Victorious life studies

by Robert Crawford McQuilkin

All of these eradication theories, with the exception of the last, make necessary a second work of grace subsequent to regeneration. They mean that God has to do something else to free a man from sin after he is cleansed, by faith, in the blood of Christ, and made a new creature by the operation of the Holy Spirit. For manifestly, if a Christian must say, “I have sin,” he must get rid of that sin, and it must be done at one of three times: before death, at death, or after death. Is there a line of Scripture that gives support to any one of these six theories of a second work of grace, or of the theory of eradication at the first work of grace?

All of these theories rest upon the assumption that there is a “root of sin” in a man, in a mechanical, material sense, and that from this root sin springs.

The Scripture testimony is that the man himself is the root of sin. Sin springs from him. Our Lord said that out of the heart proceed evil thoughts and deeds that defile the man. He was not speaking of the heart as a physical or spiritual entity in the man, but showing the Pharisees that righteousness or evil did not consist in the outward acts or observances, but proceeded from the man himself. For the heart is the man.

This natural man, who is himself the root of his sin, must be born again. It is the man himself who is born again, made a new creature in Christ Jesus. The heart, that is, the man himself, is purified by faith, through the miracle work of the Holy Spirit. This new man, who in the moment of regeneration has the fruit of the Spirit, his heart filled with love, continues to have victory in Christ as he continues to abide in Christ. “As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him” (Col. 2:6). This is God’s plan. It is because Christians have not continued so walking, or perhaps because they have not known clearly and fully the normal New Testament experience that should result from “receiving” Christ Jesus, that there is need of a crisis in the life, a decision to get back where we belong in the place of abiding.

But why is it possible for this new creature to sin after he has so received Christ? It has been assumed that there must be some root of sin in the Christian that makes it possible for him to sin. It is strange that this should be thought a necessity when we know that Satan sinned, and Adam sinned, when they were sinless and had never been tainted with any impurity. If it were not possible for this new creature to sin, he would be a machine; his very humanity would need to be destroyed. If we accept as the alternative of this kind of Christian a Christian who is provided with something in him which causes the sin, we arrive at exactly the same conclusion with this difference: we have a machine which cannot do anything except sin. Let it be understood clearly that if a man in this body and in this life in the midst of temptation is not able to sin then he is not able to be good. He can sin for the same reason that he can be good, because he is a free moral agent. That is the way God made him, and it is of the essence of his humanity. Everywhere in Scripture the Christian is appealed to as one who is responsible to choose. The reason that a Christian can sin is because he still has his free will. And when he sins, it is not a root of sin in him that sins. It is he who sins.

That first sin (which need not occur) after a man is made a new creature in Christ, or after he has understood and taken Christ as his Victory, is always a tragedy. Sin should always be a tragedy. It is not an accident nor an incident. But if the man is not responsible, but has something in him that makes sin necessary, then he cannot regard sin as a preventable tragedy.

But it is not possible for God to sin, and yet he can be good. Here we come to the heart of our confusion regarding a Christian’s goodness. God not only can be good, He himself is goodness. He is holy in a way that no man ever was or ever can be. For man’s holiness is never absolute in this sense, but always relative. Not relative in the sense that sin must be present, but relative because of the moment by moment relationship with God, the Holy One. Therefore for the Christian to be kept from sinning he must abide in Christ, and he cannot do other than sin if left to himself. At the root of all these eradication theories lies the assumption that man is to be made independently holy. But man is a dependent creature. This is of the essence of humanity, altogether apart from sin. Utter dependence on his creator and his Saviour (and the Saviour is the creator of the new life) is the only safety for the child of God. There is indeed no room for boasting nor for looking to self when we learn God’s wondrous plan of salvation by grace.

Two Christian workers were talking together at the lunch table about the question of what happened to a man when he is saved. One of the brethren pointed to the granulated sugar in the bowl as representing him as a lost man. He then took a spoon as representing the divine life imparted in conversion, stuck it into the sugar, and said: “This represents my new nature, and the sugar is still the same corrupt nature. But I am in Christ as the sugar is in the bowl.” In other words Christ is enclosing a mass of corruption with a righteous spark injected into it.

Another Christian worker, representing what Christ did in saving him, drew his coat about him so as to cover up his white vest, and said that in just this way God clothes us with Christ’s righteousness, while we remain a mass of corruption beneath.

Still another, putting these illustrations into theological terms, said: “God imputes the righteousness of Christ to me in exactly the same way as he imputes my sin to Christ. So that when God looks at me he sees the righteousness of Christ, just as when he looks at Jesus he sees my sin.” The implication is that righteousness touches me in just the way that sin touches Christ, namely, it is as far from me as the east is from the west.