CHAPTER 7

THE BIBLICAL DOCTRINE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

In this chapter, the Biblical doctrine of the Christian life will be presented. Since Christians are called saints or holy ones in the Scriptures, the Biblical doctrine of the holiness of God will be presented first. It will be shown how the holiness of God has been misunderstood by Christian legalism by showing what the Bible teaches about the holiness of God. This misunderstanding of the holiness of God will lead to a discussion of the misunderstanding of the Christian life and of Romans chapter 7, where Paul deals with the law and the Christian. Finally, the Biblical doctrine of the Christian life will be presented. Since the Christian life is a life filled with the Holy Spirit, particular emphasis will be place on the work of the Holy Spirit in relationship to the Christian.

THE HOLINESS OF GOD

1. Holiness.
2. The Holiness of God.
3. Sanctification.

Holiness

"You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am Holy,
and have separated you from the peoples,
that you should be mine." (Lev. 20:26)

The Holiness of God

According to the legalistic understanding of God's being, the holiness of God like His righteousness is misunderstood in terms of the law. Holiness is misunderstood legalistically as conformity to the law, moral perfection and sinlessness. The holiness of God is therefore the eternal conformity of God's will and mind to His being which is law. He always thinks and acts in conformity to His holy being. It is impossible in the very nature of God for Him to do otherwise. According to these theologies, the absolute holiness of God is the purity and moral perfection of His being. It is accordingly the fundamental and essential attribute of God or, more exactly, the consummate and infinite moral perfection of all the attributes taken together. Each attribute has its perfection; holiness is the infinite moral perfection of the whole together. It is not one attribute among others but the total moral perfection of the Godhead that sets Him transcendently apart from and above all the creatures. As such, holiness is the regulative principle, norm and standard of all of them. Accordingly God's love is holy love; His power is holy power; His will is a holy will. They are holy because He always acts consistent with His essential being which is law. Thus the holiness of God is understood legalistically.

According to the Scriptures, God is holy (Lev. 11:44-45; 19:2; 20:26; 21:8: Josh. 24:19; I Sam. 2:2; 6:2; Psa. 22:3; 99:3, 5, 9; Isa. 5:16; 6:3). He is the Holy One of Israel (I Kings 19:22; Psa. 71:22; 78:41; 89:18; Isa. 1:4; 5:24; 10:20; 16:6, etc.). But the Scriptures do not understand holiness legalistically. The root meaning of the Hebrew word (qodesh, a noun, and qadosh, an adj.) as well as the Greek word (hagios) which is translated holy is "separation." It has both a positive and negative sense; it refers positively to what is God's and negatively to what is not man's. Something that is holy is not only separated from common or human use but is separated to God. Hence with respect to persons and things it means dedicated or consecrated to God. This is clear from the phrase "holy unto the Lord" (Lev. 27:9, 14, 21, 23, 30, 32). It does not basically mean "sinless" or "morally perfect." This may be seen from the use of the term to describe things as well as persons. In the Old Testament, some things described as holy are the ground (Ex. 3:5; Josh. 5:15), the ark of the covenant (II Chron. 35:30), the vessels of the tabernacle (I Kings 8:4), and the place where they rested (I Kings 8:6, 8, 10). Since things cannot sin, they cannot be sinless. But they are holy. Things and people are holy in virtue of their relationship to God Himself; whatever is separated unto and consecrated or dedicated to a deity or deities is holy apart from its ethical or moral purity. This nonethical meaning is clear from the use of the term to describe male and female temple prostitutes of some pagan gods (qedeshim, masculine, and qedeshoth, feminine, Deut. 23:17-18; II Kings 23:7). As the titles indicate, they were sacred ministrants attached to Canaanite cults of the deity of fertility. They were holy in virtue of their relationship to the deity. It does not refer to their moral character. Of course, there are moral and ethical implications of the worship of the true God. But this meaning is secondary and subordinate in the concept of holiness. What is primary and foremost is the separation unto God.

"You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am Holy,
and have separated you from the peoples,
that you should be mine." (Lev. 20:26)

In what sense is God holy?
In the Old Testament there are three senses in which God is holy.

1. God is holy in the sense that He is separated from His creation.

   "¹¹ Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker:
   'Will you question me about my children,
   or command me concerning the work of my hands?
   ¹² I made the earth and created man upon it;
   it was my hands that stretched out the heavens,
   and I commanded all their hosts.'" (Isa. 45:11-12)

   "For thus says the high and lofty One,
   who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
   'I dwell in the high and holy place,
   and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit,
   to revive the spirit of the humble,
   and to revive the heart of the contrite.'"
   (Isa. 57:15)
   (See also Psa. 99:1-3, 5, 9; Isa. 6:1-5; 17:7; 41:20; 54:5)

   God is holy in the sense that He is separated from all that He has created. He is not to be confused or identified with His creation. Even though He is near the humble and contrite, He is not to be pantheistically identified with Nature. He is not Nature but Nature's God, the Creator.
2. The second sense in which God is holy is related to this first sense. He is holy in the sense that He is separated from all false gods; He is not like any other god.

