Warning Regarding Legalism

"It is quite possible that the gospel is preached in the life of the church, but the Christian congregation does not make the connection between that gospel and their own lives. One of the hallmarks of an assumed gospel in an evangelical church is that the gospel is regarded as being for the outsiders, the non-Christians who ever so rarely slip into one of the services. When we limit the gospel in this way to unbelievers we begin to adopt extra ways of relating to God and to others, and they all fall under the label of legalism. This is the opposite of the gospel of grace—striving to be acceptable first of all to God and then to others by keeping rules and by outward behavior. Churches at the Reformed or conservative end of the spectrum can be especially prone to their own set of extra rules: what we wear on a Sunday, how many services we attend, the version of the Bible and the hymnbook that we use, what must happen at which point in the service, whether we keep the pews or the organs. Churches like this are often only a generation away from extinction and from denying the gospel by losing sight of its primacy."

-David Gibson, “Assumed Evangelicalism” in Modern Reformation, Vol.16, No.5, Sep/Oct 2007