Legalism is heresy. Antinomianism is the other heresy… If you imagine a very long line with Biblical Christianity in the dead center, Legalism is on the far right and antinomianism is on the far left. Truth is in the middle.
Legalism has you working your way to Heaven, earning Celestial Brownie Points… your righteousness and your justification… Heaven itself depends on your obedience to the Law… Not eating pork and Sabbath church attendance become the focal point of your religion (totally ignoring the rest of the Torah)… You can spot a legalist on Facebook because they are uncontrollable braggarts, and they would rather win a Christian away from Jesus, grace, and faith than win a sinner on his way to Hell…
Antinomianism is lawlessness… Murder, rape, witchcraft, free love, homosexuality, transgenderism, pornography, prostitution… it is all okay; you are under the Blood, Jesus paid it all and so whatever you do is okay with God… This is lawlessness and it is heresy.
Christianity teaches that you are saved by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ… Jesus became sin for you so that you, through him, might become the very righteousness of God. If you have become “the righteousness of God,” nothing, absolutely nothing you can do can make you any more righteous. You have been justified… all the Sabbath Church services and the rest of your life without pork will not make the slightest difference. Christians are led by the Spirit… those who are led by the Spirit are not under the Law. Those who seek to be justified by going to church on Saturday and/or not eating pork are “severed from Christ” and they “fall from grace…”
Christianity teaches a living relationship with a living God… it is active and works in the present tense. Rejecting legalism, understanding that the New Testament calls the Ten Commandments a “Ministry of Death” and a “ministry of condemnation,” they never see themselves as under the law or obligated to follow the commandments… they have nothing to brag about except Jesus and his finished work… On the other hand, Jesus said to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him… We are admonished to “fix our eyes on Jesus.” In so doing, we reject antinomianism and lawlessness… We have the whole Bible to teach us what God likes but we are free from the Law. How does this work?
Christians love Jesus. Our sin cost Jesus his life’s Blood. My sin hurts Jesus… I can never assume that I am free to do the things that hurt him. I deny myself those pleasures, I take up my cross, I die to myself, I follow Jesus and I fix my eyes on him. The Spirit leads me in real time… One who is doing those things is not going to commit gross sin. It is very hard to sleep with your neighbor’s spouse or steal his lawnmower if you are living like that… This is a ministry of righteousness.
One of the great principles of Christianity is that God sees the heart. Romans 14 tells us clearly that something that is not sin for one believer may very well be sin for another believer. That chapter ends with a warning that “anything done without faith is sin.” If I can greet children at the door and give them candy in Jesus’ name and bless them, it is not sin. If you believe that by opening that door and giving that child a piece of candy, you are somehow participating in a demonic ritual, for you to do so would be sin… This is a principle that the Legalist rejects completely, and baby Christians find difficult to comprehend… However, understanding this principle will set you free.
We must love Jesus and follow him. Our faith must be in Christ alone… The Legalist adds works to faith and in doing so loses his salvation. The Lawless, lost in antinomianism, do not love Jesus, nor do they follow him… You cannot love Jesus and live a lifestyle that hurts him and nails him to the cross. You cannot claim to follow him while consistently and without remorse doing things that He would never do.
On the question of churches participating in Halloween, it depends on their motives… As a matter of fact, some Christians there may be perfectly okay and right with God while others, at the same event, may be sinning… “Anything done without faith is sin.”
My personal belief is that the Devil only has as much of Halloween as you are willing to give him. If you give him the day, it is his day. If you insist that it is the day that the Lord has made, Satan gets none of it.
While most churches are operating in blissful ignorance, some are fully aware. There are two ways to look at it… You can see it as participating with the Devil in a demonic ritual, or you can see it as taking back for Jesus that which the Devil has stolen…
Most churches that I know personally are trying to take back the day for Jesus and provide a fun but safe place for children who might otherwise be involved with or even hurt by the Satanists… Some of them push the line very hard and some cross over the line. Others back off from the line and keep their celebration from any appearance of evil… All of them seem to keep children from the Satanists who would hurt them…
This is very much a matter of how you look at it… I was never caught up in any kind of Satanic darkness… I have never been into the occult. Halloween is only evil in the books… for me, it was always an innocent exercise in imagination. For me, it is easy to give a child candy or participate in a church Fall Festival and think only of God and of protecting and blessing children. I would imagine that it might be much more difficult for one with much experience and strong connections to the dark side…
My final word is this… “He who is weak eats only vegetables while he who is strong in the faith eats anything… nonetheless, to him who thinks it is sin, it is sin. Anything done without faith is sin…” (Romans 14) Whatever you do, don’t sin…
David…
End Time Thinker 