aiki
Regular Member
Sinless perfection is not what Scripture teaches. Really, it is precisely because none of us can or will ever live perfectly holy lives that the perfect righteousness of Christ must be imputed to us. We cannot ever be acceptable to God on the basis of our conduct. It is ONLY on the basis of our being in Christ, clothed in his perfect righteousness, that God can receive us as His children. We are "accepted IN the Beloved," Paul wrote (Ephesians 1:6), not on the basis of our ability to live sinless lives.
And so, we don't read of sinlessly perfect Christians in the New Testament (or of perfect OT saints, either). Instead, we have Paul's first letter to the Corinthian Christians in which he rebukes them repeatedly and severely for their gross and willful sin. (1 Corinthians 3:1-3; 1 Corinthians 5; 1 Corinthians 6; 1 Corinthians 11, etc.) Paul doesn't threaten the Corinthians with lost salvation, or refer to them as unsaved, but frequently confirms that - sinful as they are - they are still fellow children of God (1 Corinthians 3:1, 9, 16, 23; 1 Corinthians 4:6, 10, 14-15, etc.)
It is important, too, to recognize as you have that the churches in the Revelation that were rebuked had not been cast out from God. Despite their various failures, the churches were still God's churches. The Spirit, for instance, doesn't say to the Laodicean church that its apathy had ejected it from God's kingdom. But if sinless perfection is the normal Christian life and any sin removes one from God's family, then the lukewarm Laodiceans should not have been counted as one of God's churches.
In the New Testament, we also see Paul urging Timothy to "reprove, rebuke, exhort" the believers in his charge (1 Timothy 5:20; 2 Timothy 4:2). But if genuine believers are all sinless, what need is their to do such things? The sinlessly perfect have no faults or failures that require rebuke.
And so on. Why is it that people are drawn to the sinless perfection stuff? Because it appeals inevitably to Self. The works-salvation/lost-salvation/sinlessly-perfect folk are all motivated by Self-preservation, by the fear of Self being destroyed; they are at the center of their lives, doing for God, meeting the standard, being faithful and perfect, rather than Christ being their all-in-all; they are the ones working out their salvation, not God, a rare breed who understand the truth where all others have settled for lies. It is a sad and dark way to live, inevitably characterized by hypocrisy, legalism, frustration and shame.
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