   "¹⁸ To whom then will you liken God,
   or what likeness compare with Him?
   ¹⁹ The idol! a workman casts it
   and a goldsmith overlays it with gold,
   and casts for it silver chains.
   ²⁰ He who is impoverished
   chooses for an offering wood that will not rot;
   he seeks out a skilled craftsman to set up an
   image that will not move...
   ²⁵ 'To whom then will you compare me,
   that I should be like him?'
   says the Holy One.
   ²⁶ Lift up your eyes on high and see:
   who created these?
   He who brings out their host by number,
   calling them all by name;
   by the greatness of his might,
   and because he is strong in power,
   not one is missing."
   (Isa. 40:18-20, 25-26)

   God is not like the wooden idol made by the craftsman;
   He is the Maker of all things.

   "Have you not known? Have you not heard?
   The Lord is the everlasting God,
   the Creator of the ends of the earth."
   (Isa. 40:28)

   God is holy in the sense that He is separated from all false gods.

   "⁷ In this day men will regard their Maker,
   and their eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel;
   ⁸ they will not have regard for their altars,
   the work of their hands,
   and they will not look to what their own fingers have made,
   either the Asherim or the altars of incense." (Isa. 17:7-8)

   It was in this sense that Isaiah was overwhelmed with the holiness of God during the vision in the temple (Isa. 6:1-5). Isaiah feels the contrast between the true God and all the false gods that his people are worshipping. The worship of the true God by the seraphim brings conviction to Isaiah of the uncleanness of his lips and of the people's in the midst of which he dwelt. With their lips they worshipped and praised false gods, not the King, the Lord of hosts. Seeing the Lord, Isaiah recognizes the awful character of idolatry. "Woe is me! For I am lost!" God is holy because He is the Creator of all things; He is not to be confused with any of them; this distinguishes Him from all false gods.
3. But God is also holy because He is the Savior, the Redeemer.

   "Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel!
   I will help you, says the Lord;
   your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel."
   (Isa. 41:14)

   "For I am the Lord your God,
   the Holy One of Israel, your Savior."
   (Isa. 43:3)

   In many places in the Old Testament, the Holy One of Israel is called your (our) Redeemer (Isa. 43:14; 47:4; 48:17; 49:7; 54:5). This also distinguishes the true God from all false gods.

   "¹⁰ 'You are my witnesses,' says the Lord,
   'and my servant whom I have chosen,
   that you may know and believe me
   and understand that I am He.
   Before me no god was formed,
   nor shall there be any after me.
   ¹¹ I, I am the Lord,
   and besides me there is no Savior.'"
   (Isa. 43:10-11)

   "⁶ Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel
   and his Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts:
   'I am the first and the last;
   besides me there is no god.
   ⁷ Who is like me?
   Let him proclaim it, let him declare
   and set it forth before me.
   Who has announced from of old the things to come?
   Let them tell us what is yet to be.
   ⁸ Fear not, nor be afraid;
   have I not told you from of old and declared it?
   And you are my witnesses!
   Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock;
   I know not any." (Isa. 44:6-8)
   (See also Isa. 45:5-6, 14, 18-19, 21-22; 46:9.)

   Of those who worship false gods Isaiah says,

   "¹⁶ All of them are put to shame and confounded,
   the makers of idols go in confusion together.
   ¹⁷ But Israel is saved by the Lord with everlasting salvation;
   you shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity."
   (Isa. 45:16-17)

   "²⁰ Assemble yourselves and come, draw near together,
   you survivors of the nation!
   They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols,
   and keep on praying to a god that cannot save.
   ²¹ Declare and present your case;
   let them take counsel together!
   Who told this long ago?
   Who declared it of old?
   Was it not I, the Lord?
   And there is no other god besides me,
   a righteous God and a Savior,
   there is none besides me."
   (Isa. 45:20-21; see also Hos. 13:4)

   The true God is holy because He alone can save and deliver. He alone has the power. He alone has unlimited freedom; He alone can and will save because He alone is love.

God is holy because He is love. This truly set Him apart from all false gods. The true God is holy because He is love. That which sets God apart from all other gods and also from all creatures is that feature which is most characteristic of God Himself, His love. God has freely and sovereignly chosen to be love. His choice determines the good. The good is what God wills. And it is not whimsical or arbitrary because it is God who has willed it. "Thy will be done on earth as in heaven." (Matt. 6:10, etc.) God's will is not determined by His nature; His nature is His will; He is what he chooses to be (Deut. 32:39; Isa. 45:7; 46:8-11). And God has chosen to be love and He has revealed that choice in the history of the children of Israel and supremely in Jesus Christ, His Son (John 3:16; I John 4:9-10). The true God is a God of sovereign love, not of sovereign justice or holiness. And since a person becomes like the god he worships (Psa. 115:4-8; 135:15-18), a Christian becomes like the God of love he worships and serves, and this sets him apart from the world. Love is that which makes Christians saints, holy ones (John 13:24-35).

Sanctification

The word translated "sanctification" has the same root in the Greek and Hebrew as the word translated "holiness" and means "making holy". Sanctification is the act of God by which man is separated from the worship of a false god and is dedicated to the true God. The term is not basically a moral or ethical concept. The idea of sanctification is soteriological before it is a moral concept. The idea of sanctification, which word has the same root as holiness in the Greek and Hebrew, is first of all a religious term and secondarily a moral term. It does not mean basically sinless nor morally perfect. To be sanctified is to be dedicated to God. The RSV correctly translates the verb as "consecrated" in I Tim. 2:21. Sanctification denotes first of all the soteriological truth that the Christian belongs to God. Paul uses the term to denote another way of looking at salvation (I Cor. 1:30). Justification emphasizes the right personal relationship to God, whereas sanctification emphasizes belonging to the true God rather than to a false god. The view that justification designates the beginning of the Christian life while sanctification designates the development of that life through the internal work of the Spirit is an oversimplification of the New Testament teaching and obscures an important truth. As we will see in the next section, the legalistic interpretation of justification distorts the relation between justification and sanctification. The word "sanctification" occurs only once in Romans (6:22) and is significantly omitted from the steps leading to glorification in Romans 8:29-30.

