Ep. 37 - Identifying Legalism in the Church: Navigating Christian Liberty, Morality and Personal Convictions

Are the lines between moral convictions and legalism often blurred in your understanding of faith? Discover the intricate balance between these concepts as we unravel their significance within the church. Through insights drawn from Romans 14, learn how to identify true legalism by aligning your beliefs with Scripture, and explore the subtle ways self-righteousness can creep into our lives. We'll delve into the historical tensions between Jewish and Gentile Christians and how they can teach us to foster mutual respect and understanding in modern faith communities. 

Join us for a compelling conversation on navigating Christian liberty, where we confront modern ethical gray areas such as alcohol, tobacco, and personal lifestyle choices like tattoos. As we examine the teachings of Paul, understand the importance of not judging fellow believers based on personal convictions. We'll also address how past experiences shape our approach to faith and explore principles like expedience and edification to guide our actions. Whether you're a new believer or were raised in a strict religious environment, gain valuable insights into maintaining freedom in Christ while respecting the diverse consciences around you.

Chapters

• 0:02 Recognizing Legalism in Christianity
• 7:26 Navigating Christian Liberty and Legalism
• 20:12 Navigating Christian Liberty and Discernment

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

All right, welcome back to the Psych and Theo podcast. Sam and Tim here ready for wrapping up the year. We're recording a couple of episodes here and looking forward to just finishing the year, tim, I'm with you.

Speaker 1: 0:13

I am, I am, I am and we're so happy that you guys have been following along and tuning into the podcast and sharing it with a lot of people. I've been hearing from a couple of you I always like hearing that when you guys share, that you've been sharing the episodes or that you've enjoyed a particular topic, so keep submitting those and also, excuse me, continue to submit reviews and ratings and all that just to help the podcast out. But we just hit the 2,500 download mark yesterday or over the weekend and we're happy about that, and I think next year we could hit uh 10 000. So I'm excited as this has all been organic we've just been delivering and people have been sharing, so it's been good to see as I tell people we're a little baby podcast so if you like babies, then right yeah, yeah, we're a little baby podcast, so don't expect too much of us folks yeah, birthday march when is my birthday?

Speaker 2: 1:05

No, or our birthday? The podcast birthday. We should know this, shouldn't we, before we start talking about it. I think we're We'll get it next episode.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Yeah, yeah. So we're coming up on our first year birthday. Thank you for tuning in and for supporting the show. So today we're going to jump into a topic that many of us are familiar with, the topic of legalism, or, more specifically, how to manage Christian liberties. That kind of encapsulates it. Yeah, that's a good one. So Tim here will be diving into this topic. I'll ask some questions, and I'm sure you guys have questions about this as well, so feel free to submit those and, yeah, looking forward to it, let's go ahead and jump into the topic of legalism and Christian liberties. All right, all right.

Speaker 2: 1:51

So, as we jump into this topic, I think that the episode will be titled how to Recognize Legalism in your Church, because the word gets thrown out a lot and sometimes it gets thrown out too much. People will say like, oh, you're a legalist if you have any sort of moral conviction, and that's not appropriate. It's using the term too broadly.

Speaker 1: 2:12

Then other times.

Speaker 2: 2:14

As I say, a real legalist never recognizes themselves in the mirror because they don't recognize that they are a legalist. They don't recognize that they are a legalist. And so it's a caution to all of us that we should be very careful about what kind of moral principles and moral rules that we're creating for ourselves and for other people, to make sure those are aligned with Scripture and with the principles of Scripture.

Speaker 2: 2:46

Jesus, he reserved the harshest criticisms for the Pharisees themselves who were the greatest legalists of all in the New Testament, and it's really cliche in our culture to call someone a Pharisee and to act like, oh, the other people are Pharisees, not me. But it's a warning to all of us that self-righteousness is a sin and it's a sin that can creep in unawares. We can be self-deluded into thinking that we're good, everyone else is bad because we got it figured out and we need to be really careful with that. But legalism can come in many different forms, so we can get into that. So let's define some terms. You mentioned Christian liberty. I think that's really the thing that we want people to walk away from is understanding what that is. Christian liberty is a doctrine that comes to us or it's a teaching that comes to us from a lot of different portions of scripture, but the passage that is the most used and helpful for this topic is Romans 14. Romans 14 is 23 verses long, so I won't read the whole thing, but let me just read the first five verses to you.

