“What is moralism and why is it wrong to preach moralism? Are we not supposed to call people to live morally?” One person raised these questions at a recent preaching cohort. Our sermons can degenerate into religious moralism if we fail to keep Christ and the cross in view as we preach on the demands of the Bible. Since God’s holy standards are clear, how can we avoid preaching moralism?

 

One of the academic papers presented at the Evangelical Homiletics Society covered this subject(David Giese, “Ensuring Evangelical Exposition is Not Betrayed by Moralistic Application: Toward an Evangelical Theology and Praxis of Sermon Application”). Giese defined moralism as preaching moral applications divorced from the power of God. We reduce the meaning of the text to moral self-improvement. Preaching degenerates into “self-salvation” and “self-help.” Self-salvation moralism “harms the meaning of the gospel” while self-help moralism “harms the meaning of the text.” Moralism turns our applications into preaching “work out your salvation” without pointing to God’s necessary working in us “both to will and to work.” (Phil. 2:12)

Giese identifies three uses of application. 1) The application demonstrates the necessity of God’s protective commands. It is like telling a fish to stay in the bowl or a train to stay on the tracks. This kind of application never gets beyond moralism. 2) The application drives people to Christ by exposing sin. It is like telling a fish outside the bowl to swim or a train off its tracks to move. People can’t obey so we show them how much they need Christ to obey. 3) The application shows people how Christ will enable them to obey. The Spirit will empower them to do what God demands. It is like telling a fish inside the bowl to swim or a train on the tracks to move. The second and third uses of application avoid moralism by emphasizing God’s enabling grace to do what God demands.

 

God’s enabling grace is central to the Gospel. The gospel is good news but, as has been said, too often our preaching sounds like bad news to the listener because we do not bring in God’s enabling grace. We end up preaching moralism whenever we immerse ourselves completely in a single passage without the greater context of the whole Bible.

Not that long ago, I was preaching through Luke and came to the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37).  Jesus tells a powerful story of God’s demand that we show compassion to others in spite of their moral and ethnic backgrounds. Jesus concludes by saying, “Go and do the same.” Here is a divine demand. God calls us to do something beyond our capacity. God calls us to care for someone outside of our normal circles. If I stay in the text without putting the story in the context of God’s enabling grace found in the rest of Scripture, I will end up moralizing. The sermon becomes a self-help sermon apart from the cross of Christ that changes our hearts to care.

 

We must frame the little picture of God’s holy demands in light of the big picture of God’s enabling grace to avoid religious moralism.