What It Means To Grow Spiritually — Zac Poonen

Let's just pray. Heavenly Father, as we bow before you, we thank you for these dear brothers and sisters who are eager to hear your word. And we pray that your presence will be with us, Lord Jesus. Otherwise we are wasting our time.

We lean upon you. We ask you to fill us, anoint us with the Holy Spirit for this ministry. And even though we are separated by distance, there is no distance with you. Where two or three are gathered in my name, even if they are thousands of miles apart.

You said, I am in the midst. Thank you, Lord Jesus, you are here. Help us to sense your presence and to hear your voice through the Holy Spirit. We pray in your name, amen. Okay, brothers. I think if you were to ask most Christians, most genuine believers, about whether they are satisfied with their Christian life and the progress they're making spiritually towards becoming more Christ-like, which is our goal.

The Problem of Spiritual Stagnation

If they're honest, most Christians would say, we're not happy with the way we are progressing, and we wish it were far better. So we need to ask ourselves, why is that? It was like that in my own life for a number of years after I was born again.

If I were to draw a graph of my life, soon after I was converted, the graph went up because I was a serious Christian. And then as I got involved more and more in the ministry, and that's what happens when you get involved in the ministry and you become well-known and people come to know about you, and you don't have fellowship.

And I didn't have a local church those days. And gradually I found in my life, the graph began to go down and it went down pretty low. Externally, my testimony was perfect. I wasn't misappropriating money anywhere.

I wasn't fooling around with women. All that was okay. Outwardly, it was great. But my inner walk with the Lord and my thought life was terrible. And I got so fed up with my life that a time came in my life when I said, this is nearly 50 years ago, when I said, Lord, I want to stop preaching because I'm a hypocrite.

I'm saying things which are not true in my own inner life. It's true. What I'm saying is true and it impresses people and they are challenged also, but it's not true in my own life. So I'd rather quit and find a secular job.

I won't stop being a Christian. I'll still be a Christian. I know that Jesus has saved me, but I stopped preaching. Unless, and this is a condition I made with the Lord, unless you do something in my life where my inner life responds exactly with what I'm saying.

In other words, my aim was zero hypocrisy. I remember years ago, visiting a car factory in India and I saw a board which the manager had put up there on the wall saying, we aim for zero defect. And I've never forgotten that.

I saw that more than 50 years ago. And I said, Lord, I want to aim for zero defect in my life, in my speech, in my thoughts, in my attitudes to people, in the genuineness of my love, in genuine Christ-like humility, in my attitude to money, in my attitude to women, every area, I want to aim for zero defect.

Repentance, Faith, and the Goal of Christlikeness

Now I know that I will be like Jesus only when he comes because the word of God says in 1 John 3 that we shall be like him when we see him. Let's begin with that verse. Please turn with me to 1 John chapter 3.

You're all familiar with this verse. Beloved, now we are children of God. And I think most, if not all of you will say, yes, you're a child of God. You know that you're born again. There was a time in your life when you repented and received Christ into your life.

I hope you repented before you received Christ in your life because most preaching in the world today speaks about believe, believe, believe. There's very little preaching on repent, repentance. And yet God has joined these two together.

What God has joined together, let no one separate repentance and faith. I've always preached repentance and faith together. So if you've genuinely repented and believe then you're born again. If you're not repented and you just believe you're not born again.

I want to tell you that. And that may be the cause of the problem of some of you. But assuming that most of you have really repented and that repentant doesn't mean you've overcome sin. Overcoming is different from repenting.

Repenting means you've turned around according to the military term about turn. So it's turning our back to the world and sin and turning our face to God. It doesn't mean I've reached the goal. The Christian life is a race and it's a long way before I can reach the goal.

But it's a race that we have to run. And the finishing line, the starting line of the race is being genuinely born again. The finishing line of the race is when Christ comes again and we will be like him completely.

So it says here, now we are children of God. That's where we begin. But it has not yet appeared where we will be. That's what the finishing line of the race. We know that when he appears, we will be like him.

Not before that. We will be like him only when he appears. And because we will see him as he is. Verse three, everyone who has this hope. Now, for many years in my life, if you'd asked me, what is my hope?

I said, my hope is that I'm gonna see Jesus face to face. He'll come again. But that's only half the hope according to this verse. The full hope is I will be like him because I see him as he is. And I never saw that for many years, even though it's written there plainly.