Speaker 2: 3:53

Paul, his whole book. He's dealing with the issue of salvation. Okay, he walks the Romans through what it means to be saved. Everyone's condemned, everyone needs salvation, everyone sins. All fall short of the glory of God. All are justified by faith in Jesus Christ and all are saved by him. But even if we are saved, we still struggle with sin. That's getting into Romans 6, romans 7. But we have the promises of the Holy Spirit. We are saved. We still struggle with sin. It's getting into Romans 6, romans 7. But we have the promises of the Holy Spirit and we have a hope of sanctification as we work through this life. That's Romans 8. Then Paul kind of goes on an excursus talking about the Jews from Romans 9 through 11. And then Romans 12, he gets back to instructing Christians on how to live. And so Romans 12, romans 13, romans 14, romans 15,. These are all practical, ethical verses. That he's. You know, practical ethics in the church. Another on issues about whether you can eat certain meats and certain vegetables or whether you can honor one day versus another. So there's a lot of tension between the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians right now. So let me read the first five verses of Romans 14, one through five.

Speaker 2: 5:18

He says this as for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel among or over opinions. One person believes that he may eat anything. That would be something like a Gentile, while the weak person eats only vegetables. If you think of an example of Daniel in the book of Daniel, how they, daniel and his three friends, committed to only eat vegetables for a certain amount of times, that was a practice. Not all Jews practice that, but some Jews did practice that. So one person believes that he may eat anything, while the weak person in this case eats only vegetables.

Speaker 2: 5:56

Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats. Now, when paul says he may eat anything, he means even meats and foods that the jews considered unclean, like pork. Okay, so a gentile could eat anything, it's not unclean to him. But some jews, they're only going to eat vegetables. So he's giving two extremes here and he says let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains. Let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats. Okay, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. Now, here what he's explaining is that our rhetorical question is who are you to pass judgment? This person is the Lord's servant. Okay, so you are not in a position to pass judgment on them, whether they eat or whether they abstain. Okay, so they conduct themselves before their master, that is the Lord, and the Lord is the one who's going to give them the ability to walk in the path that he's set for them. All right, one person esteems one day better than another, while another person esteems all days alike. So that gets into the issue of the Sabbath, okay. And then he finishes with this in verse 5. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.

Speaker 2: 7:26

And then he goes on to talk about some other things. Again, it's a whole chapter that he gets into this issue. He goes on to explain the weaker brother and the stronger brother. Actually, let me get into this verses 6 through 9. He says the one who observes the day observes it in honor to the Lord. The one who eats eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God, for none of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself, for if we live, we live to the Lord and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For this end, christ died and lived again that he may be both Lord of the dead and the living.

Speaker 2: 8:10

And then verse 10 through 12. Why do you pass judgment on your brother or why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written as I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess, so that each one of us will give an account of ourselves to God. Okay, so we'll stop there.

Speaker 2: 8:29

We won't go through the whole chapter, but the whole chapter is dealing with this issue of some Christians have moral convictions. In this case, there was a lot of Jews who had moral convictions to continue following certain aspects of the law, but Gentile Christians certainly didn't have those convictions. And so there's tension here. The Jews were looking down on the Gentiles, the Gentiles were looking down on the Jews and they were fighting with one another. So he says okay, let's not judge each other in this regard. Now, how do we translate this into contemporary culture? Okay, later in the passage, paul explains what a weaker and stronger brother is.

Speaker 2: 9:07

A stronger brother is one who is able to eat anything, one who is able to honor every day alike. It's basically think of like, think of like a. In this case, it would be like a gentile who's not convicted about matters of law that aren't morally binding to him, or a Jew who feels free to do those things. Now, a weaker brother is one whose conscience is weak and feels the need to continue following certain moral aspects that he doesn't yet have the freedom to follow in his conscience and in his faith before God, and so the principle that Paul gives later in the chapter is that it's a principle of having the faith in Christ to be able to be free from certain moral principles that previously maybe someone was under. So a weaker brother has a weaker conscience. There's more things that bother them morally, like you're more sensitive to things?

