Is It Possible To Be Sinless?

Rev. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, famously (or infamously) taught the possibility of a kind of sinless perfection. His doctrine continues down to our day, in what are called the "Holiness" churches (Free Methodists, Fundamental Wesleyans), but also in a modified forms in other church groups. Wesley's teaching was in my opinion more cautious than its reputation, or compared to certain forms you might hear today. Did he have anything to say that's worth considering? The summary is this...

1.  Wesley said that, if a Christian loved the Lord God with all his heart, he would not sin, since love is the fulfillment of God's law. Because it's impossible for love to break the laws of God -- and he was right on this -- a person entirely controlled by love for God would not sin.

2.  "Perfection", according to Wesley, did not mean perfect knowledge. Only God is all-knowing. He didn't mean we could be freed from mental infirmities, temperament traits, free from errors of speech or style,  free from temptation, free from the influence of our bodies, or ever attain angelic perfection on the earth.

3.  He said he did not speak of babes in Christ, although even babes in Christ could refrain from sinning. He defined this perfection as "the ability not to sin", even though a Christian might fail to exercise that ability.

4.  Wesley's main objection was to Calvinistic preaching of the time, which taught that Christians "do sin and must sin every day." He felt this precept was too pessimistic, and failed to reckon with the completion of the Gospel and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He objected to the idea of a necessity of sinning, as if there was nothing we could do about sinning.

​http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/a-plain-account-of-christian-perfection/

I appreciate today more about what Wesley was groping toward than I did in the past. I agree that some forms of Christian thought on spiritual victory (such as the "two-nature" view, taught in the Scofield Bible) are far too pessimistic. The emphasis of Romans 6 is on the possibility of consistent victory.

To teach that we do sin every single day seems to ignore the Biblical distinction between motive and action. To say we must sin every day is wrong, and promotes a feeling of spiritual hopelessness. 

I've read John Wesley's essay on the subject a few times, and honestly I think he was confusing. It's partly because of his many exceptions on the word "perfection", which make it sound as if he invented a unique meaning for the word so he could preach it. 

Wesley defined "sin" on this topic as willful disobedience to a known law of God, and was trying to clarify the idea of victory over known sin.  This just seems like common sense. After all, how can we achieve spiritual victory over sins we don't even know we're committing?  The Bible distinguishes between intentional vs. unintentional sin, and in Romans 7 it draws a line between weakness and rebellion. But, even though I think his distinctions were fair, I think he at best confused people, and at worst sounded like he was making up distinctions.

Later Methodism turned Wesley's more sprawling approach into a hard template. It attached perfection to a second, post-conversion "baptism" of the Holy Spirit, which then was treated as a second work of grace. (Pentecostalism, which grew out of Methodism, went even further, and attached tongues-speaking to the second baptism.)

Can we learn anything about victory over sin from John Wesley here?

I think he was right to distinguish the new birth from the filling of the Holy Spirit. They are not the same experience. You must be born again first, before you can become Spirit-filled. Also, the filling of the Spirit isn't automatic. There are many Christians who are trying to live the Christian life apart from the Holy Spirit, which is like laboriously pushing a car uphill when you're supposed to be driving it with power.

I think he was right to criticize the Calvinistic conventional wisdom of his day as too pessimistic. It is not true that we must sin every day. He was also right to say that sin is never a "necessity." 

I think he was right to see a distinction between unintentional vs. intentional sinning.  His opponents of the time put far too much emphasis on continuing depravity in the believer, and too much focus on the objective definition of "sin." Abiding in Christ depends on not sinning. But if we exclusively define "sin" as any failure to live up to the moral law, knowingly or unknowingly, then none of us can ever abide in Christ.

Wesley confused people. In one paragraph he seemed to expect too much out of the new birth. In another paragraph he said that we shouldn't expect too much out of baby Christians.In a third paragraph he acknowledged that all born-again believers can't be perfect like God is.  Zig,-zag, zig-zag. He was trying to figure it out, and he was on to something important, but he was doing it out loud, and he didn't have it straight yet.

Romans 7 says that sin in Christians is rooted in our mortal bodies (Romans 7:23), so as long as we live in these mortal bodies we are vulnerable to sin.

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Sinful thoughts still pollute our spirits.  Paul in 2 Corinthians 7:1 described this cleansing process as on-going. Our minds can't be intellectually renewed by one, single, explosive experience, since God doesn't promise to correct every wrong idea we have in an instant. In fact, Hebrews 5:11-12 says it's possible for Christians to slide backward to a childish level of knowledge.

However -- no sin is undefeatable. It is never "necessary" for us to sin, as if we're just helpless rag-dolls. We all have areas of weakness, in the Romans 7:19-20 sense. But we should never excuse our weaknesses. The Holy Spirit's presence in us, and His new-birth of us, gives us the ability to walk forward, out of carnality and into Christ-likeness. The Spirit's filling is not the same divine work as the new birth, or His indwelling of our hearts. But His filling is not a permanent one-time event, like the new birth, but an on-going, daily need in our lives.