Rom 14:23 . . .Whatever is not from faith is sin,. .whatever is done without a conviction of its approval by God is sinful. AMP
1 Jo 3 :5-6 And you know that He (Jesus) was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. ..
The name "Keswick teaching" is now universally used to denote a well-defined line of teaching. The novelty and peculiarity of that exposition consists not in any new truth it has to offer, but in the prominence it gives to truths that have been allowed to lie dormant. From this, many have been led to say that if Keswick had no truth that is not the common heritage of all evangelical churches, it cannot have any secret of power or blessing that is not to be found elsewhere. “Men forget that it is not the doctrine that a church has in its creeds, or a minister in his teaching that is the measure of power. It is only as much of the truth as is being made alive in the experience of teacher and hearer by the power of the Holy Spirit. Keswick teaching owed the wonderful influence it exercised to the fact that its founder called believers together to hear him, and others who had been blessed with him, to tell them what God had done for those who had embraced the teaching. And all along the keynote of its platform was personal testimony to what God had done in giving power over sin. It is only as this secret of its power is apprehended that its wonderful influence can be understood or appreciated. No one has a right to demand that all Christians state their views in the same way as the Keswick speakers. Much less would anyone claim that without this teaching, the same blessing could not be expected from above. But there are certain great principles which lie at the very root of the testimony and the teaching, and which do appear to be essential to all growth in holiness. All teachers and believers who are longing and laboring for the revival of the church would do well to give heed to these principles, in their prayer and faith, with the same definite prominence that has made the Keswick teaching such a blessing.
1.The first of these truths is that concerning sin . It is founded on texts such as the one we have chosen. Christ was manifested to take away sin-not only guilt, but sin. To this end He is the sinless one , that a soul abiding in Him does not sin; a man born of God does not and cannot sin, for Christ's seed abides in him. The seed is the life power out of which a tree grows, and which abides in it. In the power of the divine life those born of God cannot commit sin. All three expressions-"sinneth not, doth not sin, cannot sin"-refer to deeds, to actual transgressions. They say nothing about the flesh, the sinful nature still present in the believer. That is not the question dealt with here; they appear simply to hold out the promise that the believer who abides in Christ can be kept from the committal of actual sin. If anyone would –really understand Keswick teaching, he must get hold of this thought: that the desire to be kept -from sinning, and the prospect held out of being taught how to come to this, is its great attraction . I have seen appreciative notices of Keswick Conventions; one hears and reads beautiful articles and addresses on the fuller and the deeper life in which this, the very root thought of all true holiness teaching, appears to be left out. One has only to go back to the life of Canon Battersby, the founder of Keswick, to see the truth of what I say. For more than twenty years he had been a minister of deeply evangelical views, and was a man of beautiful Christian character. And yet he was dissatisfied. Sins of tongue and of temper, of worldliness and self-will came from time to time to cloud communion with God and to rob him of his peace. When he first heard in 1873 of the teaching of a higher life, with the promise of being kept continually by Christ in victory over sin, he longed greatly to know if this were really possible. At the same time he feared much the thought of sinless perfection, and dreaded being led into anything that would not be consistent with scriptural truth as to a holiness never to be found in ourselves but in Christ alone. This state of his mind is evident from what he wrote in his journal, September 1873: "'What I have been reading of the experience of others has made me utterly dissatisfied with myself and my state. I feel that I am dishonoring God and am wretched by living as I do, and that I must either go backward or forward, reaching out toward the light that my Savior holds out to me, or failing back more and more into worldliness and sin." It was this weariness with a life of continual struggling and failure, of continual humbling and sinning, that prepared Canon Battersby for the teaching he heard given at the Oxford Convention in 1874, and the invitation to come to Jesus and rest in Him for the power of holiness to keep one from sin, To him it was like a new gospel, “What was taught as to what Christ would do in keeping and saving continually, as to the faith that dared trust Him for thus keeping and saving, as much as for pardon, gave him boldness to claim and accept all that Christ could do. And in the midnight hour, after a meeting, as he gave himself to the Lord, Battersby had such a revelation of what Jesus is and will be to a trusting soul that ever after he could only speak of it with tender reverence. But the teaching and the revelation owed its power and its preciousness entirely to this one thing: it was a felt need-an intense longing not to sin, to be free from the daily so-called little sins that cloud our communion with God. It is this fact that explains why at Keswick such prominence was given to the exposure of the infirmities and failings of Christians. As the Holy Spirit is allowed to convict of sin in regard to such things, the sense of impotence and bondage is awakened, and the desire stirred for a life of liberty and power. If we are to have a great work of the Holy Spirit in power among believers, it will have to begin here. The sins that they have borne all too contentedly, because they thought that no deliverance is possible, must be revealed by God's Word and the Holy Spirit as a shame and a guilt, a grief and dishonor to Christ, the cause of failure in our own prayers and our labors. It is only when this is felt aright that the Holy Spirit can manifest Christ in all His saving power.
