Victory Over Sin 6: Experience

Right after I wrote my entry on Romans 7, I ironically heard the testimony of someone who for a while did not believe she could be a Christian because of anger she had toward her mother. 1 John 3:15 says that "everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him." She concluded that she would have to be a good pagan, since she couldn't let go of hatred toward her mother.

Her breakthrough came with the popular understanding of Romans 7. She came to believe that what was important was that she wanted to let go of hatred toward her mother, not that she was always able to "do the good I want to do." From then on she saw herself as another Christian who was "forgetting those things behind and reaching out to those things ahead, I pursue toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13-14--she didn't actually mention this verse--I'm adding to the story).

Now I don't know her heart then and I don't know the rest of the story, whether she ever felt like she was able to forgive her mother. But I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she really did want to forgive her mother but found it impossible to control her anger. In what follows I am not so much addressing her story as using what little I know of her story to discuss the question of sin in the life of a believer.

First I'd like to play the "modern" card in relation to 1 John 3:15. The original connotations of the verse had concrete associations with a specific "heretical" group that had split with John's community. They had withheld help and support from John's community when they had it to give (cf. 1 John 3:17). I would thus make two important distinctions between what 1 John was talking about and the situation of this woman:

1. 1 John is not talking about feelings. It is talking about concrete actions that the group could have done to help when they chose not to. If this woman felt serious anger toward her mother, but forced herself to do concretely what she believed was appropriate in relation to her mother, I believe she kept the command to love.

Further, I don't think this woman was a "murderer" in John's sense if she let her tongue slip at some point for which she then asked forgiveness. I don't think she was a "murderer" in John's sense if she didn't return phone calls for a week or two. I don't think she was a murderer in John's sense if she didn't visit for a while because she didn't want to see her mother. Did she sin? Maybe. But I don't think these are quite the sins of murder 1 John has in mind.

On the other hand, if a person would continue to refuse to ask forgiveness, or continue to refuse to answer phone calls out of hate and continue to ignore the person out of spite for a prolonged period of time, if you were to harbor resentment in your heart for years without doing anything about it, then I'm prepared to consider you a murderer in accordance with 1 John 3:17. The Bible gives no excuse to such a person. Such a person does not really even want to forgive or be reconciled. This person continues to sin wilfully after receiving a knowledge of the truth (co-opting the language of Hebrews 10:26 for a different context). If it persists, it seems to me there is a sin unto death in the making.

2. I don't think 1 John is addressing what might be a process of coming to forgive someone. I don't want to say that God can't or doesn't instantaneously enable people to forgive or do amazing things they could never do in their own power. But sometimes humans take time to heal, and I don't think that 1 John is talking about such a process either. In my opinion, the sin 1 John pictures is not the sin of a moment. It is a trajectory, an ongoing orientation involving concrete actions.

I have gotten off track a little. My above discussion turned somewhat into a question of when sin might reach such a pitch that it severs a person's relationship with God and Christ. But this whole series is not about how much you can sin. It's about how little a person might sin through God's power.

By the way, I hate the interpretation of Philippians 3 I mentioned above. In context, the things Paul is forgetting and leaving behind are not his failures, but things he might have considered gain from a human perspective (e.g., Phil. 3:7). Indeed, one of the things Paul is leaving behind is the fact that "according to the righteousness that is in the Law, [I was] blameless" (Phil. 3:6). Oops, there goes the false but all too prevalent misconception that Paul thought he was a horrible sinner before he came to Christ. Try the Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14 if you want to know what Paul thought about himself before he came to Christ.

Similarly, if people would pay even the slightest attention to what Paul has been talking about in the context, it is the resurrection that Paul has not yet attained (see 3:11, the verse right before). Paul has not been perfected in this sense--he has not yet been resurrected. He is not saying "I'm not perfect, just forgiven."

What is he pursuing to obtain? Again, it's the "upward call" (3:14), yet another reference to resurrection. In 3:15, he now plays on the words to say, "As many of us therefore [who are] perfect, think this way."

In short, this passage has nothing to do with the easy, "I'm a failure but God loves me" Zeitgeist of your neighborhood Christian bookstore. He's talking about qualifying for the resurrection because he remained faithful (see 1 Cor. 9:27).

