How To Become A Perfectionist

There are, however, people who think that the Bible teaches we can become sinless. That might surprise you, but it’s a long-standing, very popular, very widespread theology. They think it is possible for a believer to be sanctified to such a level that he literally is free from original sin and depravity, brought into a state of entire in the Church of the Nazarene Articles of Faith. Say it again. We believe that entire sanctification is that act of God subsequent to regeneration, by which believers are made free from original sin and depravity, brought into a state of entire devotion to God, and holy obedience and love made perfect.

And you can get to that point in this life. They say it is wrought by the baptism with the Holy Spirit, which is something that happens subsequent to your salvation, that elevates you out of your fallenness into a level of what they call Christian perfection and holiness. It is wrought instantaneously by faith and preceded by entire consecration. So, if you can get to the point where you can entirely consecrate yourself to God as a Christian by your own will, if you’ll just do that in your own strength and your own power, consecrate yourself totally to God, you will, in that moment as an act of faith, be elevated, elevated instantaneously into Christian perfection.

Now, some of you may have grown up in this kind of environment where vestiges of this were being taught. For example, you would go to church and the pastor would speak and then he would say, how many of you want to consecrate your life to Christ? You are believers. You want to essentially this theology that’s saying, if you’ll just do that, God, by your act of doing that, will take you up to Christian perfection. And oh, by the way, in this theology, you can lose that Christian perfection, which is a little hard to explain.

How does somebody who’s been made perfect become imperfect? It’s a temporary thing. And in their theology, if you do sin, you’re not supposed to be able to sin. You’re supposed to be above depravity and above sin. But if you do sin, you’re back down again. You can have another experience and another elevation to sanctification, but it’s consistent with their theology, because that theology, which is Arminianism, Wesleyan theology, believes you can lose your salvation. So just as you can lose your salvation because it’s an act of your own free will, you can take yourself in and take yourself out.

You can also lose your sanctification. You can take yourself in and take yourself out. God is sort of responding to your desires and your willpower. Now, this is very old stuff. Martin Luther, way back in his day, called it the false philosophy of Aristotle, adopted by medieval scholastics. Luther said this. They teach that sin is entirely destroyed by baptism or repentance, and so regarded as absurd that the Apostle should confess, sin dwells in me. That’s the Apostle Paul in Romans 7. As a converted or spiritual man, they say, he could no longer have any sin in him.

Therefore, they argue, he here speaks of himself as an unconverted man. And then Luther said, but sin remains in the converted man. B. B. Warfield, the great Reformed theologian, in his marvelous book called Perfectionism, traced the modern influence back to John Wesley. It was John Wesley who infected the Protestant world with the idea of entire sanctification. There was no element, says Warfield of Wesley’s teaching, which afforded him greater satisfaction, and there is no element of his teaching which is more lauded by his followers. What defines Wesleyanism is this perfectionism, and wave after wave of this perfectionism, the holiness movement has washed up on the shore of the church through the centuries and has confused these people profoundly.

Now, in order to make this thing work, in order to believe that you’re actually entirely sanctified and you’ve been lifted out of your depravity, in order to make that work, you have to redefine two things. You have to redefine sin, and you have to redefine sanctification. You have to diminish sin and diminish sanctification. You have to pull them all down to a level where you can pull it off. And that’s essentially what they do. I’ll give you an illustration of it. Charles Finney was one of the great purveyors of this Wesleyan theology, and Charles Finney preached basically that salvation is an act of the human will, totally an act of the human will.

You will be saved when you, by your own human will, come to God and receive and take the gift of salvation. Sanctification, he also said, is an act of the human will, requiring consecration, reconsecration, dedication, rededication. That’s where all that comes from. And to show you how bizarre this was, sin has to be downgraded. If you’re going to believe that you’re perfect, you’ve got to change your definitions of sin. Here’s a good illustration of it. Out of Finney’s ministry, Finney ministered in New York State, 1849 to 1879. It’s called the burned-over area. A lot of cults came out of that because of his aberrant theology.

There were about 50 little utopian communes that developed in New York under Finney’s influence. One of them developed in a little town called Oneida. Some of you look in your kitchen drawer and you’ll see flatware with Oneida stamped on it. That was originally made by this little commune of 300 followers of Finneyism in New York. Actually, that little utopian commune was founded by a guy named Henry Noyes, who bought into this theology. They started the flatware company as a way to sort of survive. Their little commune would therefore, they thought, have enough money to exist.

What few knew about this little community didn’t come out until Finney died in 1879. When it dissolved, the flatware lasted a lot longer than the community lasted, by the way. What was found out when it began to dissolve was that this little commune of Listen perfected Christians, this little commune of people who had ascended to entire sanctification, practiced communal marriage. So every woman was available to every man in the entire commune. Now that’s a pretty serious redefinition of sin, but that’s an illustration of what was going on, and it went all the way down to involving young girls.

So Noyes had basically adopted moral standards of his own preference, and could live in a perpetual orgy and claim to be entirely sanctified. Now, admittedly, that is a very extreme view, but it is an accurate one. It is a true illustration. But in any case, and in every case, if you’re going to think in this life you’re entirely sanctified, you’re going to have to change two definitions, sin and sanctification. You can’t possibly have God’s view of sin and God’s view of holiness and believe that. So what happens to people who get in this system, this downgrading of sin and holiness, is that they’re living in a fantasy, and they say sin is only what is premeditated conscious and intentional.