And I doubt whether some of you have seen it. What is your hope? Is it that Christ comes again, you're gonna see him? That should be the second part of it. I'll be like him when I see him. What's the use seeing him if I'm not gonna be like him?

If there's gonna be sin in my life for all eternity, even one sin, I don't wanna live in eternity like that. I hope you have a passion to be like Christ. And how do we know? It's very easy for us to say, yeah, I have that hope.

Intellectually, yes. But how do you know whether you really have it? Well, it says here in verse three, you will purify yourself just as he is pure. In other words, your goal is total Christ-likeness.

Even if it takes a long time to get there, you're gonna make progress, that's the point. This year has just begun, one month is over, 2021. You should be ahead of where you were in 2020. Examine yourself.

Look, God has made the earth to go around the sun in 365 and a quarter days. And that's a good period of time by which we can evaluate ourselves and see whether we've made progress. Just like our children, we want them every year to go from one class to the next class.

We don't want any of our children to be sitting in the same class every year. We want them to progress to the next class. And as much as you parents are eager that your children go from one standard or one grade to the next every year, you should be eager to make sure that you are also progressing in the way you speak to your wife.

Ask her whether there's a progress. In the way you speak to your husband, ask him. Don't yourself form an opinion. Allow your partner to be honest with you. It'll help you. She's given to be your helper, a helper to make you more Christ-like.

Even if she's unconverted, God can use that. Use an unconverted wife to make you more Christ-like by giving you more patience, et cetera. But evaluate yourself, very important. Now, the reason I say this is because if you go a little earlier in this section, you know, in John's letter, there were no chapter divisions.

These are only made for our convenience. It was one continuous letter. And earlier on in the letter, in relation to the second coming of Christ, he says in chapter two, verse 28, little children, he's talking to believers.

He will not address unbelievers as children. Little children, abide in Christ so that, again, he's talking about his coming. When he appears, we may have confidence or boldness and not shrink away in shame at his coming.

That verse clearly teaches that among little children, among believers, among born-again believers, when Christ appears, there are going to be two categories of people. Now, we know there are going to be two categories of believers and unbelievers.

It's always there. But here, if you read carefully, it's referring to two categories of believers. He's talking about little children. Little children, I'm writing to you, John says. One group of believers are bold.

They say, praise the Lord. Lord, we've been waiting for you. We're ready to meet you. Everything in our life is set right. And there is another group that says, they shrink away. Oh, Lord, we didn't know you're coming so soon.

We're not ready. There are things we are not set right. There are debts we have not repaid. There are people we have hurt whom we have not asked forgiveness from yet. There are people who hurt us whom we have not forgiven.

There are a lot of things we have to set right, Lord. Please wait, please wait. Can you wait one more day? They shrink away in shame. Now, let's be honest. Today, if Christ were to come, before I finish this message, are you going to be in group one that has boldness and say, yes, Lord, I'm ready to meet you?

Or are you going to be in that other group that shrinks away in shame, in shame? Because we're not ready. The purpose of scripture in the New Testament is to help us to grow towards Christ-likeness. Earlier on in the same chapter, 1 John chapter two, John says, if you say, this is one of the most challenging verses in the entire New Testament.

It is one of the most challenging verses in the entire New Testament. And that's why a lot of people skip over it. Don't skip over it. 1 John chapter two, verse six. The one who says he abides in Christ must walk in the same way he walked.

These are two different things. 1 John 2, 6, we are to walk as he walked now. 1 John 3, 2, we will be like him when he comes. What is the difference between these two verses? Walking is a conscious act.

Normal people don't walk in their sleep. It's a conscious act. You take one step and the next step and the next step. So when it says about walking as he walked, it's referring to the conscious part of our life.

The area of our life which we know whether we are right or wrong. Do you know that there's a huge area of our lives where we don't know whether we are doing what is right? In fact, we discover it as we grow spiritually.

That's one mark of growth is that you discover more and more in your life of areas where you're not Christ-like and you judge yourself and repent and make progress. That is when an unconscious part of you suddenly becomes conscious to you at a certain time.

Growing in Faithfulness and Conscience

For example, you may suddenly discover that all these years of your married life, you have not been very gentle and gracious in the way you spoke to your wife and took advantage of her perhaps or to your husband.

