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7. Romans 6-8 gives the theory. We see the frequent reality in practice in 1 Corinthians 2-3. The typology built out of these verses is well-known in holiness circles. The "natural" human does not receive the things of God (1 Cor. 2:14). The "spiritual" person does (2:15). The Corinthians are somewhere in between. They are "fleshly" or "carnal" Christians (3:1).
Again, Paul is not setting up an ordo salutis here, an "order of salvation." More on that in the final chapter. But we can see hints of Wesleyan theology in Paul's rhetoric with the Corinthians.
We all start off as the default human. We are under the power of Sin. We cannot help but sin whether we want to or not. At worst, we "do not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolish" to us (1 Cor. 2:14). We "are not able to know them because they are spiritually discerned."
The adjective Paul uses here is almost untranslatable: the "natural" person. The King James used "natural." The Revised Standard used "unspiritual." But the word is psychikos, "soul-ish," which is pretty much meaningless to us in English. My sense is that Paul is thinking of the part of us that we share with animals, the living being part. I decided to go with "natural" here, our default person. Yes, it does typify a person without the Spirit.
In short, this person is not a believer. He or she is not "saved." He or she is not a Christian.
8. The Corinthians should be spiritual. After all, they are believers and thus have received the Spirit. They have been set apart by God, "sanctified." Paul actually addresses the congregation as sanctified in 1:2. They are certainly not entirely sanctified! But like all Christians, they were set apart as God's property when they believed and received the Spirit.
It's worth a quick reminder of Paul's theology of the Spirit and coming to be in Christ. The Holy Spirit is God's "seal" of ownership on us (2 Cor. 1:22). Without the Spirit, we do not belong to Christ (Rom. 8:9). The Spirit is the "earnest" of our inheritance, a guarantee of our destiny, a downpayment of glory (2 Cor. 1:22). The Corinthians were thus set apart as belonging to God, "sanctified," when they came to Christ.
Romans 6 and 8 tell us what this state should look like for a believer. Sin should not rule this person's body -- or mind, for that matter. This person is no longer a slave to Sin, thanks be to God! By the power of the Holy Spirit, this person is able to do the good that God wants them to do and that they want to do. This person is consistently victorious over temptation.
This person has a complete love. They do not merely love their friends and those who love them. They love their enemies as well. This is not a syrupy feeling. This is a will to do the loving thing when the choice presents itself. This person fulfills the righteous requirement of the Law (Rom. 8:4) because the Holy Spirit has written the law of love on their hearts (Rom. 2:15; 13:8).
If the Corinthians had been spiritual like this, they would not have fought with each other over who had led them to Christ (1 Cor. 3:4). They would not have thought themselves to superior to other believers because they had more knowledge (8:1) or had spiritual gifts that others didn't (e.g., 14:21). Rather, they would have loved each other (1 Cor. 13).
9. In short, the Corinthian church was an oxymoron. They were Christians in the flesh -- something that isn't a thing. Somehow, they were stuck in the middle. They had been initially sanctified by the Spirit and set apart to God. They had been baptized into Christ...
... and then they argued over whose baptism was more significant because of who did it! They were "stuck." They were in-between, an anomaly. They had the Spirit but they weren't spiritual. They were sealed by the Spirit but still in the flesh. "These things ought not to be!" (Jas. 3:10).
To describe this "shouldn't be" phenomenon, several New Testament authors drew on the well-known trope of a baby drinking milk rather than meat. Paul says, "I gave you milk to drink not solid food because you were not yet able" (1 Cor. 3:2). 1 Peter encourages its audience to long for the pure milk that babies drink so that they can grow up. Hebrews 5:13-14 compares its audience to children who should have switched to solid food a long time ago but are still on milk.
This is not a state that can normally continue forever. While Wesley over-systematized and raised the bar too high for "going on to perfection," the basic concept is on the money. The carnal Christian needs to move on to maturity. If they don't, they will eventually fall away from God altogether (Jude 24). You cannot be both in the flesh and in the Spirit indefinitely, for these two are at war with each other (Gal. 5:17).
10. The war of the flesh against the Spirit can involve many battles. The Spirit says to do x, but the flesh wants to do y. No battle has taken you that God can't make a way to win (1 Cor. 10:13). The promise of God is that you can win every battle. Under normal spiritual circumstances, you can make the conscious choice to do x every time by the power of the Holy Spirit.
