I am a legalist. This is solidly entrenched and of my own will immovable. Who therefore do I take to be my Lord and Saviour separate and distinct from Who He is in truth? For I do submit these two are different things
I know that I do not love God, even though for the moment I am putting aside the notion that God loves me to make a point about legalism. My spontaneous responses, my careless words, make the fact that I do not love God abundantly clear, and all my legalism has done is stir up my sin to make it worse even to the point of being no longer manageable in any practical sense
Years ago I had a gigantic outburst of aphorism writing. One of them was : "self ruling legalists are not monarchists but autocrats". This was a pun on the Greek for autocrat means rule of self and by monarchist here I mean being a proper subject of God Almighty. I still seek to rule myself that I may escape the taint of sin. This is not love or faith but the proud refusal to hide any evidence that I am in fact a sinner. It is also a refusal, both proud and fearful, to accept the forgiveness of sin for a trademark of the legalist is to think in his heart of hearts that the forgiveness of sin is a license to sin. Although legalists make much noise about the commandments of God the whole motivation, given that to forsake God for the Law is deadly heresy, as Paul the Apostle says in his letter to the Galatians, is to rule one's self. It is in short a flagrant and total denial of the gospel, and as carnal men when serious about their religion are legalist, this confirms that the carnal mind is always at enmity to God, so thus we, as carnal minds are still at enmity to God. This I submit explains why legalists are so cruel and judgemental, even if the cruelty, as in my case, was turned inwards. If their efforts were in true submission to God the fruit of the Spirit would be forthcoming, namely kindness, gentleness, mercy.
Therefore I am my own Lord. Though the average sinner might rule himself by claiming the right to self indulgence the entire dynamic of legalism is still self rule, though more self oppression than self indulgence, but no less self rule for that.
As to stopping myself from sinning in the hope that if I do God will save me from hell at the last day, well of course the initiative here rests with the legalist. This denies the scripture "it does not depend on him who wills or runs but on God who has the mercy." Of course what a legalist cannot admit to he will ignore if he can't tell lies about it. That is why he is forever telling self or others to "make the act of will" or is open to being bullied by others to attempt such,
The thing is that the act of will is not the solution to the issue of sin for the will is the problem, and must be so if we are accountable for our impulses. And if the scripture says that to lust is adultery even before the impulse is acted on, because as a man thinks in his heart so he is, then of course the impulse is the true locus of our will and the true manifestation of sin. So our efforts are acts not of the will but against it, turning us into a divided kingdom that cannot stand
Naturally this goes far too deep for the carnal mind, of whom the legalist is but one kind of representative, So we legalists will either deny the fact and ignore the scripture that plainly says so, or, if we are really deeply deluded, as I am, we will try by brute force to crush the impulse and have the effrontery to ask God to help us.
But I know for a fact, after decades of bitter experience, that He will never lift so much as a finger to help me save myself from sin. He will save me from it by leading me to a heart confession of our own evil desires at the deepest level of our wicked hearts. But He will do this in gentleness and patience, for if He did not the knowledge would destroy us if we insisted, and I did, on delving the depths of our own heart like the dwarves of Moria delved too deeply and awoke a literal Balrog demon. We awake our own sin, for I only speak metaphorically of Middle earth here, and knowledge of the same in fear and guilt which is in diametric opposition to that conviction of sin which is a gift of God's grace given in relationship to Him in One on one counsel; such carnally gotten knowledge of sin will rampage to destroy.
I am not denying His grace here I am saying we have subverted it into something it is not, that the reified power we seek does not exist and our believing that it will aid our decision after and only after we have made it is a cop out, a refusal to face what our impulses signify and is in fact a manifestation of the Pelagian heresy.
We call our efforts obedience, or mortifying the flesh, and the thinking behind it we call faith. It is nothing of the sort, lest God owe an apology to the Pharisees.,
But of course we do not trust Him, not really, so will cling ferociously to our regime of self brutalization even though it is killing us.
I am my own saviour, and this beneath all the rhetoric, my lying rhetoric, to the contrary.
To even believe, I must be saved by the Saviour of mankind, Jesus Christ, God the Son, from my unbelief and that by His leading me to confess it, acknowledging that I in fact do not believe and so all my efforts to do so are blasphemous hypocrisy and deadly dangerous to the welfare of my own soul.
Such is why, incidentally , I reject that ancient heresy currently given a new name by John MacArthur - Lordship Salvation, for, as I hope to have explained, it is nothing of the sort .
So as a legalist, intent, nay even hell bent on saving myself, I must continue to seek the Lord the Spirit to repent of the foul sin which is my own righteousness.
