18 - Can We Ever Be Dead To Sin?

Can We Ever Be Dead To Sin?

"If one’s view of sin were only shallow enough, sinless perfection would not be an impossible attainment."

Steven Barabas

"I have found a far higher standard maintained by believers who intelligently reject the eradica­tion theory than among those who accept it. Quiet, unassuming Christians, who know their Bibles and their own hearts too well to permit their lips to talk of sinlessness and perfection in the flesh, who nevertheless are characterized by intense devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, love for the word of God, and holiness of life and walk."

H. A. Ironside the usual holiness platforms have taught that through sanctification we may become inwardly dead to sin. Proponents of the eradication theory have insisted that this is effected by a ripping out of inborn sin-fibres from our nature. With politic caution others teach: You may be dead to sin, but sin is never dead to you; which, however, is an obscurantism—like saying to a phthisis victim, "You are dead to the tuberculosis, but the disease is not dead to you"; or saying to a corpse, "You are now dead to the physical world, but it is not dead to you". Tested pragmatically, that yes-but-no expedient is an empty artifice. When you are dead to something, there is such utter absence of response to it that it, also, has become dead to you.

Both these ideas of death to sin are unsound from a Scriptural viewpoint, as further appeal will confirm. Paul’s mighty deliber­ation on the matter occupies Romans 6:1-23 and Romans 7:1-25 and Romans 8:1-39. In those three chapters there are three deaths:

Romans 6:1-23    Death to sin.

Romans 7:1-25    Death to the law.

Romans 8:1-39    Death to the flesh.

"Dead to Sin"

We have seen how clear is the evidence that our death to sin, by identification with Christ, as taught in Romans 6:1-23, is not experi­ential but judicial. Unless what we have said can be refuted, then the idea of an inward death to sin, by a simulated crucifixion with Christ, should be discarded, for it certainly is not taught anywhere else in the New Testament.

Also, we must reject, as equally illusory, the fond notion that what happened long ago on Calvary, in the judicial reckoning of God, is now (as the saying goes) to be "made real in you and me"—so that we are now to "reckon" ourselves inwardly "dead indeed unto sin". As we have shown, the "reckoning" in Romans 6:11 is not that we now become dead, but that we became dead to sin "once for all" (ephapax). Clearly our death with Christ then was solely judicial; and by it we are cleared from all condemnation, to live a new life through "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus".

There is no need to argue further into this again here, though maybe a supplemental reminder will not come amiss that the usual misconstrue of Romans 6:1-23 throws a noose of self-contradictions round its own neck. The way in which that theoretic "old nature" may supposedly be alternatingly on and off the Cross, transfixed yet never executed; "dead indeed" yet still "warring in my members"; "buried with Christ" yet daily dodging in and out of the grave; is a jack-in-a-box performance beyond compare.

What scufflings of doughty debaters might have been avoided if only Paul’s road-signs to holiness had been more carefully observed just where they are posted! How sure is Dr. Asa Mahan, for instance, that he is on the right road, and that all who differ have forked off into error! (Yet what rich experience of Christ he had!)

"All admit that the terms, ’sin that dwelleth in me’, ’the body of sin’, the ’old man’, the ’law of sin and death’, the ’body of this death’, and lusts which war in the members’, mean the same thing, and con­stitute what is called ’indwelling sin’."

Yet four of those six phrases do not refer to "indwelling sin". Paul’s road-signs are misread. It is Dr. Mahan himself who slants away on a wrong road, from which he reproaches as "unscriptural" all who do not travel thereon!

"What then do the Scriptures mean by such expressions as these— ’that the body of sin might be destroyed’; ’our old man is crucified with Him’? No dogma can be more unscriptural than that of the non-destruction of the body of sin in believers."—Autobiography, p. 344.

Yet with all respect to that starchy monopoly of interpreta­tion, have we not shown that neither Romans 6:1-23 nor any other New Testament passage teaches sin as a "body" of evil in us, much less that it can be "destroyed" as such?

If in these studies I have harped recurrently on that one string it is only because the garbled treatment of Romans 6:1-23 is the mischief-centre. Between eradicationists, counteractionists and others, that chapter has become an enfant terrible, whereas Paul intended it to be our out-and-out "Declaration of Independence" from all judicial bondage to sin.

