The term legalism is defined as striving to gain the approbation (attention or approval) of God, for salvation, by human good works. Legalism is the trend of mankind’s sin nature that makes futile attempts through human efforts to earn salvation, spirituality, or the approbation of God by some system of strict conformity to a code of conduct, ethics, religion, works, or morality, usually added on by religion in general or by leaders of religions.
Legalism is common to all religion and the Occult. Legalism promotes self-righteousness – the deception of pride and ego-arrogance hypocrisy. Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Legalism is perhaps satan’s most successful strategy to keep man from seeing God’s grace. Legalism is pseudo-spirituality. It is satan’s counterfeit to the true filling of the Spirit. Legalism is motivated by arrogance. Legalism is human viewpoint which is contrary to divine viewpoint.
Legalism confuses morality with spirituality which results in the production of sin, human good, and evil.
Think about this: If we could be good enough to go to heaven, then Christ did not need to go to the cross, and He died in vain. Salvation is provided by God (John 3:15-18&36; Romans 5:8; Ephesians 2:8,9).