Lecture XXII

THE SECRET OF SINLESSNESS—OUR ABIDING IN CHRIST—THE SEED OF GOD ABIDING IN US—OUR BEING BORN OF GOD

THESE strong statements;—that one abiding in Christ does not sin, and that one born of God cannot sin;—are often perplexing, not to say distressing, to serious minds. How is it? I am forced to ask. I sin, every day, every hour, every moment, I may say, in thought or word or deed. Must I therefore conclude that I am not in Christ; not born of God? It is a real practical difficulty. Let us fairly grapple with it.

I. These texts do not teach, either the doctrine of perfection, or that other doctrine which is apt to usurp its place; the doctrine that God sees no sin in his people, or that what would be sin in others is not sin in them. When I say that this latter doctrine is apt to supplant the other, I do not mean that all who believe in the perfection or perfectibility of the saints on earth are antinomians. I speak simply of what I hold to be a strong tendency in the nature of things. I am told that it is possible for a Christian to live without sinning; that he may be so sanctified as to be incapable of sinning; that such holiness is attainable; nay, that no one can be long a Christian without attaining it; that no one can be sure of his Christianity unless he has attained it. But I see in the most Christian of men, I feel in myself in my most Christian mood, much that is not easily reconcilable with this immaculate sinlessness, unless I can persuade myself that what looks very like sin is not really sin. I am tempted to do so; to defend, on the ground of Christian character, what otherwise I would give over to just condemnation; to stand up for the harmlessness in a believer of ways that would confessedly hurt or ruin the unconverted. And so I really open the door to those perversions of such texts as, “He that is spiritual is judged of no man,” “To the pure all things are pure,” which have wrought sad havoc with the plain morality of the Bible.

II. There is another mode of dealing with the statements before us which I cannot feel to be satisfactory. It is to limit or restrict their comprehensiveness; and to understand the apostle as speaking, not of sin absolutely and universally, but of sin more or less voluntary and presumptuous. According to this view, one abiding in Christ and born of God does not and cannot sin deliberately, intentionally, knowingly. He may be overtaken in a fault; he may be compassed about with infirmities; he may have his occasional aberrations and failings. But he does not lay plans and go into evil with his eyes open.

Is that true? Was it true of David? Or of the man in Corinth who was excommunicated for incest, and upon repentance restored? Is it any relief to me, when I am staggered by the hard saying that the true Christian does not and cannot commit sin, to be told that it may be so modified as to mean that he does not and cannot sin voluntarily? Will that modification meet my case? Alas! no. For I dare not persuade myself that I never sin voluntarily. The saying excludes me, and tells against me, as much as ever. And then, is it safe to make such a distinction as this between two sorts of sin: and to make it for such a purpose as this? May it not again let in the notion of some evil being tolerable and venial after all in a child of God? Where and how is the line to be drawn?

III. It may help us out of the difficulty if we first look at the statements before us in the light, not of what we are now by grace, but of what we are to be in the future state of glory. It will be true then that we sin not; it will be impossible for us then to sin. What will make it true that we sin not? What will make it impossible for us to sin? Simply, our abiding in Christ; our being born of God; his seed abiding in us.

It is most important that we should endeavour to form some distinct idea of this feature or characteristic of heaven’s holiness; its absolute inviolability; its being perfectly secure against the possibility of sin ever marring it. Saints in glory do not and cannot sin. Wherein consists this impossibility of sinning? Of what sort is it? Plainly it cannot be a merely physical or natural inability; it must be of a moral kind. It is not outward coercion or prevention; it is not enforced sinlessness, which would be no sinlessness at all. Neither is it sinlessness dependent on external circumstances; such as want of opportunity or absence of temptation. The impeccability is and must be an attribute of the inner man; of the saint himself, as perfectly sanctified in his whole nature. If in the heavenly world I am not to sin; to be incapable of sinning; that cannot be in consequence of any mere change in my outward position; any mere translation from one locality to another, from one system of things to another. It was not his expulsion from Paradise that made Adam peccable, or capable of committing sin. He was so from the first in Paradise, for there he sinned. It is not his return to Paradise, nor his promotion to a better state than that of Paradise, that will make him impeccable. His impeccability must be otherwise attained and secured.

