The Denial of the Sinful Flesh

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Let's pray. Heavenly Father Almighty and Everlasting God, we come before you in humble awe.

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You are the one true God and there is none like you. Come, we pray, and bless our hearts and our minds as we study your word.

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Send your Holy Spirit into our lives so that we may grow in love and grace and that we may go forth into all the world, proclaiming your gospel so that others may learn of your saving grace.

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Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. All right, we're gonna do something a little bit different. We're gonna deviate from the normal walk through the book of Numbers.

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Not my fault, I'm just putting that out there for the record. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I blame Bruce. And what we're gonna do today is

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I wanna build off of our texts. I wanna build off of this idea of the doctrine of original sin, and I wanna talk about what

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I would consider to be one of the most deadly doctrines out there today. It is related to the

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Pelagian heresy, and one that I think everybody in this church has run into in one form or another.

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What we're gonna be talking about is the denial that Christians still have a sinful flesh to contend with.

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Have you guys heard anything like this? Yeah, this is particularly predominant in the

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Charismatic and the Pentecostal churches. There is a place where this comes from, and that is that,

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I'll give you a historical example so that we can understand this, is that the

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Pentecostal movement here in the United States, it began in Los Angeles, California at a place called

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Azusa Street. And a fellow by the name of Frank Bartleman, who was a holiness preacher at the time, was intimately involved with the

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Pentecostal movement and the Azusa Street revival, and it's important to note that he, at the time, was a contemporary of the founder of the

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Nazarene church, and that's Phineas Brazee. Now, Phineas Brazee is the guy who was the holiness preacher in Los Angeles who planted churches of the

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Nazarene, one of them in Pasadena. And when I was growing up, Pasadena Nazarene, for real, was the hot item, the church to go to.

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And when I was living in Arcadia and going to Maranatha High School, I attended

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Pasadena Nazarene, and my pastor was a fellow by the name of Dr. Earl Lee. And Earl Lee was an old -school holiness preacher, and he taught down the line, really what the

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Nazarene church has historically taught, and this is a theological descendant theology from Phineas Brazee, who was a holiness preacher.

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Now, if you don't know what holiness is, the best way I can describe it is it's based on John Wesley's doctrine of sinless perfectionism.

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Are you guys familiar with this theology? We're gonna do a little bit of historical work today.

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Now, so what I'm gonna do is we're gonna describe it, I'm gonna give you its pedigree first, because Dr.

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Rosenblatt, my mentor, always used to tell me that thoughts and ideas always have moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and things like this.

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And so Bartleman was like Phineas Brazee. He was a holiness preacher before he went

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Pentecostal, and many of the holiness churches in Southern California after the Azusa Street Revival went

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Pentecostal, but their theology is very, very closely related. And so Bartleman, when you read his eyewitness account of the

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Azusa Street Revival, he has some very interesting things that he hangs on to, and the question is, where did he get these ideas from?

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So have any of you heard the idea that if you pray structured prayers, that God the

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Holy Spirit will have nothing to do with that, you're putting the Holy Spirit in a box? Have you ever heard this kind of, okay, yeah.

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Back in Ohio where there's more Baptists than Mosquitoes, that was their main attack on Lutheranism was the worship structure.

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And that we couldn't possibly mean it because somebody wrote it for us. Bartleman, his holiness theology, which then morphs into the

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Pentecostal movement, he believed that any kind of structure, including having pastors, having a liturgy, that God the

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Holy Spirit would pass over that church just like the destroyer passed over the children of Israel.

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This is the way he describes it. But the other thing he talks about is this belief that the church apostatized very early in its history, probably two or three centuries out, and that all of the gifts of the

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Holy Spirit got lost, and that they were anticipating the restoration of those gifts, and that Martin Luther's Reformation did not go far enough.

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It just restored the gospel but didn't restore the gifts of the Spirit. And so Bartleman, he's in this vein, but I wanna show you some doctrines from the

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Nazarene Church so that you can kinda see what's going on. And the Nazarene Church is, in their doctrines, they believe in something called

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Provenient Grace. Have you guys heard of this concept before? All right. So Provenient Grace goes something like this.

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And the Nazarenes recognize that the doctrine of original sin makes it impossible for a human being to make a decision for Jesus.

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But they believe that somebody has to make a decision for Jesus in order to be saved.

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So how do you get past the impossibility of somebody who's dead in trespasses and sins, who's incapable of making a decision for God, to jump that chasm to then being able to make a decision for God?

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How do you jump that chasm? The answer is a doctrine that was created by Arminius, who is a heretic from the

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Calvinist camp. And Arminius came up with a doctrine called the Doctrine of Provenient Grace.

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And it goes, this is my modern day explanation of it. Provenient Grace is when

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God the Holy Spirit presses the pause button on your sinful nature and its abilities just long enough so that you can make a decision for Jesus.

