IS IT A “SECOND BLESSING”?
“DO you believe in the second blessing?”
“To be sure I do,” answered a Christian whose reply voices the judgment of many, “but I shouldn’t confine it to a second blessing. I believe in hundreds of blessings after conversion.” Whatever may be our view of such a term as “the second blessing,” let us not lose the experience it describes by confusing these hundreds of blessings with that distinct change which comes in a life when the secret of complete victory is learned.
A noted Christian leader in England who was prejudiced against the teaching of a “higher life” was prevailed upon to hear a message on the subject. He approached the speaker, who was a friend of his, with this criticism: “That is all well enough, but you are preaching lop-sided truth. What we need is all-round truth.” “Yes,” was the reply, “but we are preaching to lop-sided Christians. When we get them into the center then we can give them all-round truth.”
Dr. Griffith Thomas, who relates this incident of the English preachers, has pointed out that “the perfecting of the saints” means literally “the adjusting of the saints.” It is as when a broken shoulder needs to be set before the blood can flow properly and the arm be used. It is this adjustment of “lop-sided Christians” which marks the great change. Those who experience the change realize that it is something different from any blessing they have received since conversion, and different from any new experience of deepening that will come in the life later.
What is this distinct change that comes in the life of the Christian?
It is clear that the Scriptures never hold before the believer two standards for the Christian life. The New Testament does recognize that Christians may walk as “carnal,” whereas their true state is to be spiritual (Gal. 6:1; 1 Cor. 3:1). It recognizes that Christians may walk after the flesh or after the Spirit (Rom. 8:4; Gal. 5:16).
A Spirit-Filled Life God’s Only Standard
But this does not mean that there are two standards for Christians to choose between. On the contrary, the Word makes plain that when a Christian walks after the flesh, when he is “carnal,” he is acting as though he were not a child of God at all. “And I brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat; for ye were not yet able to bear it: nay, not even now are ye able; for ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal, and do ye not walk after the manner of men?” These Christians, Paul says, were walking as natural men, who have not been born again, instead of living as spiritual children of God.
There is no platform below the Spirit-filled life which affords a safe resting ground for a Christian. One who calls himself by the name of Christ, but does not have the fulness of the Spirit, and yet says that he has no desire for this deeper experience, is confessing that there is no evidence he has ever been born again. For while a Christian may live below the standard Christ desires he cannot be comfortable in doing it; the Spirit of God within him is longing for the driving out of everything contrary to the life of Christ.
The heart of the Spirit-filled life is freedom from sin. A normal Christian is a man who does not sin. “We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?” (Rom. 6:2). “These things write I unto you that ye may not sin” (1 John 2:1). “Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin” (1 John 3:9). “We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not” (1 John 5:18).
Some teachers who have noted these plain statements of the Word have concluded that a Christian does not commit sin, and that so soon as a Christian does he ceases to be a Christian. If he is sinning it is a proof that he is not a Christian, and will not be reinstated as a child of God till he ceases his sinning. These teachers, however, see the difficulty that in the heart of many Christians are wrong feelings that should not be there, and which they do not want there but over which they apparently have no control. To get over this and other difficulties they explain that a Christian does not commit “outward” sins, though he has these sinful impulses in his heart. Even this standard, it is to be feared, would cut down the number of Christians to a small minimum.
A Normal Christian is Free from Sin
But a more serious objection to this method of explaining these difficult verses in First John is that it contradicts the very point that the Apostle is making. If close attention is paid to the conclusion of First John 3:9 it should guard from these errors: “Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God.”
That seed which is born of God is, as Dr. A. J. Ramsey has pointed out, the Child of God himself, not a seed in him. While he abides he cannot sin. (As Moffatt also translates: “The offspring of God remain in Him.”) The whole argument of the Epistle of John, and particularly of this portion, is that a normal Christian is one who is free from sin. The Apostle does not mean to say that a child of God does not “deliberately” sin, or that he does not “continue in sin” as the rule of his life, or that he does not let the inward impulses of sin express themselves: he means that the Christian, while he abides in Christ, where he belongs, does not sin. He is God’s new creation, and walks in the light having fellowship with God. For “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).
When a Christian Acts as a Child of Satan
Does John mean that a Christian does not sin, or that he ceases to be a Christian if he sins? The opposite is taught in this very Epistle. John is writing these things that Christians may not sin, but he recognizes that they may, and tells them just what to do to have the sin cleansed away in case they do sin.
When a Christian sins, he is acting against his true nature. That is the argument of First John and of all the Epistles. When a Christian sins, he is acting as though he were a child of the devil. He as a child of God can have nothing to do with sin. But there is his free will to step out of the place of abiding, and this makes possible the tragedy of a Christian’s sinning.
James is facing this tragedy of a Christian’s acting against his true nature when he exclaims: “Doth the fountain send forth from the same opening sweet water and bitter? can a fig tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a vine figs? neither can salt water yield sweet” (James 3:10-12). All these things act according to their true nature. If a Christian acted thus there would flow always from his life and lips the fruit of the Spirit. But the Apostle shows in the passage that a Christian may pray with the same mouth that he uses to say mean things about his neighbor, and that he may have in his heart “bitter jealousy and faction.”