"Dead to the Law" In just the same judicial way, chapter 7 teaches our death to the Law.Romans 7:4 says, "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the Law through the body of Christ." Most expositors seem to see four "laws" in the passage:

My own persuasion is that Numbers 2:1-34 and Numbers 3:1-51 are not separate "laws", but aspects of the one law given through Moses. I incline to think that an observant halting at the eighteen occurrences of the word, "law", from verse 4 onwards will show that it is the law of Moses each time. What then does Paul mean by the "law of sin" (Romans 7:23)? Do not Romans 7:5, Romans 7:6-9 explain? They show us how the Law of Moses became a "law of sin and death".

"Sinful passions, which were [provoked] through the Law [of Moses] wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death" (Romans 7:5). So the Law of Moses thus became a "law of sin and death"!

"I had not known sin, except through the Law: for I had not known coveting except the Law had said, Thou shalt not covet; but sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting. . . . And the commandment which was unto life, I found to be unto death" (Romans 7:7-9). So, again, the holy Law of Moses became a "law of sin and death"!

Thus, when Paul adds, in Romans 8:2, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death", he does not mean free from some inner principle of sin in our nature, as is generally supposed, but a liberation from the Law of Moses which had become a "law of sin and death". If even a fleck of doubt should remain as to that, the very next verse surely removes it: "For what the law [obviously Moses’ Law] could not do in that it was weak through the flesh. . . ." In Romans 7:23, where Paul draws a contrast between "the law of my mind" and "the law of sin which is in my members", he does not mean two different "laws" working within him, but the two effects of the one Mosaic Law upon the higher and lower reaches of his nature, respectively. To the mind, the higher and spiritual part of him, it is "the Law of God" (Romans 7:22). To the flesh, the animal and selfish propensity within him, it has become "the Law of sin" —as he has shown.

I refrain from detailing this any further here, for the very explicating of it on paper gives it a discouraging appearance of complicatedness. The big, central fact in chapter 7 is, that by identification with our vicarious Sinbearer, we are forever dead to the Law and all its claims upon us (Romans 7:6).

Death to "the Flesh" A collating of the twenty-seven verses where Paul uses that expression, "the flesh", of the present sin-bent in human nature shows that he never uses it (as already discussed) to mean an "old nature", or aggregate entrenchment of sin within us. No, he means our inborn animal and selfish urges which we have inherited along with all the higher and nobler impulses of our total humanhood; reactions, responses, propensities of our human nature itself in its present condition. The momentous question is: Can we become dead to them? Or can they die so as no longer to exist within us?

Now unless we are irrecoverably hallucinated by holiness errors such as those which these pages have disapproved, the crucial significance of the following fact will not be lost upon us. Unlike Romans 6:1-23 and Romans 7:1-25, with their once-for-all (eydnat;) judicial death to sin and to the law through the all-including death of Christ, Romans 8:1-39, which now deals with "the flesh", teaches no such complete death. Only too eagerly we agree that it does teach a putting to death, but it is by a markedly different mode from that in Romans 6:1-23 and Romans 7:1-25.

Romans 8:1-13 is Paul’s most notable paragraph on "the flesh". The phrase itself occurs in it thirteen times (see E.R.V. or A.S.V.); and the concluding comment is:

"So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh: for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye PUT TO DEATH the doings of the body, ye shall live." So there is a "putting to death". But what are those "doings of the body" which are to be "put to death"? Paul cannot mean the involuntary processes and normal functions of the body. They are not sinful; neither can they be "put to death" except by putting the body itself to death. Clearly, Paul means those uses of the body which are activated by the animal and selfish pro­pensities within us. It is those animal and selfish activities through the body which are to be "put to death"; and Paul simply calls them "the doings of the body" because the body visibly expresses them. Note the following five implications in Paul’s words.

1. This death to "the flesh", or inborn animal appetites, is not a death which our Lord representatively died for us, as He died for us judicially to Sin and the Law. It is a death which we our­selves bring about, for the text says, "If ye put to death...."

2. This death is not a completed death in the past, as in Romans 6:1-23 and Romans 7:1-25, but a continual putting to death in the present; for the verb is in the present tense.

3. This death is effected, not by union with our Lord in His death, but by an inward union with Him in His risen life; for the text says, "If ye through the Spirit put to death. . . ." i.e. through "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus".

4. This death is not either a final or a partial death to some supposed lump-evil in our human being, but a successive putting to death of distributed activities, or "doings".

5. This death is not an absolute death, such as is our judicial death to sin and the Law, through identification with the death of Christ; it is a death conditional upon our living (as the text says) "by the Spirit". From those five factors we may deduce what this "putting to death" of flesh activities actually is in individual experience. We put them to death when the will says an implacable "No" to them even though unsanctified desire still lurks in the heart; and more so when the heart itself turns away unresponsively; and still more so when will and heart and the very "spirit of our mind" (Ephesians 4:23) unite in an aversion to them. In that way those "doings" of the "flesh" through the body are "put to death".