"²⁹ For those whom he foreknew he also predestined
to be conformed to the image of His Son,
in order to be the first-born among many brethern.
³⁰ And those whom he predestined he also called;
and those whom he called he also justified;
and those whom he justified he also glorified."

Don't misunderstand me; I am not saying there is no present tense of santification. As there are three tenses of salvation: past tense, present tense, and future tense:

1. the past tense of salvation - "we were saved"
   (Rom. 8:24; Eph. 2:5, 8; II Tim. 1:8; Titus 3:5);
2. the present tense of salvation - "we are being saved"
   (I Cor. 1:18; 15:3; II Cor. 2:15);
3. the future tense of salvation - "we shall be saved"
   (Matt. 10:22; Rom. 5:9; compare Rom. 13:11; I Thess. 1:10; Heb. 9:28),

THE PROBLEM OF PERFECTION

1. THE STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.

   Jesus commanded in the Sermon on the Mount,

   "Be ye therefore perfect,
   even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt.5:48).

   This command of Jesus raises the problem of perfection:
   what is it to be perfect?
   Or more generally, what is perfection?
   In order to obey this command of Jesus, we must determine what is the meaning of word "perfect", of what he is commanding.

2. THE ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM.

   In order to solve this problem, let us first analyze the meaning of the word "perfect" and then look at the various meanings historically that have been given to the concept of perfection starting with the Greek philosophers.

   1. Linguistic Analysis.

      The Greek word in Matt. 5:48 that is translated "perfect" is teleios. This Greek adjective is derived from the noun telos which means "end" or "goal". That is, it is the termination or limit of an act or state; in the New Testament it is used also of an end of period of time or a series of events (Luke 1:33; I Cor. 10:11; II Cor. 3:13; I Pet. 4:7). It is also used as a name of the one who makes an end (Rom. 10:4), of the termination of an action (Matt. 10:22; Mark 13:13; John 13:1; Luke 22:37; I Cor. 1:8; Heb. 3:14; 6:11; Rev. 2:26), of the last in a series (Rev. 21:6; 22:13), and of the purpose for which an action is done (II Cor. 1:13; Luke 18:5). It is used for the issue or outcome of an event (Matt. 26:58) or the result of action (Rom. 6:21) and the aim or the purpose of a thing (I Tim. 1:5).

      It is also used as an adverb, translated as "Finally" (I Pet. 3:8; I Cor. 15:24). Hence the adjective teleios which is derived from this noun telos means the quality of having reach the end, that is, finished, complete. When used of persons, primarily of physical development, it means "full-grown, mature" (Heb. 5:14) and with respect to their moral (Phil. 3:15) and spiritual development (I Cor. 2:6; 14:20; Eph. 4:13), it means "mature", in contrast to babes or infants [nepios]. Hence, it means "complete" and "perfect" in the sense of complete goodness, without reference either to maturity or the philosophical idea of perfection (Matt. 5:34; 19:21; James 1:4; 3:2).

      Used of things, the Greek adjective teleios means "complete, perfect" ("the will of God", Rom. 12:2; "work of endurance", James 1:4; "law", James 1:25; "gift from above", James 1:17; "love", I John 4:18) According to I Cor. 13:10, "when the perfect comes, the partial shall be abolished." Hence, the perfect is the complete, not lacking of any part (compare, James 1:4 "lacking in nothing").

      The background of this meaning is in the Old Testament. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Septuagint (LXX), the word teleios usually translates the Hebrew word tamim, which occurs eighty-five times. Of these occurrences of the Hebrew word, fifty of them refer to sacrificial animals and is translated in our English versions "without blemish" or "without spot". When applied to persons, the word describes one who is without moral blemish or defect (Psa. 101:2, 6; Job 1:1, 8; 2:3; 8:20, etc.). The term is also applied to God's character and suggests a likeness between human persons and God, since man has been created in the image of God.

      The English word "perfect" comes from the Latin perfectio meaning "completeness" or "completion." The concept has been primarily applied to God, and then to man. As applied to man, perfectionism is the ethical theory that perfection is the end and goal of man.

   2. Historical Analysis.

      The concept of perfection has a long history. It began in the sixth century B.C. among the Greek Eleatic philosophers.

      1. XENOPHANES.
         Philosophically the concept of perfection has its origin implicitly in the teaching of the Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570-c.470 B.C.), who taught that God is a changeless being with the attributes of omnipresence and omniscience. Therefore, God does not move from place to place, and does not have any sense organs nor any physical form. God is unmoving, changeless, all-knowing, homogeneous, and ruler of all. He is the unity of the universe and its reality. This implied that change and movement in the universe are to some extant an illusion. He attacked the anthropomorphic Greek gods, and substituted in their place, "One god, the greatest among Gods and men, neither in form like unto mortals, nor in thought", who "abideth ever in the self same place, moving not at all, nor doth it befit him to go about now hither now thither." In his Metaphysics Aristotle tells us that Xenophanes, "referring to the whole world, said the One was god." That is, Xenophanes was a monist, and not a monotheist, making him the forerunner of the Eleatic school of Greek philosophers.