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It's an interesting one, right? But here's the thing. Off the top of your head, can you think of any biblical passages that teach that God the

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Holy Spirit is gonna hit the pause button so that you can make a decision for Jesus? No.

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And so you're gonna note then, the concept of Provenient Grace, which was developed by Arminius, that this theology opens the door up to the back -end doctrine, which is the one that is the most pernicious.

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But this Doctrine of Perfection, we'll talk about this in a minute, you can do a direct link from the

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Pentecostals to the holiness preachers, to the Methodists, to John Wesley, to the

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Moravians. Have you ever heard of Count Zinzendorf? All right, from Lutheran Pietism.

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From the Moravians to Franca and Spanier in Germany who created

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Lutheran Pietism. I hate to say this, but the modern -day Pentecostal movement is a heresy of Lutheranism, at its core, at its root.

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And the big fight is over whether or not you can attain sinless perfection in this lifetime.

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It's a very fascinating thing. So within Lutheran Pietism, there is an assault against structure.

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There is an assault against the pastoral office. There is a demeaning of the means of grace.

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And the thing that cannot stand is an absolution. That's like absolutely just runs the, that's like taking your cat and petting it the wrong way.

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Gets them very agitated. Yeah? So if there's a way of, who's done it so far?

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That's the kind of, the nasty little thing here is that when you embrace this theology, there's this really bad habit of you thinking you've gotten there.

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And then what happens is this, is that when it comes to having the Lord's Supper, not only is it infrequent, but those who have considered themselves to have attained true

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Christian piety, they will not and refuse to have the Lord's Supper with those who are unworthy to have it.

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But they think they are worthy. Oh, yes, yes, yes. By the way, this is where we get the concept of holier than thou.

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That's a phrase that we've all heard, but the reality is that's a concept that develops up within Lutheran Pietism.

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But this has antecedents, that there's branches that break off of all of this, and that concept.

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So Franca and Spanier, if you have ever heard of Pietisideria, Philip Jacob Spanier, he's the guy who develops the first iteration of Pietism.

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And then his interpreter, Franca, and the guys at Halle, they take it and just explode it into this other theology.

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And the way they taught this theology, the way it got spread, is through what they called conventicles, which were illegal home

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Bible studies. I'm getting really close to home.

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My apologies. I'm just doing a historical thing here. Speaking of history, the settlements of the

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Bacher, mixed with the group of Quakers that also came up from Jerusalem, spent some time there just before the Norwegians started to make the trip across the

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Bacher. Right. That's a perfect story. So the Moravians are the hub, not only for Norwegian Haugian Pietism, but also for Wesleyanism.

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I'm gonna show you some things. We're doing a little historical work here. All of that being said, the

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Church of the Nazarene, which I grew up in, comes out of the Holiness Movement and is a direct descendant of the Moravians through Wesley down to the

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Methodists and then ultimately this Holiness revival that occurs in the 19th century.

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And I want you to hear what they believe regarding Provenient Grace because this is very fascinating because they don't quite come right out and say it.

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They're very kind of fuzzy in how they teach it, but they do believe in it. So we believe that the grace of God through Jesus Christ is freely bestowed upon all people, enabling all who will turn from sin to righteousness.

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So you have to turn from sin, that's necessary. To believe on Jesus Christ for pardon and for cleansing from sin and follow good works that are pleasing and acceptable in His sight.

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We also believe that the human race's creation in God likeness included the ability to choose between right and wrong and that thus human beings were made morally responsible that through the fall of Adam they became depraved so that they cannot now turn and prepare themselves by their own natural strength and works to faith and calling upon God.

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So they recognize we can't do that because of the fall, but we also believe that the grace of God through Jesus Christ is freely bestowed upon all people, enabling all who will turn from sin to righteousness to believe on Jesus.

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So this prevenient grace is this enabling grace that hits the pause button on original sin so that you can make a decision for God.

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Isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting? Now, coming to the other shoe that drops, and this is the doctrine that they today call

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Christian holiness and entire sanctification. The way Dr. Earl Lee explained it to me was this way when

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I took membership classes there at Pasadena Nazarene is that God the Holy Spirit will give a second baptism and it is an entire sanctification.

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It is called second blessing holiness whereby when God gives this to you as a

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Christian and you have to desire it, you have to seek for it, you have to prepare for it. When you receive it, then you as a believer, the effects of original sin no longer apply to you and you will perfectly love

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God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and perfectly love your neighbor as yourself. And the central text for this, and this is how

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Earl Lee would preach it, is from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says, be ye perfect as your

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Father in heaven is perfect. And then Earl Lee would say, and Christ would never give us a command if it were not possible.

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So then how did they explain it? Well, that's the

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Old Testament. We now live in the era of the Holy Spirit. Since Pentecost, you have the Holy Spirit who's willing to give you this special gift.

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So I have a question for you. Does the Bible teach that Christians have a sinful nature still or do not?