Now obviously that "putting to death" is not a death to sin totally. It is a recurrent "putting to death" of "doings"—and, by involvement, of the urges which lead to them. Let me speak from my own experience. There are forms of sin which used to awaken vexatious response within me, but now (so far as I can tell) they have become utterly dead to me. Not only has my will always been resolutely set against them, but whatever desire there used to be toward them has become extinct, and my whole being seems dead to them. But am I therefore now dead to sin? No, alas. Why? Because, as I become dead to some forms of it, sin seeks to awaken responses within me to other and subtler forms of in­veiglement. As the years go by, or as our spiritual growth progresses, the enticements and innuendoes of temptation usually follow the order of Lucifer’s threefold approach to our Lord Jesus (Matthew 4:1-11). First there is appeal to the physical ("Command that these stones be made bread"). Then there is the appeal to the mental ("Cast Thyself down", i.e. in self-display to win popular following). Then there is direct appeal to the spiritual ("All these will I give thee, if thou wilt worship me", i.e. your high goal shall be gained by a quicker, easier way). That, I repeat, is the usual order. As we become dead to some forms of temptation we become beset by others. This is simply because the inexhaustible versatility of sin corresponds with the exquisitely complex susceptibilities of our human constitution, and the supersensitive interactions between spirit and mind and body.

So, then, there may be a continual "putting to death" of "the flesh", of sinful urges and tendings. Or, conversely, there may be a progressive inward dying to different forms of temptation and sinning. Such progressive deliverance comes, as the text says, "through the Spirit", i.e. by living responsively to Him, and thus experiencing His liberating ministry within our nature. When we so truly live "in the Spirit" (Matthew 4:9) that we "walk in the Spirit" (Matthew 4:4) and habitually "mind the things of the Spirit" (Matthew 4:5), then, that in itself continually "puts to death" the "doings" of the "flesh" as they successively occur. That is the way of progressive deliverance and victory through "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus". It is a true mortification of the flesh by a true sanctification of the mind. It is no merely theoretical deliverance through an imagined obliteration of some detachable "body of sin", or by the "counteracting" of a miscreant "old man" within us, who may be doubtfully downed, but never expires, and remains ever unclean, and must live inside us till we pass beyond. It is real victory, not merely by struggling against insinuating seductions down on their own level, but a living over them, by inward elevation of mind "in the Spirit".

Yes, it is real victory. It is a real "putting to death" of the "flesh", and a real dying to selfism through inward renewal. But, let us mark it well: there is no promise of an absolute inward death to sin.

What, Then, Of Death To Sin? That brings up the whole question as to the possibility of our ever being inwardly dead to sin. Can we ever be so in this present life?—or do we become so in the Beyond?

John Wesley and his eradicationist successors have never hesitated to teach that we may become actually dead to sin in this present life. But is the Wesleyan definition of sin ample? Is it either Biblically or psychologically adequate? My own view is that the beguiling Delilah of the eradication theory would never have been countenanced if there had been a more penetrating doctrine of sin. The eradication theory and the early Wesleyan concept of sin are twins. They were born together; they grew together; and they continue together to the present time, wherever that earlier formula of holiness is preached. In his Plain Account, Wesley defines sin (mark this carefully) as "a voluntary transgression of a known law"; and to that he adheres throughout his teaching on "Christian perfection". That which is non-volitional, so he deems, lacks the essential element of sin. "Involuntary transgressions," says he, "you may call sins, if you please: I do not." A corollary of this is, that there cannot be unconscious sin, for that which is unconscious ("unknowing" would be a better word) cannot be morally blameable. The fact is, Wesley’s definition does not define sin itself, but only sinning, or a sin. It touches sin only at the point of its recognizable commission, not in its interior conception. It identifies the expression but not the compulsion. It puts a label on the symptom but does not diagnose the disease. It overlooks that the problem of the "wretched man" in Romans 7:1-25 is not just sin as "a voluntary transgression of a known law", but "sin that dwelleth in me". The Bible uses that awful word, "sin", not only of something which we do, but of a state in which we now are. Wesley’s definition omits the latter entirely. It is like defining alcoholism as "a voluntary drinking of a known glass of beer", without any reference to the thirst behind the drink; or kleptomania as "a voluntary stealing of another’s property", without any reference to the neurotic impulse behind the theft.