And you suddenly get light on it and you begin to change, you repent. Or you discover that even though you were generally righteous in money matters as the world recognizes, you were not faithful in money.

Jesus did not tell us to be righteous in money. That is one level. He told us to go one step higher and be faithful with money. Do you know the difference between being faithful with money and righteous with money?

There's a world of difference. Righteous with money means I don't cheat anybody. I don't have any unrighteous income in my bank account. I've paid all my taxes. I don't owe anybody anything. Everything I have in my house is righteously paid for and bought.

No corruption, I'm not earning money in a wrong way. And my standards of righteousness in money matters is not at the level of others around me. We don't use the word, the world people say, everybody does it.

Well, everybody does it. Everybody's gonna help. I'm not gonna do something just because everybody does it. Is it, would Jesus do it? Is that the way Jesus would handle money? But that is righteousness.

But faithfulness is a step higher. And if we walk with the Lord, he gives us light on it. And that is to see that even though I'm righteous with money, do I recognize that everything I have is not mine, but is the Lord's?

And do I use it in a way of recognizing this is not my money. This is the Lord's money, which he's allowing me to use. I've gotta be careful with it. Not just righteous with it, but careful how I spend it.

So that's just one area. There could be many, many other areas where unconscious becomes conscious. So walking as Jesus walked is a conscious area of our life where I know my conscience tells me that was wrong the way you spoke or the way you did that or that attitude towards that person or the motive with which you said that was just to get some honor for yourself.

Sometimes after we have done something, the conscience convicts us and say, hey, there was quite a bit of pride in you in the way you did that or spoke that conscience. As soon as your conscience convicts us, we must confess it and forsake it immediately.

Never, never postpone what your conscience says. If you wanna walk as Jesus walked, number one rule is keep your conscience clear and obey the voice of your conscience always. This is one of the rules the apostle Paul had.

Turn with me to Acts of the Apostles in chapter 24 and verse 16. Acts 24, 16, Paul tells us one of the rules he had in his life. Paul was a very disciplined man. And he says one of the rules he had in his life, Acts 24, 16 is he at all times, the word always means 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

24 hours a day, seven days a week, Paul maintained his conscience absolutely clear before God and before men, like the two arms of the cross, before God and before men. Always remember this, love God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself.

Keep a conscience clear before God and clear before men. That's how Paul maintained it. And he says, one of the reasons why he did that was in relation to the second coming of Christ. He says in the first part of verse 16, in view of this, because of this, I'm keeping my conscience clear.

Of course, his primary reason he kept his conscience clear, I'm sure was because he loved Jesus, because he had been purchased and he was a child of God and he wanted to please his heavenly father. He wanted to please Jesus Christ.

That was the number one reason. But also in addition, because he knew that verse 15 in view of this means Acts 24, 15, there will be a resurrection of the righteous and of the wicked. Do you know that there are gonna be two resurrections?

You read that in Revelation chapter 20. There's a resurrection of those who are truly born again. And then years later, a resurrection of the unrighteous. So two different periods of time and people are gonna be, not everybody's gonna be raised up of the dead and not all gonna be raised on the same day.

The two separate resurrections and Paul says that here. There was certainly, there's no doubt about it. A resurrection of the righteous and of the wicked. And I want to be in the resurrection of the righteous.

So what do I do? I don't just sit back and say, well, 20 years ago I accepted Christ as my savior and I'm okay. I'm going to church regularly. I'm not killing anybody. I'm not committing adultery. I'm okay.

No, he says in view of this, I keep my conscience absolutely clear all the time. But that is only the first step. I told you, that's only the conscious area of our life. I illustrate the conscious and unconscious area of our life with a, if you take a cube of ice and put it in a glass of grape juice where you can't see what's under the surface, 10 of that ice cube is on top.

90 is hidden. Our life is like that. What you see as wrong or right in your life, you think you're holy. No, you're not. It's only 10%. There's a 90 within you of un-Christ likeness, which you're unaware of.

And, but if you take a knife and slice off that top 10 of that ice cube, slice it off, what will happen? And then put it back into the bottle of grape juice, something more comes up. Whatever you slice off, that ice cube doesn't remain under the surface.

Something that is hidden comes up. Still 90 is hidden, but it's a smaller amount. Something like that that happens when we walk with the Lord. Walk as Jesus walked. Walking is a conscious step, conscious act.