But back to our subject. In the previous entries I have tried to sketch out the theory of victory over sin. We saw that John saw sin as incapatible with the very essence of who a Christian is. God seed is in you, so sin isn't what we should expect to see in your lifestyle. Similarly, Paul told us that Christians do not live "according to the flesh" and that they are not "enslaved to sin." "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8).

Paul is not speaking in these passages of something he expects to happen to you in a second experience after you become a Christian. Take the following verses: "You are not in flesh, but in Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. And if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person is not of him" (Rom. 8:9-10). In theory, all Christians are supposed to be free from the slavery of sin and living a life victorious over sin. In theory, no one who is a Christian is supposed to be "in the flesh."

Here is where we find the disconnect between theory and practice. In the end, Romans 7 would capture well the feeling of a lot of Christians out there. If all Christians were free from sin in practice, then Paul would not have to say, "Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires" (Rom. 6:12). Despite the theory, we nevertheless frequently find Christians giving in to their flesh.

Indeed, Paul places the problem Corinthians in this category: "I was not able to speak to you as spiritual, but as individuals made of flesh, as babies in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able [to handle it]. But even now you are not able [to handle it], for you are still fleshly. For when strife and discord are among you, are you not fleshly and walking on a human level?" (1 Cor. 3:1-3).

Now I grew up with preaching that systematized these words. You start off the "natural man" of 1 Corinthians 2:14. Then you become a Christian, but as a baby Christian you are the "carnal man," the person in the flesh. Finally, at entire sanctification, you become the "spiritual man."

Paul gives us no such rigid system here. This is a classic pre-modern interpretation that imposes its traditional definitions on the text. The contrast between what the KJV called the natural man and the spiritual man in 2:14 is a distinction that probably came from the Corinthians themselves. They are calling themselves spiritual in contrast to people like Paul, whom they are calling "soulish" (the word behind the KJV's natural man). Paul then takes their terms and applies his own categories, namely, the contrast between the spiritual person and the fleshly or carnal person. In other words, Paul is not presenting a three stage progression. He is countering their two category system (soulish versus spiritual) with his own two category system (carnal versus spiritual).

Nevetheless, if we don't take these terms so rigidly, we have something like the preaching I grew up with. While in theory, you would expect all Christians to be spiritual rather than fleshly, we unfortunately find some Christians who are immature, Christian babies. These are "carnal" or "fleshly" Christians over whom sin still has power. The goal is of course to end this oxymoronic state of "carnal Christians," for Christians to "become what they are."

More on this idea in a moment. But first, we should ask whether the book of Acts entails exactly such an experience where one goes from being carnal to spiritual. We note right off the bat that Acts never uses these categories in this way. But the holiness tradition after Wesley, under the influence of Phoebe Palmer and the "John Fletcher" branch of Wesley's heirs, institutionalized a moment of "entire sanctification" in conjunction with the spirit fillings of the book of Acts. I can scarcely go too much farther before I discuss the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" in Acts.

We are at a difficult point today with regard to this way of viewing entire sanctification. You will hardly find any New Testament scholar who reads the spirit fillings of Acts in this way, even at institutions from the holiness tradition. You won't find anyone espousing this view who wasn't taught it by someone else. In other words, no one would come to this conclusion on the basis of the book of Acts itself--those who see it in Acts come to the text with this interpretation already in hand.

In the world of Luke-Acts, the Day of Pentecost is the arrival of the Spirit promised in Luke 3:16. In Luke-Acts, no one has received the Holy Spirit yet before Pentecost, for this is the very arrival of the Spirit in the Christian sense, the very fulfillment of the prophecy made by John the Baptist.

In Acts 19:1-7, Paul does not consider the water baptism of John sufficient to make a person a "Christian." He has certain individuals rebaptized in the name of Jesus even though they were already baptized by John. It is only then that they receive the Holy Spirit. These individuals are baptized in the name of Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit in one foul swoop.

Similarly, the Roman soldiers of Acts 10 have never believed on Christ before they receive the Holy Spirit in Acts 10. Indeed, they receive the Holy Spirit before they are baptized as Christians. We must again see them receiving the Spirit and becoming a Christian as associated experiences.

The Samaritans of Acts 8 are the only ones in Acts where we have the Spirit coming significantly after baptism, and Acts seems to treat the situation as unusual (cf. Acts 8:14-17). The disciples themselves have to go up to Samaria so they can receive the Holy Spirit.