2. As the first truth we have spoken of is the longing for deliverance from the committal of actual sin, so the second is that Scripture promises, and that grace has made abundant provision for, a life in which there is power to cease from the doing of sin. The whole church unites in the confession: Christ saves from the guilt and power of sin. But the preaching and the testimony of experience has been far clearer in regard to the former than the latter. At the Reformation it was most natural that all attention should be fixed on the one great truth of justification by faith. But a greater mistake was made when in succeeding generations this truth was treated as if it were the whole gospel. As a consequence, a great deal of evangelical teaching has been defective and one-sided, and a great deal of evangelical living has been marked by anything but a high standard of righteousness and holiness. "In him is no sin . . . he that abideth in him sinneth not” these words that were given to shed light and hope on our path are counted a riddle . Canon Battersby lived for eight years after he found the blessed secret he had so long sought. His testimonies at Keswick and his private journals prove that he knew that he had not been deceived in the experience he passed through. He never thought for a moment that the sinful nature had been eradicated. He never professed that he had been perfectly free from sinful acts. But what he did know and confess was that his entire life in its relation to sin had been changed-that he had entered upon a walk in the light and liberty of Christ which he had never known before. And when for a moment, because of a lack of perfect trust, there was a fall, the presence of Christ was there for immediate restoration to the life of peace and power. The whole tenor of his life was in the freedom from known sin in a degree entirely unknown in his previous experience. This is nothing else but what George Muller means when he so frequently speaks of being enabled by the grace of God to have a good conscience-not knowingly doing anything against the will of God. I cannot insist too strongly that the reason so many seek in vain so earnestly for the mighty strengthening of the Spirit in the inner man, and the promised manifestation of Christ which comes through the Spirit, is due to this: they do not seek Christ for what He is, first and last-a Savior from sin. It is the deep longing, the humble expectation, the determined purpose to be saved from the common daily sins that is the only true preparation for the revelation of the Lord Jesus in the soul.
3. In connection with this there comes another truth so much emphasized at Keswick: the need of a new and entire surrender to Christ. Christ's work as our sanctification and His keeping us from sin rests on the fact of His being our life and His having entire possession and control of our being. It depends on our being entirely given up to Him and following Him with such wholeheartedness that we leave Him free to do with us and to work in us what He pleases. A defective insight into the importance of this is the cause of much unavailing prayer and effort. People long to be delivered from some particular form of sin. They come and confess and surrender it, or that portion of their nature in which it roots. And yet they forget that it avails little to take away an ugly branch of a tree if the root and stem still remain. It is no good and often great harm to deal with the symptoms of a disease itself. When Christ asks that the offending member shall be cut off, this is only as a part of the large requirement-to forsake all and follow Him. His demand of those who would know His power to save and keep from sinning is that, in a sense, and to an extent they never thought needful or possible, they shall live with Him, and for Him, and in Him. He wants their whole life actually under His management and inspiration, wholly dependent on and subjected to Him. It is nothing less than this complete dependence on Him that abiding in Him means. "ln him is no sin. . He that abideth in him sinneth not." The abiding in Him, the sinless one, in which is implied the giving up of all self and its life to wait and dwell in His will and strength is what brings the power that does not commit sin. Through the revelation and fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the presence of Christ becomes a divine reality. He dwells in the heart to root it in love and fill it with the fullness of God. The one condition is a life entirely surrendered to Christ, a heart wholly occupied with Him, seeking nothing for itself except as a means of honoring and serving Him. Of this surrender one thing more must be said. Though it must be a disposition, a lifelong habit and state of the heart, maintained by the grace of the Holy Spirit, the entrance to it may very often be the work of a moment. As with so many who came to Christ with their petitions on earth when the need becomes urgent, and the power and will of Christ are understood, and the sinner is ready at Christ's word to obey and accept, the conscious deliverance may be immediate. One step is enough to turn from the path where we have stumbled along in our own strength onto the highway of holiness where Jesus keeps the feet of His saints.
