Yes, Christianity is “legalistic.” It’s possible to present an overly legalistic/juridical account of Christian salvation. But I find the aversion to any hint of this aspect of soteriology quite perplexing.

St. John plainly states that “everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness” (1 Jn. 3:4). As if that isn’t clear enough, he adds by way of summary, “Sin is lawlessness” (id.). Again, St. James says, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (Js. 2:10).

Hence, sin means transgression of and resistance to law (i.e., the ordinations of divine wisdom toward the good, and rational human participations therein). Consequently, it must impart legal guilt and carry a legal penalty proportionate to such guilt.

Any articulation of the gospel that doesn’t put forth some resolution for this state of guilt, and some remedy for its penalty, is simply inadequate to the data of divine revelation (not to say the moral intuitions of common sense, which bristles at injustice and admires vindication).

Indeed, I’m inclined to say that a “lawless” Christianity can only emerge from a sort of unconscious Marcionism, which resents law (indeed, resents justice) as something offensive to the goodness of God, whereas, in fact, it is constitutive thereof.

The cross (and everything it presupposes and entails) cannot be reduced to legal categories and concepts, but any so-called cross that wholly lacks such categories and concepts is — a false cross.