Moralism

Christians read in their Bibles -- you know, the Word of God -- that it is a sin (for instance) to engage in homosexual practices, so they say it is a sin. They read that humans are made in the image of God and murder is a sin, so they say that killing humans in the womb is a sin. They see that sexual relations outside of marriage is sin, so they consider sexual relations outside of marriage to be sin. It's not rocket science. What is, apparently, difficult to figure out is just why we say these kinds of things.

The world would like to argue that we say it because we're haters. Simple. Simple, but wrong. Well, let's not be too hasty. Mostly wrong. Because there are indeed people who say that homosexual behavior is a sin because they are haters. But let's just talk about those who say, "Well, would you look at that? God says it's a sin, so I have to call it that." Not haters.

But why call it sin out loud? I mean, sure, we can think things that the Bible calls sin are actually sin, but why say so? And I think here we run into another problem.

Why do Christians stand firm on issues that Scripture (God's Word) calls sin? Why do we point it out? The problem here, I think, is not merely the world's notions of why. The problem here is that too many Christians don't know why. You see, I think there is a big problem in Christian circles in failing to grasp the very basic idea of the Gospel. We seem to think that our job -- God's job, too, mind you -- is to try to make bad people into good people. Thus, if X is bad, it is our job, our duty, to point out that X is bad so they will stop. I call that "moralism". We're trying to "legislate" (whether we go through legislation or not) other people's morality. "This is bad; stop doing it." And, try as I might, I can't find that in Scripture.

So why should we be standing firm on these kinds of things? It is not because we're trying to reform people. The Bible calls them "dead in sin" (Eph 2:1). There. Go ahead. Reform that. No, that's not the aim. The aim is to point out to dead sinners that they're dead sinners. Only when they've seen this abundantly clear fact from the Bible can they take the absolutely necessary step of getting help. And what help is there for dead sinners? Well, of course, Christ and Him alone. Oh, and we have that to offer! See? Good news!

The way it works right now is that the god of this world has blinded unbelievers. So they're strolling along in their homosexual sin and their fornication and the entire list of other sins, and they're thinking, "I'm not so bad; at least I haven't murdered anyone today." If we say to ourselves, "Well, that is sin, but I'm not going to say anything because we're not trying to make bad people into good people and we're not trying to moralize and we're certainly not trying to irritate people," then they keep walking, happy in their sin. But if we say, "You know, God says that what you're doing is sin," God can use that fact to awaken them to their need for Him and you get the chance to give them the Gospel that faith in Christ can solve that sin problem. And that is why it's not "hate".

We are not in the business of making our world better. That is, making people more moral is not going to solve their sin problem. If we care about people, we will need to, first, show them the problem in order to, second, offer them the solution. If they don't know there's a problem, they won't care about your solution. Moralism is not the aim. Sharing the Gospel is.