Speaker 2: 10:02

Yeah, and a stronger brother is not as sensitive to those things and so therefore has a greater freedom in the Lord to perhaps partake in activities or things that a weaker brother would feel convicted about. Now, this is not the same as licentiousness or living it up okay. So that's not what Christian liberty is. But these would be issues what we would call ethical gray areas, where in the New Testament there's not a specific command about these things. The Lord hasn't commanded all Christians in one direction in this regard. Let's translate this into modern day.

Speaker 2: 10:39

That would be issues like drinking alcohol. There are principles in Scripture that we could see that warn of the dangers of drinking alcohol, but you cannot find a blanket, absolute prohibition in the New Testament that says don't drink alcohol. In fact, you find instances where people, even Christians, are partaking in wine in some sense. I mean, paul tells Timothy take wine for your stomach. So there's a medicinal purpose there, but alcohol would be one of them. Tobacco products now, in this day and age, certain forms of cannabis products would fall into this category as well, as we're debating over whether it's moral or right, what's proper use for it and what isn't.

Speaker 2: 11:23

Going to certain venues like concerts or certain clubs. That would be an issue where that would be like an ethical gray area, not to say that all clubs or you know, like I go to a strip club, that would probably not be a good thing, watching certain movies, certain music, whether you work on sunday or not. Tattoos, piercings, these things are all things where the New Testament doesn't give us a direct instruction on this. It's not morally binding on all believers, everywhere, at all times, like worshiping the Lord would be or abstaining from sexual immorality would be. You see what I'm saying. So something like sexual immorality is a moral absolute for all Christians. So something like sexual immorality is a moral absolute for all Christians, that it's wrong to engage in that outside of the marriage union. So that would be something that's binding on all Christians.

Speaker 1: 12:15

There's no sense of Christian liberty when it comes to that.

Speaker 2: 12:21

But what one defines as what they define as sexual immorality is where it's…. Yeah, so here's where legalism… it's a form of coming up with rules and principles and adding those onto the biblical text. Jesus often rebuked the Pharisees for this because he said they would add things to the law and it was their tradition. So the rabbis would debate, they would look at these matters of the law in the Old Testament and then they would debate about what this law meant or what that law meant, or what that law meant, or how far you take this law or how far you take that law, and they would come up with principles for how to perfectly obey the law. And so if you followed their principles, then you perfectly obeyed the Mosaic law. And Jesus rebuked them for this because they were adding all these rules to the Mosaic law. And he describes it as the Pharisees throwing burdens, like laying people down with heavy burdens that they couldn't bear, and so that's what legalism ends up doing.

Speaker 2: 13:18

Legalism approaches the scriptures and says well, this subject is murky and we don't want to sin. So there's the good part of it. It's well-intentioned at first. We don't want to sin. Part of it. It's well-intentioned at first, we don't want to sin. So, in order not to sin, let's come up with a second or third layer of rules to follow to make sure we don't sin. Where this goes wrong is saying these rules should apply to more than just me. More than just me should follow these rules. Everyone, in fact, should follow these rules. And if you don't follow the rules, well then you're sinning. And what the mistake that a legalist makes is that they think, if someone breaks my second or third layer rules, that they're sinning, when in reality I'm. I would, as a legalist, I would be sinning because I'm violating my.

Speaker 2: 14:04

I know I'm violating my conscience by breaking those rules you see what I'm saying, yeah so they make up the rules to keep themselves from sinning, but they end up applying those rules to everyone else, and that happens at a broad scale in a church, when you have a pastor or leadership. That's very legalistic. Or just a tradition, that's very legalistic.

Speaker 1: 14:23

Yeah yeah, it sounds like in the background there's this intention of I mean, it sounds like a good intention of wanting to protect people. But if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying that this person who comes up with these rules they're using that for themselves because of their weaker conscience, whatever that may be. So they're using that and then they're saying, well, if this is working for me, it should work for you too, so I'm going to impose it on you. Is that kind of how legalists operate?

