THE PARADOX OF MORALISM

"O Lord Jesus, I come unto Thee, and I pray Thee that these burdens and this straitness of my rule and religion may be a full recompense for all my sins."

Here is the prayer of the moralist. Martin Luther prayed these words regularly when he was a non-Christian (Luther, Galatians, 82). He was obsessed with being good before he understood the good news about his badness. Once he grasped the gospel, he renounced his goodness to rejoice in Christ's goodness. The gospel transformed his life and rescued him from moralism.

WHAT IS MORALISM?

Moralism teaches that our good works earn God's favor. What we do that is good pays for what we have done that is bad. Moralism expresses religion's path to God. Good people will one day stand before God, and the good they do will outweigh the bad they have done, claims the moralist.

Sadly, many preach moralism after starting well with grace. The more we push morality, the less we preach grace because moralism nullifies grace. Paul dealt with moralism as he witnessed Peter turn back to follow Jewish religious rules about eating and drinking. Paul writes, "For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor" (Gal. 2:18).

The clause "what I once destroyed" (ἃ κατέλυσα) comes first in the sentence for emphasis. The verb means to dismantle a building or repeal a law (BAGD, 414). The condition (εἰ) is a simple condition, not a contrary to fact condition, so Paul is referring to what actually happened, which he explained in verse 16. Paul had trusted in the law to make himself good enough for God. When Paul turned to Christ, he repealed the law as a way to be right with God. He dismantled law righteousness to accept Christ's righteousness.

By insisting that Christians obey the law, Paul would now be rebuilding (οἰκοδομῶ) the law that he once dismantled. If that is the case, then he proves himself to be a transgressor of the law. The present tense verb (συνιστάνω) used with the reflexive pronoun "myself" (ἐμαυτὸν) means to show or represent one's self as a transgressor (R&R, Linguistic Key, 506). Paul uses the word "transgressor" (παραβάτην) because the term connotes a violator of the true intent of the whole law more than any single statute in the law (Burton, Galatians, 131). If he builds up what he once dismantled, then, either way, he is a transgressor. He either transgressed the law by dismantling it, or he transgresses God's salvific solution by rebuilding it. The one activity negates the other activity (Bruce, Galatians, 142). Law and grace cannot both be right.

PARADOXICAL MORALITY

The paradox of moralism is the better we try to be, the worse we prove to be. The gospel of grace tells me that I become a Christian by renouncing my faith in my goodness to place my faith in Christ's goodness alone. I must accept that I am a sinner to believe in Christ as my Savior. If I return to stressing my moral goodness, I nullify Christ's grace and prove to be a worse sinner than before. There must be no mixing of my goodness with Christ's goodness to earn God's approval. To follow Christ, we must renounce moralism.

The paradox of moralism is the more we preach morality, the less we preach Christ, leading to greater immorality. Moralism creeps into our "culture wars" preaching. In our striving to see righteousness permeate our society, we slide into moralistic preaching implicitly communicating that we can create a moral world without Christ. Slipping into moralism minimizes Christ. The solution to the world's immorality is the goodness of Christ, not the morality of humanity. Unless people give up on their goodness to accept Christ's goodness, there will never be social goodness.

Our culture will never be transformed by preaching moralism. Good works flow from changed hearts. Society is changed by regeneration, not legislation. The gospel is the most transformative power the world has ever seen. Let's preach the gospel, not moralism!