FIC Home

2. Love is demonstrably superior to money, not only on a sentimental plane, but even on a computable basis: The more money you give away, the less you have, but the more love you give away, the more comes back to you.

3.Love is more than a sentimental feeling—it’s putting another’s welfare ahead of your

We don't live by feelings, though I'm glad for them! Sometimes feelings can be very deceptive without the Word of God and His Spirit as our guide!

Luke 11:27–36 - We see in these scriptures the sentimentalists, those who would romanticize the mighty acts of God. In the midst of His healing and teaching and the ensuing confrontation with the authorities, Jesus is hailed by a woman in the crowd with a paean of praise for His mother. In short, she is saying, “What a marvelous person she must have been. How wonderful to have been Your mother.” Jesus’ reply puts an end to such sentimental rhetoric. He tells us it is better to belong to Him spiritually than biologically. His hearers, then and now, have the opportunity to be a part of a holy invasion by doing the will of Jesus and His father. In doing so, we are His mother, father, sisters or brothers, even more than His biological kinfolk.

The sentimentalists usually manage to confuse the issue. They like to romanticize finding God in the great out-of-doors—in the mountains, the fields, and the oceans. Certainly God made all the beauty of the world. But, if you really want to see God, look around you and see His children—those marvelous, perverse, and wonderful creations made in His image. This is where we see the wonder of God. Yes, God the Creator is revealed among the pine trees and lakes. But He is most of all revealed in the family of brothers and sisters who hear His word and do it.

Jesus had harsh words for those romantic, spiritualizing, sentimentalists who wanted a sign. They would be given a sign, like the sign of Jonah. Nineveh repented when God delivered Jonah after three days of virtual death in the belly of the whale. Jesus tells them that they will see a greater sign than that.

If you can leave your church on Sunday morning with no feeling of discomfort, of conviction, of brokenness, of challenge, then for you the hour of worship has not been as dangerous as it should have been. The ease with which we go on being Christian sentimentalists is one of our worst faults.

1. Believers who are motivated by legalism are always anxious to know what is expected of them. They want to do only what is necessary to make themselves look respectable. They crave specific rules so they can know precisely how to behave. They plod along hoping that someday their efforts will pay off. According to the New Testament such people are legalists; they are using the law to establish their righteousness. Legalists keep the law for self-glory, or to merit some reward; they do not keep it because it expresses the desire of their heart.

Erwin W. Lutzer (1941– )—Never forget -The Bible teaches that if we fail in one thing

concerning the law we are guilty or accountable for the whole law James 2:10. The law is

The spirit of the law is that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. Only through faith can we please God and we seve Him through grace, daily.

Jesus is called to task by the scribes and the Pharisees for sitting down to eat without the ritual washing. In fact, ritual washing was not part of the law at that time. Rather, it was an oral tradition that the scribes, Pharisees, and lawyers observed in order to make themselves feel more righteous than ordinary people. In using the wonderful analogy of the cup (v. 39), Jesus is scathing in His remarks about their legalism. They are more concerned about form than substance, about appearance than reality.

He is outraged by the legalistic burdens the scribes and Pharisees have laid upon the Jews. For example, it was taught that on the Sabbath a man may not carry a burden in his right hand or left hand, in his bosom or on his shoulder. But, he may carry it on the back of his hand or with his foot, or with his mouth, or with his elbow, or in his ear, or in his hair, or in his wallet, if it is carried mouth-downward or between his wallet and shirt or in the hem of his shirt or in his shoe or sandal. That’s only one of a thousand laws that faithful Jews were to follow. To paraphrase Jesus’ reactions somewhat, He is saying, “What do you think you are doing? You have taken the joy of living as God’s chosen people and made it a burden. Because of your laws, you have made worship burdensome. Instead of sharing with joy the material blessings God has given you, you’ve made it a ridiculous game—counting every little herb in your garden. You are so concerned with tithing the fruits of your garden that you have neglected justice and the love of God.”^{^[1]}

Legalism - The cross of Christ is the only real corrective for legalism. In Matthew 5, James rescues the law from the legalists. We human beings have discovered several ways to reject God’s law. We can defy the law, taking the antinomian stance, “I am my own person, I do not need law.” Or, like the scribes and the Pharisees, we can reduce the law to hundreds of rules we can keep.

For example, the rabbis “fenced” the Sabbath commandment with 39 categories of possible violation. Each category was then broken down into specific rules. They debated whether one could wear a wooden leg or a brooch on the Sabbath. Would this be “carrying objects” on the Sabbath? Legalism begins with reverence for God’s law and ends in making the law trivial and absurd.

The legalist runs the risk of at least three sins. First, he loses sight of the Lawgiver in reducing the law to rules. Second, he reduces God’s great claims upon us to manageable rules he can keep. He then loses sight of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. (An old African proverb asks, “How do you eat an elephant?” Answer: “One bite at a time.”) Third, having lost sight of the holy God and his own sinfulness, the legalist becomes self-righteous and judgmental of others.

In Matthew 5, Jesus restates the law as the Word of the holy God. He is not fighting the liberals; he is taking the legalists to task for reducing the law to bite-sized chunks. “The holy law of the holy God cannot be watered down so easily as you think,” he says. “Anyone who reduces the great claims of the law is least in the kingdom. For example, you do not kill. Do you hate? You are proud because you do not commit adultery?

Do you lust? You give your wives a legal paper of divorce; what about your commitment to live with them until death do you part? You stay inside the law in your business dealings, but is your word your bond? You live by ‘an eye for an eye,’ but do you love your enemies and pray for them? You must not reduce God’s great claims upon you to a list of rules you can keep.”

In view of Jesus’ teaching about the holiness of God and this law, what do we see in the cross of Christ? The cross was the sin of sins. But why? Because the Jews and Romans broke the law, “Thou shalt not kill?” Yes, but is that all? Was there not also a law which said that blasphemers must die (Lev. 24:16), and did not many in Israel sincerely see Jesus as a blasphemer? What happened that day outside the walls of Jerusalem was not only the breaking of God’s law, it was also the rejection of the holy and loving God who gave the law, the prophets, and even His own Son. The sin was not just the breaking of the law, but the breaking of the Lawgiver’s heart. Jesus was crucified by the most conscientious legalists in town.

As we stand before the cross we see a love so wide, so deep, so high that all human beings come within its reach. In the cross, God reaches out once again to those who refuse to acknowledge His law and to those legalists who trivialize His law and declare themselves righteous. All our human pride and pretension is shattered on the rock called Golgotha. The cross is the only real correction for legalism.

Freedom -As children of God, we sometimes do not quite comprehend the fact that we have been set free by our Savior. Some of us are imprisoned by the memories of a sinful past. Lloyd Ogilvie said, “The memory of past failure is like sand in the gears of our effectiveness.” God did not put the handcuffs of past memories on you. They are self-imposed. He wiped out your sins in order that you might have seasons of refreshing (Acts 3:19).

Other Christians are incarcerated by legalism. They read the Bible to learn of its rules. The legalist with a sensitive conscience knows he cannot keep God’s laws perfectly. Maybe that is why the novelist John Updike said, “I agree with the Jews. One Testament is enough.” If faith is solely a matter of lawkeeping, I would agree. The Psalmist was talking about the Old Testament when he said, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” (Ps. 19:7). There was no need for a new law code, but there was a need for freedom from the consequences of disobedience. Small wonder that legalists either live in a state of perpetual discouragement or self-righteous hypocrisy. The legalist does not understand that “everyone who believes in Him is freed from all things” (Acts 13:39 nasb).

If you are living in a prison of your own making, you can walk through the doors of freedom today. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1).