It is true that change of place and of circumstances may do much; and it is a great change that is before us. “We look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” It will, indeed, be a very different atmosphere that we breathe in heaven from what so often deadens, stupifies, and paralyses our Christian life on earth. We shall be there under other influences and in the midst of other companionships. No more is there any course of this world for us to walk after; no more any prince of the power of the air to intoxicate us with the poisonous vapour of his ungodliness; no more any children of disobedience, seducing us to have our conversation among them. It will, unquestionably, be a blessed relief. To be rid of Satan and of Satan’s wiles; to be for ever quit of those worldly ways and habits around us here that are so apt to draw us into conformity with themselves; to be where there is no more any antagonism between what is and what ought to be; to be where God is all in all;—it may well be imagined to be like “a bird escaping out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken; and we are escaped!” “Oh! that I had wings like a dove, that I might flee away and be at rest!” “Woe is me that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!” But let me beware. If I imagine that it is my being in heaven that is to make me pure and sinless, or render it impossible for me to sin, I am under a sad and most unsafe delusion. Let it be granted that then all I come in contact with will be holy, and all conducive to holiness; with “nothing to hurt or to destroy in all God’s holy mountain.” Still, place me there, continuing simply such as I am here; and not only is it not true of me that I cannot sin; but it is true of me that I cannot but sin. Evidently, therefore, its being impossible for me to sin in the future state, must depend upon something else than mere change of scene. And what follows? It must depend upon something that may be actually realised more or less perfectly here. It must depend upon what may be and must be realised here, in the inner spiritual history and experience of every child of God.

Let me remind you that this impeccability lies in the will; the seat of it is the will. It is because, in the state of glory, my will is made “perfectly and immutably free to do good alone,” that my will is, or that I myself am, incapable of doing evil.² And let me also remind you that sin, the sin which it will then be impossible for me to commit, is “the transgression of the law;” of the law of God which is the expression of his will. His will is perfectly and immutably free. His law is its free utterance; the free forthgoing of his free will. Your impeccability,—its being impossible for you to sin,—is its being impossible for you to will otherwise than he wills; to think or feel otherwise than he does, as to that law of his which is his will. And if it is your will that is to be thus free; free, as his will is free, to do good alone; and therefore incapable of an evil choice; then your impeccability must be, if I may say so, itself voluntary; voluntarily accepted and realised. The position in which I find it impossible to sin must be attested by my own consciousness as a position that is freely and voluntarily mine.

Let me try to imagine myself as regards this matter in the heavenly state. I cannot sin. Why not? What hinders me? Is it that my hands are tied? Is it that my will is fettered? Am I not free? Yes; I am free as God is free. And therefore I can no more sin than God can sin. In the very same sense in which God cannot sin, I cannot sin. My will can no more go against his law than his own will can go against it. For why is it that God cannot sin?—that his will cannot go against his law? Is it not because the law is his will? Is it not because the law is his nature? Yes. The law is his will, his spontaneous will. And it is his nature; the very essence of his moral character and being is in his law. For the law is love; and God is love. The law is holy; and God is holy. He cannot sin, or transgress the law, because he cannot go against his own will, or against his nature. Sin in him, were the thought admissible, would be self-contradictory; suicidal. “He cannot deny himself.” Now in heaven am I in this respect such as he is?—really, literally, absolutely such as he is? Yes, that is my heaven! It is my being thus like him when I see him as he is. When, clear from the darkness in which now he hides himself in a world that knows him not, his glory shines unclouded; then I “see him as he is” so as to be “satisfied when I awake with his likeness.” It is the likeness of him who cannot sin.