Wesley, we sympathetically agree, could scarcely be expected to anticipate the insights of modern psychology. What disappoints us is that his definition does not cover the Scripture data. It is far from sufficient even as a definition of a sin. Many a sin is not "a voluntary transgression of a known law," yet it is none-the-less a sin. There are sins passive as well as active; sins of omission as well as of commission; sins which are not "transgressions" at all, but fallings short. We may resolve the varied aspects into the following six propositions.

(1)There can be involuntary sin. "Involuntary transgressions," says Wesley, "you may call sins, if you please: I do not." Yet his wording is self-contradictory, for "transgressions" (as the very word indicates) are active offences, therefore "transgressions" cannot be "involuntary". What Wesley means is, that involuntary sins are not really sins. Even so, he is wrong. Some of the worst sins are involuntary. In the light of New Testament revelation, the damning sin is not active violation of "a known law", but unbelief, which in many instances is passive torpidity. Since Christ came, the greatest sin of all is not "a voluntary trans­gression of a known law", but non-response to the divine love. There are sins negative as well as sins positive. They are not "transgressions", but omissions, yet they are just as truly sins. Good which I might have done, but did not; responsibility which I should have shouldered, but did not; such are sins of blame­worthy inactivity. Some of the darkest sins are not "trans­gressions," but neglects. Nor can Wesley’s denial of involuntary sin weather such passages as Romans 7:1-25. Was there not some involuntariness in the behaviour of that "wretched man" who wailed, "The good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do"; and "It is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me"! As certain diseases cause involuntary movement of the body, despite all attempted control by the will, so the sin-disease in man’s moral nature strangely galvanizes the mind to actions which override the will. Ask some weakened drunkard, dragged down to the gutter by his wretched slavery, whether his sinning is always a "voluntary transgression". Let Sam Hadley of Down in Water Street tell you, with grim poetry, how his first glass of whiskey "let loose a legion of demons" within him which dragged his helpless will through the mire like a chained slave behind a despot’s chariot. Yes, there is involuntary sin!

(2)There can be transgression without sin. Wesley’s definition of sin limits it to "a voluntary transgression of a known law"; but not all such transgression is sin. A man sees his neighbour’s boy entangled in a barbed-wire fencing, and climbs over to free him, ignoring the sign, "No Trespassing". Transgression? Yes. Sin? No; because there is gracious motive.

(3)There can be sin without transgression. Here again Wesley’s definition of sin as "a voluntary transgression of a known law", is faulty; for there are many sins which are not transgressions. That is the very point which Paul makes in Romans 5:14, "Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression." Between Adam and Moses, men did not transgress a specific command, for the Law was not yet given through Moses; yet they were none-the-less sinning, because every sin is intrinsically immoral, whether it transgresses a known commandment or not. That is why Paul says in verse 13, "For until the Law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed [i.e. is not charged as transgression] where there is no law." So there was sin without transgression. When unconverted Paul blasphemingly persecuted the followers of the hated Nazarene, was he sinning? Yes, grievously. But was he transgressing "a known law"? On the contrary, he thought he was "doing God service".

(4)Unconscious (i.e. unknowing) transgression is still sin. Wesley asks, if a transgression is committed unconsciously how can it be called a sin? Yet surely there is unknowing sin just as there is unknowing crime. A newcomer infringes the law in a certain community. In court he pleads that he offended in ignorance. The magistrate replies, "We allow that you broke the law unknowingly, but that does not alter the fact that you did break the law; and the law demands reparation." An illegal offence against a human being is a crime, whether committed knowingly or unknowingly, because it breaks a law, and therefore has an objective aspect as well as its subjective aspect in the offender.

Similarly, as crime wrongs man, so sin wrongs God; and just as every crime has its objective aspect, so has every transgression. Therefore, transgression is still a wrong against God even when the perpetrator is unaware of it. This has clear Scriptural confirm­ation. In Leviticus 5:17-19 we find: "And if a soul sin . .. though he wist it not, yet he is guilty, and shall bear his iniquity. And he shall bring a ram . . . and the priest shall make an atonement for him concerning his ignorance wherein he erred and wist it not." (See also Luke 12:47-48)