Anything that’s sort of a slip-up, unconscious, unintentional, a bad act, is a mistake, but not a sin. All of this is at the expense of a confused and tortured conscience. People who don’t really understand sin, don’t really understand holiness, and think they’re responsible for whether or not they’re sanctified or not. And then when they’re told they’re sanctified, their conscience is still accusing them, because that’s what conscience does, and they live with the torture of their conscience. If you think you’re holy, your conscience is telling you you’re a liar. Now, there have been some modifications of this kind of thing, but it’s been around a long time.

What we’re learning here in Galatians is the true diagnosis view is you’re not sinless, you’re not holy, and that is the necessary confession to move forward in your sanctification, not to think you’re sinless and holy. J.C. Ryle, in his book on holiness, also came out around that same time as Finney, 1879, said sudden instantaneous leaps from conversion to consecration I fail to see in the Bible. They aren’t there. He knew what all accurate Bible students know, that justification and sanctification are inseparable. They all happen at the same time. Just that sanctification, not some subsequent leap that happens repeated, repeated, repeated times.

Sanctification starts at justification and progresses through your life as you become increasingly like Christ, as the Spirit of God who is in you leads you in the path of righteousness and restrains you from sin. The good news, folks, is look, the Lord knows you have a conflict, right? He knows that. He understands that. Thomas Watson said this, saving faith lives in a broken heart. So important. Saving faith lives in a broken heart. It always grows in a heart humbled by sin, in a weeping eye, and a tearful conscience. That’s the mark of a truly godly person, not the idea that he’s sinless, that he’s reached perfection, that’s a proud deception, and is a slaughter against your own conscience.

In this life, the conflict will rage. Hebrews 12.1 says, the sin which so easily entangles us. Proverbs 20 verse 9. Who can say I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from sin? No one. 1 John 1.8-10. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. We make God a liar, and his word is not in us. That’s a verse that ought to bring all of that to an end. James 3.2. We all stumble in many ways. And then back to our text. Back to Galatians 5.17.

The flesh sets its desire against the spirit, the spirit against the flesh. They’re in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things you desire, you wish, or things that please you. We have to understand the true diagnosis of our condition. I can’t imagine the horrendous, horrific guilt and disappointment that would live in the heart of someone who believed that Christian perfection, sinless perfection, even eradication is a term they use. The eradication of the sin nature was a possibility, and they hadn’t achieved it. I can’t also imagine that the work of a conscience in a person who believed he or she had achieved it thought they had eradicated their sin nature, and then tried to live with the hypocrisy of reality.

In Romans 7, Paul the Apostle is going to describe his own understanding of himself. This is how Paul sees himself as a believer. Verse 14. The law is spiritual. I am of flesh. My flesh is still there. It’s still bound to sin. Why do I say that? For what I am doing, I don’t understand. I’m not practicing what I would like to do. I’m doing the thing I hate. If I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the law. Confessing the law is good. I desire the law of God.

I love the law of God. He says that earlier back in verse 12, but there’s something going on in me. Verse 17. So now no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. There’s the pathology of the Christian. I love God. The eye has been changed. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. But it’s a new eye, but this new eye has to deal with sin which dwells in me. And then in verse 18 he says, I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.

He locks it into the flesh. And I know that because the willing is present, but the doing of the good is not. The good that I want to do, I don’t do. I practice the evil I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. He distances himself, his new eye, his new person in Christ, from the sin that is still in him. I find then, verse 21, a principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law, or different principle, or different power, in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am. There is the testimony of a godly man. He’s not going to say, holy man that I am, sin has been eradicated, I’m living in Christian perfection. Just the absolute opposite. Who will set me free from the body of this death? Who will detach me from the corpse? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yes, one day that will come, chapter 8 verse 23, we’ll have that redemption of the body. But until then, look at the end of verse 25. So then, on the one hand, I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, on the other with my flesh the law of sin. Does it comfort you to know that God understands the struggle, doesn’t expect perfection, but has provided the Holy Spirit to move you in the right direction? Now why is sanctification important? Number one, worship, worship. Psalm 15, don’t come into my presence unless you come with clean hands and a pure heart.

It’s important. You could say, well, I don’t worry about sanctification, I’m going to heaven anyway. Sanctification is critical, first of all, because you love the Lord, but for worship. Secondly, for witness. Let your light so shine that they may see your what? Your good works and glorify your Father who’s in heaven. It’s important for your work. Second Timothy 2, there are vessels unto honour and some unto dishonour. If you cleanse yourselves, you’ll be a vessel unto honour. It’s essential for prayer. Psalm 66, 18, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

It’s essential for edification from Scripture. First Peter, Peter says in chapter 2, laying aside all evil as babes desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby. Why is sanctification important? Because you can’t worship, witness, work, pray, or be built up in the faith unless you are in the path of sanctification, walking by the Spirit, becoming more like Christ. And sin is not killed when it is only covered up, when it is exchanged for a different sin. Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

Thank you for joining us in this exploration of how to become a perfectionist. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].