Legalism and Grace

From ancient Israel, to New Testament Pharisees, to priests and monks in the Medieval Church, to modern day North American Christians – legalism can definitely spread its roots in the church. Legalism can make it seem as though godliness is a super disciplined life. Marci Preheim, our guest this week, felt this way growing up in her strict, fundamentalist church. But after coming back to the faith as a young adult, she began to see how the grace of God in the gospel of Jesus plays a massive role in the believer’s life. This is what this week is all about: how the grace in the gospel can free a person from thinking that they need to do in order to be in.

 

Who’s Our Guest?

Marci Preheim is an author and speaker from Nashville, Tennessee where she lives with her family. God has gifted Marci with the ability to teach the bible in a simple and understandable way. Many who have sat under her teaching will say that her passion for the Lord and His Word is contagious. You can find more about Marci by checking out her blog.

Episode Links

Marci’s book is called GRACE IS FREE: One Woman’s Journey from Fundamentalism to Failure to Faith.

Read It

*Below is an edited transcription of the audio conversation.

With me today is Marci Preheim. Marci is the author of a book called Grace is Free: One Woman’s Journey from Fundamentalism to Failure to Faith. That’s an interesting title. She’s also active in doing different formal ministry events like teaching at women’s conferences, and Bible studies, and so on and so forth. Anyways, it’s great to be chatting with you today, Marci.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Let’s just start with this. How did you meet Jesus, and where are you at now?

I was raised in a very strict fundamentalist church. It was non-denominational but very similar to maybe the Independent Fundamentalist Baptists. From a very early age, our behaviour was tracked to understand whether or not we were saved or not. There were multiple prayers of salvation just to make sure, Bible verse memory from a very early age, all kinds of spiritual activities.

We lived at church. My mother was the women’s ministries director, and my dad was an elder. We were at church three, four times a week. I knew the gospel but also came away with the understanding that you had to fit into a certain mold. I was a girl so I had to look, and dress, and act a certain way. I had to have certain gifts. Certain spiritual gifts were for men, and certain spiritual gifts were for women. That was hard for me because I have this great big personality. It turns out I love theology. I love to study. I love to teach. I love to write – so ironic to me that that’s not really a girl gift.

Also, I’m a sinner. The teenage years were hard for me or hard for my parents. We had a process of sin management at our church where you put forth a façade of good behaviour, and then if you’re a sinner, well, you do that where nobody can see you where you won’t ruin your testimony for Jesus, blah, blah, blah.

Anyways, so I moved to Hollywood at 19 to pursue my dreams of becoming a famous model and actress. Ironically, I met Jesus there through a series of extremely painful circumstances which drove me back to what I knew, back to a fundamentalist church. Just through a series of … which you can read about in the book.

I met Jesus for real. The difference between my salvation prayer at that time was that I wasn’t promising to do better,