The fourth of six posts containing the substance of teaching given by Albert N. Martin at the 1984 Banner Youth Conference, presenting a basic biblical theology of the Christian life.<\/p>\n
There is no crisis experience promised or commanded as an essential element in living the Christian life.<\/em><\/p>\n Some teaching on the Christian life asserts that only a low level of Christian experience can be realized by the person who has not had a crisis experience subsequent to regeneration, or at least subsequent to conversion and to the beginning of conscious Christian experience. Furthermore, it is asserted that the crisis experience is both commanded and promised by God as the entrance into a qualitatively new dimension or level of spiritual experience, reality and power.<\/p>\n Throughout the history of the Christian church there have been many different strands of this crisis teaching. There is what we might call \u2018classic Wesleyan perfectionism,\u2019 which concentrated particularly upon sanctification and spoke of a baptism of purifying fire, or of coming into a state of perfect love. It concentrated not so much on power for service or upon inward feelings, but on a crisis experience in which the power of indwelling sin was to all intents and purposes negated. I have read enough of classic Wesleyan theology to know that there are different opinions as to what John Wesley himself taught on the subject. But in a general descriptive manner this, I believe, is an accurate representation of old-style classic Wesleyan perfectionism.<\/p>\n Then, too, there is \u2018the old Pentecostalism\u2019 in which the emphasis was upon a baptism in the Holy Spirit, generally subsequent to conversion, and invariably manifested by speaking in tongues: the way you knew that you had this baptism of power was that, when it came to you, you spoke in tongues. The primary focus in old classic Pentecostalism was the matter of power for service.<\/p>\n Thirdly, there is the modern \u2018charismatic movement.\u2019 Like classic Pentecostalism, its teachers use many of the same passages in the Book of Acts to support their theory of this necessary crisis. So they emphasize that in most cases\u2014although there are different schools among modern charismatics\u2014it will be manifested by the speaking in tongues. Some are content to believe you have \u2018got it\u2019 if you have a season of holy laughter. Others, however, say that you have not spoken in tongues because you have some psychological hold-ups, and if these can be removed the tongues are there. You just have not given them utterance. Here the emphasis is not so much on a baptism of purifying fire (as in the case of old classic Wesleyan perfectionism), or the baptism of power (as in the case of old classic Pentecostalism), but more upon a baptism of joyful praise-filled experience. I have been speaking of generalities, but I believe they are accurate.<\/p>\n Fourthly, there are the various forms of \u2018higher life\u2019 teaching. What they have in common is this: you are simply converted, simply united to Christ, simply regenerated, and then you come to a crisis of surrender and faith, in which \u2018you let go and let God\u2019 and appropriate the indwelling life of Christ. The common denominator is that it is a crisis without any external manifestation of tongues or holy laughter or shouting or jumping, but the end result will be new power to live a holy life\u2014the emphasis falls upon the ability to be more efficient in the path of holiness.<\/p>\n Fifthly, there is a kind of teaching which has both old and modern proponents. It focuses on assurance, and has been expressed in terms of the biblical language of a \u2018sealing of the Holy Spirit.\u2019 Some of the Puritans\u2014Thomas Goodwin, for example\u2014taught this. There have been certain preachers in our own day who have believed this very strongly and emphasized it repeatedly. The basic concern in this teaching is that, subsequent to regeneration and conversion, there is a crisis experience in which the believer enters into a qualitatively new dimension of assurance by a sealing of the Spirit (some would say that the baptism in the Spirit and the sealing of the Spirit are synonymous).This results in a bright, new vibrancy in one\u2019s own spiritual testimony and experience; but the critical thing about such a person is that his true usefulness comes subsequent to his sealing in the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n The above are five of the major strands of teaching, all of them with various sub-teachings also. But these are the main categories which teach that a crisis experience subsequent to conversion and regeneration is both promised, and some would say, commanded, as an essential element of living the Christian life. What are the common denominators in all such teaching?<\/p>\n (1) Regeneration and conversion (some will often say \u2018mere conversion\u2019) leave one inadequately furnished for living a biblically normal Christian life. The teaching runs something like this: \u2018Now you are a Christian you are saved, you are indwelt by the Spirit. Fine! But if you would really live life with a capital L, live with power, live with overcoming grace, live with usefulness, live with grip in your testimony, you must have this higher, more noble, more glorious, more fulsome experience of God\u2019s grace. Oh yes, you are converted, we agree, but this will not really make you different unless you have entered into this other experience. Conversion and regeneration will fit you to die, but they do not really equip you to live. If you are really to live, you need this crisis experience.