IV. Let me try to bring out more clearly this principle as one that must connect the future with the present. Why is it that in heaven, my will being free as God’s will is free, I can no more sin than he can sin? What answer would John give to that question if you could put it to him now? As thus;—“In whatever sense, and with whatever modifications, thou didst, in thy experience when here, find that to be true which thou hast so emphatically put,—as the test, apparently, of real Christianity,—it is all true of thee there, where thou art now! How is it so? Why is it so?” “Because I abide in the Son of God, and God’s own seed abides in me, as being born of God;”—is not that his reply? What other reply can he give?

No doubt he may also say, “I am no more in a world that knows not God; exposed to its flattery or its rage. I have nothing now to apprehend from Satan’s subtilty. I have laid aside the body of corruption that used to weigh me down. The lusts of the flesh solicit and trouble me no more. Evil propensities, the remains of my old original and inveterate depravity, are all thoroughly put away. Not a vestige of any root of bitterness remains in me; nor is there any exposure to trial or temptation from without.” These are great and inestimable advantages. “But,” he would add, “not one of them secures, nor do they altogether secure, my impeccability; or its being impossible for me to sin. Excepting only immunity from Satan’s subtilty, man in Paradise enjoyed them all; and yet he was peccable; he sinned. Without any exception, the unfallen angels enjoyed them all; and yet they showed themselves peccable; some of their number fell. My heaven is no heaven at all, if in respect of this matter of my not sinning, or its being impossible for me to sin, I am no better off than Adam was in the garden, or the angelic hosts in their first estate. But I am better off. And what, you ask, makes me better off? My abiding in the Son of God, and having God’s own seed abiding in me, as being born of him. First, I “abide in the Son of God “evermore, uninterruptedly; and therefore I see God as his Son sees him; I feel towards God as his Son feels. Secondly, as born of God, I have “his seed abiding in me,” evermore, uninterruptedly; his seed, conveying and imparting to me his nature, as truly as a plant’s seed imparts its nature to its successor, or a man’s seed imparts his nature to his child.”

“These two causes combined,” John might say, “ensure my not sinning; make it impossible for me to sin by transgressing the law. For, in virtue of the first, the law is to me what it is to the Son of God, the God-man; not merely an enforced rule; far less a yoke of bondage; but an inward principle also of free, spontaneous choice. It is within my heart, as it is within his. There can no more spring up in my heart than there can spring up in his, the slightest or faintest feeling of impatience under it, or of a longing to be without it or above it. And then, in virtue of the other, the law is to me what it is to God himself. It is the expression of my nature, as it is of his. Being what I am, as born of him, his seed abiding in me, I can no more go against it than he, being what he is, can go against it himself.”

Is this the secret of the saint’s impeccability in heaven? Is it at all a true and fair account of his not sinning, of its being impossible for him to sin?

Then does it not follow that it is an impeccability that may be realised on earth? For the causes of it are realised on earth; first, your abiding in the Son of God; secondly, your being born of God so as to have his seed abiding in you. And so far as they are realised on earth, they cannot but make it impossible for you to sin here, in the very same way in which, when realised perfectly in heaven, they will make it impossible for you to sin there. For they are causes whose efficacy does not at all depend on time or place or circumstances. They act here and now as they will act then and there. They make God’s will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven.

V. Viewed thus in the light of “what we shall be,” and of the bearing of what we shall be on what we are, John’s statements assume a somewhat different aspect from what they are apt to wear when taken by themselves. They become not one whit less solemn but greatly more encouraging.

For one thing, you may now regard them as describing a precious privilege, as well as imposing a searching test. They show you the way of perfect holiness; how you are to be righteous, even as Christ is righteous,—even as God is righteous.

I suppose that it is your desire to be so; if it is not, you are none of Christ’s, and are not children of God. Your earnest longing is, I assume, that you were placed in such circumstances, or that there were wrought in you such a frame of spirit, as would make it impossible for you ever to sin any more.

