DEALING WITH SIN IN CHRIST
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Denial Of The Need To Deal With Sin
Whereas the attempts to deal with sin by self-effort represent a failure to maintain the dialectic balance by diminishing or denying the sufficiency of Christ and focusing on independent endeavors to deal with the issue of sin, the opposite extreme denies the need to deal with sin by focusing on the completeness of the Christian’s union with Christ and the total sufficiency of the life of Christ in the Christian. (cf. Right column of the chart – Addendum A).
The categories of
activism, moralism, legalism, confessionalism, and defeatism that were utilized to explain the inordinate consciousness of sin are now reversed among those who eschew the preoccupation with sin, desiring to see “God only” in His victorious grace initiative to draw all men unto Himself. Their categories of emphasis include triumphalism, perfectionism, antinomianism, mysticism, and passivism.
Triumphalism
To avoid any confusion with similar terminology, it is important that we define the type of triumphalism we are referring to. We are not addressing the religious triumphalism that regards Christian religion as superior to all other religions, or one denomination superior to other denominations. Neither are we speaking of social or political triumphalism that advocates the conquest of Christian ideology over all other worldly concepts.
Eschatological triumphalism
, the expected eventual triumph of the Kingdom of Christ at the end of time, is not our concern either.
The subject of our interest is the spiritual triumphalism that regards Christ’s victory over sin to be efficacious to the extent that Christians no longer need to consider sin in their lives.
That Jesus Christ has triumphed
over Satan (cf. Heb. 2:14; I John 3:8) and the forces of evil (cf. Col. 3:15) is not in dispute. Jesus exclaimed to His disciples, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). John likewise attests in his first epistle that Christians participate in Christ’s victory: “Whoever is born of God overcomes the world” (I John 5:4). “God leads us in His triumph in Christ” (II Cor. 2:14), declares Paul. “We
are more than conquerors through Him that loved us” (Rom. 8:37).
Spiritual triumphalism, however, asserts that Christ’s redemptive and restorative action has drawn the Christian into spiritual union with Himself, “one spirit with Him” (I Cor. 6:17), to the extent that we have not just a relational oneness with Christ but an essential oneness with Christ. Affirming one’s union identity with Christ, the Christian is encouraged to retain a fixed consciousness of “God only,” without entertaining any consciousness of good and evil, or sin. They advocate having a “single eye,” so that all you can see is God.
Absorbed into Christ
in a monistic merging, the Christian is alleged to have totally replaced all sinfulness with His godliness, all humanity with His deity. In a contemporary form of Docetism, the Christian only “appears” to be human, but is really unified with the divine.
Everything the Christian does is said to be “Christ in action.” “What I do is what He does. He acts as me.” Even the misrepresentations of sin are merely “illusions,” for they are really Jesus in action, and those who cannot see Him in the misrepresentation are failing to see “God only,” unable to “see through” to God in action.
Let us be very straightforward here.
Calling sin “Jesus” is blasphemy! Selfish and sinful expressions are not to be identified as “Jesus in your form,” or “Jesus expressing His backside.” This is totally unacceptable in any form of orthodox Christianity. It is a preposterous pretence whereby the diabolic deceiver masquerades behind an alleged spiritual triumphalism of oneness with the divine.
Next:
Perfectionism...
Dr. James Fowler | IOM Staff Writer
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