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That really is kind of where ground zero is because you're gonna note,

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I heard you all this morning and I participated. This morning, I heard you say, I confess that I am by nature sinful and clean.

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A pietist of all stripes would just go. No way.

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Romans 7? I know, we'll get to the text. Stop thinking so biblically, come on. Reach out with the spirit, man.

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I'm under a spirit of legalism. Now, if you've all heard of Bethel Church in Redding, California, this is like a major charismatic

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NAR church. One of their leaders, Kevin Dedman, has a book, and the name of the book is

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Gnosticized, and what his claim is, and in his book, he puts

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Luther and Calvin and Augustine, he puts them on trial. So this is a book that is a court case.

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He puts them on trial in order to bring them up on charges of teaching gnosticism.

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And how does he define gnosticism? Gnosticism is that doctrine which teaches that you are a sinner saved by grace.

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Rather than a saint saved by grace. Doesn't speak much Greek, does he? These saints need salvation.

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You know, Marilyn, it's like, you just, you have a hypercritical religious spirit.

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You're just thinking too biblically. It's the dead word, you gotta be alive with the spirit. Here, I'm trying to use their rhetoric and it just is driving me nuts.

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Now, this past week, I did a YouTube video of a lady whose name is

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Kathy DeGraw. And if you were just to look at the video, you would think this woman is, you sure?

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But Kathy DeGraw, if you just looked at her, you wouldn't think that she was very influential, but she's written over 100 articles for Charisma Magazine, and Charisma Magazine is now promoting and selling her course on something called

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Deliverance Ministry. And Deliverance Ministry works from the idea that Christians can be possessed by the devil.

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And so, if you are a smoker, well, the reason why you're smoking as a Christian is because you're possessed by the demon of nicotine, of tar,

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I threw in there maybe zigzags, depending on what you're smoking. Arginine. Yeah, right.

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So, and then name all the different chemicals, menthol or whatever, these are all demons, and she's gonna teach you for only $145 how to cast all those demons out of you.

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But the fundamental presupposition is this, it was Flip Wilson who said it was the devil who made me do it?

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Yeah, back at the church of what's happening now. Anyway, but I'm really dating myself.

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Sorry, sorry. I saw it on reruns. Okay. Bite your tongue, bite your tongue, bite your tongue.

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All right. But the fundamental presupposition is that as a

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Christian, if I'm indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit has canceled the effects of original sin and I am no longer a sinner.

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So if I'm struggling with sins, that has to be because the devil's making me do it. Does that make sense?

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No. It's logically consistent. Yes. Yes, there we go.

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It's logically consistent. But the question is, is this what the scripture sees?

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So I wanna show you the holiness version of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So the Nazarene Church, still to this day, teaches this.

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We believe that sanctification is the work of God which transforms believers into the likeness of Christ.

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It is wrought by God's grace through the Holy Spirit in initial sanctification. So initial sanctification is the same as regeneration.

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So when you first are brought to faith in Christ, you are regenerated and you receive initial sanctification.

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I missed that in the original text. Okay. All right, so this is simultaneous end with justification.

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So entire sanctification, something completely different, and the continued perfecting of the work of the

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Holy Spirit is culminating in glorification. Glorification, we are fully conformed to the image of the

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Son. And they're not talking about in the future. They're talking about in this present life. So we believe that entire sanctification is that act of God that is subsequent to regeneration by which believers are made free from original sin.

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This is part of the Pelagian heresy, by the way. This is a major part of the Pelagian heresy.

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Part of the way that you could tell you were dealing with a Pelagian in the time of Augustine was you ask a

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Pelagian, do you pray daily the Lord's Prayer? Yes. When you pray to Jesus, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

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Do you have any trespasses that Jesus needs to forgive? No. Why are you praying the prayer?

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In order to stay humble. Yeah, you're not -

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What's he talking about? The price of sin. Right. Paradise by, oh, that one too.

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All right. So by the Holy Spirit then in this entire sanctification, this thing that the

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Holy Spirit does, you are then made free from original sin or depravity and you are brought into a state of entire devotement to God and the holybedience of love made perfect.

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It is wrought by the baptism or the infilling of the Holy Spirit and comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding indwelling presence of the

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Holy Spirit empowering the believer for life and service. Entire sanctification is provided by the blood of Jesus and it is wrought instantaneously by grace through faith preceded by entire consecration and this work and state of grace the

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Holy Spirit bears witness to. Well, let's talk about that because you asked a great question.

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The question is what happens when you fall? So I'm gonna open up my Kindle real quick and I'm gonna have to download a book but we're gonna take a look at Wesley's book,

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A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. He and his brother Charles learned this doctrine from the

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Moravians. If you know Wesley's story, what happens is that Wesley was sent to the

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Georgia colony and things didn't go so well for him and he had to go back and so on one of his Atlantic crossings, he and his brother

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Charles spent the entire Atlantic passage with a bunch of Moravians and the

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Moravians are the ones who taught him this doctrine of sinless perfectionism and so he then picks this up and in this account and I have the book in front of me now here, he describes, he defines what a

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Methodist is and I want you to listen to how he defines this and see if this makes any sense to you.

