1 Peter 4:8 (KJV) 8And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. (for the KJV only folk)
1 Peter 4:8 (NKJV) 8And above all things have fervent love for one another, for love will cover a multitude of sins.(for the rest of us).
Proverbs 10:12 (KJV) 12Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.
Love covers a multitude of sins. Love and trust prevents a multitude of mistakes. Love and trust removes rebellion, it makes it a non issue. Why would you want to rebel against someone you trust unequivocally? Why would you or how would you consider hurting or rebelling against someone whom you love with all your heart? Where does rebellion and mistrust fit into the heart of one who knows beyond all shadow of a doubt that they are loved, truly and completely and perfectly loved?
On a purely human level one can love and trust to the extent that there is no rebellion in the heart. I have seen it and experienced it. I remember so very well a scene when someone was making some critical remarks against me and my youngest daughter who was 4 years old at the time, wadded up her little fists into a tight knot and said, loudly enough to be heard but not loud enough to get her into trouble, leave my Daddy, alone! Thank God she has never lost that love and defense of her Daddy, even though she has a child of her own. She is the youngest of four (two boys, two girls). Unfortunately that was not always the attitude of the older siblings. And it is certainly not that I love them less, it is just that they trusted me less during those growing up years and/or thought their knowledge was equal to or superior to mine on quite a few issues. On the other hand, I can count on one hand the times that I had to discipline my youngest daughter. She was sure that I loved her, she trusted me, and she wanted to please me and the slightest little rebuke was sufficient correction. Did she do things perfectly? No. Did she spill and break and tear and do things trying to help, that cost far more than if I had not been helped? Yes. But the attitude, the will, the desire to please, the desire to reciprocate love, was constantly present, and constantly apparent. And thank God it has remained till this day, and she has married a wonderful Christian husband who has become a son to me, and the two of them have been a constant inspiration for me to live up to the love and respect that they have shown me.
I could spend plenty of time there extending this very real and precious illustration that has been a lifetime experience through difficulties too many to mention
but instead I will simply leave the illustration as that, an illustration.
There was recently a couple of threads to which I responded regarding sin and perfection, a subject that so often gets very deep and controversial and it is certainly not my aim to be controversial. It is merely the aim to not be misunderstood on so vital an issue (I suppose it is better said in the positive: to be understood). We may talk about old man versus new man, sin nature, flesh, and all the rest
the tendencies of the flesh, fighting the flesh and so forth and there is no doubt far too much that I do not understand regarding all those things. We can contend over whether Paul was living in the 7th or 8th chapter of Romans and since he is no longer around to clarify his points, our points can get pointless. We can debate whether or not chief of sinners described Pauls condition when he said, I have fought a good fight, finished the course and I have kept the faith
. And his ready to be offered (presumably as a sacrifice), was while still sinning
We can debate sinless perfection versus sinning every day and split hairs over what is sin and become sinful in our point and counterpoint of arguments leaving offence on both sides or rather all sides of the argument. And it does seem, and notice I used the word seem that so many times our discussions come down to defending sin or defending self for sinning. The blanket that gets thrown out to cover it all is just how depraved and dark our hearts are and Jeremiahs true statement about them, the holiness of God and how unholy we are in comparison, which is abundantly true, and in fact that was precisely the argument that Jobs detractors used against him in the midst of that attack of the devil to try to dislodge this man from his trust in God, and hence, his blamelessness before God.
But brothers and sisters, I believe the major point of contention is in our definitions of sin and there are certainly more definitions of sin than the
חָטָא
chata (306c); a prim. root; to miss, go wrong, sin:bear the blame (2), bewildered (1), bore the loss (1), bring sin (1), cleanse (5), cleansed (1), cleansing (1), commit (2), commits sin (1), committed (21), done wrong (1), errs (1), fault (1), fear...loss (1), forfeits (1), indicted (1), miss (1), offended (1), offered it for sin (1), offers it for sin (1), purged (1), purified (2), purified themselves from sin (1), purify (6), purify him from uncleanness (1), purify himself from uncleanness (2), reach (1), sin (55), sin have I committed (1), sinful (1), sinned (87), sinner (7), sinning (4), sins (23).
of the Old Testament and
ἁμαρτάνω
hamartanō
ham-ar-tan'-o
Perhaps from G1 (as a negative particle) and the base of G3313; properly to miss the mark (and so not share in the prize), that is, (figuratively) to err, especially (morally) to sin:for your faults, offend, sin, trespass
of the new.
If we are merely talking about missing the mark in and of itself, there is no one who sinneth not.
On the other hand, if, and I believe there is sufficient warrant in the Word of God to support the if we are talking about willful transgressions, which is certainly how John describes it when he very clearly posits that the child of God does not continue in sin, and in fact makes the point very clearly that if we do, we do not know Him (Christ) {1 John 3: 3-10} as well as Paul himself (Romans 6:1, 6:15, and elsewhere) and Peter also (1 Peter 2:24, 4:1-3) and in fact the whole context of Peters argument in his 2nd epistle and Judes argument
. If we are talking about willful transgressions, then certainly there can and must come a time in our lives when, because of trust for a God who loved us and gave Himself for us, that the rebellion is dead; when the will to please God is the very will to live, not in theory but in practice.
