The Deadness of Negative Religion

Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days! (Psalm 90:14 NKJV)

This verse tells us that there is a type of life, a way of living, even a way that considers itself “Christian religion,” that does not satisfy our hearts. Whatever meager blessings it brings, if any at all, come slowly and tediously, and this false way results in sadness and lingering depression for years and years. This is the way of legalism and guilt. It is the effort to live life by focusing upon and measuring as of first concern the wrong that we do, or the wrong that we try not to do. It is the idea of “I hope I do not sin today” that dominates our minds and then permeates all of life. It kills joy, prevents growth, and casts a dismal pall over our entire life.

And, furthermore, it is unsuccessful against sin — a wrong way of thinking. Not only does it usually end in committing the very sin it seeks not to, it also fails on a greater scale because this way of thinking seeks merely “not to sin” instead of growing closer to Christ. It forgets that “whatsoever is not from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23), and faith means to have confidence in the reward of God for those who diligently seek Him (Heb. 11:6). This way puts aside the greater issue of positive living for God or of following Christ and seeks only not to go the wrong way. It is content to bury one’s talent and justify itself, with blinding pride, simply because it seems not to be notoriously sinful. It is like a man who never loves his wife, never enjoys her presence, never converses with her in any meaningful way, but imagines he is a good husband merely because he had not committed adultery that day.

This is legalism. James Stewart wrote, in his classic work A Man in Christ, that the “mark of legal religion” is its “fondness of negatives.”

“Thou shalt not” is the foundation on which it is built. It bids men preserve the house of life swept and garnished and free from the desecrating intrusion of maraudiing spirits by keeping the doors permanently bolted and the windows tightly shuttered. It fails to realize that that method of keeping evil things out is defective in two directions. On the one hand, a negative religion is always apt to defeat itself: the evil spirits which are repressed and refused entrance at the front may quite possibly, as every psychologist knows, burrow underground and come up from the basement. So long as the place is untenanted, that danger will remain. On the other hand, even if the soul were to succeed in shutting these things out, it shuts out something else as well — God’s good light and air and sunshine: legalism can never hope for the width and freedom and gladness and release which have been Christ’s great gifts to men.

Any of us who has labored under legalism can identify with these thoughts. This is the faith or religion that does not satisfy us. Stewart wrote:

[Legalism] is a burdensome creed, and never sings or exults. it is a dead-weight the soul has to carry, not (as a true religion ought surely to be) wings to carry the soul. The secret of all power and gladness, as Paul was later to discover, lies in three words, “Christ in me.” For while legal religion is a burden bearing a man down from above, Christ is a living power bearing him along from within. To be in union with Christ means the joy of possessing interior sources of a supernatural order, and of feeling within you the power of an endless life.

If there are false ways of living that do not satisfy, then we should rejoice that there is also a true way of living that does truly satisfy our hearts — the life of “Christ in me” that is “the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). This is the way we are to live, not merely seeking not to follow the devil but daily following Christ. It is daily conversation with Christ, constantly receiving His life and His joy, constantly having our hearts set upon Him, constant surrender and constant obedience to His Spirit’s calling.

A journey can never be undertaken merely by not going backwards. We need to go forward daily with Christ. Speak to Him now. Enjoy your Savior and your salvation.