Freedom From Legalism - Part 6 - How You Can Know If You're A Legalist

Question #3 — Do you tend to look down your spiritual nose at those who don’t follow God’s will for your life?
1. I heard a true story of a missionary family that was serving in a place where peanut butter was hard to find. They arranged for friends in the U.S. to send them peanut butter. They soon discovered that other missionaries where they were serving considered it a lack of spirituality to eat peanut butter, they couldn't get peanut butter and thought it was their cross to bear. Eventually the pressure and condemnation from the other missionaries became so great the family who had been sent the peanut butter eventually returned home disillusioned and cynical. Part of being a Christian is the freedom not to eat peanut butter, but it’s not part of being a Christian that you condemn others if they do.
2. People who look down at others see as inferior those who don't do what they do. They have this deceived idea that they are only ones that are following God's will. They know the truth, they know how the Christian life should be lived and if your not living that way they will judge you, pressure you and condemn you. These self-righteous Pharisees spread their vile wherever they go, some believe it's their mission from God. The sad thing is that they are not following God's will at all.
Question #4 — Are you uncomfortable with the fact that the Bible does not explicitly address every ethical decision or answer every theological question?
1. Legalists fear ambiguity. Their favorite colors are black and white. They are uncomfortable with biblical silence and insist on speaking even when the Word of God does not. They feel a “calling” to fill in the gaps left by scriptural silence and often give detailed applications that God in the Bible choose not to make.
2. Charles Spuregon was frequently criticized for being funny. When one woman objected to the humor he inserted into his sermons, Spuregon told her, “Madam, you would think a great deal better of me if you knew the funny things I kept out”. A young man asked Spuregon what he should do about a box of cigars he had been given. Spuregon said, “Give them to me and I will smoke them to the glory of God”.
3. That's enough right there to give a legalist a heart attack. To the legalist Christianity has to fit into a neat little box that either they made or someone else gave to them. Everything inside the little box of their beliefs they can understand but anything that doesn't fit they have to reject because it threatens them. They fear what they don't understand and its clear that they don't have a clue about God, but they are to proud to admit it.