Speaker 2: 14:50

Yeah, in a sense, there there's a pragmatic element to it, and that's that it works for me. It should work for you, but there's there's also a self-right. There's a righteousness element to it, which is if you don't want to follow these rules, there must be something morally wrong with you, there must be something bad in your heart. Yeah, you know, you know I'm saying yeah, so, um, so, when it comes to alcohol, for instance, there's all sorts of warnings in Scripture about staying away from alcohol, staying away from strong drink, drunkenness. Drunkenness is a sin. That is clear in Scripture in the New Testament. Drunkenness is a sin. Taking alcoholic substances like consuming that. If you were to make the argument that taking a sip of alcohol is like getting drunk, it's the first step to getting drunk and therefore it's sin in some way. Or here's the thing that legalists nowadays verse. They always pull out In 1 or 2 Thessalonians I always get this confused. But Paul says avoid even the appearance of evil. Okay, so they said well, if you're drinking, that might appear sinful to people and you should avoid that. Really, it's appearing sinful to you, not to everyone. Yeah, so that's a mistake that legalists make is that they tend to make all these extra rules that are not in scripture on matters that are ethically gray. So Christian liberty is the response to that and it says that we have the freedom to make moral choices regarding issues which the scriptures do not address directly. And we have the freedom to address those things without fear of sinning against God. Okay, as long as our conscience is clear. Okay.

Speaker 2: 16:32

But Christian liberty is not a few things. Some people can run wild with this. If they're immature, okay. So immature believers, they can grab hold of Christian liberty and end up sinning because they're immature. They're either a really immature believer or they're a strong believer or they're a strong brother. That's using their freedom inappropriately. So Christian liberty is not licentiousness. Licentiousness means it comes from license, like the license to do this, the license to do that. Licentiousness in scripture refers to a lifestyle of just open-ended moral ambiguity. Like, oh, just everything goes, anything goes, there's no real sin in the world. Like, oh, just everything goes, anything goes, there's no real sin in the world. Yeah, that's, I live a life. If I live a licentious life, that means I'm going out and I'm just living it up and you can fill in the blanks with whatever. That is Okay. That's not Christian liberty, christian liberty isn't saying well, my conscience isn't bothered, therefore I'm not sinning. Right, right, that's a big one.

Speaker 2: 17:30

Yeah, people make that mistake. You can have a conscience that's seared or made callous through sin. Your heart can be hardened and blackened by sin to where you no longer feel the conviction that you once did, and that's a very dangerous place to be. So just because you don't feel something doesn't mean you're not sinning, and that's you know. So that's we need to be really careful, yeah, yeah. So it's not licentiousness, it's not lawlessness. Paul says in romans, chapter 6, verse 15 shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? God forbid. Just because we have grace and christ doesn't mean we could just continue on sinning and presume upon the grace of God. You ever had those awkward prayers sometimes, where you know you did something wrong and then you kneel down to pray and you're going to go through the motions of prayer and then it's like the thought hits you. It's like the Holy Spirit's, like you want to talk about that. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:24

Are we going to talk about that first or you're going to go through the motions first? Yeah, so we should not presume upon the grace of god and I know, I think all of us are guilty of that where we sin, and then we're like, okay, I need to confess this, you know? And then you kneel down to confess and the holy spirit's like is that what? You see me, as you know yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:45

So it's not a. It's not an excuse to live in a lawless, licentious lifestyle, to rationalize your sin or to be combative with other believers. So just because you have Christian liberty to, let's say, partake in alcohol or, let's say, get a tattoo or listen to a certain kind of music, and another believer doesn't have that freedom where they think it's wrong, that freedom or they think it's wrong. If they think it's wrong, they're probably just a weaker brother or sister in this regard. But your Christian liberty doesn't give you an excuse to go and flaunt it in their face.

Speaker 1: 19:18

Interesting yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:20

So that's an abuse of Christian liberty. So it gives us the freedom to address ethical gray areas, and ethical gray area is one of those things that scripture doesn't address specifically or directly. So I think, just to wrap up my little monologue here a stronger brother is one who can participate in those ethical gray areas with full assurance in his conscience that he's not sinning before God. A weaker brother is one who can't participate in that ethical gray area with confidence that he's not sinning before God. A weaker brother is one who can't participate in that ethical gray area with confidence that he's not sinning before God. And that can shift. Someone can move from a weaker to a stronger brother over time as they mature in their faith. But some things people get convicted over and that conviction remains for their whole life because maybe the Lord doesn't want them to partake in that Interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:12

For whatever reason, you know family history or their cultural setting or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:18

That's a good point yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:19

And then so Paul tells a stronger brother don't throw a stumbling block in front of your weaker brother. That is like don't do the things that you have the freedom to do in front of them.

