45 Bible Verses about Legalism

whereas Israel who did aim at the law of righteousness have failed to reach that law. And why? Simply because Israel has relied not on faith but on what they could do. They have stumbled over the stone that makes men stumble ??33 as it is written, Here I lay a stone in Sion that will make men stumble, even a rock to trip them up; but he who believes in Him will never be disappointed.

for no person will be acquitted in his sight on the score of obedience to law. What the Law imparts is the consciousness of sin.

Whereas a curse rests on all who rely upon obedience to the Law; for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not hold by all that is written in the book of the law, to perform it. And because no one is justified on the score of the Law before God (plainly, the just shall live by faith, ??12 and the Law is not based on faith: no, he who performs these things shall live by them),

but since we know a man is justified simply by faith in Jesus Christ and not by doing what the Law commands, we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus so as to get justified by faith in Christ and not by doing what the Law commands ??for by doing what the Law commands no person shall be justified.

Woe to you, you impious scribes and Pharisees! you shut the Realm of heaven in men's faces; you neither enter yourselves, nor will you let those enter who are on the point of entering.

for no person will be acquitted in his sight on the score of obedience to law. What the Law imparts is the consciousness of sin. But now we have a righteousness of God disclosed apart from law altogether; it is attested by the Law and the prophets, but it is a righteousness of God which comes by believing in Jesus Christ. And it is meant for all who have faith. No distinctions are drawn.read more.
All have sinned, all come short of the glory of God, but they are justified for nothing by his grace through the ransom provided in Christ Jesus,

indeed I count anything a loss, compared to the supreme value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have lost everything (I count it all the veriest refuse) in order to gain Christ and be found at death in him, possessing no legal righteousness of my own but the righteousness of faith in Christ, the divine righteousness that rests on faith.

Though I could rely on outward privilege, if I chose. Whoever thinks he can rely on that, I can outdo him. I was circumcised on the eighth day after birth; I belonged to the race of Israel, to the tribe of Benjamin; I was the Hebrew son of Hebrew parents, a Pharisee as regards the Law, in point of ardour a persecutor of the church, immaculate by the standard of legal righteousness.

and how I outstripped many of my own age and race in my special ardour for the ancestral traditions of my house.

Woe to you, you impious scribes and Pharisees! you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and omit the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness; these latter you ought to have practised ??without omit ting the former.

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Now it so chanced that a priest was going down the same road, but on seeing him he went past on the opposite side. So did a Levite who came to the spot; he looked at him but passed on the opposite side.

As for this mob, with its ignorance of the Law ??it is accursed!"

The Pharisee stood up and prayed by himself as follows; 'I thank thee, O God, I am not like the rest of men, thieves, rogues, and immoral, or even like yon taxgatherer. Twice a week I fast; on all my income I pay tithes.'

Take care not to practise your charity before men in order to be noticed; otherwise you get no reward from your Father in heaven. No, When you give alms, make no flourish of trumpets like the hypocrites in the synagogues and the streets, so as to win applause from men; I tell you truly, they do get their reward.

Besides, all they do is done to catch the notice of men; they make their phylacteries broad, they wear large tassels, they are fond of the best places at banquets and the front seats in the synagogues; they like to be saluted in the marketplaces and to be called 'rabbi' by men.

So he told them, "You are the people who get men to think you are good, but God knows what your hearts are! What is lofty in the view of man is loathsome in the eyes of God.

They would not surrender to the righteousness of God, because they were ignorant of his righteousness and therefore essayed to set up a righteousness of their own.

He said to them, "Isaiah made a grand prophecy about you hypocrites ??as it is written, This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me:

vain is their worship of me, for the doctrines they teach are but human precepts. You drop what God commands and hold to human tradition.