      2. PLATO.
         Plato (428-348 B.C.) explicitly taught that God is a perfect being, and hence incapable of change, since change involved imperfection, changing from less perfect to more perfect, or vice versa. As the perfect being, God is the Good and the cause of good. This description of God as the Good relates God to the changeless realm of the Ideas, and separates God from the world of change. This gives to God the interpenetrating absolutes of Good, Truth, and Beauty. This unchanging perfection of God lead logically in later Platonism and Neoplatonism to the identification of God with the principle of unity: God is One. Since Plato thought of change as a quality foreign to Reason, the universal and the unchanging, this lead him to the view that man is a dualism of rational soul and body, the body as "the tomb of the soul". Plato's emphasis on the changelessness of the rational is seen in his claim that the soul is non-composite, hence simple. And since the soul is a simple entity (no parts), the soul cannot be destroyed, hence the soul is immortal.

      3. ARISTOTLE.
         Aristotle's (384-322 B.C.) analysis of perfection carried Plato's concept of perfection as the unchanging to its completion and related it to the world of change. Aristotle analyzed change into the transition from the potential to the actual. He identified potentiality with the matter of a thing and actuality with the form of a thing. "Prime matter" is utterly formless potentiality for becoming a "this" or "that." "Pure form" at the other extreme is pure actuality, without matter, without any potentiality, hence without any change. This pure changeless form is God. All other things are a composite of form and matter; they are the actuality of lower potentiality and the potentiality for higher actuality. God as this pure unchangeless form is perfect Being and every other things being both potentiality and actuality are imperfect. This perfect Being is pure actuality, without any change.

         Aristotle does not make a radical dualism of mind and body that Plato does. In fact, for Aristotle the soul has a rational as well as irrational part. The rational part is the seat of intellect and it may be divided into an active and passive part. The active intellect which makes all things survives the body at death and is immortal. The passive intellect is the seat of appetites and desires. Man's active intellect has no relation to desire, but his passive intellect can influence and exercise control of the desires. This occurs by the developments of habits, and leads to a moral will. Aristotle considers will as the actualization of desire. The appropriate development of man's affective nature leads to moral virtue based on moral norms. On the other hand, the development of the active intellect leads to intellectual virtues of wisdom and insight. This wisdom (Sophia) is speculative and combines intuitive reason and rigorous knowledge of first causes and principles. Reason is the faculty of apprehending the universals and first principles in all knowledge. This knowledge depends upon sense perceptions but is not limited to the concrete and sensuous; it can grasp the universal and the ideal. The discipline of physics acquires this knowledge, and the wisdom and insight is best accomplished by the discipline of metaphysics ("after physics"). Aristotle's Metaphysics is an example of the results of this discipline.

         In terms of practical action, the virtuous life is the doing of the right thing in the right way to the right person to the right degree; that is, it involves the ability to find the mean between the extremes. The development of practical wisdom (phronesis) leads to the discovery of the Golden Mean. This mean lies between the extreme of deficiency and the extreme of excess. Aristotle remarks that the mean most often lies closer to excess than deficiency. As examples, courage, a virtuous state, lies between the deficiency of cowardice and the excess of foolhardiness. Temperance lies between insensibility and gluttony, friendship between obsequiousness and contentiousness, justice between the deficiency of letting one's rights be trampled on and the excess of trampling on the rights of others. Following the mean in all things is human perfection.

      4. NEOPLATONISM.
         Neoplatonism carries Plato's concept of perfection as the unchanging in a different direction than Aristotle did. As the name suggests Neoplatonism starts from the philosophy of Plato, and interprets it a special way. This interpretation identifies God with the principle of unity, making God completely transcendent to the world of the many, but related to the world by a series of intermediaries, which are derived from the One by a principle of emanation. In this view, reality is a graded series from the perfection of the One to the imperfection of the many of the world. Man is a dualism of the divine and the material, who longs for union with the divine. This is the philosophy of the Egyptian-Roman philosopher Plotinus (A.D. 205-270). Plotinus attempts to explain how out of the One, the eternal principle of unity, the many of the intellectual and physical world could have arisen. The One is the undifferentiated divine out of whose being the other parts of reality are derived by emanation, which is logical and not temporal, that occurs due to the refulgence of the One. Plotinus identified three great levels of emanation from the One.
         1. The first emanation is that of the Nous or Intelligence. This is Plato's realm of the Ideas or forms. Plotinus interpreted the Nous as a multiplicity reflection of the unity of the eternal One.
         2. The second emanation is that of the Psyche or World-Soul. This is the principle of life and active intelligence. It exists in contemplation of the Nous. It is like the demiurge of Plato by which the forms become the patterns of the material world. For Plotinus this World-Soul contains the world as its body.
         3. The third emanation in the series is the Hyle or matter itself, which is devoid of form and is as such the closest approach to non-being. The evil in the world, and in man, is due to the privation of Being and of the Good.
         Whatever exists is an "overflow" of the One, and pervading all reality, at its different levels, has an ardent longing for union with what is higher, and ultimately with the One itself. Thus in the human soul, fired by the heavenly Eros, the love of the perfect, of which Plato spoke in his Symposium, is driven to undertake an ascent to the One. According to Plotinus, man combines in himself the spiritual and material orders. In this position man is uncomfortable; he has a longing for the eternal forms of the Nous and for the perfect eternal One, and yet he is caught within an imperfect body. According to Plotinus, salvation is liberation from the multiplicity of the material to the unity of the rational and spiritual by means of contemplation, both intellectual and spiritual at once. The first stage of liberation is purification: the soul must free itself from the body and the beguilements of senses. At the second stage, it rises to the level of Mind and occupies itself with philosophy and science, retaining his awareness of the self. The final stage is a mystical union with the One by means an ecstatic experience in which there occurs a lost of the awareness of the distinction between subject and object. This state of ecstasy is rarely, if ever, attained in this life and is usually short-lived. This liberation may take more than one lifetime.

