LEGALISM AND LAWLESSNESS
[p. 90] LEGALISM AND LAWLESSNESS
There are two courses of action apparently contrary one to the other, but which nevertheless spring from the same root, even the flesh. One is legalism, which I may describe as the effort to shape oneself to given laws or rules; the other is lawlessness, in which one’s own will determines everything. In legalism the occupation is necessarily with oneself. Seeking to urge oneself into conformity to law, self is before the eye, and satisfaction is felt according as there is conformity to a given standard. Legalism must always give the flesh a place, for if there were no flesh, there would be no law. The Spirit acts according to God, and against His fruits there can be no law. If the flesh be dead, there is no need for law, for he that is dead is freed from sin. But it is not of doctrine I would speak here, but of practice. The moment legality is sanctioned, it must be with reference to that which needs to be made subject; hence law has a relation to the flesh, and the flesh to the law. And this is just the evil of legalism, even that it addresses the flesh, and gives it a standing. And this is not christian, because as christians we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit; therefore the flesh has no standing, and in the Spirit we exhibit the fruits of the Spirit, against which there is no law.
Now lawlessness, though apparently opposite to legalism, springs from the same error, even from a misapprehension of how the flesh is regarded before God. Neither with the legal nor with the lawless is it treated as having been crucified with Christ; and because grace confers what the law exacts, the flesh assumes that it is not responsible, and acts according to its will, and this is lawlessness. The carnal mind becomes the arbiter and leader on every point. Self, like a primeval forest, is allowed to grow and to do as it lists. In neither case is the flesh treated as a thing to be mortified, set aside, because crucified in the cross.
[p. 91] Where there is most conscience, legality obtains; but where there is most intelligence in the natural mind, there lawlessness rules. Nevertheless the legal man, because of weakness, is often lawless, for if he be not up to and according to rule, he must be so, even against his inclination; hence legalism is no safeguard against lawlessness, because of the weakness of the flesh; and it becomes plain that there is no true deliverance from the flesh but as I walk in the Spirit.
The Galatians were legal; the Corinthians were lawless. The Galatians, no doubt, conscientiously felt that the flesh intruded and trespassed upon them, and in order to check and frustrate it, they resorted to restrictions and were in bondage to rules. Having begun in the Spirit, they were seeking to be made perfect in the flesh. They had ceased to walk in the Spirit, and they essayed to control the flesh by descending to carnal methods, and thus gave a place to the flesh, which was in itself a victory to it. Instead of disallowing it from the high eminence and control of the Spirit of God — for if we walk in the Spirit, we shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh — they fostered the very thing they wanted to check, because they thus gave it a recognised existence. The great truth is that, being alive in the Spirit, I disavow the right of the flesh to rule — in a word, that I am crucified with Christ. For if I live after the flesh, I shall die; but if I, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, I shall live. The legal man makes himself, and not Christ, his study and object, and his satisfaction is according as he succeeds in bringing himself to the adopted standard.
Now the Corinthians were lawless. They were richly gifted. The Spirit had bestowed on them very imposing gifts, and they virtually said, ‘The Spirit’s gifts are everything — the flesh may do as it likes’. But the moment the flesh is let do as it likes, then it is not dead, it is alive, and it is lawless; and they that are in [p. 92] the flesh cannot please God; nay, it breaks out and betrays itself in many forms. If I am walking in the Spirit, I mortify the deeds of the flesh, for the flesh cannot maintain itself in the Spirit’s province. I might be largely gifted by the Spirit like the Corinthians, but this is not walking in the Spirit. When in the Spirit I am first controlled myself, but this is not all. As I walk in the Spirit, I am interested and watchful that other saints walk also according to Christ; while in lawlessness the reverse is the case, I am wilful myself and I connive at the wilfulness of others.
Let us trace a little in 1 Corinthians how the apostle exposes lawlessness at Corinth. First, in chapter 1, he notices how they are in the flesh, because they are following their own will in choosing leaders. And in chapter 3 he plainly tells them that they are babes in Christ, being carnal, and walking as men. But having shown how wilful they were in their own walk and ways, he then in chapter 5 shows how utterly indifferent they were to the conduct and character of those who came to the Lord’s table; nay, that they were so leavened that they went to law with one another before the ungodly; they were not under law to Christ, they did as they chose; it ran into their domestic relationships, so that it was necessary to tell them, “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called”. They went to idol temples and ate things offered to idols; they ate their own supper at the Lord’s supper. Every one had a psalm, etc., in the assembly; 1 Corinthians 14: 26. Lastly, they had among them some who said that there is no resurrection of the dead! Alas! to what a lawless state had they come! The doctrine and power of the Spirit was accepted without the great truth of the crucifixion of the flesh. The result is the worst practice, for the knowledge of the Spirit’s gifts and power, unless I am walking in the Spirit, only leads to lawlessness; it leads to boasting in the flesh. If I am walking in the Spirit, the flesh is forced into death [p. 93] before Him. The Corinthians were not legal, they did not check the flesh at all; they gloried in the gifts of the Spirit, and allowed the flesh to please itself.
