The Moralistic Temptation
An Excerpt from
Kyle Strobel and John Coe
Paperback: Baker Books, 2026
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One of the most subtle and deceptive temptations is to reject the path of maturity for the path of moralism, turning to our own moral efforts instead of God when we are confronted with our spiritual failure and immaturity. Moralists hate the desert and desolation because it forces them to look at what they are set on avoiding: the truth of their heart. So they seek consolation to hide and convince themselves and others that everything is fine. In general, moralism is our well-intentioned attempt to use spiritual formation, spiritual disciplines, ministry, service, obedience, or just plain moral behavior to relieve the burden of our spiritual failure. Put differently, moralism is the strategy to do in the flesh what only Christ can do for us.
The Two Tests of Moralism
We sometimes assume our only problem is our tendency to do bad things—to explicitly sin—and so our solutions tend to focus on managing our outward behavior. For the moralist, this means seeking our good apart from God or doing the work only God can do in the Christian life. The devastating reality of sin and brokenness reveals how deep the problem goes, that even our spirituality is not pure but is stained by the moralistic impulse to grow through our own resources.
What is important to remember is that the Christian life is never merely a moral life. It is much more than that. It is a training in holiness, which is first and foremost about God and his presence and secondarily about how we live in the presence of a holy God. When we become Christians, we bring our faith into an already trained character. Our character has been trained in good or bad ways, but before conversion, it was a training in the self and for the self. In other words, our character was trained in the flesh and not in faith; therefore it needs a retraining in faith, hope, and love (see Rom. 14:23).
The training we knew in sin and brokenness was shaped by habits of hiding and covering to manage and manipulate life. This is the training of pride, where we are turned in upon ourselves, seeking to manage and fix our lives in our natural goodness. Many have even learned this natural formation in the church, replacing the training of faith with learning goodness. We all need to consider: How do we discern if we are Christian moralists? How do we live not a mere moral life but a spiritual life?
There are two tests that quickly reveal moralism in the heart: First, when we are convicted by sin, our first and recurring response to guilt is “I’ll do better. I’m going to work on that. I’ll be better.” We are using our own efforts to deal with our badness rather than seeking Christ. This probably leads us to make false promises to God (“God, I promise I’ll be better!”). Second, instead of recognizing our failure, sin, and guilt as a path to abide in, depend on, and seek God, we turn to self-rejection by covering rather than uncovering them to the Lord. To abide requires that we come to the Lord in truth and remain in what he has for us. Instead of self-justifying and self-establishing, drawing near to God is trusting that if we remain in him, we will know life abundantly.
The first test is to consider what happens when we are convicted by sin. Being convicted by sin is good; we should be convicted by sin. But anyone with even minor self-awareness can listen to a sermon or read a Scripture passage and realize, I just heard the ideal of what I should be, but that’s not where I am. If our first and abiding response is to work harder to meet the ideal, then we are moralists. Moralism drives us to turn to our works as the answer for our sin or need instead of turning to Christ.
In the Christian life, contrary to moralism, the first movement is to the cross, to seek Christ in the truth of what he has done for us. That is the answer to our life and struggle. No matter what we experience in life, our call is to continually go to him, trust him, and seek his gracious presence. We go to a God who is not ignorant of our sin, struggle, and brokenness but who has sent his Spirit to groan in our hearts “with groanings too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26).
This test often reveals two lies: first, that we can fix our life and, second, that fixing our life is what God really wants us to do. Instead, our sin and brokenness should lead us to confess, Lord Jesus, without you I can do nothing (John 15:5). But moralism keeps us ignorant of the depths of our sin, making us believe that God simply wants us to perform well. Our temptation is to go to our flesh to try to work out our sin on our own rather than coming out of hiding to seek him. We are tempted to trust ourselves because we find that easier than trusting Christ. This is why the moralist seeks to get out of the desert and desolation at all costs. The goal for the moralist is not seeing their sin and brokenness but just getting past them.
The second test reveals another aspect to this temptation. Instead of seeing one’s sin and failure in light of grace, recognizing it as an opportunity to seek God, abide, and know his transforming presence, we shut down because we cannot handle the truth of what our life has become. The truth feels too scary for us because we are still trusting ultimately in ourselves. Instead of recognizing that Christ is our righteousness, we see our lack of righteousness and imagine he is demanding we figure it out on our own. But we need eyes to see the truth; we need faith to remember that we are defined by Christ and his righteousness (see Phil. 3:9). This is why Martin Luther warned, “If Christ is put aside and I look only at myself, then I am done for.”
Here is the core dynamic that animates the moralist: The moralist cannot bear the awareness of being a failure. The moralist cannot bear the awareness of shame and guilt. The moralist cannot bear to see weakness. This is what they want to get away from. This is the training of the flesh that Adam and Eve immediately brought into creation after the fall. They did not want to experience their shame and guilt, so they immediately responded by covering and hiding rather than attending to it, seeing their helplessness, and looking to God. In a similar sense, we are tempted to read that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9), underline it in our Bibles, but continue to live and minister in our strength because we cannot bear entering into the truth. But God is the good Father who knows what is best for us and sometimes leads us into the desert and desolation to crack open our hearts to reveal our need for him.
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Content taken from When God Seems Distant by Kyle Strobel and John Coe, ©2026. Used by permission of Baker Publishing Group.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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