THAT SLIPPERY SLOPE OF LEGALISM

Jesus was all about freedom.  The Church of Christ is suspicious of it.  We have an ingrained neurosis which fears any movement not known to be "what we have done" in the past.  The Bible is paraded as our authority; but we lie.  It isn't our authority.  What the respected brethren of the past did is where we abide.

Don't believe me?  Look at how many churches today look precisely like they did in the 60s and 70s.  Credit it to the belief they are simply continuing their bibliocity?  Really?  And have these churches become infused by the early church's Holy Spirit?  Have they begun selling their homes instead of buying bigger ones?  Do they meet every day as did the beginning church....or are they three-times-a-weekers?

Jesus is all about freedom.  The church is afraid of what he was all about.  I urge all elders and all preachers and all members to be astutely aware of the slippery slope of legalism:

• Restricting what version of the Bible can be read.
• Warning members of what they can and can't read, where they can and can't visit, and what they can and can't believe.
• Clipping the Holy Spirit wings from His personally inspired Word.
• Developing an unlabeled, unofficial belief system which behaves as did the Pharisees.
• Fear allowed as a respectable trait of leadership with the motto---What will this lead to?
• Speaking where the Bible doesn't speak in the doctrinal name of silence of scriptures.

The slippery slope of legalism has a strange sound, does it not?  That description has been used only toward erring modernism....or even truth when it did not line up with the man-made bossiness of legalism.  There are enough slippery slopes to go around for all sides.  That's why Jesus is the truth....and not our outspoken traditions.

There is a difference.  To fail to realize it....means we have slid farther on the slippery slope of self-defense than we could imagine.