I recently spoke of the pastor whose funeral I preached who had pastored here for 4 decades. Did the man make mistakes? Certainly. Was he sinless? Well if you mean did he never miss the mark, no he was not sinless, obviously there has only been one sinless One
but if you are speaking of loving God with all his heart and never willfully displeasing God and grieving at the very thought that he may have, then for all of my adult life and for almost two decades as a neighbor, I do not believe the man ever did anything willfully to displease God.
I further believe that there have been plenty of Christians through the centuries that have lived such selfless and dedicated lives to Christ that one could say of them that for the majority of their days they never willfully disobeyed God.
Does that by any means lessen the standard of Gods perfect holiness? No. Not by any means. There is none holy, in and of themselves, not at all, but then if we are going to take the scriptures in their entirety and not just select scriptures that paint the unrighteousness of men, we have to account for those many scriptures in which men are called by God Himself, blameless, righteous, holy from Genesis 6:9 all the way through the scriptures including all those dozens of scriptures in the Psalms regarding the righteous, and the reference in Ezekiel regarding Noah, Daniel and Job (14:14) and Elizabeth and Zachariah in Luke 1:6. Those in the Old Testament gladly confessed that the Lord is our righteousness. And certainly there is no righteousness that any of us can claim outside of Christ.
How can we account for the scriptures that John writes in his 1st epistle in which he talks about not committing sin
πράσσω
prassō
pras'-so
A primary verb; to practise, that is, perform repeatedly or habitually (thus differing from G4160, which properly refers to a single act); by implication to execute, accomplish, etc.; specifically to collect (dues), fare (personally):commit, deeds, do, exact, keep, require, use arts.
If we are at the same time defending it and speaking of what the Word of God so clearly teaches in scriptures that would take pages to put down as an impossibility? Does God require impossibilities? No.
I believe the crux of the matter is what John says at the very beginning of his letter:
1 John 1:5 - 7 (KJV) 5This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6If we say that we have fellowship with him,[u]and walk in darkness[/u] , we lie, and do not the truth: 7But [u]if we walk in the light[/u], as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son [u]cleanseth us from all sin.[/u]
Can we walk in the light? Can we come to a place where like the daughter whom I used as an illustration we have no desire at all to disobey and even in those things where we mess up it is with an heart of total desire to do what we to the best of our knowledge perceive to be His Will? Does that mean sinless perfection? Or course not. On the contrary does that not imply the very epitome of righteousness that has been recognized all through the Word of God, including Noah, Abraham and others? Their faith, their complete trust in God, their desire to please Him was accounted to them as righteousness. It was a heart righteousness, God knowing perfectly well their hearts and their desires.
Having a high view of Gods holiness, His sacrifice, His unfathomable love
it is just incomprehensible to me to argue that a person cannot come to a place of loving God to such a degree that all rebellion is gone. There may be for many of us a process of sin and error in which we have to learn through much suffering just how much love was in every instruction and correction of the Father till we come to that place of such trust that disobedience is unthinkable (apparently this is what Peter is referring to when he says that those who have suffered have ceased from sin)
but to argue that we can not come to that place, and to contend that it is self-righteous to believe that we can, I believe is to argue against the experience of far too many, certainly in the Word of God, and certainly in history, that have demonstrated that love to such a degree that their lives are an astonishment to the world around them.
To relegate temptations and the thoughts that come to the mind as sin would be to condemn the very Son of God who was tempted in all points as we are yet without sin. Certainly none of us is without temptation and without the devil trying to suggest to us the most vile and filthy and even blasphemous thing. He did so with Christ tempting the very Son of God to bow at the feet of the perverted lying murderer in exchange for what could be shown him in a moments time and that showing of the glories of this world by the very description includes all that is vile and disgusting and profane to the Holy God. But that temptation was not sin. The yielding to temptation as James so clearly points out is the point were temptation ends and sin begins.
To dismiss those who have preached total sanctification as poor ignorant and arrogant brethren because of the fact that many who teach it are an argument against it by their very lives, is to dismiss far too many others who perhaps did not argue the point, as the man of whom I have referred, but modeled it in such a way that from the first day I attended the church till the day he died, I always entered his presence with a respect that was earned by the holy life he lived. I can say that even though this man was my very best friend and we had many intimate conversations and even some healthy discussions on small points of disagreement, there were so many, many times, that I left his table, his study, the church office after those conversations, without him saying one word that was meant to convict me, but just mere conversation in which he was revealing his heart, and I would return to my home so full of a desire to get down before a Holy God and be filled with the Holy Spirit that could so permeate a mans life that his simplest conversation was convicting.
Sinless perfection? Of course not. Have I arrived? No, but that is my aim. Excusing rebellion against the One who loved me and gave Himself for me
God forbid.
_________________
Clint Thornton
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