      5. AUGUSTINE.
         Augustine (354-430 A.D.) accepted the Neoplatonic concept of perfection. He accepted the Neoplatonic concept of God's being as One and unchanging but rejected the Neoplatonic theory of emanations; God is creator of the world out of nothing. With Neoplatonism, Augustine affirmed the perfection of the nature of God: His eternity, infinity, and incomprehensibility, His simplicity and unity, His essentiality without accidents. God is a being so different from all others that apparently contradictory statements can be true of Him simultaneously, that is, for example, He is eternal, timeless, yet containing all time, or in knowing His own Nature He can know the total future without depriving man of his freedom of choice. These statements that would be contradictory for any other beings than God's Being, are true of God's Being. But God's Being transcends our understanding. This Neoplatonic concept of God's Being was to become the standard for Christian theology for more than a thousand years after Augustine's time.

         Augustine also accepted the Neoplatonic concept that evil is a privation, the negation of the good. Anything insofar as it is, is good. So evil, being the negation of the good, is the lack of being. God as Being is the Good. To this concept of perfection Augustine added the concept of sinlessness. God as perfect Being never does anything that violates the law of His nature; He never sins because His nature is sinless. But man sins since the fall of Adam because his nature has been corrupted; man has a sinful nature and sins because of his sinful nature. The Greek conception of the imperfection of man's being as subject to change (birth and death) had now become the imperfection of man's sinful nature, "not able not to sin" (non posse non pecarre).

         For Augustine, salvation by grace was an absolute necessity. Without God's enablement, man cannot carry out the prescriptions of the law. The grace of God was not just an external aid to the keeping of the law that the Pelagians allowed. The grace of God must work internally, within us. It is an "internal and secret power, wonderful and ineffable", by which God works in men's heart. For Augustine, the power of the grace of God is in effect the presence of the Holy Spirit. The letter of the law kills unless we have the life-giving Spirit to enable us to do what it prescribes. Augustine says, "It is the Spirit Who assists our infirmity." For Augustine, the Christian life was Spirit-empowered law-keeping. He distinguishes four kinds of grace.

         1. There is "prevenient grace" (from Psa. 59:10: "His mercy goes before [in Latin, praevenient] me."), by which God goes before and initiates in our souls whatever good we think or aspire to do or will.
         2. Then there is "co-operating grace", by which God assists or co-operates with our will once it has been bestirred.
         3. There is also "sufficient grace" (adiutorium sine quo), which is the grace which Adam possessed in Paradise and which placed him in the position, subject to his using his free will to the end, to practice and preserve in virtue.
         4. Then there is also "efficient grace" (adiutorium quo), which is the grace granted to the saints predestined to God's kingdom to enable them both to will and to do what God expects of them.
         Grace of whatever kind is God's free gift: gratia dei gratuita. The divine favor cannot be earn by good deeds of men for the simple reason that those deeds themselves are the effect of grace: "grace bestows merit, and is not bestowed in reward for them." No good act can be performed without God's help, and even the initial motions of faith are inspired in our heart by Him. This view of the grace of God led to the Augustine view of predestination.

3. THE CLUE TO THE SOLUTION.

   Jesus was not referring to the ontological perfection of God when he commanded: "You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt. 5:48). As the context makes clear (Matt. 5:43-47), Jesus is talking about love.

   "⁴³ You have heard that it was said,
   'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
   ⁴⁴ But I say to you,
   love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,
   ⁴⁵ in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven;
   for He causes His sun rise on the evil and the good,
   and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
   ⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?
   Do not even the tax-gatherers do the same?
   ⁴⁷ And if you greet your brethern only,
   what do you do more than others?
   Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
   ⁴⁸ Therefore you are to be perfect,
   as your heavenly Father is perfect."
   (Matt. 5:43-48, NAS)

4. THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM.

   The love that Jesus is talking about is not human love, but is the divine love that loves the sinner. This is perfect love, and Jesus commands us to love with this perfect love. And this love fulfills the law. As the Apostle Paul says,

   "⁸ Owe no one anything, except to love one another;
   for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.
   ⁹ The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery,
   You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet',
   and any other commandment, it is summed up in this word,
   'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'.
   ¹⁰ Love does no evil to one's neighbor;
   therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."
   (Rom. 13:8-10 ERS).

   Paul's summary statement that "love does no evil to one's neighbor" may be stated positively, "love does good to one's neighbor". Love is a relationship between persons, the person that loves and the person that is loved, and in this relationship that the person who loves does good to the person loved. This love is not a feeling but a choice, the choice to do good to the person loved. The commandment to love is addressed to the will and one must choose to obey the commandment. It may be accompanied by feelings of compassion and caring, but Agape-love is the choice of the will to do good to the person that may be unloveable and evil. Thus God loves the sinner, not because the sinner is inherently loveable, but God chooses to do good to him and save him. Because love is a choice, it can be commanded and it can be obeyed. There are other kinds of love, but the kind of love that God commands is Agape-love. This love is not acquisitive love, that wants to acquire its object; neither is it caused by its object because of the value or the goodness of its object. Agape-love creates value where there is no value; it does good to the person loved. Agape-love gives what the person loved needs, what is good for him or her. This love is perfect love.