Here, then, is our foundation truth that God has but one standard for the Christian life, one kind of holiness, and that is the standard of his Son, who is to be our life. And that Life, that holiness, God has given to every Christian.
God’s Perfect Provision for Every Christian
It was to those “carnal” Corinthians, who had jealousy and strife in their midst, that Paul by the Spirit wrote: “I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus; that in everything ye were enriched in him, in all utterance and all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be unreprovable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:4-9).
This surely is a picture of the fulness of blessing in Christ, and it is stated that this grace had been given to the Corinthians because they were Christians. Similarly in the eighth chapter of Romans the life of victory is described: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death” (Rom. 8:2). This freedom belongs to every believer in the Lord Jesus. So throughout the New Testament it is made clear that when God spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all, he freely gave with Christ all things that a Christian needs.
But while there is but one salvation, and one plan of salvation, this salvation has a two-fold aspect. God has indeed only one standard for Christians, the standard of his Son, that is complete holiness. But God’s message of salvation comes to two distinct classes of people, to lost sinners, and to saints—sinners saved by grace.
Christians Need to Be Saved
“If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:10). This is the message of salvation for sinners. The next words of this verse are very significant: “Much more.” The apostle has just been speaking of salvation for sinners, and now he is to tell us something “much more.” This word should prepare us for some amazing revelation of his grace. “Much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
Do Christians, then, need salvation? Indeed they do, and the Word of God suggests here that a good name for that salvation which reconciled Christian needs is “the much more salvation,” and this is just another way of saying “the Victorious Life.”
God has granted that life to every Christian. But not every Christian is enjoying it. For the Christian has the terrible power of choosing to walk after the flesh and not after the Spirit. God’s plan is that the Christian life should be a moment by moment miracle life, just as the new birth is a miracle. “If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk” (Gal. 5:25). Being born again, and “walking,” are two distinct things. When a Christian learns that God intends him to walk by faith, letting Christ do it all, just as he has believed that Christ has done it all in the matter of saving him from the penalty of his sins, then the Christian is ready to enter into the fulness of the Spirit, which is the Victorious Life.
And when he does enter by faith for the first time into this complete victory, which has been his privilege all along in Christ, there is such a marked change that it is natural for a Christian to think of it as a “second blessing.” There is that perfectly clear distinction between being born again, and “walking” or living moment by moment after the new birth has taken place. The man who has been born again is in a place to take hold of the much-more salvation for Christians as he could not do in his unregenerate state.
Testing Our “Doctrine” of Victory
There are some simple tests of our “view” of complete victory over sin which will show whether we are in danger of coming into bondage to a doctrine.
Any view that centers attention upon self is dangerous. The heart secret of victory is looking away from self unto Christ. If I testify, “I am holy”; if I must look into my own state, examining self to see whether this holiness still remains, I am on wrong ground.
Any view that brings into prominence my past record of victory or holiness leads to difficulties. The testimony, “I have not sinned for so many weeks or months since my new experience” may be given with sincerity, and the speaker may intend to give the glory to God. Nevertheless, it is a wrong testimony, and no encouragement is given in the Word for such a statement. For one thing, no human being has a perfect memory; none of us can have accurate knowledge of past states of consciousness. Victory is always a matter of the present moment, and if we are occupied with Christ and his perfect work for us, the matter of our past record is of no consequence, so far as it bears on present victory by faith.
Any view that centers attention upon feeling is on the wrong basis. Many Christians who have come into the new experience of the fulness of the Spirit have been overwhelmed with flood-tides of blessed feeling. In some cases this exalted state of feeling has continued for weeks or even months. Some have counted this the “witness of the Spirit” that a new work of grace has been wrought in their hearts. Many have been thrown into confusion and darkness by waiting for this “witness of the Spirit,” which they have been taught to believe is some wondrous consciousness in their feeling. Others who have had such a “witness” have later lost the feeling and have wondered whether their experience has gone. God often permits the feeling to go, that his child may learn to look to Christ and to the fact of his grace in the life, rather than to the feelings, which vary according to temperament and circumstances.
What is the “Witness of the Spirit”?
Feeling or emotion should not be discounted, but should be kept in its right place. Praise God for every blessed emotion that is of his Spirit, but praise him also when the emotion is entirely absent. He and his grace remain the same, while the feelings go up and down. There should be, indeed, a continuous consciousness of his presence, but consciousness is based on fact and is not to be confused with emotion.
As to the “witness of the Spirit,” there is no suggestion in the Word of God that this “witness” has any connection with a great flood-tide of feeling. “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne concerning his Son. And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (1 John 5:10, 11). The witness is God’s record, or God’s eternal Word to us, that he has done something, that he has given us a gift. He does not want us to feel this word, or witness of his. He wants us to believe it. One who does not believe it makes God a liar, and this is what Christians are in danger of doing, both in regard to salvation from the penalty of sin and salvation from the power of sin. When we believe this word, and the wonder of the gift breaks upon us more and more, we shall have feelings, of course, and they will find expression according to our different temperaments and environments.