(5)Unconscious sin is still sin. Wesley says that "unconscious sin" is a contradiction in terms. But is it? See yonder heathen in cringing worship before a hideous idol. Is idolatry sin? Is it wronging God? Yes, it is. Do you object, "Ah, but he does not know that he is wronging the Creator, therefore it cannot be sin"? Wrong! for although he does not know that he is wronging God, it still remains in fact that he is doing so; for idolatry itself is a grievous wronging of God. The sin, although "unconscious" is still sin. Of course, that idolater is not committing a "trans­gression" (a legal term) for he is not violating a "known law"; so there is no "guilt" (another legal term) attaching to his idolatry. Remember Romans 5:13 again: "Sin is not imputed [i.e. as guilt] where there is no law". Nay, in many cases there is pathetically good motive in the idolater—a groping after the true God (Acts 17:23). [As a matter of ultimate indictment, that idolater’s sin is not his own, but an extension of Lucifer’s, who thus further sins through his blinded victim. That, however, is a mystery which we cannot examine here.] When the young priest, Isaiah, was prostrated by his vision of the divine Majesty and the flaming holiness of the heavenly throne, he cried out, "Woe is me! for I am undone!" In one revealing flash he now saw that many things which he had esteemed commendable were inwardly corrupt, including his own heart and actions. But he did not cry out, "Oh, what a relief!—I did those things without any consciousness that they were sinful, so they were not really sin at all!" No, he recognised them as ugly sin, even though perpetrated without consciousness of their being so. Isaiah also saw the moral corruption in his own nature as never before, and recognised it as sin notwithstanding that he had hitherto been unconscious of it as such. In the same way, as already noted, Paul refers to sin which he had earlier committed without being aware that it was sin. Recalling his vitriolic fury against the Church, he says, in 1 Timothy 1:13, "Howbeit, I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly." Yes, he had done it without the slightest conscious­ness of its grievous sinfulness, yet none-the-less it was sin, and it is with reference to it that he immediately adds, "sinners of whom I am chief". Indeed, the most monstrous sin ever committed was that of which our Lord said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Do not all these considerations settle it, that the limited definition of sin as "a voluntary transgression of a known law" is a stilted over-simplification? Do not our own experience and observation likewise disqualify it? I remember a certain man who continually tricked the customs officers at the ports. On the first occasion, although his smart twist was entirely successful, his conscience lashed him: his deceit was a wrong, a crime, a sin. As he kept repeating it, however, not only did conscience subside, but all sense of wrongness evaporated; and by the time he chatted with me on an ocean voyage he had come to regard the port regulations which he kept outwitting as a "cruel injustice" to men like himself who had "worked hard to save a bit". The peculiar shock to me was, that so far as I could penetrate his mind, the wrong had really become right to him. Yet though it had ceased to be sin to him, was it not still sin? Did it become less and less sin because it became less and less so to him! Is sin wholly a matter of a man’s conscience about it? Is there not sin (as we have said) in an objective as well as in a subjective sense? Must we not, after all, endorse W. E. Orchard’s asseveration, "Sin without sense of sin is still sin, and, indeed deeper sin just because we are uncon­scious of it"?

(6)There is sin chronic as well as active. Scripture speaks of sin as an inward condition as well as a moral violation. We are reminded again of Paul’s words, "sin that dwelleth in me". When we scrutinize that inner evil, then we have to leave Wesley’s definition of sin altogether. The human mind, with its laby­rinthine intricacies and sensitivities of the conscious, the subconscious, and the unconscious, is often a baffling complexity. There are deep-down quiverings of such superfine subtlety as to make it practically impossible to distinguish where awareness and volition begin. This, however, is Scriptural, that even "un­conscious" sins, so-called, are sinful because they are emanations of that hereditary uncleanness or sin-disease in our moral nature. Behind the outflow of sinning in thought, word, deed, is a secret upflow from subtle springs of evil in our deepest being.

I readily acknowledge, of course, that Wesley has much to say— outside his definition—concerning indwelling sin; but why does he call it "sin", if sin is solely "a voluntary transgression of a known law"? To be consistent, should he ever have called that inner condition anything more than an inward tendency to sin? How­ever, he does refer to inward depravity as "sin" over and over again; but because his definition of sin is inadequate, so is his idea of "sin that dwelleth in me". We are reminded again of Dr. E. Sugden’s complaint that according to Wesley sin is "a thing which has to be taken out of a man, like a cancer." To Wesley, sin indwelt as a foreign body, rather than inhered as a toxic infection; it was a distinguishable malignant growth in the system, rather than a coextensive permeation. Therefore it could not be refined away; it must be drastically removed—"eradicated". If Wesley had seen "inward sin" more penetratively as an evil "leaven" diffused through the "three measures of meal", instead of leaven in the "lump", his conclusions would have been much modified. It was the latter view which led to his doctrine of perfection. "A Christian man may be so far perfect as not to commit sin." With the "extinction" of inborn sin (so he says) there is a cessation of all, even inward sins.