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A Methodist is one who loves the Lord his God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind and with all his strength and notice the is, does, presently, now.

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God is the joy of his heart, the desire of his soul which is continually crying, whom have

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I in heaven but thee and there is none upon earth I desire besides thee.

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He goes on and says, agreeable to this one desire is this one design of his life namely to do not his own will but the will of him who sent him and he goes on to say things like, you know, let me just get to the punchline because I think the punchline is the best part.

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Yeah, let's see, where did I put it? Hang on one second, let me just get to my punchline. Let's see here, here it is.

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In conformity therefore both to the doctrine of St. John and the whole tenor of the

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New Testament, we fix this conclusion. A Christian is so far perfect as not to commit sin.

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A Christian is so far perfect as not to commit sin. Now, when

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I was in the Nazarene church, here's how the sermons would often go. A true Nazarene loves

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God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. Be ye perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. No true

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Nazarene Christian would ever have a lustful thought. No true

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Christian would ever lie about their neighbor. No true Christian would ever play cards, drink booze or dance or anything like this.

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So I'm learning this in my teenage years. This is a bad time to be learning this because here's how the conclusion works.

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Well, if a Christian is perfect and loves God with his whole heart, then

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I'm having sins and they clearly start here and here and they manifest in my physical life.

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That means I must not be a Christian. That's what that means.

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Because, you know, I hit puberty in the day of dolphin shorts, you know, and the 80s were just a great time for sin for me, right?

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So every action that burbles up from within my sinful nature, they say no

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Christian does these things. So here's how the cycle then went because the

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Nazarenes teach that you can lose your salvation by sinning. So the only way I understood this was, well,

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I sinned, I must not be a Christian. So as part of the service regularly, if not every

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Sunday, we had altar calls where you can come up and you can be born again.

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And so I would go up and I would be born again, again. But then I wouldn't even make it out of the parking lot before I sinned again.

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So clearly I had to come back the next week in order to go to the altar call to be born again, again, again.

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So it was just a parade of those that had fun, right? Right, and here's the worst part about it is that as part of their preaching and teaching, you have people giving testimony and you have people who are guest speakers and lecturers or guest pastors who are selling books and they're all claiming they have figured out how to do this.

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And if you follow their methods, you too can have this Christian perfection.

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No, it doesn't. So what this does is it fractures Nazarenes kind of into three groups.

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You got the people who claim that they're pulling it off, the people who are honestly trying to figure out how to pull it off and aren't being successful but they're being honest, and then you have the people who are just dog tired, worn out, and they've given up and they're called the backsliders, right?

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They're the carnal Christians. Yeah, I know he believes in Jesus but he smokes. Yeah, I know he believes in Jesus but I heard that he plays cards.

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And I remember this to this day. I mean, one of my Nazarene friends invited me to his house on a weekend. So we weren't gonna do homework.

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I think we were gonna play ColecoVision or something. That was a thing back then. You guys heard of this? Anyway, so he says, so he reaches into his backpack and he's pulling out a

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Ziploc baggie. I'm thinking, oh, here it comes. And he goes, hey, I got something. What do you got? And he goes, cards,

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I got a pack of cards. No, cards, really? Yeah.

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So we did something really evil. We played a game of poker, you know? And we were going to hell and we knew it.

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All right. You guys were outlaws. Oh man, that's right. I was gonna start wearing black and everything.

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Two bad dudes. Yeah. But the endless parade of this, the whole assumption is if you're earnest enough, pious enough, sincere enough, and you ask

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God the Holy Spirit, please give me this second blessing, then he's gonna cancel original sin and you're gonna be perfect.

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Yeah. The sad part of the three -tiered layer of the church you described is the ones who think they're number one on top are actually the most lost.

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Yeah. I think they're delusional. Because what does 1 John say?

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If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. Truth's not in us. It seems to me

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Satan loves to lie to us about God's promises.

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Yeah. Because if he can convince us that God is going to provide, has promised us something God hasn't promised, then when what

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God never promised us never shows up, because God never promised it in the first place, he can turn around and say, see,

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God's lying, better walk away. But Wesley would turn, he would turn on you pretty hard. He'd say,

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Bruce, you just don't have enough faith in the promises of God. You are only believing in partial salvation, but Christ died for your whole person.

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He died not only for your physical body, but for your mind and your heart as well. So your problem is you are deficient in your faith in Christ, and only believe that he has partially saved you.

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I believe, Lord, help thou my unbelief. So then everybody... Well, now, that's funny that you would say that, because what happens then when normal life happens to people, all right?

