Abiding So As Not To Sin
I was raised in
Protestant evangelical churches. By the time I came to confront the claims and
teachings of the Lord Jesus I was in high school and I was very aware of how
much sin had gripped me. And further I was aware of how much it still gripped
me.
The focus of so
much evangelical spirituality is centered around sin and moral uprightness—which
tends to lead people toward the kind of fake religiosity that our Lord
condemned in the Jewish religious leaders of that day. In my experience, the
leaders attempted to compensate for their emphasis on conversion, striving to
live a pure and morally upright life and doctrinal clarity by emphasizing the
grace of God towards us. We needed to be reminded constantly how much we were
loved and that God was gracious to us because we felt the guilt of sin and the
shame that reinforced those feelings of guilt.
Since then I have
been in evangelical churches that swung over toward the opposite error—of emphasizing
God’s willingness to be merciful so much that they ceased to talk about sin in
any meaningful way. Thus the underlying message conveyed is that sin should be
expected to continue among Christians and that God covers that because of the
blood of Christ. Serious decisions to pursue righteousness and to learn to say
no to sinful patterns was simply not taught.
I have come to
appreciate this heritage for at least one reason: I know without any hesitation
or qualification that without the Presence of God in me I am prone to sin and
that without Christ I stand before God corrupted and inwardly dying—of this I
am quite sure. The liberating day came when I finally said to God that this was
true and that I had no hope without the Lord’s deliverance of me.
This good news of
the Lord’s sacrificial death on our behalf brought me great joy and I started
to learn what it meant to not have to have guilt for the choices I made to harm
myself and others. What took me much longer to learn was the meaning and
practicality of the Lord’s command to “abide in me as I abide in you.” This is
not to say that I could not recite accurately proper theological terms related
faith or comprehend what the biblical writers say about the spiritual life in
Christ. I knew it in my mind but I still did not want to do what was necessary
to actually experience it.
My own repeated
failures to live up to my own standards, which I discovered were not nearly as
strict as the Lord’s commands, eventually drove me to find answers and words by
which to articulate how to abide in Christ so that I did not have to sin. For is
this not what the Lord’s Apostles taught us was possible?
Walter Marshall’s
book has been very helpful to me. Here is gem of insight from this faithful
pastor of generations past.
“In this way
only God is reconciled of us, even in Christ (2 Cor. 5:19; Eph. 1:7). And so He
loves us and is a fit object of our love (1 John 4:19). And so in this way only
we have a new and divine nature by the Spirit of Christ in us, effectually
carrying us forth to holiness with life and love (Rom. 8:5; Gal. 5:17; 2 Peter
1:3, 4), and have new hearts according to the law, so that we serve God
heartily according to the new nature, and cannot but serve Him (1 John 3:9). So
that there is a sure foundation for godliness and love to God with all our
heart, might and soul; and sin is not only restrained, but mortified; and not
only the outside made clean, but the inside, and the image of God renewed; and
holy actings surely follow. We sin not according to the old nature, though we
are not perfect in degree because of the old nature.”[i]
This is the secret
of abiding: To let the old nature die by not feeding it and living from it. In
this we invite Holy Spirit to perpetually renew us in our spirits and from the
center of our being to progressively change us. Thus in this way “the image of
God [is] renewed; and holy actings surely follow.” I have to want to abide in
Christ in order to avoid sinning but now I actually can do so! What a
liberating truth this has been—and how sobering. For now I know what displeases
the Lord and I can choose to return to do it, but in such a way that I am doing
violence to the renewed inner person.
