Morality or Gospel?

That's the title of an essay written by Adolf Schlatter one hundred years ago, where he writes that in the gaze of God we can no longer play around with the moralistic questions.

--Adolf Schlatter, "Moral oder Evanglium?" in Gesunde Lehre: Reden und Aufsatze, 98

Here's how French psychiatrist Paul Tournier put it: The strange paradox on every page of the Gospels, and which we can verify any day, is that it is not guilt which is the obstacle to grace, as moralism supposes. On the contrary, it is the repression of guilt, self-justification, genuine self-righteousness and smugness which is the obstacle.

--Paul Tournier, Guilt and Grace, 136