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So normal life occurs and you get sick, or you fall into a pretty well -known sin.

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Where do you go for help? You can't go to the people at church, because if you did that, they're going to blame you and your lack of faith or your lack of obedience for the trouble that you find yourself in.

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Well, this is your fault, Marilyn. And so if I could look at my Nazarene friends now and say, well, look at me,

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I'm fat and ugly. I mean, what happened? Well, it's all your fault, Roseboro. It's all your fault. You didn't have enough faith. You're not squeaky, shiny, clean and young and healthy and wealthy.

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That's all your fault. And so what ends up happening in that environment is that everybody spends an inordinate amount of time putting paint on a self -righteous facade that is completely a sham.

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And so you get into the parking lot and people say, how you doing, brother? You say, oh, I'm the head and not the tail.

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I'm doing great, brother. Thanks for asking. How about you, dude? I'm doing great, praise the Lord. Liar, okay?

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Because what happens is that they're just like me, okay? When you put your kids in the minivan and you're going to church, okay, you're about to lose your mind, okay?

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I don't know about your guys' minivan, but my minivan, we needed padded walls, okay?

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Because things like, mom, he's touching me. Mom, make him stay in his side.

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And then mom gets, I told you guys to do this and da -da -da -da -da -da. And the whole time,

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I'm just doing this the whole way to church. And finally, I say something stupid like this. Would everybody stop yelling?

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Well, I'm yelling, right? Okay? And so what happens is that in those churches, that's your trip all the way to church.

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As soon as you get to the parking lot and the parking lot attendant is waving the thing, you know, to land the plane in the right parking space, you're okay.

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Everybody puts on a smile, hey, we're at Disneyland. And they're lying. That's not what they're feeling at all.

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Sorry, I'm doing therapy right now. But you know what

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I'm saying. Because that's the only place you cannot let anybody know what's really going on in your life.

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And when you go to the liquor store, you don't make eye contact because then that's kind of the agreed upon way of everybody knowing that, you know, everybody knows the

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Nazarenes are going to buy alcohol. If they were here, they're at Happy Harry's twice as much as everybody else. But they just don't make eye contact because that way they can all just say it never happened.

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It's medicinal. It's medicinal, right, yeah, that's right. That's a stomach ailment, yeah. Right? Yeah. I knew somebody that drove 40s.

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Well, that means they know they're bourbons. Wow, that's impressive. So, the best way

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I can put it then, what we see in Wesley's Plain Account of Christian Perfection that a Christian can achieve perfection in this lifetime, that the

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Holy Spirit's gonna give you a second baptism or blessing or charisms that'll cancel out original sin so that you will perfectly love

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God so that a Methodist says, I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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And again, this is a Lutheran heresy. This comes from sin boldly in the mole, all the more boldly believe

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Luther? Uh -uh. This doesn't come from Luther. This comes from Spanier. Okay.

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Okay, so in the wake of the 30 Years' War, in the wake of the 30 Years' War where Calvinists and Lutherans all committed war crimes,

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I mean, it was not right to take our Calvinist brothers and baptize them until the bubble stopped. That was not good.

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Okay. Sorry that you were drinking, it's your fault.

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So in the wake of the 30 Years' War, everyone was just burnt out and they were looking for some more, they were looking for a religion that didn't have an emphasis on orthodoxy, that we can all embrace, that is based on love and piety, and it's into this vacuum that Philip Jacob Spanier writes his book,

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Piedisideria, and he starts teaching this concept of pietism and it fully blooms into this religion and the early

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Lutheran pietists believed in Christian perfectionism. They did, even before Zinzendorf.

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Zinzendorf learned it from the Hall of Theologians and this is, oh, this is the gift that,

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I don't wanna say we've given to the world, but let's just say that the devil brought on in full force and it's still in the world today, it's still there.

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The Nazarenes are just, they're just downstream from the Lutheran pietists, they really are.

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And so the question is, how do we know, as Christians, that we still have a sinful nature to contend with?

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Mirrors, conscience, God's word, Holy Spirit. You just don't have enough faith.

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You just don't have enough faith. Let's take a look at some biblical texts, shall we? As much as I'm convinced, yes, it is true,

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Bruce, you are a sinner. We need to know what the scripture says in this regard.

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So we're gonna first look at a text that, I'll show you how they try to shoot it down, but it's Ecclesiastes chapter seven, verse 20.

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And here's what it says, Solomon writing, surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

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That seems pretty clear, but you know how Wesley shot this down? Well, that was before Pentecost. That was the old covenant.

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Of course, nobody could be perfect before Pentecost. That's his argument.

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I'm way holier than David. But Ecclesiastes does say, surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

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Let's take a look at another text that is like it, and one that we should all be familiar with, 1 John chapter one.

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I'm gonna start in verse five. Let me copy that and put this over here. So this is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you.

