Romans - Lesson 21

Class Discussion on the Introduction to Romans 5-8

Student 1: 
That is one of the biggest struggles we have in the Wesleyan Pentecostal: that struggle between the old man and the new man.  A lot of classical Pentecostals would say once you’re saved, you’re free from sin; and being free from sin means you don’t sin anymore, like perfection.

Dr. Moo: 
And if you do sin?

Student 1:   
You’re lost.

Dr. Moo:  
Or you don’t really belong? Would that be the…? I don’t know your tradition that well, so you’ll have to inform me. 

Student 1: 
John, when he wrote First John, he was clear that if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father.  He knew that as long as we’re in the flesh, we’re going to struggle.  That is something that I’ve really had to teach my folks i my church, the fact that yes, we are free from sin, but it not the end all, be all to solve everything. You are still going to have struggles, you’re still going to have temptations, you’re still going to stumble from time to time.  It’s like when I was in my Master of Divinity program, Dr. (x) wrote a thesis on “the problem of the painless Pentecost,” how the beginnings of the Pentecostal movement were trying to stay pain free; they focused on the results rather than what got the results. 

Dr. Moo:   
That is an interesting observation.

Student 2: 
The problem was that most of the songs in that early time dealt with ‘when I get to heaven I will be through with my troubled and trials.’  As though this is something we’ve got to ignore while we are looking for the city to come. We are looking for the sweet by and by, but we have the nasty now and now to deal with. 

Question from one student to another:   
How do they recover when they sin then?

Student 1: 
Now, the consensus is now that sanctification is at salvation and progressive.

Dr. Moo: 
So, you do have a sense of definitive sanctification as well as progressive.

Student 1:   
We are not perfect. 

Student 3: 
I am not Pentecostal, but Wesleyan in background and it’s that thing of balance again.  I can see where we can get into libertinism of: you’re saved by grace, do what you want; or this false perfection that says, I am now saved so I don’t have to worry about stumbling anymore.  It is a balance. I think the modern Pentecostal Wesleyan movements have achieved more of that balance, at least I hope we have, than we did for a while.

Student 5: 
I talked with a Nazarene minister and he strictly curtailed, boxed sin in as strictly conscious sin. There is no such thing as an inadvertent or no such thing as an unconscious sin. That’s the only way you can bring this off as far as I can tell or even get close It just has to be a lawlessness, a transgression, consciously done.

Student 4: 
That’s not what Wesley taught. 

Student 5: 
Yeah, but that’s what he was saying.

Dr. Moo:  
I am not a Wesleyan scholar, but I know there is some controversy about what Wesley meant when he talked about perfection. 

All of these things are terribly relevant to what Paul is doing here. Whatever tradition we come from, and I’m not suggesting any of us abandon the traditions we come from but trying again to maintain the balance of what Paul is presenting here as far as who is the Christian. Adjusting again our understanding to what Paul is teaching so that we can help our people have a good solid genuinely Christian self-identity. I think that is so fundamental to what is going on in the Christian life. You can tell people kind of in a moralistic way, do these things, or don’t do those things. That goes just so far, but unless people take this on board and become changed within in their perception, it will all be kind of superficial. 

Student 4: 
You have these roots, this is so practical, these roots are in the church.  In a sense of saying we came from this mold, you didn’t get it like I got it, so you don’t got it. That’s bad English, but. But you come back to these things.  People are able to revisit, painfully sometimes, but they are able to revisit and say, that isn’t quite as bad as I thought, 

Dr. Moo: 
It can be hard to give up that sometimes.  All of us have very deep emotional ties, particularly to those situations in which we were converted. That is there and we have to recognize that; I think in pastoral wisdom says try to build on that as much you can rather than scorning it or being condescending about it, if the background isn’t all it could have been. 

Student 5: 
Do you have a quick sketch of what you think sin is? I mean like a quick definition? 

Dr. Moo: 
I just wrote an article on sin and Paul for a book that Crossways is publishing. It took me about twelve thousand words. I don’t think you want to hear that! 

Student 5:   
I’ve always considered it something like, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, even taking it to the point of substandard human good or substandard perfection. Do you look at it as strictly something conscious and rebellious, or do you look at it as including omission? 

Dr. Moo: 
No, I do think sin is a pretty broad thing. I don’t think it is the worst thing in the world to go to Romans 3:23 where Paul unpacks it there: sin means falling short of the glory of God. There are expectations God has for us as people created in His image. We sin when we fail to do what God wants us to do as much as we do when He tells us not to do. Most Christians don’t operate with that other category. 

Sin, for a lot of believers is, I did something that clearly God doesn’t want me to do. I entertained this lustful thought and that is wrong. But we don’t maybe significantly operate enough with “I didn’t confront my neighbor with the Gospel when I needed to; that was a sin of omission; I failed to do something that God was calling me to do. 

Without depressing people unduly, I really think that is one of the problems we face is that people don’t have a solid enough estimate of how serious sin is, how all-encompassing it is, how many different ways it manifests itself. It is only when we fully confront that sin in that sense that we realize that we really do need Christ. People really begin to reckon with how tough a road it is. 

I think it was Pascal who said, it takes grace to turn a sinner into a saint. People who don’t believe that don’t know either what a sinner is or what a saint is. I think there is a lot of truth in that.  We don’t realize the extent and the seriousness of sin on the one hand, and we don’t realize what the high calling is to be a saint on the other hand is.