Clean Enough for the Spirit?

What is this page about?

The preacher tells the story to encourage people. And the man in the story did a good thing. He found that he had kept money that was not his, and he gave it back. Every Christian tradition would say that he was right.

The question is about the lesson that comes with the story. The story says that God kept back his Spirit for seven years because of a small, forgotten wrong. And God gave the Spirit when the wrong was put right.

If God works like that, then every person who prays for more of the Spirit and feels nothing has a job to do. Search your past until you find the thing that you missed.

This page asks: does the Bible teach this? Did the church of the past teach it?

The short answer

1. It was right to pay the restaurant. Zacchaeus promised to pay back four times what he had taken (Luke 19:8). Nothing on this page argues against that.
2. In the Bible the Spirit is a gift. Paul asks: “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?” (Galatians 3:2) At the house of a man named Cornelius, “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the word.” (Acts 10:44) Nobody had done anything yet.
3. The warnings are about sin that you know and keep. See Part 3.
4. Christians stay sinners all their lives. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (1 John 1:8). The church at Corinth had every spiritual gift (1 Corinthians 1:7). And its members were cheating each other (1 Corinthians 6:8).
5. The Spirit does the cleaning. See Part 4.
6. Nobody could ever finish the search. See Part 5.
7. The idea is new. See Part 6.

Take the story apart

The story says several things at one time. Some are ordinary Christian teaching. Some are new.

Three are things that every church teaches. Three are new. And all three new ones are about why God kept back, or what made him give.

What comes first?

The best story in the Gospels about paying back is the story of Zacchaeus. He collected taxes, and he had cheated people. Look at the order.

Jesus sees him in a tree and says:

Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.

Luke 19:5 · World English Bible

In simple words: Zacchaeus, come down quickly. Today I must stay at your house.

The crowd complains, because Jesus has gone to be the guest of a sinner. Then Zacchaeus stands up, in his own house, with Jesus already there. And he promises to pay everyone back.

The act is the same. A debt is paid. But in Luke, a man does it because Christ has come to him. In the preacher’s story, a man does it so that the Spirit will come.

The other parts of the New Testament have Luke’s order. On the day of Pentecost, Peter said to the crowd:

Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you

Acts 2:38–39 · World English Bible

In simple words: Turn back to God, and be baptized, each one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins are forgiven. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you.

Peter calls it a gift and a promise. Three thousand people were baptized on that same day.

Jesus said that the Father gives the Holy Spirit to people who ask him. In the same sentence he called these people “evil” (Luke 11:13).

Sin that you know, or sin that you forgot?

Some Bible verses say that sin can come between a person and God. People who teach “find it and put it right” quote these verses. Ask of each verse: what kind of sin does it mean?

Three verses about sin that a person knows and keeps:

• “If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened.” (Psalm 66:18) To “cherish” is to love and keep. And the next verse says that God did listen.
• “If therefore you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you” (Matthew 5:23–24) then go and make peace first. The important word is “remember”. The verse says what to do when a wrong comes to your mind. It says nothing about wrongs that do not.
• “your iniquities have separated you and your God” (Isaiah 59:2). The next verse names them: hands with blood on them, and lips that speak lies. These are open sins.

Three verses about wrongs that a person cannot see:

• “Who can discern his errors? Forgive me from hidden errors.” (Psalm 19:12) In simple words: who can see his own mistakes? Forgive my hidden ones. The man does not go and look for them. He asks God.
• “For I know nothing against myself. Yet I am not justified by this, but he who judges me is the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 4:4) Paul means: I do not know of anything wrong in me, but that proves nothing. He leaves to the Lord what he cannot see.
• “Search me, God, and know my heart.” (Psalm 139:23–24) He asks God to do the searching. He does not begin to examine himself without end.

The old churches agree that a serious sin, which a person knows and keeps, shuts him off from God. About the year 350, Cyril of Jerusalem spoke to people who were preparing for baptism:

if you persist in an evil purpose … the water will receive, but the Spirit will not accept you.

Cyril of Jerusalem, about 350

In simple words: If you keep to an evil plan, the water will take you, but the Spirit will not accept you.

That is a real warning. But a restaurant bill from years ago, small and forgotten, is a different thing from an evil plan that a person keeps to.

Who does the cleaning?

How can we see what the church has believed? Listen to how it prays for the Holy Spirit. Here are three very old prayers from three traditions.

