Peter Mead suggests that a spirit of legalism manifest itself in a number of ways:

1. Negative attitude toward pleasing God – it is duty rather than delight (I feel like a slave not a son)
2. Competitive attitude toward others – they don’t live up to my standard (biting and devouring one another)
3. Prideful attitude towards self – it may be self-despising at times when I fail, but it is a self-evaluation that registers somewhere on the pride scale.
4. Distracted focus of the heart – me and law and others, more than Christ Himself.
5. Corrupted view of love relationship – I must obey in order to be loved, rather than I lovingly obey because I am loved.
6. Broken representation of the Trinity – I obey to merit love, so I shatter the beauty that I am called to represent, of a Son lovingly obeying His Father in a loving response to love.
7. Selective distaste for sin – I will express my dislike of sins that bother me (i.e. those that are “worse” than mine, or that I never struggle with), but I seem to harbour and nourish other sins (private, secret, “sanctified” gossip, or talk that tears down, or pride, or self-righteousness, or whatever).
8. Disproportionate conversation – I have much more to say about rules, standards, laws and evaluation of others than I have to say about the wonder of Christ. Get me going on issues of sin and I wax eloquent, but raise the beauty of Christ and I don’t have much to say.
9. Embittered personality – I reflect an inner tension, sourness, anger or negativity, rather than an increasingly effortless manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit.
10. Restricted vulnerability – I may offer some token statements of my own failure and weaknesses, but I am reticent to reveal too much of my inner self.