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By the way, who is the apostle John writing to? Pagans or Christians? Christians, all right.

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You'll notice that the epistles of the apostles, they are not their wives, those are the letters they wrote. The epistles are written to Christians.

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So this is the message you've heard from us and we proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

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If we say we have fellowship while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. Now at first this would seem like a passage that says, well, see, that means we have to be sinless.

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No, that's not true. This is a Hebraism that has a Greek word. So the

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Greek word is peripateo, but your Hebrew word for this is gonna be halakh, and it, which does mean walk, but the way it's understood biblically in this

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Jewish way of thinking, walking is how you conduct your entire life. This is, so how you walk is how you conduct yourself.

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Do you conduct yourself in rank sin and blasphemy or do you conduct yourself as a repentant sinner?

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That's kind of the idea. And so it has to do with how you conduct your life. So if we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth.

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But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us.

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And I'm gonna point this out. This is present active indicative. Cleanses us now, presently.

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It doesn't say cleansed, aorist, or cleansed, perfect.

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It says cleanses us now, cleanses us presently, cleanses us from all unrighteousness or cleanses us from all sin.

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And then we have the passage we're all familiar with. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

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If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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If we say we have not sinned, we make God out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

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I think that's as clear as it gets. Yes, sir. I very rarely do this with Greek grammar, but present active indicative isn't just present.

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It's present and ongoing. Yes. It's the stereotypical

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Hindu cab driver. I'm going to be driving you, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm driving you now and I'm still gonna be driving you in five minutes.

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That's it. So he's forgiving us. And traffic is bad, we're gonna be here for a long time. He's going to be forgiving us and is continuing to forgive us.

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Not just at this moment I'm forgiven, but I'm in this ongoing process of being forgiven, which is good because I'm in this ongoing trap of sin.

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Right. Okay, so I completely agree with you. Thank you for the expanded explanation of the present because that's correct.

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All right, so notice what he says. So if we say we have not sinned, we make God to be a liar and his word is not in us. So my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, subjunctive.

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But if anyone does sin, well, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not only for our sins, but for all the sins of the whole world.

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I mean, that seems pretty straightforward, right? Right? So I want you to think then about this for a second while I pull up another text.

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We're gonna go into Galatians 5. But I want you to consider this. The words, the most important words when we have the

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Lord's Supper are these words. For the forgiveness of your sins.

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So, we have the Lord's Supper today. And you heard the verba. You heard the words of institution.

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On the night when Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat, this is my body, which is given for you, this too in remembrance of me.

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In the same way also, he took the cup after supper and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of it, all of you. This cup is the

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New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This too as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

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So, when you came up there, I said these words to you. Take, eat, this is the body of Christ, given for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

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If you think you're perfected in this life, do you need that?

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Yeah, because that sin of pride's gonna really wreck you. Okay? But if you don't realize it.

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So, you're gonna know the belief that you no longer have a sinful nature, that you've achieved some kind of pietistic perfection, that your affections are perfect towards God and neighbor, the offense of the sacraments is gonna be huge.

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Many only need it once a year. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, now it's just a memorial meal and to keep it special, let's just do it every so often.

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But what if it actually delivers what Jesus says? What if it is a true means of grace?

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What if the sacraments, the word, the absolution, or the means of grace by which the

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Holy Spirit delivers to us the forgiveness of sins, strengthens our faith, builds our understanding of the scriptures, and it all comes from outside of us?

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Then you need the sacrament like all the time. And it's fascinating that historically, it's the pietists who broke with hundreds, more than a thousand years, 15, 16, 1700 years of Christian history where you had the

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Lord's Supper every single service. These guys come along, believe that they're perfect in their love for God and their love for others, and they go from having it every other week to barely having it at all.

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And even worse, they refuse to have it with anybody they deem to be a sinner.

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Oh yes, it's even a reaction to some of the faults within the Lutheran church, all right?

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But the thing is that the opposite error of an error is still an error. You would differentiate this from the more strict close communion of the wells, or would you say like the wells and the

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ACLC are engaging in pietism? I don't wanna get there.

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Okay. Let's hang on to the wells is a different question because the wells are like the

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Missouri Senate. They're a mixed bag. ALC is a mixed bag. But you can talk about what they were historically and differently and why they broke with Missouri, but that's a whole other topic.

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I don't wanna get into it. Here. From what I've seen, there's also been a reaction within the

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Nazarene church from what you described as the earlier days because today it's turned into a lot of pop evangelicalism.

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And liberalism. And liberalism, you don't see Nazarene churches putting that Nazarene word out there very seldom.

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And secondly, I know from a reliable source who's been a Nazarene church for many years at the seminary level, he's frustrated because they're no longer holding to six -day creationism.

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Mm -hmm. Like you said, from liberal elements. Pasadena Nazarene is currently pastored by a woman now.