We therefore are on flimsy ground to consider the disciples to be Christians already on the Day of Pentecost, even though they were baptized by John. According to Paul in his writings (e.g., Rom. 8:9; 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5), a person cannot be a Christian without the Holy Spirit. In that sense, no one can technically be called a Christian until the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit comes for the first time in this way (unless you want to count Jesus' own baptism).

Some might want to bring in John here (John 20:22) and say that the disciples had received the initial coming of the Holy Spirit already. This is of course a pre-modern argument that doesn't read each gospel on its own terms. But if I have to play the pre-modern game, the text of John doesn't say that they actually received the Holy Spirit at that moment. I personally believe that this is a kind of symbolic allusion to Pentecost and that Jesus "breathing" on them does indeed symbolize them receiving the Spirit of Christ. Comparing John with the other gospels shows that it is kind of like the "New Living Translation" of Jesus, so we should not be surprised that John presents Pentecost somewhat allusively.

The key and programmatic verse on this subject in Acts is of course Acts 2:38: "Repent and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." The first part is obviously about becoming a Christian, and the last part says nothing like "and after a while, after you die to self, you will have the experience of entire sanctification." The most natural way of reading the verse is to see all these items in association with becoming a Christian: 1) repentance, 2) baptism, 3) receiving the Holy Spirit.

In short, you will only find entire sanctification in any of these verses if you come to the text with it in hand. The term "the fulness of the Spirit" is a nice one that I actually like (more in a moment), but it is not a biblical term. Acts uses phrases like "receiving" the Spirit, the "baptism" of the Spirit, being "filled" with the Spirit interchangably.

So in what way can we speak of entire sanctification experientially? Let me start by recapping some of the conclusions I've already reached in this process:

1. The New Testament consistently considers sin incompatible with the nature of a Christian. In theory, a Christian should not sin or be under the flesh.

2. In practice, we often find Christians for whom #1 is not the case, even though it should be.

While we are now speaking logically and experientially, we can suggest that many Christians may find themselves at a point in their life where they sense they need to move to the next level in their spiritual pilgrimage. We know that despite the fact that Paul was not speaking of a Christian, many identify with his comment that "the good I want to do I don't do." Many Christians find themselves to struggle with matters of the flesh.

It is at these points that the language we have used in our tradition, while not exactly biblical, still makes sense.

Entire Sanctification: Of course every aspect of our lives has to be consigned to the realm of the holy. Everything in our lives needs to belong to our God. If you refuse to surrender everything to God, there will be a point where a "sin unto death" stands around the corner. God demands everything. If you don't eventually surrender, you have exposed the crucified Christ to public disgrace. God will not stand for it.

It makes sense to come to a point of commitment where you surrender everything to God. Logically, such surrender takes place at a point in time, even if you aren't aware of the exact moment. Wesley used the image of death. There is a time when you know a person is alive and a point when you know someone is dead. The exact moment of transition may be indiscernable.

Of course once we have said this, we recognize that new things come into our lives that have to be surrendered. Old issues that we had surrendered can resurface. Life is complicated.

Fulness of the Holy Spirit: While Acts only uses the image of being "filled" with the Holy Spirit, the image of being completely full--"the fulness"--works. If you are only half God's, then how could you be "full" of His Spirit? This language highlights something that our sense of "complete consecration" doesn't, namely, that ultimately being under the power of the Spirit is something that requires God's action. It is not something we can simply do by act of our will.

It is at this point that we can return to Paul's imagery of becoming a slave to righteousness and becoming free from the law of sin and death. I don't think Paul is setting down a process here, but he is giving us the goal. Whatever it might mean truly to be under the power of God's Spirit to where a person can fulfill the righteous requirement of the law--it must be something like what our tradition has called entire sanctification. And if the fulfilment of the law is love, then it must have looked something like what John Wesley called perfect love.

I entitled this series, "Why I believe in victory over sin" because that is what I think it all comes down to. I believe that a Christian can live consistently victorious over temptation. I believe that a Christian can be "perfect" in the sense of consistently "acting" both in thought and mind in accordance to that which you know to be the right or to avoid that which you know to be the wrong.

I further believe that God will change our attitudes as well. I believe that we can become more and more loving as time goes by in feeling as well as action. I believe that even our feelings and spontaneous reactions can become ever more Christ-like. The current pessimistic view of sin in the life of believer simply isn't biblical--and it doesn't show much confidence in the power of God either.

I believe in victory over temptation and sin.