I always say to myself that these thoughts will be short. So far they haven’t been, but I’m almost sure this time. 

Legalism is basically the idea that if you do something good, you will be rewarded and if you do something bad, you will be punished. This is pretty much the theology of the world, where parents will reward their kids for doing well in school and you will be punished by the law if you do something bad.

The unfortunate part is when people take this and incorporate it into their Christian lives. Maybe when people “haven’t sinned” for a while, they are all right with God, and they are “close” to Him. Life is going well and it must because I have been doing well in Christianity. By the same token, when we sin, we live in fear that God will somehow smite us because we did something that He didn’t want us to do, say that one night we happen to go a little overboard at the party. Legalism says that sometime in the future, God is going to come back and punish you. Seems to make sense doesn’t it? Seems to be that whenever we sin, a bad day happens, you get a bad grade on a test, or your friend stabs you in the back a little bit afterwards huh?

But do not be deceived.

If the price of sin could be paid with a bad day…
If it could be paid with a bad grade…
If the penalty of sin could be appealed with a betrayal…
If the wrath of God could be withheld without death or some torment of our soul… 

Then Jesus died for nothing, and we have been living out our Christian lives the wrong way.

For each thing wrong we did, we should have had a bad day in order to make up for it, but if that were the case, everyone would have a bad day everyday. Jesus took the wrath that we rightfully deserved, so that we may live in the grace God has given us freely. God is not a God of wrath, but instead only seeks a relationship with us. However He is also a God of justice, and the penalty for sin is death, for which Jesus has already paid for us.

This is not to say that we can freely sin and abuse the grace given to us… and there should be at least a little fear of punishment. No good father would let their child run rampant without disciplining them. Perhaps those “bad days” you experience are God’s way of telling you “Hey that thing you did the other day was not the right thing to do. This is your slap on the wrist.”

So all in all, do not become legalistic and so conceit yourselves. If we could pay the price of sins by ourselves, then we are much greater than we make ourselves to be.