   "⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God;
   and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
   ⁸ The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
   ⁹ In this the love of God was manifest among us,
   that God sent His only Son into the world,
   so that we might live through Him.
   ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us
   and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins.
   ¹¹ Beloved, if God so loved us,
   we also ought to love one another.
   ¹² No man has ever seen God; if we love one another,
   God abides in us and His love is perfected in us."
   (I John 4:7-12 ERS).
   "¹⁶ And we have come know and have believed the love
   which God has for us.
   God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God,
   and God abides in him.
   ¹⁷ By this, love is perfected in us,
   that we may have confidence in the day of judgment;
   because as He is, so also are we in this world.
   ¹⁸ There is no fear in love;
   but perfect love casts out fear,
   because fear involves punishment,
   and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
   ¹⁹ We love, because He first loved us.
   ²⁰ If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother,
   he is a liar, for the one who does not love his brother
   whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
   ²¹ And this commandment we have from Him,
   that the one who loves God should love his brother also."
   (I John 4:16-21 NAS).

THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

Augustine and much of Roman Catholic theology conceives of the Christian life as a process of earning eternal life by the good works which the Christian is enabled to do by the grace that was infused or imparted at baptism and renewed by the other sacraments. The doctrine of the sinful nature was introduced into Christian theology by Augustine in the early fifth century A.D. to explain why man can not save himself apart from the grace of God by his meritorious works. Instead of denying that salvation has anything to do with meritorious works, Augustine assumed that salvation is by meritorious works and thus taught that because of his inherited sinful nature, man, since the fall, cannot do meritorious works to earn salvation apart from the grace of God. But Augustine's assumption is wrong; according to the Scriptures (Rom. 4:4-5; Eph. 2:8-9), salvation is not by meritorious works, and the doctrine of the sinful nature is unnecessary to deny that man can save himself by his meritorious good works. Man cannot save himself by the law because the law cannot make alive, not because he cannot do meritorious works. The law cannot deliver one from death or from sin, neither can it produce life or righteousness ( Gal. 3:21). There is no salvation by the law.

The sinful nature is not needed to explain why man cannot save himself, because the law was not given by God for salvation. God gave the law, not for salvation from sin, but for the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:19); that is, to show what should be man's right personal relationship to God and to his fellow men (Deut. 6:5; Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:37-40). This knowledge does not save man but only shows man what he ought to be; it cannot make him to be that. Because the law cannot make man alive ( Gal. 3:21), salvation is not by the law, nor is the Christian to walk by human self effort (the flesh) to keep the law. Salvation is only through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit; Jesus Christ is the life (John 14:6) and the one who receives Him is made alive (regenerated) and is kept alive (renewing) by the Spirit (Titus 3:5). The Christian is to walk by the Spirit (Rom. 8:4; Gal. 5:16, 25).

Neither is the sinful nature needed to explain the struggle and defeat in Romans 7; the Christian cannot live by the law any more than he can be saved by the law. The law cannot produce righteousness because it cannot make alive.

"Is the law against the promises of God?
Certainly not;
for if a law had been given which can make alive,
then righteousness would indeed by the law." (Gal. 3:21).

Augustine's conception of the Christian life is clearly legalistic. And it was this conception that the Reformers and Reformed theologians denied as unbiblical. But by retaining a basically legalistic understanding of Christ's work of salvation and justification, it was difficult if not impossible for them to understand the Christian life and sanctification in any other than legalistic terms. The practical matters of the Christian life are definitely affected by the theory of salvation and, behind that, the theory of the need of salvation. Since man's relationship to God was conceived in legalistic terms, that is, that all men are under the law and that man's relationship to God is determined by the law, not only is sin understood legalistically as breaking the rules, the transgression of the law as the divine standard of perfection in thought, word, and deed, but righteousness is also understood legalistically to be the keeping of the rules, a conformity to the law in thought, word, and deed; namely, moral perfection. Since according to this legalistic conception man was created under the law and for the law, man's highest good and final goal is this moral perfection; this legal righteousness. To stand spotless and without blame before the law was thought to be the Christian's ultimate hope. So the Christian life and sanctification was conceived by most Reformed theologians as growth and progress toward this moral perfection. Of course, it was not to earn eternal life. For all our moral progress, they said, we are still sinners, sinning in thought, word and deed. And at the same time legally righteous with the imputed righteousness of the merits of Christ -- simultaneously righteous and unrighteous, saint and sinner.

Chapter 7 of Romans was interpreted by most Reformed theologians as the normal Christian life. They said that because the Christian after conversion still has a sinful nature, he will have an unending struggle with indwelling sin. His sinful nature (which is subject to sin) is in constant warfare with his renewed nature (which is subject to God's law). Even though he wants to keep God's law, he finds himself being compelled by his sinful nature to do the very things he hates. Although justified (declared righteous through the imputed merits or righteousness of Christ) and thus assured of salvation, there is still no deliverance from his sinful nature until he dies. He will finally be delivered from his sinful nature when he will be raised from the dead in the last day with an incorruptible body completely free from the presence of the sinful nature. Thus most Reformed theologians interpreted the 7th chapter of Romans as the normal Christian life.

