
In turn, Jesus’ teaching about securing a dwelling place for His people in the eternal temple is built on the biblical teaching regarding the various dwelling places of God with His people throughout redemptive history. The biblical metanarrative carries us from the garden of Eden (the place of man’s original dwelling) to the new heavens and the new earth. As it does, it moves us from the garden of Eden to the land of Israel, from the land of Israel to the incarnate Christ, from the incarnate Christ to His dwelling in and with the church by His Spirit, and from His dwelling in and with the church to His dwelling with His bride in the new heaven and earth. The Scriptures carry us along the stepping stones of these various “dwelling places” until we finally arrive at the garden-city bride (Rev. 21–22). The Apostle John envisioned the church—the redeemed bride of the Lamb—coming down out of heaven to dwell with Him in the new heaven and earth. The connection between the garden of Eden and the new heaven and earth is the theological significance of “the ground” out of which God made man.
Eden was a special dwelling place—a unique land—in which God placed man at creation. God had created man from “the ground” outside of the garden and then, by His grace, placed His image bearer in this paradisiacal sacred space. It was a precursor to the promised land. God formed man out of the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7). The ground (Hebrew adamah) was man’s original environment. In fact, there seems to be an intentional play on words in Genesis 2:7, where we are told that the Lord formed adam (man) out of the adamah (the ground). There is a clear connection between the ground and the man who was formed out of the ground. The name Adam means “red.” Since he was made out of the reddish clay of the ground, the name is a play on the word “ground” (adamah).
The ground was the sphere of blessing and fruitfulness for mankind at creation. Eden was the sphere of God’s richest blessing. God intended to create an image bearer who would work the ground and who would turn the world into the temple, extending the borders of the garden-temple out into the far reaches of the earth.
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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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We followers of Christ are not exempt from sorrow, grief, sadness, and heaviness. Jesus himself wept. He wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41) and wept at the death of his beloved friend Lazarus (John 11:35). He was distraught at the loneliness he would endure on the cross. The thought of the suffering he would bear brought him into such a state of distress that he sweated great drops of blood (Luke 22:44). Our great Savior knows what it means to be lonely. He knows the grief and sorrow we bear. He knows of the rain that never stops. He knows that Christians get depressed too. He knows what it is to be royal and yet suffer. 

When we wake up it is dark. When we come home it is still dark. This time of year can be a season of tremendous sadness. Some sadness emerges due to things like clinical and seasonal depression. Another sadness comes from the circumstances of the season. 

Seemingly every advertisement shows smiling faces, but for some reason, he doesn’t feel like smiling without his wife of 50 years beside him anymore. 
The family came to visit for the holidays just a few days ago, but it might as well be decades by the tears on her face. It was just a few years ago the kids were playing tag in the basement. Now one is a drug addict, and the other committed suicide Christmas Eve two years before. 
She’s thrilled to be in the embrace of her new boyfriend who asked her out over the Christmas break. The old boyfriend struggles to find words or motivation for anything and ends up quitting college after failing 3 out of 4 classes in the spring.  
The alarm clock disturbs a brief moment of restful sleep to remind the parent that all is quiet in the house, their little 5-year-old daughter won’t wake them up in bed anymore because she’s in hospice care with only a few days left to live. 

While many this time of year are in “shop until you drop” mode, some are in “weep until you sleep” mode. Despite all the efforts of commercialism to drive an anxious populace to buy happiness and exchange material gifts, whatever fleeting experience of excitement and enjoyment soon fades. Willy Wonka’s 4th quarter push to stimulate gains can’t compare to the crushing realities, tragedies, and struggles of the broken world we dwell in. The temporary timestamps of worldly pleasures fade away as the grim darkness and coldness of winter come with a truckload of haunting guilt, regretful words, and overwhelming circumstances. 
Why are some sad during this time of year? Because the grass withers and the flowers fall (Isaiah 40:8). Because nothing under the sun can provide lasting satisfaction, everything is wearisome (Ecclesiastes 1:8-11). 
The heaviness of this time of year is a burden for many. The cacophony of voices shouting words like “sale” “special” “discount” and “celebrate” echo as dark empty hallways in the hearts of those grieving, wounded, weak, and weeping. All the memories of loved ones and bygone days seem to pile up and throw themselves across the checkout counter of life during this season. I’ve seen it in the poor, and I’ve seen it in the rich. It’s a look that betrays the inward thoughts. There is nothing in this world that can bring lasting gladness. This world is gray. No, this world is worse than gray. It is overcast with a storm of tears and seemingly no wind to push the storm away from us. All is calm, but all is not bright. 
This time of year awakens in many of us the realities of death. Of relationships gone, of friends and loved ones beyond our present reach. Of opportunities lost, doors closed, and windows locked shut. For many, they wear a smile only because it is a socially agreed-upon thing to do. We smile outwardly because it is expected, while inwardly we rage, we curse, we fear, we long. 
In the long night of winter, we do not feel like merry-making. We sit in proverbial ashes and dust, waiting for the next time of fitful sleep to overwhelm our exhausted hearts. For many this time is the loneliest time of year. This is the time when death most tightly grips us with its ice-cold bruising grip. 
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