Legalism is where a Christian will try and "stay saved" by folllowing rules and regulations that are not even in Scripture.
When you have churches that teach that a Christian can lose their salvation, you almost always end up in legalism.
Why? Because if you can lose your salvation, then what are you going to do to try and keep it? You are going to do works!
Now, Christians are people who are trusting in Jesus for salvation, and NOT in their own works, so you can see how seriously wrong it is for a Christian to start out trusting in Jesus, and then sometime later to start thinking that they are save because they follow some rules someone made up.
In Galatians, Paul was dealing with the Judaizers. They were people who said that Trusting in Jesus was NOT enough to be saved but that a Christian ALSO had to follow Jewish dietary and ceremonial laws.
If you read Galatians, you will see that Paul pleaded with Christians not to fall into this, and Paul condemned the Judaizers VERY harshly!
So, today in some Pentecostal churches, not all, SOME....
You have serious legalism going on.
There are some Pentecostal churches that actually have a written LIST of things called "the articles of Holiness" that are just a list of "Don'ts" and they are always external things you can see from across the room like:
Women:
Don't wear pants.
Don't wear makeup
Don't wear jewerly
Men:
Don't have any facial hair
Don't have long hair
(which means you must have very short hair, like a businessman)
Men and women:
don't Watch TV
don''t watch movies
don't drink alcohol
In other words, don't don't don't.
We have a BIG holiness church presence in my town, and they have a dress code. You can literally spot them anywhere because of this dress code. It is very similar to the Amish.
I attended a foursquare gospel Pentecostal church and heard an entire sermon on how a woman "Could not get the Holy Spirit because she had a bracelet on."
The people who like to follow the extra rules end up thinking they are saved NOT because of Jesus so much, but because they are following rules, and man made rules at that!
If anyone has thoughts and comments on Legalism, or Pentecostalism, I would like to hear it.
Now, lastly, I want to say that most Pentecostals are our brothers and sisters in Christ. Not ONENESS Pentecostals, because that is a heretical group and another thing altogether, but I am talking about regular Pentecostals.
I have friends in churches like these, and I have been to Pentecostal churches, that have plenty of people in them who are truly born again, and love God.
So, if anyone has any thoughts on this, I would like to hear them.
AHHH James something we can agree on, the hollieness churches are bad about falling into leagalism.
I completly agree, now as far as women dressing, they should never dress in a way that draws the attention of a man in a sexual nature, and panys someyimes do that, if I was allowed to wear a dress to work I would never wear pants, but that is my own conviction not something imposed on me by a rule, which is how it should be, I am working out my own salvation with fear and trembling, there are also hollieness churches that forbid, televisions and computers well internet is what they are forbiding, I think TV is ok if you can diciplin yourself not to watch garbage, I do not wear earings or any piercings , not because of a man made rule but because it is symbolic of peganism something I learned on my own and dont want to be associated with, now you might see me sometimes and I look alot like a hollieness not all the time but there are ti,es I pin up my hear and I hardly ever wear makeup, I do wear colorful clothes and most of these legalistic women wear dull colored clothes they are dressing so that they dont call attention to themselfs which is ok if you do it out of your own convictions and not out of a man made rule. My church is not like that at all we follow the laws of God because we want to not because a man told us to, we want to because we are saved and love the Lord and we love his laws ,
The Bible says woman are to adorn themselfs with Jesus, and not with jewlery and braids (paraphrase) but it does not say never wear jewlry, but what should be seen on a woman is Jesus her beauty and adornment should be him, her virtue because of him, her love for people and her love for the Lord,
I must however adress this I have quoted this scripture 100 times, show me your faith without works and Ill show you my faith by my works, the 2 go hand in hand, you can not have one without the other, the problem is when people think they are saved by their works, they are not but if they have true faith the works will be there too, you can have works without faith but your not saved but you can not ever have faith and not works
I agree with what sister Elisha is saying. The level of our faith causes us to conduct ourselves in certain ways.
Im not saying that everyone should start following an external/written "dressing code," rather, follow the internal code of love that comes from the Holy Spirit.
I pray that in everything we do, we will do out of love for Jesus and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
Ken
John 13:34-35 (NIV)
34 �A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.�
I agree with what sister Elisha is saying. The level of our faith causes us to conduct ourselves in certain ways.
Im not saying that everyone should start following an external/written "dressing code," rather, follow the internal code of love that comes from the Holy Spirit.
I pray that in everything we do, we will do out of love for Jesus and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
Ken
John 13:34-35 (NIV)
34 �A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.�
.:applause::applause::applause::applause::applause::applause: I am proud of us my brothers that we agree:yay::yay:
it is Jesus on the inside working on the outside as we used to sing as children, this is what I think of leagalism: it is taking this old rotten nasty flesh and wrapping it in beautiful clothes and presenting it to God, God rejects that, legalism is pride and talk about someone thinking they can save themselfs..lol I laugh but it really isnt all that funny its sad sad sad , and I really hate that this is associated with pentecostals because we are not all like that, alot of us knew the difference in actualy regeneration and God creating a clean heart in us,
that really is bad and a terrible display of pride, I see the hollieness women all the time you can tell them cause they dont cut their hair.. but if you didnt know better you would think my pastors wife is hollieness ,she doesnt cut her hair either but the differnce in her is her Joy as far as noticble things outwardly the leagalistic hollieness women are usualy pretty rude, I work at a grocery store and I mean they are never real sweet and kind and soft spoken like my pastors wife who happens to be one of my very best friends, we had homecoming at our church back in july and the pastor and his wife from a hollieness church came, and she was a mean lady she really was one of their members comes to our church sometimes I said we just love sis so n so and she said "well you cant have her" like she was scared we were trying to steal one of her members, they dont have many anyway and sis helen n her husband comes to my church sun and wed night cause they only have service sunday morning!! they are not full of joy most the time anyway
