by Elder Peter Lim

In my last article, I briefly explained the difference between legalism and standards. There were some statements in that article that I felt would be more clearly understood with an example. Today’s article will make no sense unless you have first read that article. Assuming that you’ve read it, let’s move on to the example.

Clothing is a good example of applying legalism or standards in the life of a church. Every church has a dress code. Even the ones who say that they don’t have a dress code have some standard of a dress code. If a man walked into church service with no shirt on, wouldn’t he be asked to put a shirt on so that he would not be distracting to other people? Maybe not, you say? What if it was a woman? Of course they would. So every church has a standard that people be clothed in a particular way. Is this church being legalistic? No, they are simply making the judgment that people ought to wear shirts. There is no verse in the Bible to support this but it is derived from passages that speak of not causing others to stumble, considering one another more important than ourselves, etc.

Each person also has an opinion of how people ought to dress to church. The more conservative ones may even think it to be inappropriate to wear anything less than the “Sunday Best” coat and ties for men and flowery dresses for women. Others in places such as Hawaii and other tropical climates may think that it would be inappropriate to wear suits but rather that people ought to wear shorts and aloha shirts. It’s also interesting to note that sometimes people who would advocate having no dress code for the “normal people” shamelessly endorse a double standard when it comes to how clergy ought to dress.

The leaders also have an idea of what the dress code should be. The difference is, the leaders set the pace for the rest of the church in terms of how the church ought to be represented in their community. They have the responsibility of determining the level of appropriateness of dress. It may not be clearly communicated to the congregation what that level is. If the leaders come up with some sort of a written policy, it may be construed by some to be legalistic.

If a member disagrees what that level should be, how should he deal with this conflict? The Godly man would recall Scripture which reminds him that he is to obey the leaders and let them lead with joy. He wouldn’t make a big deal of his disagreement and try to subvert the leaders’ authority by spreading his poison to other people by “sharing” with them. In fact, a Godly man would halt any such talk if he hears them from others although he may also disagree with the leaders. He does this because he is more concerned with the unity of the body and obedience to Scripture than the furtherance of his own agenda. The assumption here of course is that the leaders have developed such a trust and love of the congregation that they ought to be able to overlook minor disagreements with the leadership.

Now let’s take this example and relate it to other “gray area” topics such as smoking, drinking, gambling, certain kinds of entertainment, etc. While each of these will definitely lead to sin in excess, the true danger of them will actually be felt and experienced long before you get to the “definite sin” stage. This is because sin engages the heart first before anyone (even oneself) can see it. We can see some indications of this when we start justifying our actions by reasoning that there’s no chapter and verse of an explicit prohibition against it instead of considering whether this is truly the best use of one’s time and money in order to maximize God’s glory. Another indicator is when a friend expresses concern about it and we start getting defensive and offended rather than being thankful for their concern. That’s why in the church, we leaders endeavor to stay far away from the “sin cliff” and set standards that are helpful and healthy for the members, and not because we are so concerned with imposing our own standards upon the members. This sometimes presents a dilemma for some members because it seems like the leaders are elevating their own standards into a degree of legalism and making those with “lower” standards feel bad. They misunderstand the leaders’ intentions and lose their focus and turn it into an issue about themselves instead of the bigger picture that the leaders have the responsibility of maintaining for the overall witness of the local church.

The topic of gray issues is clearly not a simple matter that can be settled by precisely defining which activities are sinful and which are not. Such simple thinking reveals the immaturity of one’s thinking. Let’s wrap it up today by concluding that we are to pursue excellence and maturity in our thinking instead of testing how close we can get to the sin border without sinning.

1 Cor. 14:20
Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature.