Pastor Jann Braaksma
Sin is a nature which is unlike God, it is a spiritual hindrance to the Christian, and which becomes a source of our sinful acts. It motivates, expresses its desires, and inclines toward sinful deeds.
The aspects of sin are expressed in two repeated heart-cries common to people of all nations.
First, “I have sinned”. While chronologically each one of us is born with the sin nature and later reaches the age of accountability, yet in returning to God and receiving His salvation each of us first realizes the need of forgiveness and usually only later realizes the need of cleansing.
Our cry as a guilty sinner convicted by the Holy Spirit and repenting sincerely before God is, “I have sinned,” “I did,” “I spoke,” “I thought.”
We ask ourselves, “Why did I do it?” “Why did I say that?” “Why did I think that way?” So the heart-cry of the sinner is, “Alas, I have sinned.”
Then, “I am unclean!” Even sinners may at times realize that they are
very sinful, unclean in nature, and unholy. However, until a person repents, the Spirit chiefly convicts of sinful committed acts.
After the person has repented and been wonderfully forgiven by God’s grace and has received new life in Christ, they often are so full of joy from their assurance of God’s forgiveness and their new relation with Christ that they may not sense any further spiritual need for some time.
However, as they continue in their Christian life, they sooner or later become aware of a remaining sinfulness in their nature that was not cleansed away at the time of their new birth.
They know that they are a child of God, and they love the Lord. But they may be perplexed or even dismayed to find something within them tends at times to draw back from doing God’s will.
By the Spirit’s help, they are able to subdue the inner tendency, but sometimes it is a real inner struggle.
The believer now at times feels the Holy Spirit’s conviction—not mainly because of committed acts, but because of their inner sinfulness, inner resistance and rebelliousness.
They realize that part of their nature is not holy in the sight of God. Their cry now is not, “I did,” but “I am.”
“I am not holy,” “I am unclean,” “I am so spiritually weak I need more power,” “I am so helpless in myself,” “I am defeated within even though I may not show it from my actions.”
This is conviction of the sinful nature, the realization that more of the Spirit’s cleansing, more of the Spirit’s power is truly needed.
There are two major moments in salvation. In the first, the Holy Spirit in His patient love and faithfulness may repeatedly knock on the sinner’s heart’s door or reprove and convict of sins.
This may continue over a period of days, months, or even years before the sinner truly repents of their sins and experiences full, clear, assured forgiveness of sins.
Sometimes the primary struggle is not one of obedience, but, rather, of faith.
This is especially true in those who have not come from a Christian home or who were followers of another religion or sect. In those cases, it may require considerable time before Christ’s truth is understood and all doubts answered by Scripture.
It may be that as God’s light and God’s truth were received, the person accepted one aspect after another—it was a series of steps of faith before full faith was received.
Or perhaps a series of steps of obedience before the last sin was confessed or the last act of restitution was taken.
In such cases, the person may hardly be aware of the exact moment of the new birth because they were receiving and walking in one aspect of God’s light after another.
However, usually persons are very aware of the time when the burden of sin was gone and they knew their sins were forgiven and they were now children of God.
In either case, there is always a definite moment when the new birth becomes real. Many a person records and remembers that exact day or occasion when faith and obedience touched God. Thank God, it is knowable and real.
In a similar way, a born-again Christian may feel the Holy Spirit’s conviction of need for inner cleansing and may come repeatedly and partially respond on various occasions before the time comes when their consecration and surrender becomes total, or before they actually by faith claim full cleansing through the infilling of the Holy Spirit.
This is particularly true when the person has not had clear teaching on the experience of entire sanctification through the infilling of the Holy Spirit.
Multitudes of true Christians who love the Lord have a vague awareness that God surely has a deeper victory for them than they have ever received. As yet they have not understood or believed that this definite experience of full cleansing and true fullness of the Spirit is biblical, obtainable, and knowable in this life.
They are loyal to the Lord and to the doctrine they have been taught, but they are still aware of inner defeat. They cannot help but long for something deeper, higher, more complete, and more victorious.
