The Doctrine of Christian Perfection
A Continuation of the Thought Exercise of Jesus' Attained Perfection
While discussing with a friend my theory on the possibility that Jesus attained rather than retained His perfection while on earth, he encouraged me to chase this thought exercise to it's completion. Again, if you have not already read what I have written about this so far, you can click here, here and here to read the foundations already laid out in this thought exercise. I will warn that it can become a long read.
For those who want a refresher or just the cliff notes version of what was written, I spent a fair amount of time and characters on the investigation into whether or not Jesus was born a perfect and sinless Saviour, or if He attained that perfection through the guidance of the Holy Spirit after His baptism. As followers of Christ, it is compulsory for us to accept that Jesus died as the perfect sacrifice for our sins; for us not to accept this means that there is no hope and no purpose for Jesus to have died because His death and even His resurrection could not have accomplished anything. Any good man could have died and accomplished no less, and even a miraculous resurrection would have accomplished nothing for anybody except for him who was resurrected.
Since publishing my last article on this subject, I have added an addendum to it on January 6, 2025, which states as follows: 'As I am working on writing another article, it occurs to me that Jesus' struggles and temptations that He bore were enough to teach Him how to attain to perfection without the need for Him to have actually sinned in the process, which would negate the necessity for Him to have to pay for His own sins in His redemptive work on the cross. It is a simple concept, yet one that escaped me in the writing of this and previous articles; that Jesus could be both perfected through trials that all men face and yet have remained sinless in those trials.'
This
thought came to me through the reading of the following words in
"Introduction to Christian Theology"; "Temptation seems to be involved in the idea of probation. No temptation or evil suggestion becomes sin
until it is tolerated or cherished by the mind. As long as the soul
maintains its integrity it remains unharmed, however severe or
protracted the temptation may be." "This does not mean that the entirely
sanctified Christian cannot yield to temptation and sin. He is still
human and on probation." (page 331) However, we need to remember that Jesus was not entirely human as He was born without the human sin nature due to His being conceived by the Holy Spirit and not by man.
Satan seeks to pervert our natural, human
desires in order to draw us into sin. However, if we remain free from
indwelling sin, we are strengthened in our battles against temptation,
and the more that we are victorious over temptations, the less we are
defiled and the more strength we have against further temptations. The above simple conclusion seems to bring the entirety of Scripture into coalescence, from the temptations of Jesus to the phrases indicating His attainment of perfection through testing including the claims of his sinless state. I find it mildly self-deprecating that it took me dozens of hours of research and writing to come to the conclusion that what I have always considered the Scriptures to say is actually true, but now I will not have to, in the future, wrestle with the concept of Jesus needing to learn from God and to attain perfection while remaining sinless, and hopefully neither will you.
Having stated thus, this leads me to a discussion on the doctrine of Christian perfection. Since the premise of my thought experiment has been that Jesus attained perfection through the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit, and since Believers are to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, does it not make sense that we can also attain to Christian perfection with the help of the Holy Spirit? I will be gleaning my information extensively from chapter 18 of the book "Introduction to Christian Theology" [further referred to as ITCT], 1946, by H. Orton Wiley, S.T.D. and Paul T. Culbertson, Ph.D.; a book which I have come to value as a source in my own reading and studies.
The doctrine of Christian Perfection does not imply that a Christian is able to attain to perfection in all things, or even perfection as it relates to our innate sin nature. As fallen man, we are always susceptible to temptations and to acting in ways that are not in line with God's will and desires for us. Christian perfection is akin to the Apostle Paul's exasperated pleas that we as believers move on from the milk of infants to the meat of maturity (Hebrews 5). As stated in ITCT, "Christian perfection...is nothing more and nothing less than a heart emptied of all sin and filled with pure love to God and man."[a] This does not mean that we love perfectly either. There will always be people around us that we would rather not have to associate with and even those that we do not like. This is unavoidable in the human condition. However, we can strive to always treat others as Jesus would treat them. That being with respect and understanding, keeping in mind that Jesus was not scared to point out their errors in judgment or understanding, but He did so out of love and not from a spirit of correction or haughtiness.