The Protestant Reformers rejected the teaching that grace is given by the sacraments to enable the will of man to earn his salvation by meritorious works and they taught that salvation is by grace through faith and that the grace of God regenerated the believer, giving him a new nature, by which he can do good works, but not to earn salvation and eternal life (Christ had earned this for them by His active obedience), but to show that they are saved and regenerated. According to their teaching, the believer has two natures, a sinful nature and a new nature, and the experience recorded in Romans 7 was interpreted as the struggle between these two natures. This legalistic explanation of salvation and of the Christian life leaves the believer under the law, and under the dominion of sin (Rom. 6:14). And this legalistic explanation of Romans 7 also leaves the believer with no deliverance from this struggle, contrary to the clear teaching of the Scirptures that there is deliverance:

"²⁴ O wretched man that I am!
who shall deliver me from the body this death?
^25a I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
(Rom. 7:24-25a KJV).

John Wesley

John Wesley (1703-1791) in the 18th century recognized that there was deliverance from the Roman 7 experience, and he put forth the teaching that there was a second work of grace (the first work of grace was conversion), which he called "entire santification", that would eradicate the sinful nature, cleansing from inbred sin and enabling those experiencing this work of grace to live without conscious or deliberate sin (Christian Perfection). But his explanation of this deliverance as the eradication of the sinful nature assumes that the struggle of Roman 7 is caused by the sinful nature. This assumption is wrong; the cause of the struggle is not the sinful nature, but being under law. According Rom. 6:14
("For sin shall not have dominion over you:
for you are not under the law, but under grace."),
sin has dominion over the believer when he is under the law and the deliverance from the dominion of sin is to be under grace. The grace of God, God's love in action, delivers the believer from the dominion and the slavery of sin by placing the believer back under the grace of God. God does this by not condemning the believer who is in Christ Jesus.

"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus."
(Rom. 8:1).

"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
has set you free from the law of sin and of death." (Rom. 8:2 NAS).

Wesley's Theology

Wesley's theology is essentially Arminianism, which is usually contrasted with Calvinism. But his Arminianism is not just a negation of the five points of Calvinism. Wesley affirms the sovereignty of God to overcome the "sinful, devilish nature" of man, by the work of the Holy Spirit. Wesley called this process prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace (grace being nearly synonymous with the work of the Holy Spirit).

Prevenient grace for Wesley is the universal work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and lives of people between conception and conversion that prepares them for conversion. Original sin, according to Wesley, makes it necessary for the Holy Spirit to initiate salvation, because people are bound by sin and death. People experience the gentle wooing of the Holy Spirit, which prevents them from moving so far from "the way" that when they finally understand the claims of the gospel upon their lives, they have the freedom to say yes. The justifying grace is the work of the Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion when they say "yes" to the call of prevenient grace by placing their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Wesley understood conversion to have two phases in a person's experience. The first phase is justification which includes the Spirit imputing to the believer the righteousness earned by Christ. The second phase is regeneration or the new birth. This lays the ground work for sanctification or the imparting of righteousness. These two phases mark the distinctiveness of Wesley's theology. Here he combines the "faith alone" emphasis of the Protestant Reformation with the passion for holiness so prevalent in the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Sanctifying grace describes the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believers between conversion and death. Faith in Christ saves them from hell and sin for heaven and good works. Imputed righteousness, according to Wesley, entitles one to heaven, and imparted righteousness qualifies one for heaven. Here Wesley goes to great lengths to describe his view of Christian perfection. The process of sanctification or perfection culminates in the experience of "pure love" where one's love becomes devoid of self-interest. This second work of grace is the main work of the Holy Spirit in lives of believers. The first work of grace, justification, imputing of Christ's righteousness must be followed by the second work of grace, sanctification, the imparting of Christ's righteousness. According to Wesley, this second work of grace was not just a single experience but was also an on-going, continuous and dynamic process moving toward perfection, perfect love. This concept of continuous process was later clarified by the mystics such as Francois Fenelon, whose phrase "moi progressus ad infinitum" ["my progress is without end"] impressed Wesley and became the major teaching for the perpetuation of the Evangelical Revival. The watchword of the Revival was "Go on to perfection; otherwise you cannot keep what you have." According to Wesley, prevenient grace is a process and justifying grace is instantaneous, but sanctifying grace is both a process and instantaneous. Although Wesley spoke of an instantaneous experience he called "entire sanctification" subsequent to justification, his major emphasis was upon the continuous process of going on to perfection.

Wesley's concept of holiness as sinless perfection is a legalistic misinterpretation of the Biblical concept of holiness. We have examined the Biblical theology of holiness and sanctification.