\u2019<\/p>\n (2) An experience subsequent to regeneration is to be sought and obtained on the basis of meeting certain conditions or in the use of certain means. Some who teach these various doctrines would say that the experience has to come to men unsought but, be that as it may, it is our duty to seek and to obtain such an experience, and in the pursuit of it to meet certain conditions. Each school of thought has its own set of conditions, and within each school there are differing conditions, but one of the common denominators is that the experience is to be sought until it is obtained after certain prescribed conditions have been met.<\/p>\n (3) All believers who have the later experience will know it because it registers at the level of Christian consciousness. A person may be brought to repentance and faith in a context of very poor teaching. Both adoption and justification are legal declarations of God, made at the very moment the weakest faith lays hold of the promised Saviour and the salvation that is in him. It is perfectly possible for a man or woman, boy or girl, to be as abundantly justified as the apostle Paul, and as much adopted as the famous Augustine, and yet to be unaware of it for lack of clear teaching. But all the proponents of crisis experience theology say that this is not so as far as this crisis is concerned. All who have the experience will know it because it is registered in one\u2019s consciousness.<\/p>\n Now at this point the old Pentecostals were the least cruel because they said that a believer had an absolutely clear criterion by which to know that he had it\u2014he spoke in tongues. Others who teach this doctrine and who do not give any criteria are cruel beyond words. They leave people saying: \u2018I must have this experience. If I am just an ordinary Christian without it, I cannot really become the Christian I ought to be until I have it. How shall I know when I have it?\u2019 But the basic answers of all schools say that you will know it because it registers in your consciousness.<\/p>\n (4) Behind this teaching is a very selective and questionable use of certain texts of Scripture. All crisis teachings claim to be based on Scripture and often the very language of Scripture is used to<\/p>\n hold forth the experience. For example, one of the phrases which is almost a shibboleth in old Wesleyan perfectionism is \u2018heart purity,\u2019 taken from Acts 15:9, \u2018purifying their hearts by faith.\u2019 In its context, however, it is talking, not about a second work of grace, but about the first work of grace that God performed in the hearts of Cornelius and his friends. Again, the concept of entire sanctification is taken from 1 Thessalonians: \u2018I pray God your whole body, soul and spirit be preserved entire\u2019 (5:23). The idea of \u2018the saving life of Christ,\u2019 a well-known term in some teaching on the \u2018higher life,\u2019 is taken from Romans 5:10: \u2018If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life.\u2019 A whole theology of a crisis of surrender in which we enter into the victorious life is couched in that biblical phrase and then strung into this terminology, \u2018the saving life of Christ.\u2019<\/p>\n Thus one of the common denominators in all of these crisis theology theories of the Christian life is that the teaching is based on a very selective and questionable use of certain texts of Scripture. How do we know that this teaching is not scriptural?<\/p>\n There is not one suggestion in the New Testament that any problem faced by any Christian or any church is ever resolved by urging them to seek a crisis of experience.<\/p>\n (1) Consider the problem of divisions. There was a party spirit at Corinth. Somebody did a little sanctified tattling to Paul\u2014the household of Chloe. \u2018It has been signified unto me concerning you, my brethren, by them that are of the household of Chloe, that there are contentions among you\u2019 (1 Cor. 1:11). Paul describes how those contentions were manifested. What can be more carnal than to find believers with a party spirit? These believers had all been \u2018baptized by the one Spirit into the one body,\u2019 and had all been \u2018made to drink of the one Spirit\u2019 (1 Cor. 12:13). They had a common experience in the Holy Spirit. There were not two levels of Christians\u2014those who had only been converted and those who had been baptized in the Spirit; those who were only converted and those who had entered the higher life; those who were merely Christians and those who had had a baptism of fire. There is no hint in the letter of two levels of Christian experience. Paul writes to the church \u2018sanctified in Christ Jesus\u2019 and says, \u2018Now among you there are these divisions.\u2019 He describes the divisions. Some believers have attached themselves to Paul, some to Peter, and then the really spiritual ones said, \u2018We are the Christians, the real Christians, we are attached only to Christ.\u2019 But Paul puts them in the same class as the others.<\/p>\n How does Paul deal with the matter? Does he say that it is evident to him that the reason for the divisions is that they have never been baptized in the Spirit, that they have never come to grips with what it is to be cleansed from inbred sin? What does he offer as the antidote to this deep-seated and pervasive problem of division? He does not tell them to go ahead to get something more. Instead he urges them to come to grips with the truth of what they already are and what they already have. He says, \u2018Is Christ divided?