That inner longing and sense of partial dissatisfaction is God’s gift. We were created to be filled with the Spirit. We are never spiritually all God wants us to be. And until we are fully cleansed and filled by the Spirit, the Spirit lovingly reminds us of this.
God does not want us to be totally satisfied until we have experienced all for which Christ died on the cross. “Jesus also suffered outside the gate to make the people holy through His own blood” (Heb. 13:12).
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.”
On the other hand, there are wonderful Christians who have never clearly understood God’s provision for their cleansing and infilling. But after the new birth they have hungered for more of God’s purity and power, and have yielded themselves to God—perhaps repeatedly.
They have sensed God’s meeting them as they have reached out to Him, and God has met their heart-cry as He faithfully responded to their longing and walking in His light.
They may not have been aware that they had a definite new, deeper experience with God. They may have felt they had a series of deeper experiences. But the time did come in their walk with the Lord when their surrender in love and faith became total, and God met their need.
Now as they receive clearer teaching they may say, “Why that is exactly what God did for me! Now I recognize how it is described by God’s Word. Now I know what to call it. Praise God! That experience is already real in my life!”
The second major work in salvation by the grace of God is this work of the Holy Spirit in cleansing the innermost nature, and then taking complete possession of our cleansed temple and filling it with His holy being, His love, and His power.
1 Corinthians 3:16 tells us: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”
Also from 1 Corinthians we hear in chapter 6, verses 19 & 20: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
God’s Spirit does not indwell your flesh and bones but indwells your spirit, which of course inhabits your body as a part of your total personality. As the Jewish temple had a holy place, so you are to keep your body pure.
There was also an inner room of the temple called the Most Holy Place, where the Holy Spirit resided, as symbolized by God’s Shekinah glory over the Ark of the Covenant. Even so, within your body your spirit resides, and God’s Spirit lives in your spirit as the Shekinah indwelt the Most Holy Place.
The second major work of God’s redemptive grace in us may be called entire sanctification, for that is the basis of all the Holy Spirit does at this time—He cleanses completely. Thus the first work of grace is often called justification, or the forgiveness of sins, for that is the basis of all that God does in the new birth.
Or instead of entire sanctification, the second major moment experience may be called the fullness of the Spirit, since all the cleansing and the infilling and the empowering is done by the Holy Spirit. When He cleanses away all the hindrances, He can now fill you completely.
From 1 John 1:7 we hear: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
The Spirit then makes and keeps you holy as you live for God and walk obediently in His light. Holiness is not a substance which you receive. It is a quality of the Holy Spirit’s nature which He imparts to you as He fills you.
Holiness is not an “it” which God gives you. It is a spiritual state of your nature which results from the Spirit’s filling you. It is not merely cleansing from sin, it is all the Spirit’s presence, power, and fruit filling you.
“Now pastor”, you might say. “You’ve put a pretty big piece of spiritual meat on our plate here. Not all of us are familiar with being born-again, sanctification, justification or holiness. What are we suppose to do now?”
Ask God to meet you right where you are, right now. Do you want more? More victory, more power, more answered prayers. Do you have loved ones you want to see saved? Healings you need?
It is ours for the asking.
Perhaps you are like the father of the demon-possessed boy who said, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mk 9:24)
Start where you are. Admitting you are sinful is first, asking God’s forgiveness is next. Then receive his love and grace and begin to walk in your new life. Ask for God’s guidance, protection, mercy and grace often.
Remember, he is more willing to give than we are to ask. James 4:2 plainly states, “You do not have, because you do not ask God.”
Ask. Ask believing. Ask for more of the Holy Spirit. Ask for victory over sin. Ask for answered prayers. Ask for salvation for your loved ones. Ask for healing. We can’t out ask God.
Then receive His answer. Yes, no or the hardest of all, wait.
We walk by faith and not by sight. Let us pray.
Resources: “God’s Great Salvation” by Wesley L. Duewel; Life Application Study Bible.
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24: “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.”
1 Corinthians 3:16
“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”
1 Corinthians 6:19 & 20
“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”
1 John 1:7
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”