symbolic links of one’s own imagination is to devalue God’s progressive outworking of redemption and revelation in history, as well as to undercut the credibility of the relevance one is seeking to draw between the ancient text and one’s listeners. Moralism has been defined in various ways. Occasionally, any summons to concrete behavioral change in a sermon has been dismissed and condemned as “moralism,” even though the New Testament epistles and the teaching of Jesus are full of such ethical