Being like Christ is unconscious plus conscious, our total personality. That's gonna happen only when Christ comes again, when we be like him. But till then in our conscious life, we can walk. And that means in that 10 of our life, which we see, we can walk as Jesus walked in righteousness, in humility, in love to everyone as far as we know, in seeking the glory of God and no honor for ourselves, et cetera.

Keeping our conscience absolutely clear. But as I said, Paul recognized that that was not the whole thing. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 4, where Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4, verse 4, he gives his own personal testimony.

He says, I am conscious. Again, that word conscious, that 10%. What a conscience tells him. According to my conscience, I'm not aware of anything wrong in my life, nothing. My conscience is not 99 clear, it's 100 clear.

It's the same thing he says in Acts 24, 16, always. Keep a clear conscience before God and before men means I'm ready to ask. I have asked forgiveness from everybody I hurt. I have forgiven everybody who hurt me.

I have said all matters right, financial matters, everything. I've judged my motives. I've judged my attitudes to people. My conscience is clear, but he says in 1 Corinthians 4, 4, it doesn't mean that by I'm acquitted.

Acquitted is a court word. In a court, a judge condemns a person or acquits a person. An acquits means the judge says, go free, you're not guilty. He says, even though I keep my conscience perfectly clear, I cannot say I'm not guilty because he recognizes there is this unconscious area of my life, which the Lord examines.

1 Corinthians 4, 4 is a great word that explains this. And if you are really being walking with the Lord, you have found from experience the reality of this. All those who've been walking with the Lord would have discovered that they saw something in their life at a certain stage, which for years before that, they didn't even realize was sin.

Now they realize it's sin. Even in money matters, we find God raises our standard. And we realize, hey, that's a wrong attitude. It's not just that I cheated anyone, no. Do you know that the love of money itself is a sin?

And we are all born with the love of money. It's not only rich people who love money. We've all seen homeless people, beggars. Have you ever seen a homeless person or a beggar who doesn't love money? They love money thoroughly.

And the rich people love money too. It doesn't depend on your bank balance, whether you love money or not. It is inbuilt in us, every child of Adam. Just like sexual desire and the temptation to sin sexually is in every person.

Maybe a little less in women than in men, but it is there in everyone. And if you recognize something is there, you'll fight it. If you don't recognize it or you pretend it's not there, you just sink into the pit where all humanity is sunk.

Judging Ourselves and the Judgment Seat of Christ

So we progress is where that ice cube becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. We are becoming more and more Christ-like as we walk with him. And we have to examine ourselves. 1 Corinthians chapter 11, this is a word that has tremendously challenged me and comforted me.

1 Corinthians in chapter 11, verse 31. 1 Corinthians 11, 31. If we judge ourselves rightly, and that word rightly is very important, we will not be judged. What does that mean? You know, in the final day, we're all going to stand before the Lord and be judged, including believers.

There are two judgment seats. One is called the great white throne judgment seat of almighty God, you read in Revelation 20, where only unbelievers stand. But then there is another judgment seat, which is called the judgment seat of Christ in 2 Corinthians in chapter five and verse 10.

And that's not for unbelievers, that's for believers. We, Paul says to the Corinthians, you and I are going to stand not at that great white throne judgment seat of God described in Revelation 20, but at the judgment seat of Christ so that we believers can be rewarded according to the deeds we did in our body, whether they were good or bad.

Not everyone is going to get the same reward. That's very clear, Jesus made it very clear. There are many stories he said of people to whom he gave money. He used a parable of a man went out on a long journey and gave money to his servants to invest.

And some people brought back 100%, some people brought back 50%. And each was rewarded according to what they produced. And some people did nothing with what God gave them. The guy had one talent and he just buried it and he was cast out.

So there are areas where we are different in gifts and abilities, and we'll be judged according to the gifts God has given us. For example, if God has given me a gift of preaching, for example, or teaching, and also not only the gift of teaching, but the opportunity to travel to many countries and physically and through Zoom and through the YouTube, much more will be expected from me than from you, to whom God may not have given the same gift of preaching or the same opportunity to reach people around the world.

So I'm gonna be judged by a much higher standard with what I did with my gift than you are. So that's like one person that was given five and another person was given two, another person was one. And you had to produce 100%.

