Legalism and Alcohol

Much has been written on Blogs lately about Fundamentalism and Legalism, especially in relation to moderation in alcohol. I am truly amazed at the ignorance of the meaning of NT legalism, as well as the relative way the ignorance is applied (I have yet to hear these bloggers claim that those who believe slavery or smoking marijuana is sin are legalists (even though the NT does not condemn these acts either)).

To shed light on the NT meaning of legalism I will quote from Zane Hodges’ “Legalism: The Real Thing.” Dr. Hodges could not be labeled, a legalist, since he has argued against Lordship Salvation (a position I hold). Thus, his comments are quite objective.


“Legalism is not a very nice word. No one wants to be accused of it anymore than one would want to be accused of despising motherhood or apple pie. In ecclesiastical circles, to call someone a legalist is to hurl an insult of the first magnitude. If someone says, "You’re a legalist," the instinctive reply would be, "Them’s fighting words!"

But legalism is more than just a nasty religious word. It is also a widely misused word. In the ordinary jargon of evangelicalism, legalism has come to mean an undue emphasis on rules—particularly rules of a negative kind. But on this basis the apostle Paul, whose epistles contain a plethora of negative commands, would himself be called a legalist! This is an absurd designation for the great Apostle of Grace.

When I did my undergraduate work at Wheaton College, like all other Wheaton students, I signed the famous Wheaton pledge. The pledge, of course, bound me to abstain from things like drinking, smoking, dancing, card playing, and going to movies. To many people today, that kind of restrictive policy smacks of a very bad case of legalism. Yet I am happy to report that I never had a problem with the Wheaton pledge at all. Not only did I abstain from all these things while a student there, but I was actually glad the pledge existed….

Naturally there were some people, even in those days, who thought the Wheaton pledge was a par excellence example of rigid fundamentalism with its so-called legalistic mentality. This accusation, however, was false. First of all, if you didn’t like the idea of a pledge you could go to another school. Anyone who enrolled at Wheaton knew perfectly well what the rules of the game were. It was a fault much worse than the pledge, to enroll and sign it, and then go out and break it in the name of Christian liberty. Those who did so only revealed their lack of Christian integrity and character.

But in the second place, the Wheaton pledge was not an expression of legalism properly perceived from a biblical point of view. If anything, the Wheaton pledge impinged on the NT teaching about doubtful things. Paul had a good bit to say on that subject and if I read his words correctly he was highly sympathetic to the idea of giving up doubtful things if they caused offense to his Christian brothers. I am impressed by his words in 1 Cor 8:13 where he writes: "Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble." I am not at all sure I could pull that off!

My experience in Evangelicalism suggests that not very many Christians today share these sentiments of Paul’s. For the most part, Evangelicals are not very eager to surrender practices they regard as their right to engage in, in the interest of a brother who may be spiritually hurt by their activity. It is not uncommon to hear scruples against so-called doubtful things labeled as "legalism." This kind of characterization then offers an excuse for ignoring other people’s scruples, in the alleged interest of maintaining Christian freedom against unbiblical legalism.

To all of this I say, "Stuff and nonsense!" People’s conscientious scruples against activities not explicitly condemned in Scripture is not—I repeat, not—legalism. Of course, when a word is used widely in a certain way, it comes to have that meaning. But I am not talking about the semantic history of the word legalism. I am talking about the NT concept of legalism….

Let me quote Berkhof directly on this point. He designates this use by the Latin words, usus didacticus or normativus, and then he writes as follows: "This is the so-called tertius usus legis, the third use of the law. The law is a rule of life for believers, reminding them of their duties and leading them in the way of life and salvation….

For a long time I have felt that Acts 15 is a highly instructive text in terms of the nature and content of the legalistic thought which Paul vigorously opposed. For example, in Acts 15:1 we are told this: "And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, ‘Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.’" Naturally, it is unlikely that this means that these Judean teachers asked for circumcision and nothing more. The subsequent debate at Jerusalem suggests that the larger issue was the keeping of the Mosaic law, in the keeping of which circumcision was simply the first step.
But clearly these Judean teachers mixed their commands into the conditions for final salvation from hell. We should not leap to the conclusion, however, that they denied the necessity of faith in Christ. In all likelihood they affirmed it, since they got a good hearing at Antioch—so much so that the congregation there dispatched Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem to settle this issue once and for all.”


In other words, maintaining Biblical standards of holiness as a way of life is not legalism, rather, legalism is an insistence on certain behaviors to accomplish salvation. I have never heard any leader, or for that matter, pastor in the SBC who has said one must abstain from alcohol in order to be saved. Such derogatory, devisive and erroneous labeling of legalism on those who uphold the biblical standard of holiness displays either an ignorance of legalism or a lack of intellectual honesty.