Maybe you can define legalism from both sides of the equation you mentioned above.
Those who base the doctrine of faith saves are legalists as you say, yet legalists also have a doctrine that saves which is works.
One has to be wrong.
Which one?
Both sides are obedient, but to what?
How does qualify and quantity obedience and works?
Those who base the doctrine of faith saves are legalists as you say, yet legalists also have a doctrine that saves which is works.
One has to be wrong.
Which one?
Both sides are obedient, but to what?
How does qualify and quantity obedience and works?
It wasn't the "LAWFULL" things the Jews practiced that got them in trouble. It was the "iniquity", or "Lawlessless" they practiced that cost them the Kingdom. At least according to His Word.
Mat. 23:23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Had they not omitted much of God's instructions and created their own they would have been like Zechariahs.
6 And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.
They would have known Jesus when He came to them like Zechariahs did, just as the Christ Himself promised.
John 14:21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, (Like Abraham and Zechariahs) he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him (Like He did for Abraham and Zechariahs)