As governments become increasingly liberal, a paradox emerges: a more liberal society is becoming less free. While liberals disdain moral standards and work to dismantle them, they are legal maximalists, burying society under an avalanche of laws, regulations, orders, procedures, and bureaucratic oversight. Since their predecessors failed to remake the world through revolution, liberals have chosen to do so through legal means, one law or regulation at a time. Hidden within the invisible bureaucracy supporting elected leaders, they tinker with freedoms, slowly transforming a free land into a nation bound by a legal straitjacket. The legal code has grown so massive that no one can keep abreast of it, fueling the explosion of the legal profession to handle the intricacies and frequent violations of these laws. Liberalism is stifling the nation, and legalism is its weapon. In contrast, God commands humanity to follow only ten principles of living, the Ten Commandments. Compared to life under human liberalism, living under God's revealed way of life is liberating.

In Matthew 5:20, Jesus declares that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. The key to understanding the leaven of the Pharisees lies not in their zeal for keeping the law, but in their zeal for finding loopholes to twist it for their own ends. Their approach was akin to brinkmanship or marginalism, always testing how close they could get to the edge without crossing over. This legalistic behavior mirrors a morbid curiosity about boundaries, focusing on the negative rather than the vast positive choices available within God's law. The spirits of legalism and lawlessness are twin siblings, both fixated on boundaries rather than the freedom to do good within them. Legalism, as practiced by the scribes and Pharisees, failed to move from external observance to internal transformation. Their righteousness was driven by self-interest, motivated by anticipation of reward or fear of punishment, rather than a deep, internal desire to express love through God's law. Jesus calls us to rise above this, developing an internally motivated, outgoing righteous character that surpasses the superficial righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.

Legalism represents a dangerous ditch on the right side of the narrow road to salvation. It emphasizes an extreme focus on abiding by every minute detail of the law, which is not inherently wrong, as God desires obedience to His laws. However, a legalistic person, much like the Pharisees, becomes so preoccupied with the specifics of the law that they neglect the greater principles of faith, justice, and mercy that matter most to God. They live in constant fear of breaking the law, seeing sin in every action and thought, and build rigid legal walls around their lives to avoid any possibility of transgression. These walls often consist of man-made ordinances, such as the Pharisees' burdensome regulations about what could be carried on the Sabbath, which serve no true spiritual purpose but instead create unnecessary hardship. This legalistic mindset frequently extends to family and friends, imposing suffocating burdens on them by expecting adherence to the same strict, self-imposed rules. Such an approach makes Christianity feel restrictive and binding, forgetting that the letter of the law kills, while the Spirit gives life. Christ confronted this issue directly with the Pharisees, denouncing their hypocrisy for focusing on trivial ordinances while disregarding justice, mercy, and faith—core elements of a relationship with God and others. Legalism can lead to self-righteousness, where a person establishes their own standard of righteousness above God's, becoming puffed up with vanity over their knowledge and precision in law-keeping. It may even result in a tally-sheet mentality, where one believes their accumulated righteous deeds will outweigh their sins, obligating God to accept them. This path ultimately distracts from the true purpose of God's law and the upward climb to His Kingdom.