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And I'll say this. If all you're getting is la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, a true Christian does this and doesn't do this, well, that means

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I'm not a true Christian. At some point, you're gonna break. You're gonna break.

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You're gonna become delusional and think that you're pulling it off. Or you're gonna despair and think that you're not pulling it off.

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Or you're just gonna become really angry and say, I'm gonna destroy this whole thing and what we're gonna replace it with is some ooey -gooey concept of love that's based on liberal thought.

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Which is a false gospel, but I tell you this, that's more, liberalism is more sane than holiness.

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It's more sane. It's still crazy, though.

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You see what I'm saying? Because I tell you this, having gone through this, lived this, atheism at some point was beginning to make sense for me.

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Very close to making sense to me. And it was only by the grace of God I did not end it.

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Now, my wife and I, Barb and I, so this is what we went through in high school. And we, after high school, said to each other, you know, we're just not serious enough about our

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Christian walk because we're not obedient enough. So you know what made sense to us? We went full -blown charismatic.

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It just so happens we got involved in what's called the Latter Rain, which is a cult. But that step made sense to us because if we could just get the

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Holy Spirit to supercharge our sanctification, then we wouldn't sin anymore. And that didn't work either.

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None of it works. This is not how you reign in your sinful nature. These are all false promises, false hopes.

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So how then, as Christians, do we deal with sin? Let's keep looking back at our text.

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Galatians 5. I want you to consider the assumptions of what

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Paul is saying. And he's still writing to Christians, although he's concerned about those who've fallen into the

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Judaizing heresy. Galatians 5 .13, Paul says, you were called to freedom, brothers. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

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I would say Galatians 5 .13 is a pinnacle text in this debate.

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Why? Because here he's talking about those who've been set free from bondage to sin, death, and the devil.

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Baptismally, this is a reality of Christians. And Paul does not say, and so then pray to the

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Holy Spirit and he'll cancel original sin. What does he say? He says, don't use your freedom as an opportunity for what?

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Sinful flesh. Does Paul still believe that Christians have a sinful nature?

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If I can use my freedom as an opportunity for the sinful flesh, that means I still got one of those.

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For the whole law is fulfilled in one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself, but if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you're not consumed.

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So walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. I'm gonna point this out to you because I think it's worth noting that in the book of Galatians, as well as other places, when

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Paul uses the phrase by the Spirit, that is a synonym, a synonymous concept to the same phrase by faith.

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I'll show it to you in Galatians 3 so you can see how it works. Galatians 3, Paul says, oh foolish

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Galatians, who's bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. So let me ask you this.

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Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? So note the phrase, by hearing with faith.

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Are you so foolish having begun by the Spirit? So note, by hearing with faith, by the

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Spirit, these are synonymous concepts in the book of Galatians. So back here in Galatians 5,

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I say walk by the Spirit. You could literally say walk by faith. Faith in what?

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Faith that the Holy Spirit indwells you and that he will give you the power to do something very important, that is mortify your sinful flesh.

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So walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. He's saying this to Christians.

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Walk by the Spirit and you won't gratify the desires of what? Your sinful flesh.

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Do I have one of them or not? Is Paul a holiness preacher? Does Paul teach

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Wesley's doctrine of second blessing holiness and Christian perfection? Not even close.

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Walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. The desires of the flesh are against the

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Spirit. The desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. These are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

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This is called the normal Christian life. Have you ever noticed that you have a desire to do good, to obey

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God, and that your sinful carcass goes, I just wanna lie on the couch and watch Netflix all day?

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Or is that just me? You're good. That's a great double entendre, though, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

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Yeah. The evil I want to do, the Holy Spirit's like. And then the good that I want to do, my sinful nature's like, trip.

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Yeah. And there's a wonderful book on Romans 7, and we'll get to Romans 7 in a minute, called The Eye in the

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Storm, E -Y -E, The Eye in the Storm. An eye, eye, the letter I, sorry, eye. The letter

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I in the storm. And the eye in the storm is, when you look at Romans 7, who is the eye that Paul's talking about?

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The things I want to do, I don't do. He's speaking from his regenerate ego, his regenerate eye.

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See, we are all new creations in Christ. Everybody who is a Christian, Christ has raised you from the dead.

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You are a new creation in Christ. You have a regenerate person that is there. And you know what your regenerate person only wants to do?

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Only wants to do good. But you have your sinful flesh. So you're gonna note here, watch, you can even see it in this grammar here, okay, that the desires of the flesh are against the spirit the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.

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These are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

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Notice where the I is, or where the you is. It's on the regenerate person that you are in Christ.

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Your sinful flesh wants to keep you from doing what you want to do.

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And if you're not sure what the sins of the flesh are, he'll go on to explain.

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So if you are led by the spirit, you're not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Let me list these out for you. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

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In the charismatic NAR movement, if you are dealing with dissensions, divisions, fits of anger, or sorcery, or idolatry, or sensuality, or sexual immorality, there's a demon that has to be cast out of you and they're all named after these things.