"Christian Perfection"

Thus to criticize so saintly and mighty a servant of Christ as the venerable founder of Methodism grates on one’s sensibilities. Yet unless I am obtusely misreading the guideposts of Holy Writ, not only is he astray in his constricted concept of sin, and its by­-product theory of eradication, but also in his resultant doctrine of "Christian Perfection", which he has to pare and scissor until it is not moral perfection at all. In his Plain Account, page 223, he says:

235

"Not only sin properly so called (that is, a voluntary trangression of a known law) but sin improperly so called (that is, an involuntary transgression of a divine law, known or unknown) needs atoning blood. I believe there is no such perfection in this life as excludes these involuntary transgressions. . . . Therefore sinless perfection is a phrase I never use, lest I should seem to contradict myself." [Plain Account, pp. 197 and 188.]

Note the three inconsistencies: (1) Involuntary transgressions are not properly sins; yet First John 5:17, says, "Every un­righteousness [even a negative "un" or shortcoming] is sin". (2) If involuntary transgressions are not properly sins, and there­fore not morally blameable, why do they (as Wesley avers) "need atoning blood"? (3) If Christian perfection is not absence of such sinning, how can it really be "perfection"?

It is strange to see how Wesley clings to that word, "perfection", yet continually edges away from it. He writes his brother Charles not to make perfection too perfect: "To set perfection so high is effectually to renounce it". [Letters 5:20.] Actually, the doctrine becomes one of imperfect perfection. There is a smack of unreality about it; and not without reason is the retort that according to it "one may be a perfect Christian without being a perfect man". As one peers into that bottomless abyss of mysterious surprises, the human heart, and then reflects on Wesley’s cramped definition of sin, issuing in eradication-yet-not-sinless, and perfection-yet-not-perfect, the old lines from Hamlet swing solemnly before one’s inward eyes again:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamed of in your philosophy."

Yet to say that yesterday’s Wesley was partly wrong does not mean that today’s psychology is wholly right! Modern psychology has given us a much more sophisticated comprehension of "sin" and its interwoven patterns in mental behaviour. It has stratified the mind into the "conscious", the "subconscious", and the "unconscious" (subdivided into "primary" and "secondary"); also, accordingto some, the "pre-conscious" and "super-conscious". It has analysed, classified, tabulated and labelled our instincts, impulses, motivations and actuations. Yet has it really told us much more about sin than we already knew from the simple, concentrated words which the Bible uses to define or expose it?

Much that modern psychology set out to clarify and simplify it has tantalizingly complexified into "confusion worse confounded". Are we really wiser in learning that sin is "malfunctioning of instincts", or, "unethical imbalance of motives"? I have heard of a young minister who preached a brilliant sermon on the "total depravity" of man, couching it in highfaluting psychological terminology. Afterwards one of his now-enlightened flock remarked, "My! that’s a fine doctrine, if only we could all live up to it"!

Modern psychology can tell us much of value about the opera­tional, but little about the constitutional. We know now how the machine works; but who is the "hidden hand" turning the levers? We know now how the piano plays; but who is the mysterious pianist bringing such harsh cacophonies from it? We know now how the stream flows; but what of the hidden source-spring which determines it? The fact is, there is a part of man which is beyond psychology. It is that part which Scripture calls the "spirit". Man is not merely bipartite, but tripartite: body and mind and spirit (pneuma). It is the "spirit" which is the ultimate mystery in man: therefore psychology can never say the last word about him. It is in the "spirit" that human sin (the essence) and sinning (the effluence) originate. And who shall vivisect that mystery? On the whole, therefore, we are wiser not to entangle our concepts of sin too verbally with psychology, for in its deepest meaning sin is essentially spiritual. It is not so much a wrong behaviour of parts, as a wrong direction of the whole; a rotating of our whole moral nature on a slanting axis. Most of us sensed this and groaned over it before ever we saw our first psychology primer. So did long-ago David (without help from Freud) when he scrutinized his "inward parts", and lamented, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity". The worst shocks some of us have experi­enced have been our discoveries that behind and below even the apparently good motives in the upper region of the mind there were ulterior motives skulking in the shadowy recesses of the subconscious. And more; in our moments of most penetrating self-perception are we not helplessly aware of an originating sin-towardness, too tenuous, too elusive for psychological pin-pointing or definition, yet insidiously pre-affecting even the embryonic emergence of awareness and thought and desire and motive. When we beat around for a name by which to call it, somehow psycho­logy has none which quite fits. We must needs go back to the wailing wall of the "wretched man" in Romans 7:1-25, "sin which dwelleth in me"

All such considerations should surely caution and steady us in essaying an answer to the question, "Can we be inwardly dead to sin?" Can We Be Inwardly Dead To Sin?

