An ancient heresy of the distinction between two types of
Christians, carnal and Spirit-filled, is the heresy of perfectionism.
Perfectionism teaches that there is a class of Christians who achieve
moral perfection in this life. To be sure, credit is given to the Holy
Spirit as the agent who brings total victory over sin to the Christian.
But there is a kind of elitism in perfectionism, a feeling that those
who have achieved perfection are somehow greater than other Christians.
The “perfect” ones do not officially—take credit for their state, but
smugness and pride have a way of creeping in.
The peril of perfectionism is that it seriously distorts the human
mind. Imagine the contortions through which we must put ourselves to
delude us into thinking that we have in fact achieved a state
of sinlessness.
Inevitably the error of perfectionism breeds one, or usually two,
deadly delusions. To convince ourselves that we have achieved
sinlessness, we must either suffer from a radical overestimation of our
moral performance or we must seriously underestimate the requirements of
God’s law. The irony of perfectionism is this: Though it seeks to
distance itself from antinomianism, it relentlessly and inevitably comes
full circle to the same error. Continue at R. C. Sproul
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