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But according to the apostle Paul, where did all that stuff burble up from? You, your sinful flesh.

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So I warn you, as I warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

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Against such things there is no law. Now let's look at the cross -reference to this Roman 7.

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And I will note this, that in the Nazarene church, their official interpretation of Roman 7 is that Paul in this section is not talking about the present reality of being a

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Christian but is describing what he was like before he made a decision to become a

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Christian. That worked except for every verb in the passage. Uh -huh, I know. All the present tense verbs work against this.

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So Paul talking about the law. It's good, it's holy, but he's not.

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So did that which is good then bring death to me? No, by no means. It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

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For we know that the law is spiritual. I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions.

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I do not do what I want, present tense. He's not saying

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I used to do what I don't wanna do. He's saying I currently do not do what

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I want but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good.

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It is no longer I who do it but it's sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh.

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For I have the desire to do as right but not the ability to carry it out. I do not do the good that I want but the evil

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I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but the sin that dwells within me.

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Does this sound familiar to any of you guys? I mean, the Christian life feels like being at complete war within yourself.

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On the one hand, you really desire to do what's right. On the other hand, your sinful flesh don't wanna have anything to do with that and is fighting you to go the opposite direction.

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And so the normal Christian life internally feels like this day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

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It's just this constant thing. Why? Because you still have a sinful flesh and it is corrupted by the condition of sin.

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Now if I do what I do not want, it's no longer I who do it, it's sin that dwells within me.

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So I find this to be a law, that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being.

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And by the way, do pagans delight in the law of God in their inner being?

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No, they are at war with God. They cannot obey God's commands nor do they desire to do so.

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The scripture's very clear on this. So I find it to be a law, when I wanna do right, evil is close at hand. I delight in the law of God in my inner being but I see in my members another law, waging war against the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members presently.

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O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our

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Lord, so that I myself serve the law of God with my mind but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. But there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are on Christ Jesus.

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More texts. Colossians 3. See anything about casting demons out of Christians?

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No. Anything about a second blessing of the Holy Spirit that'll cancel original sin and the sins of the flesh?

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No. What do we do then with our sin? Confess it, be forgiven, receive the means of grace by which

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God the Holy Spirit produces in us the fruit of the

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Spirit. Paul then says in Colossians, after the beautiful chapter two, which so explicitly lays out we are saved by grace through faith apart from works.

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So if then you have been raised with Christ, have you been? Yeah? All right, so then do this.

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Seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth.

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For if you have died, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. So when

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Christ who is your life appears, you will also appear with him in glory. So put to death therefore what is earthly in you.

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Paul, who is he writing to again? Christians. Put to death what is earthly in you.

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Do I have anything earthly in me if the Holy Spirit's canceled out original sin? No. And here's what's earthly.

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Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming.

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And in these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth.

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Do not lie to one another, saying that you've put off the old self with its practices and put on the new, which is being renewed in the knowledge after the image of its creator.

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Does this text assume you still have a sinful nature? Yep. Are there any texts that would lead somebody to believe as a

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Christian you can grow out of this state or that God the Holy Spirit would lead you to a blissful state where that doesn't describe you?

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How then do we differentiate the Galatians 5, whoever does this has got nothing but wrath waiting for them with the idea that until we're made perfect in heaven, we're constantly doing these things even though we don't want to.

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Right. So coming then to Jesus's prayer, that we pray daily, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

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So the idea then is that the Christian walk is a daily return to your baptism, this is how

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Luther would describe it, and a daily repentance, receiving the forgiveness of sins, trusting in Christ, calling upon God the

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Holy Spirit to help us so that we do not sin, and consistently asking

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Christ for forgiveness where we have fallen short. The LCMS theologian

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Francis Pieper, in his dogmatics basically describes it in this way. We awake at the beginning of the day with a wholehearted intention of not sinning, and at the end of the day, pray forgive us our trespasses.

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So there's a salutary sense in which the putting off of the old self, recognizing that these desires that come up from within me are truly sinful and damnable, and that I'm still going to struggle with them, and so it's the daily, it's daily repentance.

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Repentance is not a flu shot. It is a daily grind of saying,

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Lord I have sinned, I have fallen, please have mercy on me, forgive me, and do not take your

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Holy Spirit from me, but instead restore to me the joy of your salvation. You don't move beyond that until you have been freed from your sinful flesh, which is not in this lifetime, not in this lifetime.

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So there's just, the way I look at it, there's no magic pill to take. There is no experience that you can hope for that will relieve you of this daily repentance.

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There is nothing. And anybody who's selling you a doctrine like this is just selling you magic beans, and they will not grow, and you will not go up to the giant and take his harp.

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It's just not gonna work that way. Those beans will not germinate, they will not grow. You've just wasted your money.