Let the Church Be the Church!

If the church is not the church as God intends her to be, no amount of success or popularity will fill the hungry soul. It is time to let the church be the church. So writes Dr. Rick Shrader, pastor of Metro Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri. In this article Dr. Shrader helps us answer our critics and challenges us to maintain purity and holiness in our churches. Fundamentalists have often been called legalists. The problem today is that the word “legalist” has been used so often to mean anyone who has rules of conduct that this has become its accepted meaning.1 But just because someone has said something repeatedly does not make it truthful.

What Became of Personal Separation?

1 John 2:15–17 “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the Iust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”

The Handy Slogan-Word Legalism

If ye love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15). If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15). But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless (Matt. 12:7). It may be a common observation that it is easier to corrupt a congregation than it is to edify it. To build it up in faith and conviction seems to be the result of years of instruction and agony.

What is Legalism?

Introduction This article is not really a book review. But it is a response to a very important issue raised by Charles Swindoll in his book Grace Awakening. While there are many helpful truths in the book, there are also several problems – one of which is his understanding of legalism. Because it is wrong and colors his thinking, it affects many of the other things on which he comments. A Definition of “Legalism” Swindoll’s book is a sustained attack on “legalism,” yet the term is not defined until page 81.