Andrew Murray
echoed much of Marshall’s refreshing teaching and application. His writings have
profoundly shaped my thinking and given me reason to think, even when I was in
the grip of deeply embedded sin patterns, that somehow there must be hope of
breaking free. He asserts the following:
“The believer
who claims the promise in full faith has the power to obey the command, and sin
is kept from asserting its supremacy. Ignorance of the promise, or unbelief, or
unwatchfulness, opens the door for sin to reign. And so the life of many
believers is a course of continual stumbling and sinning. But when the believer
seeks full admission into, and a permanent abode in Jesus, the Sinless One,
then the life of Christ keeps from actual transgression. ‘In Him is no sin. He
that abideth in Him sinneth not.’ Jesus does indeed save him from his sin—not
by the removal of his sinful nature, but by keeping him from yielding to it.”[ii]
There is here in
Murray’s teaching an answer to the riddle of human nature and the operation of
sin in us. How are we to live free from willful sin when our nature is corrupted
by it? How are we to escape from patterns of thought and behavior that are not
merely learned but are expressions of the inner bent towards self-will (and
opposition to doing God’s will)? How are we to explain it when a person who
genuinely has a measure of faith in Christ is still prone to turn back toward
impurity and brute selfishness (and the many varied ways this is manifested)? “Jesus
does indeed save him from his sin—not by the removal of his sinful nature, but
by keeping him from yielding to it.”
There is in these
words truth that cannot be taught in any ordinary way that I or any other
teacher or preacher possesses. These are simply words that sound promising but
unrealistic to the person chronically stuck in iniquity. That is where I was
for many years—half awake to God and convinced that I somehow had it in me to
please God; that he would take my half-measures and somehow make up for my
failings with his mercy. I was deceived. That is not how God operates in us—he does
not compensate or make up for our deficiencies in any way at all. Rather, Holy
Spirit speaks to us to convince us that we must fully yield to his Presence and
his holy work of spiritual renewal in us.
In me there is
nothing that can be “fixed” and then I can stand up and do what is right. Paul
stated plainly, “In me there is no good thing.” (Romans 7) The redemption by
the blood of the cross for us accomplished our permanent release from sin to be
sure. However, God also takes the cross and kills our nature—progressively— and
simultaneously he patiently develops and matures his own gift of life (new
nature) in us.
James put it this
way: “In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth,
so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” (James 1:18,
NRSV) Based upon this assertion of God’s operation of grace and power in us he
can then exhort us to learn to listen, to put away anger and unrighteous
judgments and to cease to practice all forms of impurity and evil “and welcome
with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” (vv.19-21).
And further, it is possible (but contrary to God’s good will) for believers to
deceive themselves into thinking that merely hearing the truth is acceptable to
God. They must readily listen to the truth and put it into practice and in this
way conduct themselves in ways that are pleasing to God (vv.22-27).
The wonder of God’s
grace granted to us in Christ is that we are responsible to act upon the truth
we know but we are not able to activate the power to actually do the things
that please Father. This is a wonderful paradox that defies all human reasoning
because the mind can only conceive of what is possible within the range of God-given
abilities. Humans are able to do many amazing things. However, conquering sin by
human will, desire or disciplines is not possible; any attempts to do so become
yet one more way by which we are propelled into the very destructive sin patterns
want to escape or if we manage to stop the particular behavior that is
destructive we simply take on another kind of sin.
Again, Andrew
Murray asserts the following:
“Is not this
way of saving from sin just that which will glorify Him?—keeping us daily
humble and helpless in the consciousness of the evil nature, watchful and
active in the knowledge of its terrible power, dependent and trustful in the
remembrance that only His presence can keep the lion [corrupt human nature]
down. O let us believe that when Jesus said, ‘Abide in me, and I in you,’ He
did indeed mean that, while we were not to be freed from the world and its
tribulation, from the sinful nature and its temptations, we were at least to
have this blessing fully secured to us—grace to abide wholly, only, even in our
Lord. The abiding in Jesus makes it possible to keep from actual sinning; and
Jesus Himself makes it possible to abide in Him.”[iii]
[i] Walter
Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification [Fig:2012], pp.261-262.
[ii]
Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ (27th Day); cited from The
Andrew Murray Collection (Barbour), p.151.
[iii]
Murray, Abide in Christ; cited from The Andrew Murray Collection,
p.152.
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