Moralism

In 1796 a physician named Edward Jenner made an important discovery that has helped eradicate the dangerous smallpox viral disease, a virus with a deathrate of nearly 30%. What Jenner discovered helped set the course for modern vaccinations. He discovered that milkmaids who were infected with cowpox recovered with an immunity to the more deadly smallpox. It was a remarkable discovery. He proceeded to test his findings by taking fluid from an infected pustule on a milkmaid’s hand and inject it into an eight year old boy. Six weeks later he exposed the boy to smallpox and the boy did not develop any symptoms.  (I’m not sure I would have wanted to be that boy!) It was from this experiment that the term “vaccination” was coined. The term comes from the Latin word, “vacca”, for cow reminding us that a vaccine works by exposing us to a less harmful virus very similar to the dangerous one in order to build up our immunity to the more dangerous virus.

Let’s think about this in terms of Christianity for just a moment. Christianity, in some ways, is like a virus only instead of killing its patient, it gives it life. The Scriptures teach us that we are all born sinners and deserving of the wrath and curse of God. We are, in a sense, walking dead men. It is the gospel that teaches us that Christ came to stand in our place so that the wrath and curse of God due for our sin falls upon Him so that those who receive Him have new life. But what if there were a “vaccine” against Christianity? What if our Adversary wanted somehow to inoculate people from believing this good news? What would it look like? Just like cowpox looks an awful lot like smallpox, moralism looks a lot like Christianity. Moralism inoculates dead-men walking from gaining new life in Christ.

Job has already undergone trial after trial, tragedy after tragedy, more than any of us can even imagine. He’s lost his wealth and family. He’s lost his health. And as we saw in the last chapter he feels abandoned by God himself. He longs for death. And the one thing that can bring him out of his despair is the gospel – the reality that God has declared him blameless. His friends have come to bring comfort and for seven days stayed by his side in his suffering giving him at least the freedom to expose his pain. But the Adversary turns even that into an attack. His friends become the voice that utters words steeped in truth but misapplied. Their words become the Adversary’s attempt to inoculate Job to the power of the gospel. Their words offer hope through moral living. And while moral living is good and can yield rich rewards, it cannot give us the one thing we most need. It cannot give life. Moral living apart from the gospel only insulates people in their death. What does moralism look like? That’s what I hope to answer as we consider these words of Eliphaz. Moralism leads to good works but produces bad fruit. Moralism has the appearance of life but leads to death. In the end we find that moralism is a misplaced confidence and a misplaced faith.

 

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