A man who had five brought five, a man who had two should bring only two. So God doesn't judge all of us equally when it comes to gifts. But there's another parable where Jesus said there were 10 servants and he gave each of them one talent.

Everybody had only one. One is in Matthew 25, the other is in Luke 19, I think, where the person who had one talent produced 10. Another person who had one talent produced only five. So both were equal when they started.

That is not referring to gift, those two parables, one about the pounds and the other about talents. One is related to gifts, where it's five, two, and one, but the other is one, one, one, and someone produced 10.

And what is the one area where all of us are equal? When it comes to gifts, we are definitely not equal. Opportunities, for example, mothers with many children, they don't have opportunity to travel here, there, and everywhere to preach the gospel.

They are not going to be required to do that. They're going to be faithful with their own, the way they bring up their children. But what is the one area where we are all equal? Two areas, actually, where we are all equal.

One talent to each person. Some produce 10 with it, some produce five, some produce nothing. First of all, all of us have got 24 hours a day. Nobody gets 25, nobody has 23. What you do with the 24 hours is up to you.

What another person does with the 24 hours is up to him. And there, one person may be more faithful in his 24 hours than you are, but he had the same opportunity as you. The second area where we all have the same amount is in the lusts in our flesh.

Nobody has more lusts. Don't think that that person has less lusts. Temperaments may be different. Temperament has got nothing to do with the lust of the flesh. Temperament, some people are very outgoing and extroverts, and some people are very inward-looking and melancholic.

That makes no difference. Those are temperaments. But if you look inside that man's mind and heart, you'll find the extrovert and the introvert have got the same number of lusts, the lust of the flesh to be tempted.

Sin as Self-Will and the Root of the Problem

And basically, sin is doing your own will, and holiness is doing the will of God. Through the years, I've discovered all sin is not lusting after women or stealing money or telling a lie. No, no, no, no.

Those are all the external results or actions. Basically, from within, it is doing my own will, where self is in the center or sitting on the throne and saying, I wanna do this, you wanna do this, you wanna lust, or you wanna steal, or you wanna tell a lie.

It's that will that produces that sin. And so, if the will is crucified, you overcome sin, and you need the power of the Holy Spirit to do that. That's why in the Old Testament, nobody could overcome sin.

They could overcome external sins. That's why the 10 Commandments only dealt with external sins. But Jesus came and expanded that in the Sermon on the Mount and said, listen, the external adultery starts with the root of lusting in the heart.

Get rid of the root. We can say that the Old Testament was where God gave people a pair of scissors to cut off the fruit as soon as it appears. Whereas John the Baptist said that Jesus is gonna come with an ax that's laid to the root of the trees, you read in Matthew 3.

And there's a lot of difference between a pair of scissors and an ax. A pair of scissors is as soon as a bad fruit comes into your tree, cut it off. Another fruit comes in, cut it off. Another fruit comes, cut it off.

But an ax to the root deals with the root of the problem. That the tree just doesn't produce bad fruit. You plant another tree, which produces good fruit. That is true Christianity. It's not just presenting a good image.

I picture Christians like this, many Christians I've met. They're very careful, very, very careful that people going by the road should not see any bad fruit on their tree. So they keep a pair of scissors and look very carefully.

As soon as a bad fruit comes, they cut it off. And they go to the market and buy some good fruit, some good apples or something and tie it up to the tree. So everybody goes by and says, wow, what a fruitful tree this man has.

It's all a deception. This is the life of many Christians. It's presenting an image before people, which is not really true. It doesn't come from within. It's an apple bought in the market and tied to that branch.

It's artificial. Or they can hang plastic apples, which sometimes plastic apples look more real and more attractive than real apples. It's a deception. A lot of Christianity is like that. We got to steer clear of that.

Hypocrisy, Holiness, and Authentic Worship

There must be no acting in our lives. Do you know that the word hypocrite, which comes often in Jesus speak about hypocrisy. Hypocrite is not an English word originally. It's a Greek word. And the word hypocrite in Greek means actor.

And so when it's translated in the New Testament, it's written in Greek. When it talks about hypocrisy, it's talking about acting. So when Jesus said, don't be a hypocrite, what he meant is don't be an actor.

The Pharisees were accused of hypocrisy, of acting. If you know what acting is, you saw all these Hollywood movies. There are some biblical movies where some guy will act like Moses, holy man of God in the movie, as long as the movie is being shot.