Well, can we? In the sense of eradication, the answer is a cat­egorical No. Let it be said yet again, with final emphasis: sin is not just a bad lodger which can be ejected, or a disease sector which can be excised.

Neither can we ever be dead to sin in the split-ego sense of the "two natures" theory, with one part of us (the so-called "new" nature) dead to sin, and another part (the "old") never so. The precise question is: Can you and I, as spiritually reborn Christian believers, become really dead to sin throughout our now-regenerated moral nature? And the first part of our answer must be, No, in the sense that we cannot be dead to the possibility of sinning. In the famous Methodist hymnbook of 1780, Charles Wesley asks, in hymn 332, for "a heart that cannot faithless prove"; and, in 345, he says, "When I feel [Christ] fixt within, I shall have no power to sin." But it is wishful poetry rather than conceivable reality. Even in the Beyond, when we are presented in sinless rapture before the heavenly Throne, unless we are demoted into non-volitional beings, there will always be the power of choice which is inherent in free-will; and therefore there must always be at least the possibility of sin. There cannot be absolute impossibility of sinning. To deny this is to deny free-will and full humanhood.

Further, we cannot be dead to sin in the sense of absolute insusceptibility to it. Even where there is utter absence of bias, inclination, desire, and the soul is perfect in holiness, susceptibility to temptation nevertheless inheres. Were unfallen Adam and Eve sinless? They were, with not a fleck of sin-towardness or wrong desire in their whole being. Yet even they were not insusceptible to temptation; for unholy response was begotten within them. Likewise, the fallen angels were all originally sinless. There is neither sex nor procreation among purely spirit-beings, nor, therefore, is there among them any such transmitted evil as an hereditary sin-bias. Each of those fallen intelligences sinned without any such inward bent or pull. Why? Because, even in the sinless, where there is intellect, emotion, and free-will, there cannot be mechanical immunity from wrong response. Was not our blessed Lord Jesus utterly sinless? Then why did He "suffer, being tempted" (Hebrews 2:18)? Why did those Satanic solicitations hurt so, even to tears and sweat of blood? It could only be because, even in that sinless, stainless, guileless, perfect manhood (not in His Godhead) there was an inevitable human susceptibility (despite utter holiness of desire) to temptation.

Some years ago, a rigidly Biblical denomination of believers was almost split in two on the question as to whether our Lord could or could not have yielded to temptation. The one part declared it blasphemous to suppose for a moment that He could possibly have yielded to sin. The other part contended that if it was mechanically impossible for Him to yield, then His temptations were theatrical make-believe; His manhood was merely doketic; and His behaviour was not a valid example we can follow, inas­much as it was not a genuine human victory. It would have been better if both parties had agreed that they were dealing with an insoluble mystery. Christ, as God, could not be tempted, for "God cannot be tempted" (James 1:13). Similarly, Christ, as God could not die; yet He did die, for He was human. Even so, as His humanhood was susceptible to human pain and death, so was it to temptation. We must believe so, or make His incarnation arti­ficial, and discredit the written Word (Hebrews 2:18, Hebrews 4:15, Hebrews 5:7, Luke 22:43-44). Yes, even that perfect manhood was susceptible to temptation, and could "suffer" in resisting. But although we cannot be dead to sin in the sense of im­possibility or insusceptibility, we can be so in the sense of purity of motive; also in the sense of holiness of desire; also in the sense of unresponsiveness to the unholy. That, indeed, will ever be our felicitous state in the Beyond, with our glorified Lord. Every effect of hereditary sin will have been forever expurgated from mind and heart; from thought and inclination. There will be no sin-bent; not a quiver of sin-towardness. The once-aslant axis will have been put perfectly straight. Yea, more; not only will there be absolute absence of sin-propensity, but the whole predisposition will be toward the holy, the heavenly, the exquisitely beautiful, the Divine. There will be no temptation there; but only lovely incentives to highest expressions of holiness. The present flesh-and-blood body will have given place to a physique of supernal texture—a perfect vehicle for the spiritual, with no relation to the animal. We shall continually dwell amid that ineffable glory-light which is pure rapture to the holy, but a "consuming fire" to all else. The eradiating light of His glorious face will shine through and through us, so that never a shadow can even momentarily darken a flitting thought. The Holy Spirit will unobstructedly suffuse our whole being. Not only shall we thus be with Christ: "we shall be like Him"! It will indeed be sinless rapture.

