against moralism, but it leads to social chaos apart from the
recognition of God's grace-expression of goodness.
Sin is still sin! It is not derived from God. It does not
express the character of God. It is instead derived from the
devil (I John 3:8) and expresses the character of the Evil
One.
Whenever the Christian misrepresents the character of
God in his behavior by infidelity, dishonesty, greed, strife,
jealousy, anger, dissensions, drunkenness, etc. then the
intent of God to express His character in that Christian is
not taking place. It is a tragic misrepresentation of the life
of Jesus Christ.
As we allow the Christ-life to be lived out in our
behavior, manifesting God's goodness by His grace, we
conversely disallow the "fleshly indulgences" (Col. 2:23),
which religious moralism was impotent to deal with. We
disallow fleshliness to be selfishly, sinfully and satanically
expressed in our behavior. Thus it is that we "deny
ourselves" (Luke 9:23) and "abstain from every form of
evil" (I Thess 5:22). As we allow Christ to manifest His
good-life in our behavior, He thus supersedes, overcomes
and disallows the misrepresentative sinful behavior
expressions. The positive swallows up the negative.
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