All three ask the Spirit to come and do the cleaning. Not one says, “We have cleaned ourselves. Now come.”

Luther said the same for the Lutherans. The Holy Spirit is a gift who “daily cleanses and sweeps out the remaining sins.” In simple words: every day he cleans and sweeps out the sins that are still there.

The church decided this a very long time ago. In the year 529 a council met at Orange, in the land that is now France. It spoke against anyone who says that “God awaits our will to be cleansed from sin”, that is, that God waits until we want to be clean. The council said that even the wish to be clean comes from the Holy Spirit.

This is important for the story. The preacher says that God showed him the restaurant bill. Christians believe that the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person his sin (John 16:8). So if someone showed him the bill, the Spirit was already with him and already at work.

How would you ever know that you had finished?

Suppose that the story is right. If one forgotten bill can keep back the Spirit, then so can every unkind word that you never said sorry for. So can every time you made a story bigger, every duty you did not do, and every hurt that you caused and did not know. How long is that list? And how would you know that you had come to the end of it?

Christians have been in this place before. When Martin Luther was a young monk, he confessed his sins for up to six hours at a time. He went back over his whole life, to be sure that he had missed nothing. In the end, the priest who heard him told him something like this: come back when you have a real sin to confess.

Later, the Lutheran churches wrote the lesson into their statement of faith:

But if no sins were forgiven, except those that are recounted, consciences could never find peace; for very many sins they neither see nor can remember.

The Augsburg Confession (1530)

In simple words: If only the sins that we name were forgiven, our consciences could never find peace. For there are very many sins that we do not see and cannot remember.

The Catholic Church disagreed with Luther about many things. It agreed about this. In 1551 the Council of Trent spoke of sins that a person cannot remember after he has examined himself honestly. It said that they “are understood to be included” in his confession. In simple words: they are counted as confessed too.

And the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal church in the world, said it in its own words in 2010:

By definition, a gift is not earned. If it were on the basis of a person’s merit, the unanswerable question would be, ‘What should be the extent of the person’s worthiness?’

The Assemblies of God, 2010

In simple words: A gift, by its meaning, is not earned. If it depended on how good a person is, nobody could answer the question, “How good must the person be?”

Where did the idea come from?

The teaching “find it and put it right” is not very old. We can follow it in four steps.

These were serious men, and they were answering a real problem. Some people went to church and never paid their debts or changed their lives.

But even these men did not go as far as the story goes. Torrey spoke of sin that the person knew about. He said that if honest prayer brought nothing to light, the person should go on. John Wesley taught that a Christian could be made perfect in love. But he said that nobody in this life is free from wrongs that he does not know about. He added:

sinless perfection is a phrase I never use.

John Wesley

In simple words: I never use the words “perfect and without sin”.

One more thing. The story ends with an experience, and the experience is used as proof that the man was clean enough at last. But Paul asks if all Christians have the special gifts, and he expects the answer “no” (1 Corinthians 12:30). The church with the most gifts of this kind was Corinth. And Paul told its members that they were still like babies, living in a human way (1 Corinthians 3:1).

Turning back to God, or searching without end?

Has anyone ever told you that a hidden sin is stopping the Spirit? Then ask these six things about yourself. This is not advice from a pastor.

1. When I remember a wrong that I have done to someone, I put it right as far as I can.
2. I am not holding on to a sin that I know about and do not plan to give up.
3. When I confess my sins and hear that I am forgiven, I accept that the forgiveness is really given.
4. I can ask God to forgive the wrongs that I cannot see, and I can leave them with him.
5. When prayer feels dry, I do not think at once that a hidden sin must be the cause.
6. I could hear a story like this one and not begin to search my past for the thing that I missed.

If these are true of you, you are living as the Bible describes. You put right what you remember. You give God what you cannot see.

Check it yourself

Here are five things. The first takes ten minutes. The last takes no time at all.

1. Read Acts 2:37-41, Acts 10:34-48 and Galatians 3:1-5. On what ground is the Spirit given?
2. Read Luke 19:1-10. Notice what Jesus says before Zacchaeus says anything about money.
3. Read Psalm 19:12-14 and Psalm 66:16-20. One is about wrongs that you cannot see. The other is about sin that you keep.
4. Read 1 Corinthians 1:4-9, and then 3:1-4 and 6:1-8. It is the same church, in the same letter.
5. Remember the last story you heard in which a blessing came after one last thing was put right. Do this one. Which came first in that story: the gift, or the cleaning?