An old pentecostal preacher I knew very well and have great respect for who has gone to heaven now once told me that we sin in all sorts of ways hundreds of times a day in thought, word and deed, most of which we are not even aware of.
His viewpoint was that God was so Holy that we can't even comprehend all the ways we actually sin against Him everyday.
What do you guys think?
Is it possible to go sinless for...the rest of your life, a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour, a minute?
If it is not possible to free from sin, then God's grace is in vain. Grace is given to us for the purpose of enabling us to be transformed. If we can't be transformed, then the grace is in vain.
I have been a Christian pretty much from birth. I was raised in a Christian family, and there was never a time when I didn't believe in Jesus. My conversion experience happened when I was about 8 years old and I was baptized not long after that.
From that time I have continually struggled with numerous sins, including some that I was not aware of at the time. There were many times during my teen years and into my adult years that I really wondered if I were truly saved because, based on an honest reading of scripture, I knew I simply did not match up to what a Christian was supposed to be and what the redeemed life was supposed to be.
I'm not talking about keeping the law etc.. I'm talking about actually experiencing what Paul and Jesus, and Peter and John describe as the life of a person who is in Christ.
Further, I also knew I wasn't remotely matching up to what my Church taught about the believer's victory over sin and other trials of life etc.
There were times when I struggled with the reality that there either had to be something seriously wrong with me, or with what my Church taught and what I believed.
We were basically taught that all believers have victory available to them, and all they have to do is "step out in faith" and boom, you'll have it, you will be victorious, you will be an overcomer, you'll have everything that the New Testament writers said you should have or could have.
I therefore figured that either I wasn't truly saved, or my faith was simply not good enough, probably because I wasn't devoted enough.
Eventually I was lead to move on from that Church and I began to re-discover a different, older view of Christianity. One of the things I eventually found was that God has given us 'means of grace'.
The idea that you simply have to "step out in faith" and boom everything will fall into your lap is false. Nothing works that way in natural life and it doesn't work that way in spiritual life either.
natural life, the natural world, was all created to reveal God and his truths to us. As a result most aspects of natural life are allegorical in a sense, for spiritual life.
In natural life, if you sit around and never do anything, you get fat, lazy, and unhealthy. If you eat simply what you want to eat, you get fat and unhealthy. Further, while those things are enjoyable for a while, eventually they lose their pleasure and they become a burden, even while you are still enslaved to them.
If you want to be healthy, if you want to be fit, if you want to really function as you are supposed to function and be what you are supposed to be, you have to train. You have to train yourself to eat the things that are good for you, not simply what tastes good. You have to train yourself to exercise, to sleep the right amount, to drink the right amount of water.
Spiritual life is basically the same. If you want to be healthy, you have to feed yourself on the right things, and you have to discipline yourself, train yourself to love the right things, and to do the right things.
In both spiritual and natural life we face the reality that we are effectively enslaved by our habits. In natural life most people are almost incapable of changing without something outside of themselves enabling them to do it. Whether it is an event, or a person that pushes them etc.
In spiritual life we are not able to do this without the grace of God enabling us to do it.
Discipline, feeding yourself on the right things... these things are not 'works' in the sense that they don't 'earn' you anything. Yet they definetly are work in the sense that they are often difficult to do.
all the things we do in this regard, we do because God enabled us, and we do them in cooperation with him. He is working in us, and we are cooperating with him.
Earlier I mentioned the phrase "means of grace". What this is talking about is the idea that God has made physical ways for us to receive grace that strengthens and renews us.
Often times our version of Christianity has made everything abstract, and mental... it all takes place in the mind, faith is in the mind, and thats all that matters etc.
God, on the other hand, created the physical world to express himself. He created us as physical and spiritual beings... and then he himself became a physical being.
God uses physical things, and we as both physical and spiritual beings are meant to interact with God on both of those levels.
Things like baptism, and communion are obvious examples. These are physical actions that when we do them in faith, they have spiritual results. They are means of grace.
Other things include prayer, scripture reading, meditation. We often view these things are primarily mental, non-physical things, but they really do involve our body as well as our mind. When we pray we should involve our body by taking different postures, whether it be kneeling, prostrating, raising your hands, etc.
I re-iterate the point that none of these things are about earning salvation, or earning holiness. They are about being transformed. In physical terms we've all probably heard the saying "you are what you eat." Eating is a transformative activity. When you eat you either transform yourself towards health, or away based on what you eat.
The same is true spiritually, what we consume is transformative, for the good or the bad.
But really, when you get down to it, the point of all these things is to know God and to interact with God. The things I have talked about are ways that God himself established for us to do that.
The reality of our faith is that we are transformed by communion with Jesus Christ. When we are united to him, when we experience union with him, it can't help but change us. He has made physical ways for us to pursue those spiritual ends. God does not intend that you have to become disembodied in order to know him. On the contrary, he became embodied so that you could know him.
Going back to my own experience. When I began to realize some of this stuff I really pursued them. I read the bible, I had regular prayer times where I didn't just throw lists of requests at God but praised him, thanked him, loved him and sought to know him. I spent time meditating on scripture, but also time just sitting and waiting silently on God, making an effort to focus my mind on him and devote my attention to him. (that is very hard to do by the way)
I can honestly say that I have never before in my Christian life experienced anything like what I experienced during that time. Most of my life I have hated trying to have prayer times and the like because it always seemed like torture.
During that time I had wonderful prayer times. I had such an awareness of God's love that I never had before. That was truly transforming. I learned then that we are incapable of loving as we need to, until God's love fills us and flows out from us.
There was a period of several months where I truly had victory over the old sins that always beset me. In fact, I remember at one point thinking "wow, I'm free from that, what else is there? Have I arrived?" and God quickly pointed out some other issues that I hadn't been aware of before and so I started looking to overcome those.
There came a time when I was tempted to some of the old things. I was not tempted in the old way, where it seemed impossible to resist and like failure was inevitable.
I can't say why, but for whatever reason, I didn't flee the temptation as I should have I allowed myself to linger in the situation and allowed it to continue and eventually I fell to the old temptation, almost without even realizing it.
Since that time, I have struggled to discipline myself again. Discipline has always been my greatest weakness. It is strange because I know that knowing God is far better, far more fulfilling, even far more enjoyable, than the spiritual laziness and distracting myself with games and what not that I do.. but I still struggle to actually make myself go back and pursue those things again like I did.
I'm amazed also at how quickly I forget the things I learned then and how quickly I am distracted away from them. How easy it is for me to focus on other desires in life than knowing God.
That is one of the really important things too... anything that genuinely brings you to seeking God is good, BUT if you seek him for any reason other than simply his own sake, and loving him, it will be a hinderance to you.
This is why I am some times dismayed when charismatic chase power, glory, experiences, etc. Those things are fine in their place but they are a poor substitute for God himself, and like any person, like any lover... he doesn't want to be used as a means to an end. He wants people who want him for him... not people who want him for selfish reasons.