That, however, is then and there. What of here and now? Even though there cannot be inability to sin, or insusceptibility to temptation, can there be, in the present, death to sin in the sense of utter unresponsiveness to it? What kind or degree of death to sin is possible now? We may be helped to a true answer by thinking back over our six propositions. From these six premises we may safely draw two conclusions: (a) sin, in the sense of that which is blameable, is always a matter of motive; (b) where the motive is pure there cannot be blame.

It may be asked: Is not an utterly pure motive sinless? And if one motive may be sinless, why not all? And is not that sinlessness? In reply, we need neither affirm nor deny the possibility of such utter purity throughout one’s motives. What we need to realize is, that even sinlessness of motives is not sinlessness of nature. Motives are among the subtlest functionings of the nature, but they are not the nature itself. What of that underlying region from which they pre-consciously and incipiently arise in continuous flux and flow?—motives, desires, inclinations, urges, tapering off into minutest reactions of the subconscious. The New Testament certainly does call us to "blamelessness", or entire purity of motive (1 Thessalonians 5:23); and to a continuous "renewing of our mind" (Romans 12:2). Motives, desires, propen­sities, all may be renewed, refined, sanctified, by the Holy Spirit, as He continuously suffuses the consecrated believer. Yet, nowhere does the New Testament promise a sinless nature in this present life. As we have said, our hereditary sin-proneness lives in the very tissues of our moral nature. In imagination, let us peer into the inner life of the holiest man on earth. Every instant of his wakeful hours, in endless succession, through things seen, read, heard, sensed, there are injected into his mind, from the world around him, thoughts, ideas, suggestions, many of which are more or less evil. They are not emanations from his own mind; they flit in or force entry through the senses of the body or the susceptibilities of the mind; but they all provoke reactions or awaken responses, for he is still human, and still in the flesh; and there is always that within him which will succumb if given opportunity. Yet over against all this, and just as continuously, there is the interpene­trating "Spirit of life in Christ Jesus", renewing his mind, refining his desires, elevating his motives, replenishing his will, so that instead of response to evil there is aversion, and instead of sinning there is holiness. That kind of continuous dying to sin and living in holiness is truly realizable in the experience of the consecrated, prayerful Christian; and those who have lived in it have testified what a sunlit Canaan of heavenly joy and fellowship with God it is. Does someone ask: If the Holy Spirit can purify and refine our desires, impulses, motives to that extent, why not to the point of absolute sinlessness? As to the theoretic possibility of that, we are not concerned to answer; but as to its present practicality our reply is unhesitating: it is presumption to go beyond what Scripture promises. We might just as well ask: If the Holy Spirit can heal our bodily sicknesses, as many believers have proved, then why not restoration to utterly diseaseless health, with never a need for even minor medical aid? That the Holy Spirit could do this we well know, for in the consummation yet to be He will do it (Romans 8:11, Romans 8:23, 1 Corinthians 15:42-45); but we foolishly presume if we try to wrench it into fulfilment now!

So, then, can we be inwardly dead to sin, in this present life? NO, not in the sense of inability or insusceptibility; nor in the sense of a nature absolutely freed from all hereditary sin-effects, and permanently reconstructed so as to function with moral faultlessness. YES, in a dependent, moment-by-moment sense, through the infilling Holy Spirit whose interpenetrating life continuously counteracts the appeal of temptation. YES, in the sense that through the indwelling Sanctifier all our conscious desires and motives and inclinations may be so purified and refined as to be continuously unresponsive to sin. YES, in the sense that thus, at the very centre of the personality, the upward pull of the desire for holiness may grow stronger and stronger, making the downward pull of sin grow weaker and weaker. YES, in the sense that, as we thus live and walk in the light of God, the very springs of our thought and impulse and desire are purified by the Holy Spirit, so that God is the soul’s supreme delight, and every thought of sin is hated. This is no static level of supposed sinlessness through supposed eradication. Nay, they who walk with God most closely are most keenly aware of inhering liabilities to sin which still linger and would immediately reassert themselves, apart from the continual infilling of the Holy Spirit. Some who read these lines may think we have not gone far enough. Others may think that even what we have said is beyond present experience. There are those, however, not a few, who have left sincere and credible testimony to its reality. Oh, that more of us were living in it, for it is "heaven begun below". Not merely pardon, Lord, alone My heart can satisfy, But Thou Thyself directly known, A presence always nigh:

Oh, help me persevere in prayer, Until I always find That Thou art luminously there, To my communing mind. Not merely pardon for my sins, But victory over sin, The very source where sin begins Renewed and cleansed within: Not weary stragglings to repress. But all my mind renewed, Refined by inwrought holiness, By Thine own power endued.