Of course He will get argument from me.
There is no point in concealing it
I know that I do not love God, even though for the moment I am putting aside the notion that God loves me to make a point about legalism. My spontaneous responses, my careless words, make the fact that I do not love God abundantly clear, and all my legalism has done is stir up my sin to make it worse even to the point of being no longer manageable in any practical sense
Years ago I had a gigantic outburst of aphorism writing. One of them was : "self ruling legalists are not monarchists but autocrats". This was a pun on the Greek for autocrat means rule of self and by monarchist here I mean being a proper subject of God Almighty. I still seek to rule myself that I may escape the taint of sin. This is not love or faith but the proud refusal to hide any evidence that I am in fact a sinner. It is also a refusal, both proud and fearful, to accept the forgiveness of sin for a trademark of the legalist is to think in his heart of hearts that the forgiveness of sin is a license to sin. Although legalists make much noise about the commandments of God the whole motivation, given that to forsake God for the Law is deadly heresy, as Paul the Apostle says in his letter to the Galatians, is to rule one's self. It is in short a flagrant and total denial of the gospel, and as carnal men when serious about their religion are legalist, this confirms that the carnal mind is always at enmity to God, so thus we, as carnal minds are still at enmity to God. This I submit explains why legalists are so cruel and judgemental, even if the cruelty, as in my case, was turned inwards. If their efforts were in true submission to God the fruit of the Spirit would be forthcoming, namely kindness, gentleness, mercy.
Therefore I am my own Lord. Though the average sinner might rule himself by claiming the right to self indulgence the entire dynamic of legalism is still self rule, though more self oppression than self indulgence, but no less self rule for that.
As to stopping myself from sinning in the hope that if I do God will save me from hell at the last day, well of course the initiative here rests with the legalist. This denies the scripture "it does not depend on him who wills or runs but on God who has the mercy." Of course what a legalist cannot admit to he will ignore if he can't tell lies about it. That is why he is forever telling self or others to "make the act of will" or is open to being bullied by others to attempt such,
The thing is that the act of will is not the solution to the issue of sin for the will is the problem, and must be so if we are accountable for our impulses. And if the scripture says that to lust is adultery even before the impulse is acted on, because as a man thinks in his heart so he is, then of course the impulse is the true locus of our will and the true manifestation of sin. So our efforts are acts not of the will but against it, turning us into a divided kingdom that cannot stand
Naturally this goes far too deep for the carnal mind, of whom the legalist is but one kind of representative, So we legalists will either deny the fact and ignore the scripture that plainly says so, or, if we are really deeply deluded, as I am, we will try by brute force to crush the impulse and have the effrontery to ask God to help us.
But I know for a fact, after decades of bitter experience, that He will never lift so much as a finger to help me save myself from sin. He will save me from it by leading me to a heart confession of our own evil desires at the deepest level of our wicked hearts. But He will do this in gentleness and patience, for if He did not the knowledge would destroy us if we insisted, and I did, on delving the depths of our own heart like the dwarves of Moria delved too deeply and awoke a literal Balrog demon. We awake our own sin, for I only speak metaphorically of Middle earth here, and knowledge of the same in fear and guilt which is in diametric opposition to that conviction of sin which is a gift of God's grace given in relationship to Him in One on one counsel; such carnally gotten knowledge of sin will rampage to destroy.
I am not denying His grace here I am saying we have subverted it into something it is not, that the reified power we seek does not exist and our believing that it will aid our decision after and only after we have made it is a cop out, a refusal to face what our impulses signify and is in fact a manifestation of the Pelagian heresy.
We call our efforts obedience, or mortifying the flesh, and the thinking behind it we call faith. It is nothing of the sort, lest God owe an apology to the Pharisees.,
But of course we do not trust Him, not really, so will cling ferociously to our regime of self brutalization even though it is killing us.
I am my own saviour, and this beneath all the rhetoric, my lying rhetoric, to the contrary.
To even believe, I must be saved by the Saviour of mankind, Jesus Christ, God the Son, from my unbelief and that by His leading me to confess it, acknowledging that I in fact do not believe and so all my efforts to do so are blasphemous hypocrisy and deadly dangerous to the welfare of my own soul.
Such is why, incidentally , I reject that ancient heresy currently given a new name by John MacArthur - Lordship Salvation, for, as I hope to have explained, it is nothing of the sort .
So as a legalist, intent, nay even hell bent on saving myself, I must continue to seek the Lord the Spirit to repent of the foul sin which is my own righteousness.
Of course He will get argument from me.
There is no point in concealing it
