Excellent point!
The danger of judigng and trying to say, "always in this case always this, and always in that case that, ect, and it's all black and white and there are never any exceptions to anything, ever...
These are the ideas of closed minds that apparently want to stay closed, and do not want to broaden the horizon's of their own perspective(s)...
God Bless!
There is good, of course, in recognizing one does not know everything. But acknowledging this doesn't necessitate thinking that
everything you already know is in some way in error or incomplete. Many times what we know to be true is, in fact, true and needs no significant adjustment or addition of further information to be held as such. In the matter of righteousness and how it impacts our walk with God, I don't think there is any need for me to move closer to the sinless perfection view than I am at present. Certainly, I have heard nothing from those who hold this view (and I have heard
a lot from them recently), that gives me any good reason to adjust to their legalistic, works-salvation, sinless perfection perspective.
Scripture makes very clear that I am justified, or made righteous, before God, not by
my efforts to be righteous (which is works-salvation that
Ephesians 2:9-10, Romans 3:20 and
Titus 3:5 flatly deny) but by placing my trust in Christ as my Saviour and Lord.
Acts 13:37-39
37 but He whom God raised up saw no corruption.
38 Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through this Man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins;
39 and by Him everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.
Romans 3:21-22
21 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,
22 even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe...
Romans 3:24
24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
Romans 3:27-28
27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.
28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.
Romans 5:1-2
1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Galatians 2:16
16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
And so on. Good works, whether they are provoked by a moral command of the OT Mosaic law or not, are impotent in justifying anyone before God. The Israelites had been trying to obey God and sustain a relationship with Him through that obedience for many centuries and had found they were utterly incapable of doing so. The law of God ended up condemning them, exposing their moral weakness over and over again. The record of the OT, then, makes amply clear that Man cannot, by obedience to God's commands, work his way to God. And so, through Christ, God made a way for Man to be reconciled to Himself that didn't depend upon Man's success in obeying Him. As the verses above explain, Man's righteousness, his justification before God, would now come
by faith in Christ as Saviour and Lord.
Now, some would contend that this means of justification only secures one's "initial" salvation (a phrase that never appears in Scripture) and that thereafter one must be sinlessly perfect in order to remain saved. But this is just works-salvation one-step removed that the Bible denies is possible (see above). Salvation is not a work of Man but of God (
John 6:44; 2 Timothy 2:25-26) and what God accomplishes in bringing us into His family cannot be undone by the will or effort of Man (
John 10:28-29).
One of the serious problems with the sinless perfection view is that it exposes a very low view of God's holy perfection and far too weak a view of human sin. God has never ever had the slightest tinge of wickedness in Him. "God is light and in Him is no darkness at all," the apostle John wrote. (
1 John 1:5) But we are entirely comfortable in sin. We are born cursed by Adam's sin, inheritors of a nature bent always toward evil. We make a friend of sin; we sin reflexively and habitually; we glory in sin, even. When we look at God, then, and try to understand His holiness properly, we will always tend to diminish it, make it weaker than it is and thus more palatable to our sin-saturated hearts, and in so doing subtly accommodate our own wickedness.
The truth is that no one this side of the grave will ever be sinlessly perfect. We all have sin buried so deep in us, sin that has become so much a part of the fiber of who we are, sin that is so subtle and deceptive that but for God we will not ever see it for what it is (
Jeremiah 17:9). And it is precisely because this is so that we all must have the perfect righteousness of Christ imputed to us.
Only His righteousness, perfect and unchanging, will satisfy God.
It is because Christ's righteousness is perfect and unchanging, and God accepts us on the basis of our being clothed in his righteousness (
Ephesians 1:6-7; Ephesians 4:24; Galatians 3:27), that we never lose our acceptance with God no matter what we do. So it is that the apostle Paul wrote,
Romans 5:19-21
19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:
21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
Where sin abounds, grace much more abounds in and through our Saviour, Jesus Christ. And so we are always acceptable to God. Our sin cannot exceed the super-abundant grace of God in Christ.
So, what, then, of all the verses in Scripture that seems to suggest that our righteous living is integral to our salvation? Well, I have gone back and forth with the sinless perfection advocates in many threads on this site about this subject. Feel free to look them up! I'd be writing all night trying to account for all of the verses (many used illegitimately) that get thrown up as support for the sinless perfection, works-salvation doctrine.
