Liberal Legalism And Martyn Lloyd- Jones

Legalism is one dastardly thing that has always plagued the Church. Man has an innate desire to always attempt to make his way to God when the glory of the Gospel says that He came to us. He stooped down to pardon sinners. He fulfilled all the righteous requirements to secure our just standing before Him. It was Christ that kept the whole Law to perfection and died as if He broke it (2 Cor. 5:21). He is the basis for our justification. His life, death and resurrection. He grants life to all that the Father has given to Him. The Holy Spirit gives life to the sinner and the sinner repents and trusts completely in Christ Jesus. Because of Jesus and through faith in Him, the sinner is forgiven and credited with the righteousness of Christ that he may stand before the thrice holy God and be called His child. It's all of grace.

The legalist hates it. He thinks he must work his own way to God. Perhaps Christ can be of assistance, but nonetheless he will get there in his own efforts. Whether his efforts mixed with a little of Jesus or his complete own striving. We saw the sheer legalism of the Pharisees and the type that mixes their efforts with Christ in the book of Galatians. But there is a type of legalism that come from liberalism. This type denies the propitiatory death of Christ and wishes to treat it more as an moral example of "love." They then turn to the red letters of the Bible (the words of Jesus) and emphasize those over any other passage in the Holy Writ. Then they employ Biblical terminology while importing their own definitions into the words. They take passages on social justice and make that the thrust of Christianity. They turn to unbelievers and present the fruit of the Gospel as the Gospel itself and tell the poor soul, dead in their trespasses and sins, that if they "be like Jesus" and live the Sermon on the Mount, that they will make themselves fine Christians. In other words they make the law the sinners hope. Of course they will not state it so bluntly. But that is the essence of their message. That is legalism. The liberal aspect comes from the denial of Christ's vicarious death, redefining biblical truths of sin, judgment, hell, salvation e.t.c. in a humanistic manner. In simple terms they are humanists.

I just received The Cross by Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I'm barely one page into the book (not counting the foreword and introduction) and he's already speaking of and dealing with similar issues. Here's some quotes:

How am I so to live that I shall reap the blessing of joy and happiness and peace in this world and in the world to come for ever and for ever? That is the question, but unfortunately, as the Apostle goes on to point out, and as indeed he has been indicating in the whole of his epistle, that question, that problem, has become somewhat confused, because there are false teachers. The position had arisen in the early church, and it still remains today. There are contradictory voices going out in the name of the Christian church. They all say they are Christians, all claim to belong to the Christian church, but they are saying things diametrically opposed to another. So the first thing we have to do is discover which is the true message. How do you differentiate between the true and the false? The Apostle has answered in this epistle, as he has answered it in other epistles. As indeed the whole Bible answers it.

What then is the true message? What is the Christian gospel? What is it about? What does it proclaim? What has it got to say to us? How can a man be right with God? How can I sow to the Spirit? How can I reap everlasting life? What have I got to do in this life and in this world which will render me immune to what may happen round and about me, which would enable me me to smile in the face of death, which already assures me that I have nothing to fear when I come to the judgment of God, and which guarantees me everlasting and eternal bliss in the glory indescribable? What have I got to do? How can I get to that position?  Here, very fortunately for us, the great apostle answers the question. He puts it in this glorious and tremendous statement. 'God forbid that I should glory...' the thing is unthinkable, he says, that I should glory in anything '...save in the cross of our lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.'   This is the thing in which he glories. This is the thing which he preached. And this by the grace of God is the thing i am privileged to preach to you. It is the same answer, there is only one message.

What is it? Let us look at it like this. The preaching of the cross, the preaching of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on that cross is the very heart and centre of the Christian gospel and the Christian message... The central thing that matters above everything else, and what he picks out is the cross, the death on the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

What is the message of the Christian gospel, and of the Christian church? Now at the risk of being misunderstood I will put it like this. it is not the teaching of our Lord. I say that, of course, because there are so many today who think that is Christianity. They say: 'What we need is Jesus's teaching. He is the greatest religious genius of all times. He is above all the philosophers. Let us have a look at his teaching, at the Sermon on the Mount and so on. That is what we want. what the world needs today,' they say, 'is a dose of the Sermon on the Mount. A dose of his ethical teaching. We must preach this to the people and teach them how to live.' But according to the apostle Paul, that is not their first need. And I will go further. If you only preach the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, not only do you not solve the problem of mankind, in a sense you aggravate it. You are preaching nothing but utter condemnation, because nobody can carry it out.

The whole New Testament is proclaiming  the blood of Christ, the death of Christ upon the cross, on Calvary. It is the heart and centre of the Christian evangel, the good news of salvation.*

This book is from nine sermons Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached on Galatians 6:14. You can get it here.


 "But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."


Soli Deo Gloria!

For His Glory,
Fernando

* LLoyd-Jones, Martyn. The Cross. Illinois: Crossway, 1986. Print.