Part of the reason that we are not able to attain to true perfection in our actions and our thoughts is that we do not possess perfect knowledge. Only God has perfect knowledge. It can be argued that not even Jesus as part of the Godhead has perfect knowledge since only the Father knows the day of Jesus' return (Matt. 24:36). So even as we attain Christian perfection, we are still liable to making mistakes which may be seen as having fallen short of Christian perfection. But, "Perfect love does not bring perfection in knowledge, and hence is compatible with mistakes in both judgment and practice. Infirmities bring humiliation and regret, but not guilt and condemnation."[b] Since we do not possess perfect knowledge, we will err in our judgments of people and situations, and will therefore make mistakes in our decisions and actions. This does not negate our Christian perfection, but should serve to remind us of our shortcomings and inspire us to strive to do better.
The above quotation continues; "Both,
however, need the blood of sprinkling. Under the Levitical rites of
purification errors and infirmities were put away solely by the
sprinkling of blood (Heb. 9:7); while sin always demanded a special
offering."[b] So the humiliation and regret that come about as a result of our infirmities need to be addressed, as well as any guilt and condemnation that come as a result of having slipped into sin. This leads to a theology that I hold to, that we are to "continually" confess our sins to God in order that we do not carry them into His presence. This is not the confession of the Roman Catholic Church in which you confess your sins to a man who claims to have the authority to absolve you of your sins; that is a heresy, as only God can absolve us from our sins. But I do believe that any unconfessed sins that we carry to God when we die will be counted against us when our Heavenly reward is calculated at the Bema Seat Judgment of Christ. This does not disqualify us from entering God's presence because the payment is made for our sins by Jesus' shed blood, but we need to claim His blood over our sins in order for them to be forgotten, and this is accomplished through the act of confession. This is borne out in specifically the King James version of Romans 3:25, which states that the sacrifice of Jesus was "a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his
righteousness for the remission of sins that are past,". This indicates to us that we are to continue to confess our sins as we act on them or as they are brought to our attention, because only the sins that have already been committed and confessed are covered by the blood of Jesus. This is not a common belief and I may need to address this more thoroughly in the future.
But this implies that something happens when we confess our sins to God, more than the simple notion that He forgets them. God is holy and pure; sin cannot exist in His presence, so what happens?
I have been reading elsewhere that Jesus is acting
as our perfect High Priest even now in Heaven, in the Sanctuary of which
we only had a copy in the Tabernacle and, later, in the Temple. The
responsibility of the Temple Priests was to accept and execute sacrifices for the sins of the people, and the High Priest would, once a year, on the Day of Atonement, enter the
Holy of Holies to sprinkle blood for the cleansing of the Temple of the
accumulated sins of the people over the course of the previous year. So Jesus, as our High Priest forever, is even now ministering in the original Sanctuary that exists in Heaven, sprinkling the blood that cleanses us for the sins that we are committing even now. But I digress.
We are unable to attain to this Christian perfection of our own accord; we simply do not have the capacity to achieve it. It is only by the grace of Jesus that we can attain it through the power of the Holy Spirit. "This perfection is evangelical as opposed to a legal perfection (Heb.
7:19). Christian perfection is of grace in that Jesus Christ brings His people to
perfection under the present economy."[c] The legal perfection that is referred to here is the requirement of the Law of Moses, fulfilled in its entirety, which no man is or ever has been able to accomplish. This is why God had to establish a New Covenant. The present economy refers to the New Covenant that Jesus established by His resurrection and His victory over death and the grave; this is the evangelical perfection, referring to the story in the Gospels of the how and the why of Jesus' life and sacrifice.
