If Christ’s righteousness, not your own, has really been imputed to you so that you are totally accepted by the Father as in the Son, then stop trying to cover your badness by being good but, in full confession of your badness and failure, obey in light of your failure and what He has done for you.
One of the most important spiritual disciplines for daily resisting the temptation of moral formation is to open and center the heart with the Spirit on these two realities of full pardon and full acceptance. Sometimes, our moralism has to do with not really accepting the reality of our full pardon from the condemnation of sin. In this case, we seek to hide from our sin by being good, for it is too painful to see our sin as it is insofar as we experience guilt as condemnation. As an antidote to this malady, we must come out of hiding, in prayer, and open deeply to the truth of our sins and how these have been imputed to Christ, that there is no condemnation for those in Christ (Romans 8.1), so that we may open deeply to the Spirit applying forgiveness and love in our experience.
At other times, our moralism is linked to a deep belief that we are unacceptable because of our sins. I find it very common, in my own life and in those I minister to, that we feel forgiven for particular sins and failure, but we do not feel acceptable. This explains why many believers do not experience liberation through awareness of sin: they feel forgiven but unacceptable and, thus, they must work harder at being good to become acceptable. This is the true heart of moralism.
Consequently, in prayer, we must learn to open to the full justification by God and the unbelievable truth that I am not only full pardoned but also fully acceptable to God on the basis of Christ’s merited righteousness that has been imputed to me and not on the basis of what I have done. Everything else in my culture and in my heart informs me that I am acceptable for what I do. This is the whole point of Christ’s active obedience in life, such that His merited righteousness would be imputed to me so that, in Christ, I am totally accepted by the Father.
From: “Resisting the Temptation of Moral Formation: Spiritual Formation Grounded in the Cross and Justification” by John Coe, in Sundoulos: The Alumni Magazine of Talbot School of Theology (Winter, 2011), p. 9.
John Coe is Director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.
