THE SECOND CRISIS IN CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE
04 -- THE TWO-FOLD NATURE OF SIN
The failure to recognize the fact that our difficulty is
two-fold, accounts for much of the confusion and controversy regarding what is
known as "the second blessing." Hence, some may be heard to say they
"do not believe in any half-way work; that when God pardoned their sins he
pardoned all of them," etc. Just as though we taught and believed but half
of their sins had been forgiven, and now we would have them come and have the
other half forgiven. Of course, the holiness people neither believe nor teach
anything of the kind. Certain it is that when God pardons a sinner He pardons
every sin he has ever committed, and the soul is made to rejoice in a perfect
pardon.
There is no occasion nor necessity of under-rating or
minifying the experience of justification in order to make place for the second
experience. Instead of saying that justification is but a half-way experience,
we would prefer to say that justification itself includes at least twelve
distinct and perfect works, though they occur simultaneously, as follows: a
perfect conviction; a perfect surrender; a perfect repentance; a faith that
perfectly trusts God; a perfect pardon; a perfect washing of regeneration,
removing all acquired pollution; a perfect quickening into newness of life; a
perfect adoption; the love of God shed abroad in the heart; power to forsake
and cease from all sin; the witness of the spirit; obedience to all the light
God gives. All this and more enters into the experience of every person who is
truly and scripturally justified; but all this has to do with sin as an act --
sins committed.
The fact of original sin, innate, inborn, is just as clearly
set forth, in the Scripture as is the fact of sins committed. David said,
"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive
me." (Ps. 51: 5). Elsewhere it is spoken of as "the carnal
mind," "the law of sin," "the flesh," "sin that
dwelleth in me," "body of death," "the sin of the
world," "our old man," etc., etc. Theologians speak of it as
"depravity," "inbred sin," "original sin,"
"the Adamic nature," "a tendency to evil," etc. Mr. Charles
Wesley spoke of it as "our bent to sinning." Almost every church in
Christendom makes some reference to this fact of "original sin" in
its theology and hymnology, if not in the creedal statements The Methodist
Episcopal Church says in her Discipline, Article No. 7, "Original sin
standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it
is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of
the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original
righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that
continually." This "corruption of the nature of every man"
cannot be pardoned, seeing it is not an act of sin, but may be purged and
cleansed away.
It is from this "corruption of the nature" -- the
"carnal mind" -- that anger, and envy, and doubt, and fear, and
pride, and unholy ambition, etc., emanate. And as the Anglican Confession says,
"This infection of nature doth remain, yea, even in them that have been
regenerated." In the nature of the case it cannot be pardoned, for the
simple reason that we did not commit it; but, thank God, there is power in Jesus'
blood to wash and cleanse it away.
In view of this two-fold difficulty -- sins committed and
the sin nature inherited – Toplady sang:
"Be of sin the double cure,
Save from wrath and make me pure."
Mr. Wesley said: "Sin does remain in one that is justified,
though it has not dominion over him. For he has not a clean heart at
first." (Wesley's Journal, dated June 24, 1740.) In his sermon on The Repentance of Believers," he said, "Although we may weaken our enemies day
by day; yet we cannot drive them out. By all the grace which is given in
justification we cannot extirpate them.
Though we watch and pray ever so much, we cannot wholly
cleanse our hearts or hands. Most surely we cannot till it please our Lord to
speak to our hearts again, to speak the second time, 'Be clean,' and then only
the leprosy is cleansed. Then only the evil root, the carnal mind is destroyed,
and inbred sin subsists no more." (Vol. 1, page 208.)
The promise is, "If we walk in the light as He is in
the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ,
His Son, cleanseth us from all sin." A sinner is in darkness and surely
cannot "walk in the light as He is in the light." Only a pardoned man
is in the light, and to him alone comes this promise of cleansing "from
all sin."
