When you meet someone new, there are three questions they always ask. “Where do you live?” … “Where did you grow up?” … “What do you do?”

When I answer that last question, people know they’re in trouble. “Well, I’m a pastor. So yes, I’m about to give you the gospel. You ready?” Sometimes it’s over the course of a few months or even a few years, sometimes it’s on a half-hour plane ride to Kauai, but one way or another, they’re going to hear the gospel.

In all of those conversations, I’ve never seen someone get mad or offended, but almost all of them say something like, “Well, that sounds nice, but it’s not for me.” Some of them are a little more honest and add something like, “Well, that sounds nice, but I’m just not ready to give up ________.” I’ve heard dozens of things in that blank. “I like partying too much.” … “I like women too much.” … “I like pakalolo too much.”

Even though they’ve just heard the gospel — that our salvation isn’t dependent on what we do, but on what Christ has already done — they equate Christianity with a list of rules. Why is that?

Forty years ago, Francis Schaeffer wrote a book called True Spirituality and wrote:

Often, after a person is born again and asks, “What should I do next?” he is given a list of things, usually of a limited nature and primarily negative. He is given the idea that if he does not do this series of things (whatever this series of things happens to be in the particular country and location and at the time he happens to live), he will be spiritual.”

People equate Christianity with a list of rules because we’ve taught them to equate Christianity with a list of rules! It’s just that every different church in every different culture has a different list of rules. When my dad was growing up, if you were a Christian it meant that you don’t drink, and you don’t chew, and you don’t go with girls who do. You don’t go see movies. You don’t dance. You don’t listen to rock ‘n’ roll music. When I was growing up, some of that list was still around. In college I visited a church where the preacher made fun of all those rules, but then he gave us his own set of rules. He said, you might be a believer, but you’re not really a disciple unless you care for the poor and the marginalized. Unless you fight against injustice.

Everyone has their own list of rules. Some Christians think you need to go down to the state capitol and hold signs for biblical morality if you want to be a real Christian. Other Christians think you need to stand up for tolerance and love, and stand against hate if you want to be a real Christian. In some churches, if you don’t raise your kids with a certain method, you’re not a real Christian. In other churches, if you don’t speak in tongues, you’re not a real Christian.

The word for all of this is legalism. Legalism is taking a set of rules — whether they come from the Bible or not — and using them as a way to decide who’s in and who’s out. Who we like and who we don’t. What this practice assumes is that we can even keep those rules in our own strength. So legalism is something that’s completely man-centered. It’s a form of righteousness that doesn’t come from a humble dependence on God’s grace. And we all fall into it.

Which is why Paul said to us in Colossians 2:20, “With Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world. So why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations?” The elemental spirits of the world are the elementary things we all pursue. The instinctive needs we all have.

We all have an instinctive need to rely on ourselves and glorify ourselves. Legalism helps us fill that need. But if we’ve put our faith in Christ, then we died to that need. We don’t need to rely on ourselves, we can rely on Christ. We don’t need to glorify ourselves, Christ is glorifying himself in us (which brings glory to us as a byproduct!).

We died to legalism. So why do we keep letting it rule over us?