A war can be won even if you lose a few battles. But the more battles you lose, the more in danger you are of losing the war. God has not only given us the Spirit, but the Church -- fellow soldiers to hold us accountable and fight the battles with us. We don't have to lose. We should expect to win.
What is particularly serious is when you lose the same battle over and over again with some "besetting" sin. We'll think a little about addictions and an impoverished will in the final chapter. There are times when God uses the body of Christ to come alongside you because you are extraordinarily pinned down behind enemy lines.
Yet if the problem is that you have a divided will and are a "double-minded" person (Jas. 1:7), your soul is in grave danger. The second and third soils in the Parable of the Soils tell of those who initially receive the word with joy but then either wither because they have no root or because the cares of the world choke them (Mark 4).
The double-minded person should not expect unending forgiveness when there is no genuine repentance. "Let him or her ask in faith" (Jas. 1:6). And if a person continues to try to use Christ's sacrifice for the same sins over and over again -- not because of genuine addiction or disempowerment but because of a lack of wholehearted allegiance -- let not that person think they will receive anything from the Lord (Jas. 1:7). They have used up their sacrifice (Heb. 10:26).
In context, James 1:2-8 is talking about a time of trial and testing. God will help you through if you genuinely want help. Ask for wisdom in the trial, and God will give it (1:5). But you must really want God's help. If you're not sure, you're double-minded. A few verses later (1:13-15), James makes it clear that God is not at fault if temptation leads you to sin -- you are.
11. We can thus affirm in an unsystematic way what Wesley was trying to get at with his doctrine of Christian perfection. It is often the case that those who have believed in Christ find themselves in a carnal No Man's Land. They still identify with the person in Romans 7 who wants to do the good but finds themselves in a horrible war with their flesh. And they sometimes lose.
Is there no hope for something more? Is it not possible that the power of the Spirit might take the journey to the next level? Are we doomed to stay on milk our whole life on earth, or might we actually by God's power and grace be able to eat some spiritual steak!
It will take complete surrender to God. It will take full allegiance to Jesus as Lord. Only then can we be filled with the Spirit to the top of the cup, the fullness of the Holy Spirit.
Getting there will likely take some battles. The Battle-of-This-Thing-I-Don't-Want-to-Fully-Give-God. Then do you remember the Battle-of-the-Next-Thing-I-Didn't-Want-to-Fully-Give-God? Then surely there is a point where you have surrendered everything you know to surrender. As Keith Drury put it, you have given God full access to all the rooms of your house. But now will you sign over the deed to the property? [9]
Is not this moment of choice what Wesley and all those holiness preachers were preaching? God will not give us all of him if we haven't given him all of us. "There remains, therefore, a sabbath rest for the people of God" (Heb. 4:9).
Yes, these verses were taken a little out of context. [10] Yes, Wesley overly systematized it. But if we can step back just a little, there is a profound truth here.
And we'll likely have to give more to God again later. We may have to give the same things to God again. That is different. Our power over the flesh is only as sure as we are plugged into a relationship with the Spirit. If we loosen the connection, lessen the relationship, Sin lieth at the door. New things come into our lives -- we have to give them too.
There is no "I'm done now." Every day that is called "today," we enter his rest again (Heb. 3:13). We are Pilgrim until we reach the heavenly city.
In the final chapter, I hope to tie all these threads together into what I have heard Chris Bounds call a via salutis ("way of salvation") rather than an ordo salutis ("order of salvation"). I also want to address some of the concerns of our modern world like addictions. Finally, I want to mention an aspect of holiness that we Westerners are prone to overlook -- corporate holiness.
[9] Keith Drury, Holiness for Ordinary People 2nd ed. (Wesleyan Publishing House, 2004).
[10] In context, Hebrews is telling its audience to recommit their faith to God every day. The author is urging them not to fall in the desert on the journey to the Promised Land. The final Sabbath rest, it would seem, is when we finally make it to the kingdom of God.
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Preface: A Sanctification Story
1.1 Filled with the Holy Spirit (part 1)
1.2 Spirit-fillings in Acts (part 2)
2.1 What is holiness? (part 1)
2.2 What's love got to do with it? (part 2)
2.3 What is perfect love? (part 3)
3.1 What is sin? (part 1)
3.2 All sins are not the same. (part 2)
3.3 Romans 7 is not about the inevitability of sin in our lives. (part 3)
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