4. The last truth of Keswick teaching that must not be omitted is that of the power of faith. The whole evangelical church is one in the confession that salvation is by faith alone. But that every part of that salvation, sanctification equally with justification by faith, has been too much overlooked. All that has been said so far about freedom from sinning, of the entire surrender to Christ and abiding in Him, of His indwelling and keeping, and the continuous life of His Holy Spirit, with all the power these truths have exercised in thousands of lives, is dependent upon the one great truth all things are possible to him that believeth. When the first call comes to the believer to make a new and entire surrender as the condition of knowing the saving power of Jesus fully, he generally feels how formidable it is to make such a surrender with any hope of, its being true or lasting. He stands baffled at the thought of an impossible demand until he sees that Christ can be trusted even for the ability to make the surrender. When he is taught that the new life he is to enter is to be one of faith that moment by moment rests in the Lord, he again is all fear, But he will not have such continual faith until he sees how he can trust Christ to keep his very faith from failing. 'When the thought comes of daily temptation to sin, he has to learn that each difficulty will vanish in the presence of faith, because faith is the committal of our need to a faithful Savior. And so with every promise of the Spirit's fullness, or the Savior's indwelling, or the life of fruitfulness and blessing, he learns that because God is to work all, faith is the one disposition that secures every blessing. Saved by faith becomes, moment by moment, the watchword of his life. But how is it that men who bear the name of believers find it so hard, and so often fail, to be believers indeed? Why were those who first came to Christ on earth so soon brought to believe in His word of healing? And why do we, with our greater light, the power of the Holy Spirit, the beginnings of faith in our heart, lose so much by our unbelief? The answer is simple, but very significant. Those men felt their need and longed with their whole heart to be freed from their disease. The disease was the one burden of their life; deliverance from it their one desire. They were ready to believe. When daily sinning becomes the burden of our life, and deliverance from it our one desire, the message "he that abideth in him sinneth not”, will get a new attraction . And the testimony of those who can say that they once knew what is was to carry that burden, but that they have found a deliverance beyond what they dared, hope for, will waken a longing that will leave no rest. As we pray for revival, let us pray much for a conviction of sin, through the Spirit, in believers that will make the daily sins unbearable. That will prepare for a revelation of Christ, through the Spirit, That will call out a surrender and a faith to which he can give himself and his life in full measure.
The four core gospel truths of the Keswick deeper life in Christ movement
#1 I must want to be free from sin. from disobeyinq God , and I must be to inherit heaven:
Rom 7:20-24 Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that lives in me...O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of (sin and) death?
Rom 6:13 Do not present. your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness: AMP
1 Cor6:9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?
#2 I must see in my Bible that God has made a wav for me to be freed from sin's power:
Rom 6:18 And having been set free from sin, you have become the servants of righteousness (and conformed to God's will in thought, purpose, and action). AMP
John 8:31-32 (Jesus) ...|f you continue in My word...you shall know the truth (My word), and the truth (My word in you) will make you free (from sin, from disobeying Me).
#3 I must surrender my life to God so that He by His word and Spirit can free me from sin:
2 Cor 5:15 ...Those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him (Jesus) who died for them and rose again.
Luke 14:33 (Jesus) Whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple
Rom 6:13 ...Offer and yield yourselves to God as though you have been raised from the dead to perpetual life, and your bodily members and faculties to God, presenting them as implements of righteousness. AMP
Acts 5:32 ...The Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who are willing to obey Him
#4 I must sim0lY believe that I died with Christ to sin and my sin nature and I remain dead:
Rom 6:11 You reckon (believe) yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ
Gal 5:24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its desires;
Phil 3:10 That l may know Him (Christ)...being conformed (by His words)to His death
1 Pet 1 :5 Who are kept (from sin) by the power of God through faith for salvation...
Rom 8:9 (To Christians) ...if anyone does not possess the Holy Spirit of Christ, he is none of His, he does not belong to Christ, is not truly a child of God. AMP
1 Jo 3:5-6 He (Jesus) was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has not seen Him nor known Him (for by their uncovered sin they've died to Him - so we must let Him free us from sin).
By these four original gospel truths, brought again to light at Keswick 140 years ago, God blessed the worldwide evangelical Church and freed multitudes from sin to inherit eternity.