\u2019 \u2018Were you baptized into the name of Paul?,\u2019 He shows them that they must come to grips with what they already have and already are. In the outworking of what they have and are the divisions will be swept away. You see the difference? He does not say, \u2018You must get something more; he does say, \u2018You must understand and appropriate what is already yours in Christ.\u2019<\/p>\n (2) The problem of immorality. Paul\u2019s letter reveals that some of tthe Christians at Corinth were fornicating. They were living at a terribly low level of Christian experience, and they needed, if anyone did, a baptism of fire to cleanse them from inbred sin. Christians were even consorting with prostitutes, and possibly even with temple prostitutes. How does Paul deal with this terrible problem? He writes, \u2018Meats for the belly, the belly for meats, but God shall bring to naught both it and them. But the body is not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised the Lord and will raise us through his power. For do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? God forbid! Know ye not that he that is joined to a harlot is one body, for the two, said he, shall become one flesh, but he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. Flee fornication. Every sin that a man does is without the body, but he that commits fornication sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, which you have from God, and you are not your own? You were bought with a price. Glorify God therefore, in your body\u2019 (1 Cor. 6:13-20).<\/p>\n Do you see what Paul is doing? As he faces this thorny problem of gross, moral deviation, he does not suggest that what these Corinthians needed was a qualitatively new experience of grace. He does not say, \u2018You need the baptism of the Spirit to purify this sordid, filthy propensity to fornication.\u2019 He suggests no such thing. Instead he says \u2018Do you not know \u2026?\u2019 (or in today\u2019s English, \u2018Don\u2019t you know \u2026?\u2019).Think of what you are, think of the relationships that already obtained when in repentance and faith you were called into union with Christ. That was a real union: \u2018God is faithful by whom ye were called into the fellowship, the shared life of Jesus Christ. Do you not know that it is a real union? When you go to the house of the prostitute you go in union with Christ. Would you take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Do you not know that your body is a purchased possession? When Christ bled and died, when he was inundated by the fiery fury of divine wrath upon the cross, he died to purchase you. Your hands, your feet, your sexual organs, are purchased property. O ye Corinthians, do you not realize it, do you not know it?\u2019<\/p>\n Not once does the apostle suggest that the reason why the Corinthians lived in the way they did was that they had missed out on some crisis experience. He says to them, Here are the great indicatives\u2014you are joined to Christ, you are indwelt by the Spirit, you have been bought with a price. Now, what you need is not another experience, but to live out the implications of what you already are, and of what you already have. You can go through First Corinthians with all the problems of the church, and that is the emphasis that comes through again and again. You will find the same emphasis in all the letters of the New Testament.<\/p>\n I am not saying that believers do not experience spiritual crises; that would contradict both the teaching of the Bible and the evidence of Christian biography. Christians do have crises, and some of these crises bring them in a very short time to a level of spiritual reality and power that they have never known before. I am not debating that! It would be foolish to claim that Christians never have crises. What I am saying is that the Bible nowhere commands or promises a spiritual crisis of any kind as essential to living the Christian life. There is a world of difference between these two things. You can go right through the New Testament and notice how problems of every kind are taken up, at least in principle\u2014moral problems, ethical problems, problems of interpersonal relationships, problems of indwelling sin, problems involving the world and the flesh\u2014but never, never, never, do the apostolic writers command or promise a crisis experience as God\u2019s answer for these problems.<\/p>\n What then of the so-called \u2018four Pentecosts,\u2019 mentioned in Acts chapters 2, 8, 10 and 19? We cannot expound these passages here, but I heartily recommend, for those who are serious in coming to grips with what they teach, reading F. D. Bruner\u2019s helpful book, A Theology of the Holy Spirit<\/em> (Grand Rapids, 1970). There are one or two places in Bruner\u2019s book where a Barthian view of Scripture comes through. I do not hold such a view. He also takes what some have called a realistic view of baptism\u2014some of us call it a sacramental view\u2014grace actually meeting men in the water of baptism. But apart from those two flaws, Bruner\u2019s exposition of those passages in Acts is masterful. As far as I am concerned he gives an unassailable interpretation of the true significance of those \u2018four Pentecosts.