These two forms of evil, which appeared so soon in the history of christianity, have produced strange combinations in christendom. You will find one lawless in choosing a leader, and then easily submitting to certain rules, as if he were quite a legalist. You will find another avowing legalism, and yet very wilful in personal habits and ways. One glories in what he can make of himself — for instance, a teetotaller; the other is gratified by the acts of his will; thus in both cases there is plainly self-satisfaction. Legalism is in man in the flesh when there is conscience. Lawlessness obtains when there is a release from law if the flesh is allowed to act. Hence Paul urges, “Only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh”; and Peter, “as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness”. The true ground of liberty or freedom from evil is that I am dead to the law by the body of Christ. If the old man has been crucified, there is no room for legalism or lawlessness; and hence the danger of relaxing the claim of the law, for it is not that God has relaxed His claim, but that which the law addresses has been crucified, and therefore it is neither to be improved, nor left at will, but to be mortified.
Now in these last days we are warned that there is the form of godliness without the power thereof, and then it is that lawlessness is most marked. Men are lovers of their own selves, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. The mystery of godliness, if received by faith, necessarily sets aside man here. Hence the apostasy endeavoured to contravene the effect of true godliness by introducing penance and self-denial of an extreme kind. The mystery of godliness is great, and its effects distinct in the setting aside and repudiation of the flesh because of association with Christ. Instead of bowing to the mystery of godliness, the apostasy [p. 94] from the faith was marked by severe impositions on the flesh, which, so far from setting aside the flesh, gave it a distinct place by avowing it as capable of correction. This has ever been the rule so long as God is admitted to have a claim, and I am in that nature which of itself resists His claim; there must either be law for that which is not subject, or there must be lawlessness. Indeed the former, legalism, paves the way for lawlessness. This we see in the case of the Colossians (though I cannot enlarge on it here), where there was a mixture of judaism and philosophy. It was the will of the flesh, and this is sin, and sin is lawlessness.
The great evil of Cain was in devising for himself a way to propitiate God. He was not at first lawless, but he was not subject to God’s mind; and wherever in-subjection creeps in, no matter how heavy and exacting the restrictions, then there is a giving rein to one’s mind; and the next step, as we see in Cain, is utter lawlessness — no restraint whatever. This downward course is traced for us in Jude. We read, “They have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core”. First adopting self-restrictions, then acting for self-advantage, and eventually in open rebellion. Thus the legal in the long-run become lawless; they find their restrictions accomplish nothing, and then they are thrown overboard, and lawlessness ensues. The one who imposes the severest restrictions, as king Saul (1 Samuel 14: 24), is the selfsame one who lapses into open wilfulness.
The sum of the matter is this: that beginning in the Spirit does not preserve from legalism, as we see in the Galatians; and the knowledge of the Spirit’s power and place in the assembly does not preserve one from lawlessness, as with the Corinthians. Nay, the knowledge of grace tends to lawlessness, because if under grace we are not under law; and if the flesh be not [p. 95] mortified, because ended judicially in the cross, there will be legalism where there is conscience, which eventually lapses into lawlessness because the flesh is wicked and wilful.
The great evil among us is the Corinthian; owning and receiving the truth in the natural mind, seeing and admitting that the Spirit has the power and the right to rule, enjoying His gifts too; and yet with all this a manifest license to the flesh, a reigning as kings, and many other glaring expressions of self-will. It is from the more enlightened that the truth receives the greatest damage if there be not a practical power coincident with the possession of it. And there cannot be this practical exhibition of it unless by walking in the Spirit, where alone the flesh is mortified. No amount of restriction will be true testimony, and there can be great intelligence and acknowledgment of right principles without true rule — the rule of the Spirit, who always manifests Himself by mortifying the flesh, and thus displaying His own fruits, against which there is no law.