Speaker 2: 20:28

Sure, yeah, is like, don't do the things that you have the freedom to do in front of them. You have the freedom to do it, but don't do it in front of them, because then you're throwing a stumbling block in front of that person and you're saying, yeah, it's okay to do, come on, come on, do it with me. And you're going to end up getting that person to violate their conscience. So you're sinning by causing someone else to sin. Yep, exactly, yeah. So you got some questions for me.

Speaker 1: 20:47

Yeah, yeah. One of the questions I was going to ask is have you noticed or have you seen that those who become legalistic usually come from a background where they made they didn't know the Lord growing up At least, this was the experience that I have with a lot of people from my church is that they didn't know the Lord. They kind of lived the life the way that they wanted they come to know the Lord and, in order to avoid everything that they had experienced from their past, they did take these extreme measures of okay, I'm definitely not going to do this, I'm not going to hang around to this person. So it seems to be a theme of those who lived a life of sinfulness and now come to the Lord later on. They want to avoid it completely. So they have all these rules for themselves to not commit those things again.

Speaker 2: 21:29

Yeah, it's very common. Yeah, you often hear I grew up in a very legalistic environment. I grew up in Midwest Ohio, western Ohio, like the Midwest, and there's a lot of very conservative fundamentalist churches in that area and so I've seen this stuff firsthand. I grew up in it. I know it Like I can imitate it, you know, and a lot of those preachers you'll hear them talk about their wayward life before they came to the Lord and how they were in all these different things I love. One guy said I was sowing my seeds in the devil's field of sin. I'm like that's a great line, you know, and yeah, so then they swing all the way over to legalism and they're not aware that they're adding things to scripture that aren't there.

Speaker 1: 22:17

Yeah, yeah, and then on the other side then you have those who maybe grew up in the church, so they have that mentality, maybe a pharisaical approach or the way that they live, but then when they become adults they start to loosen up a little bit or they completely deconstruct and just go off and do it.

Speaker 2: 22:34

I have seen many of my friends or colleagues growing up as a kid and teenager. I've seen many of them either go completely off the rails and walk away from the faith, go completely off the rails and just live it up like the world, just completely rebel against the system that they were brought up in. For this reason, because they're just. You know, legalism creates. It creates this structure that's impossible to. It's a standard that's impossible to live up to and it creates enormous amounts of shame in the people that it's put on. Yeah, and when they continually can't live up to the standard and they're filled with shame shame by their religious leaders, shame by their parents and their community they're labeled as, quote-unquote, the bad kid or the bad teenager or whatever. They identify with those things, and then they end up acting out later on, when they get the freedom to do so. Yeah, so it's a really sad state. I've seen a lot of people go through that.

Speaker 1: 23:32

Yeah, I was going to ask one more here where? How does one discern whether or not they should address something that's a gray area, or maybe something that is clearly stated in scripture, because I think that's where people are going to struggle the most. I remember hearing this principle. It was like sometimes something is not bad or it's not necessarily good to do. It's not bad to do or it's not good to do, but it may not be wise.

Speaker 1: 23:55

Yeah, and remember that was such an important principle to learn, because, okay, maybe you're not sinning by doing this activity, but it's definitely not wise for you to continue to do that. Yeah, right. So I think that kind of speaks to this idea of I think it's in Galatians, where it talks about the stronger brother to be able to address sin in another brother's life, but making sure that their own life is clean before they address that. So how does one make that distinction? Because we do have friends, we do have people that are in our lives that may not be living in a wise way and it's having negative effects on their lives, but maybe the sin is not clearly stated in Scripture. How do we approach that situation?

Speaker 2: 24:38

So there's a lot of principles that we could get into and I'll just give a few of them here. So I think there's kind of two layers to your question. One is how do you confront someone? But I think the higher the more, or maybe the lower. The fundamental layer that you're asking about is how do you frame an issue as whether it is sinful or not, or whether it's potentially, potentially sinful, maybe is the way to put it? So there's a principle of expedience. That's the first one I would give. That is.