\u2019<\/p>\n I am not saying that a Christian should not pray that he may be more full of the Spirit tomorrow than he has been today. No! Am I saying that a Christian should not pray for a qualitatively deepened experience of the knowledge of Christ tomorrow, over and above that which he has today? No! As much as I abominate with all my being all of this crisis teaching which leads to confusion and, in many cases, to cynicism and fanaticism, I also abominate the spirit of Laodicea\u2014\u2018rich, increased with goods, and needing nothing\u2019\u2014as much as to say, \u2018We have got everything in Christ; let us sit back \u2026\u2019 That spirit is nowhere taught in the New Testament. Although, in union with Christ, we have been \u2018blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places\u2019 (Eph. 1:3), we shall spend our lifetime working out and appropriating even the fringes of those blessings. At best we have only the down-payment; much is yet to come. God abominates the spirit of indifference: \u2018because thou art rich, increased with goods, and have need of nothing\u2019 our Lord Jesus said, \u2018I am about to vomit you out.\u2019<\/p>\n We are to pray continually for more and copious supplies of the Spirit. \u2018If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!\u2019 (Luke 11:13). In Ephesians 1, Paul writes, \u2018Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us \u2026\u2019 Then there is that theology in eulogy in which he blesses the triune God for so great salvation, the Father for electing and predestinating grace, the Son for redeeming grace, the Spirit for sealing us to the day of redemption. Yet he proceeds in verse 15 to say, \u2018For this cause I bow my knees, that God would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of himself, that you may know what is the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, that you may know what is the exceeding greatness of his power.\u2019 He says: \u2018You have all of this, but I plead with God that you may have a deeper, richer experimental knowledge of all that you have in Christ and all that Christ has in you.\u2019 As though that were not enough, in chapter 3 he says, \u2018I bow my knees,\u2019 and then he prays for the unprayable. He says, \u2018I pray that God would make you strong to comprehend the incomprehensible, that you may know the length and breadth and height and depth, and know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God.\u2019<\/p>\n Paul is not praying that they will have some kind of a specific charismatic experience; he is not praying that they will have a second work of grace; he is not praying that they will have any of those five categories of experience that I have described, but he is praying that they will have enlarged capacities, expanded spiritual perception, and increased spiritual appropriation of the fulness that is in Christ. The New Testament does not command us to seek, or promise us any crisis experience subsequent to regeneration and conversion. It does, however, teach with equal clarity that hungering, thirsting, panting, longing, pleading, yearning, seeking, advancing, are the characteristics of the healthy soul.<\/p>\n There are times when I despair and say, \u2018O Lord, is it possible that we can even expect to see people who have grasped that biblical emphasis?\u2019 It seems that people either go off on the one hand to all the excesses of crisis Christianity, or they drift off to this dull, lifeless, non-experimental, bland, cold kind of Christianity. Tragically, it often bears the name \u2018Reformed.\u2019 Frankly, I would rather be with a warm-hearted, woolly-headed \u2018Wesleyan\u2019 who thinks he needed and has had a second work of grace, but who is hungry for God, than the man who can sit for hours and prove that there is no such thing, and whose heart is as cold as a stone.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Albert N. Martin (1934\u20132026) was a pastor and preacher whose penetrating exposition of God\u2019s word has been a transformative influence on many. His noted lectures on pastoral theology, originally given at Trinity Ministerial Academy, can be accessed in\u00a0mp3<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0book format<\/a>. Al Martin is the author of four booklets published by the Trust \u2013\u00a0A Life of Principled Obedience<\/a>,\u00a0Living the Christian Life\u00a0<\/a>(a booklet comprising the content of this six-part series),\u00a0The Practical Implications of Calvinism<\/a><\/em>, and\u00a0What\u2019s Wrong with Preaching Today?\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Look out for the two remaining posts coming in the next two weeks.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Featured Photo (visible when post is shared on social media) by USGS<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The fourth of six posts containing the substance of teaching given by Albert N. Martin at the 1984 Banner Youth Conference, presenting a basic biblical theology of the Christian life. There is no crisis experience promised or commanded as an essential element in living the Christian life. Some teaching on the Christian life asserts that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65473,"featured_media":297696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"resource-author":[21020],"topic":[4905],"class_list":["post-297695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","resource-author-albert-n-martin","topic-christian-living-3"],"yoast_head":"\n