Well, if it is so, should it not be matter of satisfaction to you to be told that you have even now within your reach, realisable in your experience, the elements or conditions, so to speak, of that very state of things which you so warmly covet? John takes it for granted, that “having this hope in God;”—the hope that when “it does appear what you shall be,” it will imply your being “like him whose children you are, because you shall see him as he is;”—“you purify yourselves even as his own Son is pure.” And surely in that view he does you a kindness when he tells you how this purifying of yourselves as Christ is pure may become possible, even to the extent of its being as impossible for you as for him to commit sin or to transgress the law. He does no sin; he can do no sin; he cannot have a thought or wish to transgress the law. Why? Because he is the Son of God, his only begotten Son, of one nature with the Father. Even when he takes your nature, he is, on that account, sinless and impeccable. And the good news here is, that you also are becoming impeccable in him. Of course, it is good news to you only if impeccability is really the object of your desire; your hope; your heaven. Is it so? Would it be heaven to you not to sin; to be incapable of sinning; to be so situated and so minded, that for you to sin would be as truly and really an impossibility as for Christ or for God? Then these texts are for you. They let you into the secret of this impeccability; they show you wherein it consists. They set it before you, not as something to be reached some time, somewhere, somehow, in some other world, through some mysterious unknown processes to be gone through at death and the resurrection; but as what you may have experience of, and must have experience of, in this present world, and under this present dispensation of the Holy Ghost. For the Holy Ghost makes you really one with the Son of God, so that, abiding in him, you partake of his sonship; his filial relation to the Father and filial heart towards the Father. And the Holy Ghost also implants in you and puts within you the seed of God, the germ of God’s own nature and God’s own life, so that you are in very truth born of God. When thus in your adoption, rightly viewed, and in your regeneration, the Holy Ghost unites you to the Son, and assimilates you to the Father;—when thus you abide in the Son, in whose sonship you share, and the seed of God your Father, of whom you are born, abides in you;—you have already, in present possession and for present use, all that is essential to impeccability.

VI. Taking this view, I confess I do not feel so much concern as otherwise I might feel about reconciling such strong statements as that one abiding in Christ sinneth not, or that one born of God cannot sin, with the acknowledged and lamented fact that he does sin. John has dealt with that fact already, and told us how to deal with it. It is not his business here to be making allowance for it. It would be beside his purpose altogether, and indeed against it, to be qualifying his high and bold appeal to honest aspirants after perfection, by concessions to those whose object would seem to be to ascertain, not how, and how far, perfection may be reached, but how far they may stop short of it. John has not any such Christians in his eye. Or if he has, it is to bring to bear upon them the whole artillery of these startling statements, in all their strictest and most literal force. They are to be solemnly warned that sin is absolutely incompatible with abiding in Christ and being born of God—all sin, any sin, every sin; that “whosoever sinneth hath not seen Christ, neither known him.” To them John has nothing else to say. He cannot otherwise meet their question as to the extent to which sin, still cleaving to a child of God, may be admitted not to vitiate his title. For indeed it is most dangerous to be considering the matter in that light or on that side at all. It is almost sure to lead, first to calculations, and then to compromises, fatal to singleness of eye and the holy ambition that ought to fire the breast; calculations first, about the quantity and quality of the residuum of old corruption which we must lay our account with finding in the purest God-born soul; and then compromises, under the sort of feeling that, as the proverb says, what cannot be cured must be endured.

I beseech you to turn from that downward, earthward way of looking at this great theme; and to look upward and heavenward. I speak to you as believing you to be in earnest about purifying yourselves even as Christ is pure. I tell you that the gospel makes full provision for holiness; and no provision at all for sin. It contemplates, not your sinning, but your not sinning; nay, its being impossible for you to sin. If it did not, it would be no gospel to you. For you are weary of sinning; weary of finding it always so possible, so easy to sin. The risings of a rebellious spirit in you against God, and his will, and his law; your feelings of irksomeness, as if his commandments were grievous, his ways dark, his sayings harsh, his service hard, himself austere; are a continual grief to you. Well, may it not be some consolation, some encouragement, to know, that you have within you, if you will but stir up the gift that is in you, the elements of a holier and happier life? For these are indeed, when rightly considered, most precious assurances; “Whosoever abideth in Christ sinneth not;” “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for God’s seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”

Let a few practical inferences be suggested.

