The tension between law and gospel has been one of the most enduring and heated controversies in Christian history. Paul wrestled with it directly in his letters to the Galatians and Romans, sometimes speaking in the strongest possible terms about the futility of relying on the law. The Reformers returned to the theme with equal urgency, declaring that justification is by faith alone, apart from works of the law. Within Adventism, the 1888 General Conference at Minneapolis reopened the question with fresh intensity, as E.J. Waggoner and A.T. Jones confronted the law-heavy culture of their time with a rediscovery of righteousness by faith.
Yet the debate has often been framed too narrowly — as if the options were only bondage to law on one side or reckless license on the other. In this binary, legalism is portrayed as a childish error to be avoided, while freedom is celebrated as a final and complete maturity. What gets overlooked is that Paul himself does not treat the law as a sheer mistake. He condemns reliance on it for righteousness, but he also dignifies it as a paidagōgos — a household guardian, a custodian, a disciplinary scaffolding appointed until Christ. What looks like bondage alone is, under divine sovereignty, also a passage.
This essay therefore proposes that “legalism” is best understood not simply as an error but as a rite of passage. To say this does not endorse legalism — God does not will self-righteousness — but it does affirm that God providentially uses the law to expose sin, confront self-reliance, and drive the sinner toward grace. In this sense, the law has providence, not approval. The thesis is simple: the law is not a destination, but neither is it wasted. It is a stage to be endured and surpassed, so that the believer may move on to Spirit-formed maturity.
A discussion of this kind requires careful distinctions, lest it sound as though legalism itself were being endorsed.
Law refers to God’s revealed moral will. In the Old Testament this was codified in Torah, but Paul also extends the category to the conscience of Gentiles (Rom. 2:14–15). The law is holy and good (Rom. 7:12), but powerless to justify or give life.
Legalism is the misuse of the law as the ground of covenant standing or acceptance before God. It is not the law itself but a distorted relation to it, where obedience becomes the supposed basis of justification.
Rite of passage describes the transitional crisis in which the law confronts the sinner, defines sin, collapses self-reliance, and presses the soul toward Christ. In this sense, what is often called “legalism” has a providential use without being divinely approved.
Boundary statement: God does not will legalism, but He does will that the law expose sin.
Legalism has providence, not approval; it is a stage overruled by God’s grace, not a method He endorses.
These definitions establish the ground rules. They guard against the charge that to speak of legalism as “rite of passage” is to glorify it. The aim is to show that the law has a divinely appointed role that is transitional, not final — scaffolding, not the finished edifice.
Paul himself embodies the paradox of the law.
In several places Paul speaks of his own experience under the law in starkly negative terms. “All who rely on works of the law are under a curse” (Gal. 3:10). “The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me” (Rom. 7:10). His former zeal for law-righteousness he later calls loss and refuse compared with Christ (Phil. 3:4–9). From this perspective, the law was not a gentle helper but a harsh master, condemning rather than liberating.
Yet in the same breath Paul can speak of the law as a tutor. “The law was our paidagōgos until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). The word does not mean teacher in the modern sense but a household guardian tasked with disciplining children until maturity. Similarly, in Galatians 4 he compares life under the law to the experience of an heir who is, for a time, no better than a slave until the date set by the father. In other letters he uses images of milk versus solid food to capture the idea of provisional stages in growth (1 Cor. 3:1–2; Heb. 5:12–14).
The result is a striking tension. On the one hand, law-righteousness is condemned as curse, bondage, and death. On the other hand, the law is dignified as a God-ordained custodian, appointed until Christ. The same law that kills also tutors. The same law that exposes sin also prepares the way for grace. Paul does not spell this out as a formal “stage theory,” but his metaphors point toward a developmental logic. The law is not salvific and not final, yet it is not wasted either. It is a stage through which the believer must pass on the way to the Spirit.
Paul’s tension between condemnation and pedagogy suggests a developmental framework. The law is not a permanent covenantal basis, but neither is it meaningless. It functions as scaffolding, pressing the believer toward maturity.
Human growth moves from external rules to internalized principles. Children first learn “do this, don’t do that” long before they can grasp the reasons behind such rules. Over time, they internalize wisdom and act freely within the bounds of virtue. To bypass the stage of rules is to remain naïve; to remain under rules forever is to remain stunted. Both the necessity of scaffolding and the danger of immaturity apply equally in spiritual life.
Faith Crisis (Collapse of Self-Reliance): Exposure to the law produces not righteousness but futility. The sinner comes face to face with inability: “the good that I want, I do not do” (Rom. 7:19). This crisis is pivotal. Either it leads to despair and rejection, or it drives the person to faith in Christ.
