Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
Moral scrupulosity for the sake of moral scrupulosity is one of the hardest things for a believer bound-up in legalism to put aside; yet it must be put aside if real life in Christ is to be realized. Our tendency to try to accomplish our goals through “playing by the rules” is universal, at least in those who do not have the seared conscience of a Sociopath. The attempt to attain to righteousness through moral effort was not only the heart and soul of the Judaism of Christ’s time, but of virtually every other world religion, both then and now. This effort is inextricably bound up in the instinct of fallen men and woman to find a self-centered solution to the problem of intrinsic human evil.
The message at the core of Biblical Christianity is twofold; that human beings will never be able to achieve on their own the perfect righteousness necessary for real relationship with a holy God, and that faith in the Son of God and His death on their behalf does achieve it. This is the essence of the Christian message. It is also the entire basis for the actual living out of the Christian life. Salvation and sanctification are both dependent on the personal appropriation of this truth by grace, through faith. Salvation and sanctification are both the gift of God in Christ.
So why is the abandonment of our old effort to meet the demands of God’s moral law seemingly so difficult for many of us to realize, even after our moment of salvation? There is more than one reason. From a psychological perspective we may have been greatly molded by the worldviews of the people who had the most human influence on our early development, our parents. If, for whatever reason, one or both of our parents were highly moralistic, and they did their best to transmit the idea that moral effort is the core of what makes someone “a good person”, we may have this faulty idea deeply imprinted upon our hearts. Unfortunately some who have this “imprint” are now in teaching positions in the church and communicate the false gospel of works, often unconsciously, to those sitting under them.
Another problem in fully receiving the freedom from meeting the demands of the law that Christ came to grant us is that we do not yet completely understand and receive the fullness of both His identity and His work on the cross. His identity as God in the flesh makes Him absolutely capable, as our substitute, of satisfying God’s just condemnation of human sin. His actual crucifixion and resurrection are, therefore, the absolute solution to our bondage to a law we can never satisfy in our fallen imperfection. In Christ God has Himself absorbed His own punishment for the sins of the human race throughout all human history, past, present and future.
Finally we must grapple with the fact that many of us find some perverse, prideful pleasure in continuing to at least partially live in the cycle of self-effort, failure and self-condemnation that is engendered by “works-righteousness”. Perhaps this is a form of spiritual masochism. It sometimes seems easier to exist this way than to risk fully surrendering our hearts to the lordship of Christ. But it is not easier. To continue in self-empowered moralism is to resist the love of God and to condemn ourselves, at the least, to a life of bondage and frustration that His love would otherwise relieve. Such a life is not true life at all.
In each of the above three cases it is we who, at the end of the day, must grapple with and overcome these barriers to living in the grace of God. Yet, paradoxically, it is God Himself who is the Author and Finisher of our faith and the Source of our very ability to overcome. As He works in us to “work and will according to his good pleasure” we can choose to reject legalism and, at the same time, surrender to the life Jesus Christ has obtained on our behalf. In fact that surrender is, itself, made possible by His saving and sanctifying love, a love that is infinitely more desirable than living in the misery of self-righteousness.