The name of Tullian Tchividjian may be faintly familiar to some of you; if so, it’s most likely for his high-profile moral failure in ministry over a decade ago—he resigned as senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale in 2015 after admitting to an extramarital affair; he’s now known to have had at least one other affair before that one. Up until that point, he’d largely been a golden boy—charismatic pastor, successful writer, and Billy Graham’s grandson—and while I must confess to an unreasoning prejudice against that category of person, he did some good stuff. In particular, I go back to an essay he wrote in 2013 titled “Church, We Have a Problem” in which he made a striking observation:
Spend any time in the American church, and you’ll hear legalism and lawlessness presented as two ditches on either side of the Gospel that we must avoid. Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law or rules, and lawlessness when you focus too much on grace. . . .
It is more theologically accurate to say that the one primary enemy of the Gospel—legalism—comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (you could call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (you could call this “back-door legalism”). . . . Either way, you’re still trying to save yourself—which means both are legalistic, because both are self-salvation projects.
Tchividjian focused his application on the importance of preaching grace, but I value his comments most for what they show us about the world: the world wants us all to be legalists, and doesn’t much care which kind. It wants us to be conformists. Some times and cultures favor “keep the rules” conformists, others favor “break the rules” conformists, but what really matters either way aren’t the obvious rules being kept or broken. What matters is the deeper set you aren’t allowed to question.