Victory Over Sin 3: Introduction to Paul on Sin

With regard to the subject at hand, the part of 1 John that is most relevant is 3:9, John's comment that the person who has been born of God is not able to be sinning. I have taken this as a statement that sees sin as antithetical to the very "nature" of what it means to be a Christian. For John, it is certainly possible for a Christian to sin, but sin is something that needs forgiveness and some sins knock you right out of fellowship with God. John wrote so that his audience would not sin in the ways they were tempted, revealing sin's negative nature. Finally, love of the brothers is the antithesis of sin in 1 John.

What a radical statement 1 John 3:9 seems, that the person born of God cannot be sinning! Doesn't this flatly contradict what the apostle Paul has to say on this subject?

Nope. This is exactly Paul's position as well.

I begin with mention of 1 Corinthians 10:13, a memory verse for a Wesleyan child:

Temptation has not taken you except that which is human. But God is faithful who does not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but He will also make an escape with the temptation, so that you are able to bear it.

Again, a "pre-modern" interpretation is one that is unaware that a text might be read differently than it strikes us, particularly that the original meaning might be different from the way it strikes us today.

[By the way, the key to "after modernism," "POST"-modernism, is the realization that we all--no matter how much we've studied--remain to some extent unaware of our assumptions. Thus no one except God is ever completely "modern" in his or her perspective. There's a little (or rather a lot) of "pre-modern" in all of us. This makes the terms pre-, post-, and modern labels somewhat less than precise, somewhat less helpful, and not a little condescending. I do not mean to use the term that way, although it does seem accurate to me to say that most Christians are vastly unaware of what it means to read the Bible's words in context.

It is this systematic and programmed unreflectivity that leads me to continue to use this term with regard to biblical interpretation. We can mark the rise of a better understanding of how to read the Bible in context to the period of the Enlightenment. I think we reject many of the values that went along with this Enlightenment perspective, that came to read the Bble's words as words are normally read rather than in magical ways. Nevertheless, the distinction between the original meaning and the "detached" way the words strike us in our traditions seems beyond question once a person understands this distinction.]

So what exactly was Paul talking about when he wrote these words in 1 Corinthians 10:13? It was in a discussion of eating meat sacrificed to idols, of idolatry, of sexual immorality, and of the grumbling of the Israelites in the desert. All of these were issues for the Corinthian church. Again, Paul is not thinking of "micro-intention" in this passage. He is discussing things like going to a pagan temple or having sex with a prostitute. No Christian group should have any doubt but that God can provide victory over any temptation to do anything like these. Were some Corinthians tempted to visit prostitutes or sleep with their step mothers (1 Cor. 5 and 6)? There was no excuse for them. God is a God who makes it possible to overcome such temptations. Were some Corinthians tempted to attend public meetings at pagan temples to advance their careers in civic life? God had you covered even if this temptation was almost unbearable.

In short, Paul believed that sin on this level was completely avoidable through the empowerment of God.

We might further note for the record that Paul also says something akin to John's "sin unto death." In 1 Corinthians 9:27 Paul says, "But I subjugate my body and I lead it into servitude lest somehow after I have preached to others, I myself might become unworthy." At this point many of my Lutheran and Calvinist friends protest the deal about "works." You make this verse sound as if certain human "works" are necessary to be found worthy on the Day of Judgment (clarification--not so much talking of justification here but of salvation in the Pauline sense outside Ephesians. Paul's language of salvation in most places is future oriented, being saved from God's wrath on the Day of Judgment).

This isn't the time to discuss that but I just don't think Paul would have a clue what you're talking about. As a Jew he just did not formulate the distinction the way some Protestants have. If he did, then what could he possibly mean when he commends the Thessalonians for their "work of faith" (1 Thess. 1:3). As I say sometimes when my interpretations are criticized for being incoherent on something like this, "Talk to Paul about it. I'm just telling you what he said."

As a lead in to our next entry on Paul, I want to mention Galatians 5:16:

"Walk by the Spirit and you will never fulfill the desire of the flesh."

Here's a sticky wicket for the person who thinks Paul saw the Christian life as constant failure in relation to "the good I want to do." Au contraire. Paul here uses the "subjunctive of emphatic negation," involving not just one but two "nots." By the way, in English two nots make a yes. In Greek they only increase the "not-iness."

So Paul does not say, the Spirit might enable you to resist the flesh. Paul does not even say casually, the Spirit often enables you to resist the flesh. Paul says that Spirit and flesh are opposing forces over which the Spirit can always win.

What was he talking about in context? He was trying to head off the abuse of his theology at the pass. Much of Galatians targets a community that is in danger of "becoming enslaved" to the Jewish law unecessarily. They are Gentiles and Paul believes they are endangering their reception of God's grace by turning to the Jewish law for justification--"you have been nullified from Christ, you who are being justified in the Law, you have fallen from grace."

But (in my minority evangelical reconstruction), Paul has recently been burned by the Corinthians in his "not under law" teaching. "Hey, Paul," the Corinthians said, "we're so not under the Law--we have a guy here who's sleeping with his step-mother! Aren't we spiritual?" Paul was horrified. How can you be proud of something like that? No, don't let your freedom in Christ become an opportunity for the flesh (Gal. 5:13). It is in this context that these words of Paul appear.

So what are the desires of the flesh that Christians can have victory over? Paul gives us a list in 5:19-21: "sexual immorality, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hostilities, strife, jealousy, angers, quarrels, divisiveness, factions, envy, drunkeness, orgies and similar things..." Can a Christian have victory over the "flesh" and the sins it leads to because of its desires? Yes, Paul insists a Christian can and will.

Again, the tendency of the Western conscience is to make some of these hyper-introspective (e.g. envy or jealousy). Given what we think we understand about ancient Mediterranean personality (of course we could be being "pre-modern" on it in some way we don't currently anticipate), these would relate much more to concrete intentions rather than passing thoughts or even periods of certain feelings. A Christian can be completely victorious--by the power of the Spirit--over both concrete acts of sexual immorality and concrete intentions toward sexual immorality. A person can consistently resist the urge to act or formulate concrete intentions regarding jealousy, anger, or envy.

This would not mean that a person will necessarily become free of jealous thoughts or feelings from time to time, although I personally believe such things should decrease exponentially as one's Christian life progresses. But all Christians, not just some entirely sanctified subset, should be consistently victorious over concrete actions of the sort we have mentioned. Of course in a future entry we will discuss the fact that the ideal often isn't the real.

In the next entry I want to discuss the "mother of all misinterpreted passages" on this subject: Romans 7. Critiques, questions, and comments welcome...