At What Age Did You Commit the Unforgivable Sin? I Did at 10. Part One

Bottom line upfront: Before we can figure out what's actually required of us as Christ followers, we have to identify what people told us was required. This week I need you to tell me your legalism story — because next week, you and I are going to build something better together.

My story happened on a Saturday afternoon when there was nothing much to do. My friend Mack invited me to sneak off and commit what I was absolutely certain was an unforgivable sin. So we got on our bikes and pedaled toward one of those houses of sin we'd heard so much about...

The idea was Mack’s, though in fairness, I didn’t object too much. Mack was the grandson of a very famous preacher—a name most of you would recognize—who was still on the radio decades after his death. Where did we go?

We went to a movie theater and we watched Sink the Bismarck! a black-and-white war picture about the British Navy.

That was my great transgression. I remember praying afterward, begging God to forgive me for being such a sinful young man. I was only ten years old, and I genuinely believed I might have crossed a line God couldn't reach across.

Maybe you grew up like I did, in the golden age of church legalism. No dances. No cards. No rock and roll. No movies of any kind. And that was just the beginning.

Pretty quickly, at least for me and my buddies, the Bible became “the book of no.” Anything that seemed fun or adventurous to a kid — somehow the Bible said no to it. This puzzled me, because I was fairly sure most of those horrible, sinful activities didn't even exist in Jesus' day.

I went to a school where you couldn't even show a film using a projector — because projectors came from the movie house, and the movie house was of the devil. We couldn't have a piano because pianos were tangled up with rock'n'roll. Cards? Of the devil, obviously. Try navigating all that as a ten-year-old who's convinced the unforgivable sin is a matinee.

Here's why I'm telling you this now.

Char and I are spending this next week at the beach, and I'm using the time to wrestle with a problem I genuinely cannot solve alone — one that I believe will make the Spiritually Fit Today podcast significantly better. The question is simple to ask and hard to answer:

From a practical standpoint, what is required of us as Christ followers?

Let me be clear about what I'm not asking. I don't want to start an unsolvable argument about works-based versus grace-based salvation. I understand and believe Ephesians 2:8 with everything in me: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” Ephesians 2:8 (NIV).

But here's what I keep bumping into. There are two camps — the legalism camp, and the anything-but-legalism camp. Many of us lived through the first one, got burned by the ridiculous rules and the guilt-by-association, and then watched the pendulum swing so far the other way that grace became a synonym for nothing matters.

Think of it in fitness terms. You can't eat 33 donuts a day and expect a healthy heart. You can't smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and expect healthy lungs. Is that legalism? No. That's just practical reality. So what's the spiritual equivalent? What are the practical realities of a spiritually fit life — the things that aren't rules for rules' sake, but simply how spiritual health works?

My friend Tom Rempel was preaching at our church recently and said something that lit this whole fuse — and yes, I'm taking what he said slightly out of context: “Your behavior reveals your beliefs.”

If that's true — and I think it is — then somewhere between the book of no and anything-goes, there's a real answer to what a Christ follower's life actually requires. And I don't want to guess at it. I want to hear it from you.

For those of you over 50, you carry something the rest of us need. You lived through the legalism era. You watched the pendulum swing. You have decades of scar tissue and wisdom that a 25-year-old simply cannot have. This is exactly the kind of moment where you still matter, because you're the only ones who can answer this from experience.

So here's my ask this week, and it's personal. Email me at arnie.cole@bttb.org and tell me:

When did grace completely disappear and legalism show up in your life? What was the offense, and what did it do to you?

Was it a movie? A dance? A divorce? A tattoo? A question you weren't allowed to ask? Tell me the story. I'll be reading every reply on the beach, and next week we'll take the second step together: figuring out what is required — practically, honestly, and without the guilt trip.

All in, eyes up!

P.S. Your answers this week aren't just for me — they're going to shape where we take the Spiritually Fit Today podcast next. Thanks for your help in building the program!

P.P.S. In fact, if you haven’t listened to the Spiritually Fit Today podcast, this would be a great week to start. Bruce joins me in the studio to discuss exactly what I was talking about above: how false beliefs shape our identity, and how God's truth renews our minds. I hope you’ll join us!