Spirit Maturity (Internalization): With the coming of the Spirit, the law is written on the heart (Jer. 31:33; Rom. 8:4). Obedience is now relational and joyful, not coerced. This is the transition from being a child under guardianship to being a mature heir in Christ.
What if someone is granted the probationary span but never undergoes this passage? Three dangers emerge:
Infantilism: Remaining morally shallow, guided by impulse rather than principle.
License: Confusing grace with autonomy, treating freedom as self-rule rather than Spirit-rule.
Anomia: Lacking the ability to name sin, leaving grace unintelligible because forgiveness presupposes transgression.
For this reason, the law–faith crisis cannot be optional. In one form or another, God presses every moral agent through the confrontation. We see Biblical precedents for this pattern.
One of the clearest signs that a believer remains in the law stage is a hypercritical posture toward others. When acceptance before God is perceived as performance-based, comparison becomes inevitable. Measuring one’s standing by works fosters judgment of others who appear to fall short. Paul describes this dynamic in Romans 2:1 — “You who pass judgment do the same things.”
By contrast, maturity in the Spirit produces the opposite posture— awareness of a relationship-based, spirit-led journey. When acceptance is grounded in Christ — His finished work, His gift of righteousness — the believer is freed from anxious comparison. Instead of criticism, there is patience; instead of rivalry, there is recognition that others are also on their way through the passage.
This Christ-grounded graciousness is not a natural disposition but the outflow of union with Him. The believer who rests in Christ no longer needs to establish status by judging others. They can accept that different people are at different stages of their passage, because their own standing is secured in Christ.
Thus, a critical spirit is a symptom of law-entrapment, while a Christ-rooted gracious spirit is a sign of Spirit maturity.
The pattern of rite of passage is not confined to Paul’s reflections on the Law. It is embedded in the story of God’s people. Israel was not delivered from Egypt straight into the promised land. They passed through both Egypt and the wilderness — stages of bondage and testing that revealed their need of God and their inability to save themselves. Egypt was the crucible of deliverance; the wilderness was the school of obedience. Both were transitional, neither was final.
Jesus Himself recapitulates this pattern. As Matthew highlights, “Out of Egypt I called my Son” (Matt. 2:15). He too experiences the wilderness, led by the Spirit into a season of forty days and nights of testing (Matt. 4:1–11). Just as Israel was given the Law at Sinai and tested for forty years, so Jesus confronts hunger, temptation, and the question of trust. Unlike Israel, He emerges faithful. His passage through Egypt and the wilderness confirms that these stages are not accidents of history but divine pedagogy, preparing the way for Spirit-filled mission.
In this light, the Law belongs to the same pattern. It is neither the final gift nor an optional detour, but a necessary passage. Egypt, wilderness, and Law all serve the same function: they expose, they test, and they drive the people of God to depend upon His provision. The Spirit is the end; the passage is God’s chosen way.
The Adventist conflict at Minneapolis in 1888 illustrates this dynamic on a communal scale.
E.J. Waggoner and A.T. Jones emphasized justification by faith as a corrective to a movement heavily oriented toward law-keeping. Established leaders such as G.I. Butler and Uriah Smith viewed this message as destabilizing, a threat to doctrinal clarity and denominational unity.
Critics often caricatured the emphasis on faith as naïve, reckless, or unbalanced. Later generations sometimes treated the 1888 crisis as a regrettable lapse into adolescent zeal.
But the controversy can be reframed. Instead of seeing it as immaturity to be mocked, it can be seen as movement adolescence — the necessary transition from law-scaffolding to Spirit-edifice. Just as Paul insists that heirs must pass through guardianship before maturity, so Adventism in 1888 was wrestling with the passage. To scorn the stage is to miss its providence; to stall in it is to entrench immaturity.
Such a reframing naturally provokes objections. Four in particular demand attention.
Reformed “Third Use of the Law”
Objection: The law guides believers even after faith.
Reply: Yes, but guidance comes only after the law has first fulfilled its pedagogical role. The sequence matters: pedagogue → gospel → Spirit → guidance.
New Perspective (Covenantal Nomism)
Objection: “Works of the law” are primarily Jewish boundary markers, not legalistic striving.
Reply: Even if that is granted, Paul still depicts the law as a custodian. Boundary markers may shift the debate, but they do not erase the imagery of transitory guardianship.
Antinomian Concern
Objection: To release believers from law risks moral license.
Reply: The rite-of-passage model culminates not in lawlessness but in Romans 8:4: “the righteous requirement of the law fulfilled in us, who walk according to the Spirit.” The Spirit establishes deeper obedience, not freedom from obligation.
Felix Culpa Worry
Objection: Does this make legalism into a “necessary evil,” glorifying error?
