Sin, Sanctification, and legalism: The Inversion of Christianity

There are those Christians who wish to go about imposing a greater burden on the rest of us than what is necessary; despite that Christianity is a gospel of freedom (James 1:25). I call them legalists. They impose rules and regulations that have the appearance of wisdom (Col. 2:23) but are nevertheless superfluous and ultimately harmful (Gal. 2:3-4/Col. 2:17-3:3). They impose rules such as "Do not taste this, do not drink that, do not even touch that". The first ever Church counsel was formed to deal with this specific issue (Acts 15:1-29) but still we face legalists today.

Meanwhile the Bible makes it clear about the sins that will actually keep us from Heaven. Paul warns Christians in 1 Cor. 6:9-10 that we should not fool ourselves, people going to Church, the ones saying the prayers, who commit the sins on his subsequent list will not inherit the kingdom of God. Don't fool yourselves, don't pervert the undeserved kindness of our Lord, don't pervert grace, don't be fooled into thinking you can have two masters (Luke 16:13), or that fresh water and salt water can flow from the same cistern (James 3:11), they cannot. Don't be fooled into thinking that the old nature does not have to be crucified (Romans 6:5-7), or that you need not put an a new self (Eph. 4:22-24), or that you can love Christ without obeying Him (John 14:15). You can be going to Church calling "Lord, Lord" until your heart is content, but you still are disqualified on Judgment Day (Matt. 7:21)

I am primarily offended at the inversion of these two pillars. Christians today will not only excuse their wretched sin because of their misinterpretation of grace, but they will actually ostracize those who do not obey the invented rules.

"Yes yes, I perform half the sins Paul says will keep Christians out of Heaven, but I know that grace has me, after all I feel the tingles in my spine during my favorite worship song. What is God if He's not the tingles? But you, oh you, you broke that rules that I made up, and I'm terribly sorry but that means you'll be the subject of prayer meetings, yes there's something terribly wrong with you, but not me."