Woe to you, you irreligious scribes and Pharisees! you are like tombs white-washed; they look comely on the outside, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all manner of impurity. So to men you seem just, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

He replied, "And why do you transgress the command of God with your traditions? God enjoined, Honour your father and mother, and, He who curses his father or mother is to suffer death. But you say, whoever tells his father or mother, 'This money might have been at your service but it is dedicated to God,'read more.
need not honour his father or mother. So you have repealed the law of God to suit your own tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah made a grand prophecy about you when he said, This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me: vain is their worship of me, for the doctrines they teach are but human precepts."

Yes, forsooth," he added, "you set aside what God commands, so as to maintain your own tradition. Thus, Moses said, Honour your father and mother, and, He who curses his father or mother is to suffer death. But you say that if a man tells his father or mother, 'This money might have been at your service, but it is Korban' (that is, dedicated to God),read more.
he is exempt, so you hold, from doing anything for his father or mother. That is repealing the word of God in the interests of the tradition which you keep up. And you do many things like that."

Woe to you, you irreligious scribes and Pharisees! you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are filled with your rapacity and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! first clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside may be clean as well.

Did not Moses give you the Law? ??and yet none of you honestly obeys the Law. Else, why do you want to kill me?"

Then said some of the Pharisees, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the sabbath"; others said, "How can a sinner perform such Signs?" They were divided on this.

Jesus said to them, "See and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees."

So he cautioned them, "See and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod."

Then they realized that what he told them to beware of was not leaven but the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

You observe days and months and festal seasons and years! Why, you make me afraid I may have spent my labour on you for nothing!

Here, listen to Paul! I tell you, if you get circumcised, Christ will be no use to you. I insist on this again to everyone who gets circumcised, that he is obliged to carry out the whole of the Law. You are for justification by the Law? Then you are done with Christ, you have deserted grace,

Well now, why are you trying to impose a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we ourselves could bear?

For whoever obeys the whole of the Law and only makes a single slip, is guilty of everything.

No, it is by the grace of the Lord Jesus that we believe and are saved, in the same way as they are."

Do not imagine I have come to destroy the Law or the prophets; I have not come to destroy but to fulfil.

Christ ransomed us from the curse of the Law by becoming accursed for us (for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a gibbet),

Tell me, you who are keen to be under the Law, will you not listen to the Law? Surely it is written in the Law that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave-woman and one by the free-woman; but while the son of the slave-woman was born by the flesh, the son of the free-woman was born by the promise.read more.
Now this is an allegory. The women are two covenants. One comes from mount Sinai, bearing children for servitude; that is Hagar, for mount Sinai is away in Arabia. She corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for the latter is in servitude with her children. But the Jerusalem on high is free, and she is 'our' mother. For it is written, Rejoice, O thou barren who bearest not, break into joy, thou who travailest not; for the children of the desolate woman are far more than of the married. Now you are the children of the Promise, brothers, like Isaac; but just as in the old days the son born by the flesh persecuted the son born by the Spirit, so it is still to-day. However, what does the scripture say? Put away the slave-woman and her son, for the son of the slave-woman shall not be heir along with the son of the free-woman. Hence we are children of no slave-woman, my brothers, but of the free-woman,

For it is by grace you have been saved, as you had faith; it is not your doing but God's gift, not the outcome of what you have done ??lest anyone should pride himself on that;

The Pharisees said to him, "Look at what they are doing on the sabbath! That is not allowed."

Some of the Pharisees said, "Why are you doing what is not allowed on the sabbath?"

But the president of the synagogue was annoyed at Jesus healing on the sabbath, and he said to the crowd, "There are six days for work to be done; come during them to get healed, instead of on the sabbath."

and he has further qualified me to be the minister of a new covenant ??a covenant not of written law but of spirit; for the written law kills but the Spirit makes alive.

I know, I am certain in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is in itself unclean; only, anything is unclean for a man who considers it unclean.

"I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel in all the strictness of our ancestral Law, ardent for God as you all are to-day.

One of the jurists said to him, "Teacher, when you say this you are insulting us as well."