Reply: No. God does not approve of legalism; He overrules it. The stage has providence, not approval. It is not inherently good, but God makes use of it in His pedagogy.
If the law is indeed a rite of passage, then the church must not despise it nor leave believers stranded in it. Instead, pastors and communities should name the stage, guide people through it, and prevent distortions on either side.
Pastors and mentors should learn to recognize when believers are entrapped under the law. Signs include a constant oscillation between guilt and temporary relief, anxiety about one’s standing with God, and a performance-driven spirituality that exhausts rather than enlivens.
By contrast, the fruits of Spirit-formed maturity are assurance rooted in Christ rather than self, obedience flowing from gratitude and joy, and a conscience both tender and clear — able to name sin without collapsing into despair.
Preaching must follow the same sequence Paul outlines: law to expose, gospel to relieve, Spirit to enliven. The law is not to be preached as ladder but as mirror. The gospel must be proclaimed not as license but as rescue. The Spirit must be presented not as optional accessory but as the very fulfillment of God’s moral design. When this cadence is maintained, believers can trace the passage without confusion.
In discipleship, churches must explicitly prepare believers for the collapse of self-reliance. Just as children are reassured that growing pains are normal, so Christians should be told that the experience of futility under the law is not failure but God’s appointed means of pressing them to Christ. Testimonies should be shared that normalize the transition: “I once trusted my performance, but God showed me my need, and led me into freedom in Christ.”
Finally, communities must guard against the two perennial distortions. Lingering under the law stunts assurance and breeds despair. Despising the law dissolves moral boundaries and opens the door to license. Both errors miss the point: the Spirit fulfills what the law demanded, writing it on the heart so that obedience is no longer external compulsion but inward joy.
The law is not wasted, but neither is it final. Paul’s life captures the paradox: what killed him also tutored him; what condemned him also prepared him for Christ. Legalism is not God’s will, yet God overrules it as a stage in His pedagogy. It has providence, not approval.
The Adventist struggle of 1888 illustrates how a whole community can experience this passage corporately — with all the tensions, misunderstandings, and charges of immaturity that accompany such transitions. To freeze in that stage is death. To mock it is folly. But to name it as a passage is to shepherd believers and communities into maturity.
The journey is from Pedagogue to Paraclete: from the external custodian that exposes sin to the indwelling Spirit who fulfills righteousness. The danger is not that believers walk through the scaffolding, but that they camp under it, or tear it down before the edifice is ready. By recognizing the law as rite of passage, the church can honor the wisdom of God’s pedagogy and lead believers onward to Spirit-formed life.
A full treatment of the law–gospel controversy would require engagement with centuries of commentary. Here, only a brief note is needed to show how prevailing interpretations have left the pedagogical dignity of the law underdeveloped, and how this gap has shaped the posture of analysis.
Reformation Traditions
Luther rightly emphasized the usus elenchticus — the “accusatory” function of the law driving the sinner to grace (Institutes, III.19; Heidelberg Disputation). Yet this was largely framed in negative terms: the law condemns but does not teach. As a result, the formative role of law as scaffolding toward maturity received little attention, leaving believers vulnerable to viewing the law only as mirror rather than as passage.
Modern Protestant Exegesis
F.F. Bruce (e.g., The Epistle to the Galatians, 1982) and James D.G. Dunn (Romans, 1988) underscore Paul’s critique of law-righteousness, but they often construe the law primarily as a dead weight or custodian of bondage. The language of paidagōgos in Galatians 3 is interpreted as a symbol of restraint or even oppression, rather than as a providential stage with dignity of its own. This interpretive lens has colored assessments of the law with suspicion more than recognition.
New Perspective on Paul
The work of E.P. Sanders (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 1977) and N.T. Wright (Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 2013) corrected caricatures of “legalism” by stressing covenantal nomism and boundary markers. Yet in doing so, they tended to downplay Paul’s metaphors of guardianship and childhood. The law’s transitional, pedagogical function is acknowledged but not given theological depth as a rite of passage.
Adventist 1888 Memory
Within Adventism, the Minneapolis controversy is often remembered as an embarrassment — either an overreaction to legalism or a failure to embrace righteousness by faith. This historical memory has tended to mock the stage rather than dignify it. The idea that 1888 represented a form of corporate adolescence, a rite of passage in which a movement wrestled toward maturity, remains underdeveloped in Adventist historiography.
Summary
Across traditions, the law has been painted as condemnation, bondage, or boundary marker. Its providential function as passage into Spirit-formed life has been noted but rarely developed into a constructive model. This shortfall has mis-colored the postural assessment of law, leaving believers prone to either entrapment under it or dismissal of it. A rite-of-passage framework recovers the tension in Paul: what condemns also tutors, and what wounds also prepares.