Speaker 2: 25:05

The question is this is it spiritually profitable to do this thing or not? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient. So some things that are like Paul basically said, I could do almost anything, but not everything is profitable for me to do or useful for me to do. So is it expedient? Is this thing that someone is doing or I'm doing, is it expedient or not? Edification, principle of edification Is it building me up or not, or is it tearing me down? There's nothing wrong with drinking mochas I love mochas but if I get addicted to coffee and I'm drinking five mochas a day and I'm falling out of shape and I'm addicted to caffeine and I can't live without it. Okay, that's becoming a vice in my life. That's a little petty example, but alcohol is a more serious one. Yeah, if you can't if you can't stay away from it, then you need to stay away from it.

Speaker 2: 26:07

You know I'm saying yeah yeah, or if it was a part of your yeah it passed yep, or your family's history dip into it yeah you know, that's where I guess you look at the family tree and all that yeah, so edification, uh, with that is like, is it going to slow me down in my race with the Lord? Hebrews says let us lay aside every weight and sin.

Speaker 2: 26:27

So there's weights and then there's sins that easily beset us and then we need to run with endurance, the race that God has given us. So some things are not sinful, but they weigh us down. We need to lay those aside. We can come into bondage to things. That's the principle of enslavement. Is this thing going to bring me into bondage to something?

Speaker 2: 26:49

We're talking about the alcohol one because it's the easiest example. Some people say I don't drink alcohol, not because I think it's sinful, but because I don't trust it. I don't want to become an alcoholic. That's a perfectly legitimate approach to that issue. That's a wise thing. We could talk about the principle of example. Is it going to help me set an example for other believers or not, or is this actually harming my testimony or not? That is that area of wisdom that you're getting at that. We need to really be careful how we conduct ourselves, because I might have the freedom to do something, but it might be misunderstood, not just by a believer, but it might be misunderstood by an unbeliever, and I need to be careful with that. I need to be really, really careful how I use my Christian liberty.

Speaker 1: 27:38

So you have to understand the culture, the setting that they're in also.

Speaker 2: 27:41

Yeah, so is it going to help me set an example? And also, with that, is it going to hinder evangelism? If the person sees me do this thing and then I go and witness to them, are they going to be hindered by what I just did or not? Is this going to hinder me from glorifying the Lord and walking with the Lord? These are all principles we need to ask ourselves, or questions we need to ask ourselves.

Speaker 1: 28:08

There's a sense of personal accountability that someone needs to draw on to be able to make these decisions.

Speaker 2: 28:17

Yeah. So just a couple pointers to close it out for people's advice. Number one to do anything, we need to be convinced for ourselves that it's not sin to do. We have to be convinced in our minds and our hearts before the Lord that it's okay for us to do that. And if you're not sure, continue to pray about it until the Lord gives you freedom. It's as simple as that. And don't do it until he gives you freedom. But study the scriptures, because the scriptures are the truth and they will help you. Seek advice from godly people on that issue as well, confident before the Lord.

Speaker 2: 28:50

As I said, if we're confident to engage in this activity, then our conscience is free, as long as the scriptures doesn't say that it's sin. We need to be considerate of other believers. As I said, we do not want to throw a stumbling block or to give a matter of offense to believers. And then we need to be concerned for unbelievers as well in the exercise of our Christian liberty. But we we started this talking about legalism and how to recognize it and my advice for people who they understand Christian liberty but they're frustrated with legalism they see around them, I would say this be patient with people you think are legalists, because they may not be as legalistic as you think.

Speaker 2: 29:37

They may just be ignorant of certain things in Scripture and if you were to show them, they would go oh okay, not everyone who says that you're doing something wrong is a legalist, because you might actually be doing something wrong. You might actually just be offensive to someone. That doesn't make them a legalist. It might make you offensive. So we need to keep that in mind. I think our generation especially needs to remember, remember that that just because someone has a problem with what you're doing, it doesn't make them a legalist. You might actually be doing something that's offensive. Yeah, so check yourself before you wreck yourself, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:17

That's good, good tips, all right. Well, I think we. I think you touched on the topic of legalism and Christian freedom pretty well. Yeah, good job, like it All right, guys? Well, we. This actually is a perfect segue for our next episode that we're going to be talking about purity culture, so that'd be a a big one for us to cover as well. Thank you for tuning in. We will talk to you guys next time.