1. I think the texts teach, or imply, the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints; the impossibility of their either wholly or permanently falling away from a state of grace. I cannot understand statements so strong as “sinneth not,” or “cannot sin,” especially when taken in connection with the reasons given,—“abiding in Christ;” “being born of God;” “the seed of God abiding in him,”—in any sense consistent with the idea of one who by faith has been united to Christ, and by adoption and regeneration made a child of God, proving ultimately a castaway. It may be quite true that it is not John’s immediate design to dwell on that tenet. But nevertheless he uses words that seem very plainly to assume it. It is not easy to see how any one could be called upon to recognise in himself, as actually his now in possession and experience, the principle, if I may so speak, of impeccability, excepting upon grounds precluding the risk of his losing altogether his character and standing in Christ.

2. The texts teach however, very plainly, that this doctrine, whatever may be its practical use and value in its right place, and when turned to legitimate account, cannot give to any man security in sin; cannot make him safe when he is sinning, when he is committing sin or transgressing the law. When he is sinning, he can draw no assurance whatever from his. “having seen and known Christ.” Virtually, to all intents and purposes, he is exactly in the same position with one who “has not seen him, neither known him” (ver. 6). Never, at any moment, may I reckon on a past act of God towards me,—his calling me, justifying me, adopting me in his Son; or a past work of God in me,—his regenerating me by his Spirit;—as giving me any present confidence, if my present state is one of sin. Not only is this not right; I believe it to be impossible. I believe that no man ever yet felt himself secure in sinning now, on the ground of his having been brought to “see and know” Christ long ago. His feeling of security, in so far as he has such a feeling, does not really spring from that belief as to the past, but from ignorance now of Christ and of God; from present unbelief. For the present, he is an unbeliever, not seeing or knowing Christ; no better than if he had never seen or known him. The moment he comes again to believe, and has his eyes opened to see and know Christ; Christ looking on him when he is sinning as he looked on Peter;—security there is none; confidence there is none; only bitter weeping. He repents, and does the first works. He believes, as if he had never believed before. He realises again, as at the first, his abiding in Christ and God’s seed abiding in him. Our sinning, therefore; our feeling it to be possible for us to sin; is in fact, and as a practical matter, absolutely incompatible with our abiding in Christ and being born of God. We are only really abiding in Christ, and consciously and influentially, if I may say so, born of God so as to have his seed abiding in us,—in so far as we do. not sin,—in so far as we cannot sin.

3. For this, let me again remind you, is John’s true design and purpose; it is to put you in the way of not sinning; of its being impossible for you to sin. It is to let you into the secret of sinlessness, of impeccability; that you may be successful in purifying yourselves as Christ is pure. Realise your abiding in Christ, your being born of God, his seed abiding in you. And realise all that, as you may realise it, not as what is to be in heaven; when it will appear what you shall be; but as what may be, and must be, and is on earth; even when “it doth not yet appear what you shall be.” Do not imagine that you must wait till you get to heaven until you can know what it is not to sin; to be beyond the possibility of sinning. No doubt it is only in heaven that you can know that perfectly. But you may know something of it on earth. You need not imagine that if you know nothing of it on earth, you can know anything of it in heaven. For it is not, I repeat, any change of scene that will make you know it. Some have fancied that by getting out of the world into the wilderness they might come not to sin; nay, might get themselves into a state in which they could not sin. Away from society’s pomps and vanities, its pleasures and vices, in the solitude of the desert, they have sought for immaculate and impeccable holiness; they have sought for it painfully, with tears and stripes. Alas! they have sought for it in vain. But you may find it, in the midst of all evil, if you seek it aright, in the way of abiding in Christ, and having God’s seed abiding in you, as being born of him. And you will find it, if you apprehend the force of the Lord’s own words: “As thou, Father, hast sent me into the world, even so have I sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified through the truth.”