"Those who are justified are saved from their sins; those who are sanctified wholly are cleansed from all sin; but those who are thus justified and sanctified still belong to a race under the doom of original sin, and will bear the consequences of this sin to the end of the age."[c] There is a difference between being justified and being sanctified. At the moment that a person accepts Jesus' payment of our sin debt, that person is immediately justified and will be ushered into God's presence at the end of the age. This is how someone who makes a deathbed confession, much as the repentant thief on the cross beside Jesus, can enter paradise. Sanctification is a process that takes time and effort. It is the setting apart of oneself for God's will and purposes. Not all believers attain to this, even if they accept Jesus as a child and live a long and productive life afterwards. Sanctification is a choice; no, it is a lifetime of choices to always seek God in all things and in all ways, and it is these decisions that lead to Christian perfection.
I want to conclude this article with the conditions required to receive Christian perfection, as laid out on pages 332 and 333 in Introduction To Christian Theology. There must be in the Believer:
1-
"A consciousness of inbred sin, and a hungering and thirsting for full
conformity to the image of Christ." according to Catherine Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army. This is not something that is common among Believers. R.A. Torrey was a revivalist who continued the work of D.L. Moody; he said, "God never gave
this gift to any human soul who had not come to the point that he would
sell all to get it." "No man ever got this blessing who
felt he could get along without it." There must be an intentional desire, even a need in the heart of the Believer to chase after conformity with God.
2-
"A firm conviction in the light of the scriptural provisions that it is
not only a privilege but a duty to be cleansed from all sin." Unfortunately, most Christians are content to accept Jesus' payment of our sin debt as the ticket for admission into Heaven, but do not understand the responsibilities that come with that admission. It is more than just teaching Sunday School, going to church regularly and living a good life. We must acknowledge that while it is a privilege to be initially cleansed from our sins, it is our duty to pursue further cleansing of our sinful nature as well.
3-
"perfect submission of the soul to God, commonly known as
consecration." C.W. Ruth states that this includes "all we have
and all we expect to have; all we are and all we hope to be; all we know
and all we do not know, with a promise of an eternal 'yes' to all the
will of God for all the future. It is not consecration to a work, or
consecration to a certain calling, but consecration to God. It is not
simply a desire to consecrate or a willingness to consecrate, but the
unconditional and irrevocable signing of the deed of all to God for time
and eternity." "It is not an act of feeling but of the will. It is a
voluntary, unreserved, irrevocable, enlightened and comprehensive
dedication for the specific attainment of heart holiness." I cannot add any value to these quotes; I believe that C.W. Ruth states is quite succinctly.
4- Faith; pure, complete and unrelenting. Assurance that the promises that are laid out in Scripture can and will be fulfilled. "An act of simple faith in Christ - a sure trust in Him for the promised blessing." "This faith is a divine evidence or conviction (1) that God hath promised this sanctification in the Holy Scriptures. (2) It is a divine evidence or conviction that what God hath promised He is able to perform. (3) It is a divine evidence or conviction that He is able and willing to do it now. (4) To this confidence, there needs to be added one thing more - a divine evidence or conviction that He doeth it." (Wesley, Sermons, I. p. 390) As the Scriptures put it, there must be a belief that God rewards those who diligently seek Him (Heb. 11:6).
In short, Christian perfection is a relative term; as we are unable to attain to true perfection, it is relative to our relations to God and to man. Once achieved, it "must be guarded by constant watchfulness, and maintained by divine grace"[d], as it is probationary in that it can be forfeited, or lost, due to our own negligence. Christian perfection is only attained by the grace of Jesus, so it is therefore also only retained by the grace of Jesus, and not by our own efforts, though failure in our own efforts can cause it to be forfeit. And as it is a result of the works of the Holy Spirit in us through our submission, Christian perfection can also be defined as the baptism of the Holy Spirit, resulting in perfect love which is regarded as spiritual adulthood, that which the Apostle Paul calls us to.
I think that this brings to a conclusion my thought exercise in examining the perfectness of Jesus and all that it entails for Him and for us. There is a parallel course of entire sanctification which is similar to, but yet different from, Christian perfection. But I think that enough time has been spent on this subject, at least for now, and to continue to pursue this line of reasoning will become tedious for you, the reader.
As always, please feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
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