And once the day's film shooting is over, he goes back home to live his drunken life with his third wife or whatever it is and fools around with women and et cetera. That's his real life. And the next day, film shooting starts again.

Again, he puts on the dress of Moses. That is acting. He's not really holy. He's just pretending to be. And that's what a lot of Christians do when they come to Sunday morning church service. That's when the film shooting begins and they're acting, holy, singing praises to God, which they don't mean.

I'll give you an example. Think of the songs you sing in the Sunday services and ask yourself, you see hypocrisy, I mentioned hypocrisy because that is one of the major areas of unconscious sin, which we need to get rid of.

And if you really seek to walk with the Lord, he will make you alert to it. I told you that in 1 Corinthians 11, this verse I was coming to, that if we judge ourselves, we will not be judged. What does it mean?

That means if I judge myself, like in these areas of hypocrisy, I'm talking about where I see, hey, I'm acting. I've got to get rid of that or any other area. I judge myself in areas where other people can't see.

One day when I stand at the judgment seat of Christ, the Lord will say, I've got nothing to judge you in. Isn't that wonderful? Wouldn't you like to stand at the judgment seat of Christ when he comes again and the Lord looks at your record and the video of your whole life?

And he says, I've got nothing to judge you in. You're clear, well done, my good and faithful servant. I wanna hear that. I love to hear that. I'd give anything in the world to hear that from my Lord. That's all I live for.

That's the thing that gripped my heart many years ago. I said, Lord, the honor of men, it's rubbish. The opinion, what people think about Zach Poonen, put it in the trash can. I'm not interested one bit in that.

People can call me a prophet or a devil. It is exactly the same to me. I can love both of them equally, not be puffed up with one comment or discouraged with the other comment because I don't live for that type of trash.

I put it in the trash can immediately. I wanna live before my Lord to say, what do you think about me? I remember one saying, Lord, Lord Jesus, can you say about me, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.

Oh God, if you can say that about me, I'd give anything. That's all I want. I don't want money, I don't want comfort, I don't want honor, that's all trash. I want to hear those words from you. Not only when you come back, I wanna hear your spirit saying that to me while I'm alive right now.

You are my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. Jesus walked that way. And one of the great truths I discovered in the Bible is that Jesus came to earth just like me. Not with my lusts, no, there was no sin in him, but he had a will just like I have.

And he was tempted, tempted to do his own will. And if he had yielded to his own will once, he would have sinned. But he never yielded to his own will and that's why we say he never sinned. When the Bible says in Hebrews 4 .15, he was tempted like us in all points.

It doesn't mean he had all our lusts, how could he have that? He was not born with a human father. The Holy Spirit came upon Mary and she was a virgin. And so the angel told her that holy thing that will be born of you will be the son of God.

He was born holy. It's very clear in Luke chapter one. And so, but he was like us in this way that he had a will of his own that he could say yes to or no to. And he always said no to his own will. This is the secret of holiness.

Jesus Christ and the Victory of Doing God's Will

Turn with me to John's gospel and chapter six, John chapter six and verse 38. John 6, 38. I always call this the one sentence autobiography of Jesus. A biography is what someone writes about another person's life.

An autobiography is what a person writes about his own life. Here is the autobiography that Jesus writes about his own life. His entire 33 and a half years on earth can be summed up in one sentence. I came from heaven, that's when he was born.

And throughout his life, it's described in this sentence, never doing my own will, but always the will of my father who sent me. That's a sentence that describes Jesus' own life. That's like saying he never sinned.

That's like saying he always was holy. He never did his own will. Now, if he was not even, if he didn't have a will of his own, then what is the point saying, I never did my own will? That is meaningless.

It's only when I have something, I can reject it. If I don't have it, how can I reject it? He had a will of his own, just like you and I have, just like Adam had in the garden of Eden, but he never did it.

There's nothing wrong in having your own will. Adam had his own will when he was created. He's not like the planets. The planets and the stars, they don't have their own will. They just obey God thousands of years, never disobeyed God, but they cannot be holy just because they obeyed God for thousands of years.

They cannot be sinful because they cannot disobey God. The trees, they obey God according to the laws God has put in them. There's no sin there because there's no will. Sin can come only when somebody has got a will of his own.