That is a great quote that I heard recently. The Scriptures give us an amazing amount of freedom in choices we make. Yet there are always professional legalists lurking in the background ready to pounce on those who make choices they would not make. These are not the "innocent" who will be hurt by our lifestyle decisions but legalists who are threatened by our liberty and who believe that others should make the choices they make - restrictive ones which is the nature of legalism.
The funny thing is that their legalism is not a threat to our liberty! Those who live in freedom are not threatened by legalism: Indeed they find it repulsive and sad.
In the early days of my tenure as leader of ReachGlobal we changed some policies that had a legalistic cast to them. Everyone cheered me on - except a few legalists who were deeply threatened by the change. Even though we had not asked them to change their individual convictions the fact that we were no longer legislating those convictions on everyone was a threat to them. Some actually left the organization because of it. Legalists like to impose their view on others. Those who live in freedom give others the choice to make decisions that Scripture leaves grey and up to individual conscience.
Why? Because Christian freedom is always a threat to legalism. It questions the premises of rules, regulations, expectations, that some like to place around themselves and others. Christian freedom means we have choices to make and many legalists don't like either that freedom or responsibility. The freedom Jesus lived in was highly irritating to the Pharisees whose rules He broke with regularity.
I chooses to live on the side of Christian freedom. It may be a threat to my fellow legalists but their legalism is never a threat to my freedom. In fact it reminds me often of the joy of freedom.
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