Am I a Moralist?

A bizarre figure makes his way back into civilization from his time in the wilderness. You’ve heard rumors about him, that he’s been living alone in the desert, covering himself in animal skins to ward off the cool of night and eating bugs to survive. Some people even say he was hearing from God in the wilderness. Since making his way back into civilization, everyone’s been flocking to him – the mysterious man with words as bold as his sun-drenched skin.

He spends his time crying out to the crowds of people, dunking willing men and women in the river in a ritual he calls ‘baptism.’ Most of his content (which some claim to be prophetic) surrounds a man who would come after him. He claims that it’s his mission to make a path for him, and the ritual baptisms are for the purpose of ‘repentance’ – men and women indicating their desire to walk a straight path in preparation for ‘the way of the Lord.’

On one occasion, the religious leaders join the flocking crowds to see what this son of a high priest was going on about. Upon seeing them, this man who had come to be known as John the Baptizer turned to them and said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance… Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

The crowd responded with an appropriate question: “what then shall we do?”

///

If I may interject, I’ve always been uncomfortable with John’s reply to this question. I expect a similar response that Peter provided in Acts 2:38 – “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins…” Or Paul and Silas’s reply to the jailer in Acts 16:31 – “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…” In short, I expect John to give some iteration of the gospel.

And yet, this is how John replies to the crowd in Luke 3: “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” And to the tax collectors: “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” And to the soldiers: “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

Is John a moralist? In other words, did he teach the values of moralism?

This is where we come to an important distinction. People often conflate morality and moralism. Morality is a behavior, whereas moralism is a belief. To put it a different way, morality is what a person practices as an outflow of what they believe; moralism is what a person believes based on what they practice. Here it is in visual form:

The outward appearance for either may be the same—after all, both are doing that which is externally moral—but the difference between the two couldn’t be more stark. Commentator Robert H. Stein helps us understand the distinction in his response to John’s remarks to the crowd: “In [these] verses we find practical examples of the kind of fruit that is in keeping with true repentance.”[1]

John wasn’t explaining to the crowds the way to earn God’s favor—that would be moralism. He called them to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” Therefore, the person who had genuinely repented would be the kind of guy or gal who shares his clothing and food. A reformed tax collector wouldn’t gouge his own people. And a changed soldier would live in contentment. These are the practices of a reformed belief system; it’s evidence of genuine repentance, not good works that attempt to justify oneself.

This difference has vast implications in discipleship. For the sake of example, let’s put it in the context of counseling. When a man struggling with sin comes in for help, the counselor must address the counselee’s system of belief in order to affect his practice. He must first be shown (if he’s not already convinced) that the things he’s doing are displeasing to the Lord and require repentance. Thankfully, forgiveness is readily granted at the foot of the cross—the very location that serves as the pivot-point of genuine repentance. A person must walk to the cross in repentance, and then from the cross in faithful obedience. Christ’s Word outlines what it means to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which [he has] been called” (Eph 4:1). In other words, from that point, Jesus outlines the life of morality for His glory.

This point is often missed in the baptism explanation found in Romans 6:

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. – Romans 6:1-4, emphasis added

The passage opens with an appeal to live righteously, pointing to the imagery that the Christian’s baptism represents. But the point that’s often overlooked is that the person is raised to “walk in newness of life,” similar to the charge found in Ephesians 2:10. What a person does matters, but how their works are affected makes all the difference.

When a counselor or counselee inordinately fixates on the practice without addressing the belief (i.e., there is no repentance, but an attempt at redressing behavior devoid of heart-change), then any modification will be short lived, since the source of behavior—the belief—has been left untouched. Or even worse: if a change in behavior is sold as a way to affect belief/standing (e.g., “I can be right with God if I do this,” or “this will make me a good person”), this will lead to further disorder. Both methods prove to be faithful disciples of moralism.

But there’s another insidious way to err, and it relates back to the reason I get uncomfortable with John’s reply in Luke 3. In certain well-meaning circles, there is a deemphasizing of (or even downright hostility towards) morality. As far as I can tell, this is caused by an overreaction to the trappings of moralism. In an overzealous attempt to prevent men and women from becoming moralists, we avoid discussing the “fruit of repentance” that John highlights. Are you an awful husband? Believe in the gospel and be on your way! Are you a compulsive liar? Believe in the gospel and be on your way!

This flies in the face of Jesus’s own teaching. The famed sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7 contains moral edict, after moral edict, after moral edict. Only in His conclusion does Jesus ground his teaching in an altered system of belief, compelling his listeners to build upon Him and not anything else. Jesus wasn’t afraid of morality, and He was vicious towards moralism (c.f., Luke 18:9-14). Real change is rooted in gospel-centered repentance, followed by “bearing fruits in keeping with repentance.”

///

Finally, the man that John the baptizer had been endlessly talking about came to one of his baptism sessions. Fixing his eyes on him, John declared to the crowd, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” The man, this ‘Lamb of God,’ then got into the water and was baptized by John. But when he came up from the water, there was a figure unlike any I’d ever seen descending on him, and a thunderous voice from a parted sky seemed to say, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Could this be the Messiah?