(Dr. Griffith Thomas notes that the often abused passage on the witness of the Spirit in Romans eight does not say that the Spirit beareth witness to our spirit, but with our spirit, that we are children of God. That is, our spirit says “Father,” and the Holy Spirit says “Father” with us.)
John Wesley on Use of Terms
Whatever our “view,” let us guard against laying emphasis upon certain terms, and making these the test of correctness. We should remember that God has granted the same experience to Christians who have come into their experience by different paths and who therefore explain it in different ways. The important thing, after all, is to have the fruits of the experience in the life. John Wesley, who had the experience, whatever our view of his theology, has a word of wise counsel at this point:
“Beware of tempting others to separate from you. Give no offense which can possibly be avoided; see that your practice be in all things suitable to your profession, adorning the doctrine of God our Saviour. Be particularly careful in speaking of yourself; you may not indeed deny the work of God; but speak of it when you are called thereto in the most inoffensive manner possible. Avoid all magnificent, pompous words. Indeed, you need give it no general name; neither 'perfection,’ 'sanctification,’ 'the second blessing,’ nor 'the having attained.’ Rather speak of the particulars that God has wrought for you.... And answer any other plain question that is asked with modesty and simplicity.”
Was It Sin, or “Infirmity”?
Any view that leads us to lower the standard of holiness to fit our experience, or to argue with the devil or with ourselves over sin, is in error. A Christian who has had a blessed new experience notices something in the life that is not quite according to the Spirit of Christ. He begins to examine it and decides that this is not a sin but one of the “infirmities” from which he has not expected complete deliverance. Or he confesses it as a sin and is cleansed in the blood of Christ, but since he does not want to believe that he has lost his experience he explains that this was a temptation from without and was not due to any evil within. Or, not able to delude himself with these bits of human reasonings, he falls back into his old life of struggle and failure.
John Wesley has a word in season here also: “And if any of you should at any time fall from what you now are, if you should again feel pride or unbelief, or any temper from which you are now delivered, do not deny it, do not hide it, do not disguise it at all, at the peril of your soul. At all events, go to one in whom you can confide, and speak just what you feel. God will enable him to speak a word in season which shall be health to your soul. And surely the Lord will again lift up your head and cause the bones that have been broken to rejoice.”
The Bible treatment of the conquest of sin is subject to none of these distressing difficulties. It guards from dangerous errors on every side, and at the same time leaves no loopholes for tolerating sin as do the current views held by nearly all Christians.
What Terms Does the Bible Use?
God says, “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin” (Rom. 6:11). There are two ways the devil would like us to interpret this. One is by his old lie regarding “death.” He wants us to believe that the capacity for sinning is taken away so that we shall not acknowledge sin to be sin, and shall call the works of the devil the fruit of the Spirit. But death is not annihilation, but separation. It is not that some “thing” within us has been put out of existence. All that we were as lost sinners, in our unregenerate state—the “old man”—was crucified with Christ and is buried, and a Christian is to reckon that fact true. But he is to remember that there is ever the possibility of turning our members over as instruments of sin. And whenever sin enters, when anything in thought, word or deed that is contrary to the Spirit of Christ has a place in the life, it means that self is on the throne and we are alive to sin.
But Satan’s other interpretation of this verse is his favorite one, for by it he deludes most Christians. It is only when this fails that he tries the other and drives the Christian beyond the Word of God. You are to reckon yourselves dead unto sin, Satan tells us, but of course you know very well that it is never actually true that you are dead unto sin. You will keep on sinning. When you die then will come complete deliverance, but not before. In other words, God is a liar. All Satan’s wiles in the last analysis are found to be variations of this original statement of his to our first parents.
God never tells us to reckon on a lie. It is eternally true that in our position before God we are dead to sin, because we have been crucified with Christ and raised together with him. This position of ours becomes a blessed reality in actual experience as we reckon by faith, and only so long as we reckon by faith. Let Satan not rob us of our heritage by telling us it is only “positionally” that we are dead to sin. God is not thus mocking us when he tells us to “reckon” on this truth of crucifixion with Christ.
When We Reckon Self Dead to Sin
This reckoning gives us no holiness of our own. It gives no cause for boasting in our own record. It gives no uneasiness as to whether we have had this or that feeling as a witness of the Spirit.
It will be seen from these Scriptures which have been considered that every true Christian has a measure of victory in Christ. As Dr. Scofield has pointed out, the experience of Christians and Christian experience may be two entirely different things; for Christian experience is wholly the product of the Holy Spirit. Whatever measure of true Christian life is expressed, therefore, is the work of the Holy Spirit, and to that extent is victory by faith, even though the Christian is ignorant of the truth of the faith walk.
The Victorious Life, which is just another term for the normal “Christian Life,” is simply walking moment by moment in complete faith in His perfect work.
Whether I am in victory or not at this moment is simply a question as to whether or not I am appropriating the sufficient grace of the Lord Jesus for the needs of this very moment. My glorious privilege is so to appropriate that grace, now, and to do it moment by moment without any breaks. For His Grace IS sufficient. His Grace is “more than enough.”