1. Holiness.
2. The Holiness of God.
3. Sanctification.

Holiness Movement

But Wesley's understanding of sanctification as a process was lost by Wesley's followers. In the 1840s and 50s, there originated in the United States a movement that endeavored to preserve and propagate John Wesley's teaching on entire sanctification and Christian perfection. Sanctification was seen as instantaneous experience, a second work of grace, in which inbred sin is eradicated. This Holiness movement emphasized that salvation involved two experiences. The first was conversion or justification, in which one is freed from the guilt of sin, and in the second experience called entire sanctification or full salvation, in which one is liberated from the flaw in their moral nature that causes them to sin. This experience makes possible for them to fulfill the entire law of God. This doctrine of entire sanctification became the distinctive of the Holiness Movement. When contemporary writers and teachers within Methodist Church attempted to downplay this instantaneous experience and emphasize the continuous character of sanctification, the Holiness people withdrew from the Methodist Church and formed their own denominations: the Wesleyan Methodist in 1843 and the Free Methodist in 1860. These became the first two denominations with the Holiness teaching of entire sanctification. After the Civil War, a full-fledged Holiness revival broke out within the ranks of Methodist, and in 1867 the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness was formed. From 1893, it was known as the National Holiness Association (NHA) and in 1971 it was renamed the Christian Holiness Association. Until the 1890s, the Methodist dominated the movement and channeled its work into their churches. By the 1880s as tensions between Methodism and the Holiness association increased, the first independent Holiness denominations began to appear, The gap between the two widened as Methodist practice drifted toward a sedate, middle-class American Protestantism, while the Holiness groups insisted that they were practicing primitive Wesleyanism and were the successors of Wesley in America. The small schismatic bodies gradually coalesced into formal denominations, the largest of which were the Church of God, Anderson, Indiana (1880), Church of the Nazarene (1908), and the Pilgrim Holiness Church (1897), which later merged with the Wesleyan Methodist in 1968. The polity of these churches was a modified Methodism moving toward a somewhat more congregational autonomy, and the "second blessing" of entire sanctification was the heart of their theologies. Most of them operated with a strict perfectionist code of personal morality and demanded that their adherents wear plain dress and abstinence from "worldly" pleasures and amusements. Almost all of them allowed women to be ordained into the ministry and occupy leadership positions.

The Holiness teaching quickly spread beyond Methodism. A Mennonite group, the United Missionary Church (formerly the Mennonite Brethren in Christ and since a merger in 1969 is known as Missionary Church), adopted a doctrine of entire sanctification and Holiness standard of personal conduct. Another group, the Brethren in Christ, founded in 1863, of mixed Pennsylvania pietists and Mennonites, also adopted Wesleyan perfectionism. Four Quaker yearly meetings that had been influenced by the Holiness teachings came together in 1947 to form the Evangelical Friends Alliance. The Salvation Army also adopted the Holiness teachings. The Christian and Missionary Alliance with its teaching on Christ as Savior, sanctifier, healer, and coming King, had affinities with the Holiness movement, but never accepted the doctrine of the second work of grace and the eradication of the sinful nature. Two of its teachers and ministers, A. B. Simpson and A. W. Tozer, were widely read in Holiness circles.

Pentecostalism

The Pentecostal movement began as an offshoot of the Holiness Movement. It began at a small school, Bethel Bible School, in Topeka, Kansas, which was founded by a Holiness evangelist, Charles Fox Parham. Parham had concluded that speaking in tongues was the sign of the second work of grace, after a student, Agnes Ozman, experienced speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, in January, 1901. The teaching and practice spread rapidly among Holiness groups. They became known as Pentecostals because they identified their experience with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the 120 gathered in the upper room on the day of Pentecost recorded in Acts 2. They called their experience the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" on the basis of the promise of the risen Jesus recorded in Acts 1:5, "John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit." The movement came to Southern California in 1906 when a student of Parham, William J. Seymour, a black Holiness evangelist from Houston, Texas, came to Los Angeles, Calif., and began to hold revival meetings at an abandoned African Methodist Episcopal Church on Azuza Street in downtown Los Angeles. The Azuza Street Revival from 1906 to 1909 became the center from which Pentecostalism became a world movement. Other Holiness groups were pentecostalized rapidly as leaders of Holiness Movement came to Azuza Street to investigate what was happening there. Among the Azuza Street "pilgrims" were G. B. Cashwell (North Carolina), C H. Mason (Tennessee), Glen Cook (California), A. G. Argue (Canada), and W. H. Durham (Chicago). Within a year from the opening of the Azuza Street meetings (April, 1906), these and others spread the Pentecostal message across the nation. But many of the Holiness groups were not willing to believe that speaking in tongues was sign of the second work of grace. Sharp controversies and divisions developed in several Holiness denominations. The Pentecostals left or were forced to leave their Holiness denominations and they formed the first Pentecostal denominations, among which were the Pentecostal Holiness Church, the Church of God in Christ, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), the Apostolic Faith (Portland, Oregon), the United Holy Church, and the Pentecostal Free-Will Baptist Church. Most of these churches were located in the southern states and experienced rapid growth after the Pentecostal Revival. Two of these, the Church of God in Christ, and the United Holy Church were predominantly black. A controversy developed among these churches about sanctification. Some like Parham and Seymour taught that speaking with tongues was the sign of the "second work of grace", but others held that the baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues was a "third work of grace". Then there were those like William H. Durham who in 1910 began to teach his "finished work" theology, which taught that sanctification is progressive work of the Holy Spirit based on the finished work of Christ on Calvary. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was the first filling of the Holy Spirit by which one is enabled by the Holy Spirit to live and minister. The Assemblies of God was formed in 1914 based on Durham's teaching and soon became the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world. Most of the Pentecostal Churches after 1914 were formed on the model of Assemblies of God. They include the Pentecostal Church of God, the International Church of the Four Square Gospel (founded in 1927 by Aimee Semple McPherson), and Open Bible Standard Church.