Legalism!

Perhaps we can be a bit quick to cry "legalism!" when the law of God seems uncomfortable.

David Chilton tries to clarify what legalism is and is not in Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators, his response to Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, in which Chilton often has the polemics at full volume:

Legalism cannot be defined simply as rigorous obedience to the law: after all, Jesus Christ obeyed the law fully, in its most exacting details – and He, certainly, was no legalist. The true legalist is the person who subscribes to one or more of the following heresies – ideas which are roundly condemned in Scripture:

(1) Justification by works…. The only basis of salvation is the finished work of Jesus Christ, in fully satisfying the demands of God’s law, and suffering its penalties, in the place of all His people….

(2) The requirement of obedience to Old Testament ceremonial law… These received their completion in Jesus Christ, and are no longer literally binding upon us. There is a very real sense, of course, in which we still keep these laws: Jesus Christ is our priest, He is our sacrificial atonement, and we cannot approach God apart from Him. Thus, in their real meaning, all these laws are observed by all Christians….

(3) … The requirement of obedience to man-made regulations. (Romans 14; Colossians 2)

(4) Another form of legalism … is confusion of sins with civil crimes. There are many things the Bible condemns as sins, for which there is no civil penalty attached…. Where God has not provided examples of legislation, we may not legislate. To do so is legalism….

The antinomian is opposed to the authority of God in human affairs. While he may cloak his humanism in a garb of extreme religiosity (as did the Pharisees) or “radical Christianity,” his primary goal is to abolish God’s law and replace it with his own laws. He wants to be “like God, knowing [i.e. determining] good and evil.” On the surface, antinomianism and legalism appear to be diametrically opposed; in reality, they are both rooted in the sinful attempt to dethrone God. (pp22-24)