Legalism

The New Testament contains many passages of command and exhortation to live holy lives. When we remove these from the wider context of the already perfect status before God that we possess thought faith in Christ, then we reduce Christian living to a form of legalism quite foreign to the New Testament. The corrective to this is to keep firmly in our minds that the whole of Christian existence is the application of the gospel to every part of our lives. We start with Christ as the new creation for us, and move towards the goal, which is to be made like him in the universal new creation. As in biblical theology, so in Christian living, Christ is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan, Pg. 233