Quote:
Originally Posted by Pliny
How many times have conservatives been castigated as being “legalists”?
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Not every conservative is a legalist.
Legalism is loosely defined as follows (we Apostolics might want to expand a bit on what it means to repent and have faith, but this is generally a decent definition):
Legalism (or nomism), in Christian theology, is the act of putting the Law of Moses above gospel by establishing requirements for salvation beyond repentance and faith in Jesus Christ and reducing the broad, inclusive, and general precepts of the Bible to narrow and rigid moral codes.
For example, those who believe that
Deuteronomy 22:5 applies to pants.
According to their interpretation, if a woman wears pants, she's committing an abomination. An abomination is no joke. She might as well have gone out and committed sodomy! So, a woman can be saved in a service and go home and put on a pair of pants to go to the store and... BAM... she's lost. Or at best, in danger of losing her soul. She's committing abomination.
An abomination is a serious thing. It is something that can provoke the wrath of God in an instant. Thus, if one properly applies
Deuteronomy 22:5 to pants... a woman really doesn't have time to pray, find her convictions, search it out, seek the Lord, etc. to conform to the a standard. It's a direct command concerning a detestable thing. Since it is an abomination (according to those who apply Deut to pants), it demands IMMEDIATE conformity. Or... we trivialize what an abomination truly is. The Law is not designed to bring life. It's like a fly swatter designed to immediately destroy the unrepentant offender. When one reads from the Law of Moses, it's like charging a shot gun. We should hear, "SHUCK-CHUCK!", because the gun is now charged and loaded.
It's serious business to say that something is an abomination to God... and that we are still under the Law concerning that abomination. To just throw it out there... and let people just "adjust" out of their abomination... trivializes how serious an abomination truly is.
What I see is an inconsistency. Churches will declare that pants on a woman is an abomination... but act like it is a matter of spiritual discipline she has time to grow into. That's inconsistent. An abomination demands repentance, immediate condemnation and immediate repentance.
So, we (in our fellowship) see the text of
Deuteronomy 22:5 as actually speaking to a more serious perversion... not just an article of women's attire. And we embrace the Christian discipline of modesty, encouraging skirts and dresses, but allowing women to follow the Spirit as the Spirit guides them into all truth. Some will aspire to greater modesty than others. But immodesty should not be named among women professing to know the Lord. There is grace. There is patience. There is time for teaching, learning, and personal convictions to be discovered. There is time for modest saints to model and serve as examples to learn from. Modesty is a Christian discipline that is practiced devotionally as one seeks to please the Lord. So we see pants as a modesty issue. Not an abomination. And being a modesty issue, we ask that if any woman wears pants or leggings, that she wear a loose long top that covers the hips and perhaps her thighs.