Q82. Is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God?

A. No mere man since the fall is able in this life perfectly to keep the commandments of God, but doth daily break them in thought, word, and deed.

The answer to Question 82 may be divided into a fact, its extent, and then ways or modes. In other words, we can show from Scripture (1) the fact that no mere man can keep the commandments; (2) the extent to which no mere man can keep the commandments; and finally (3) the ways in which no mere man can keep the commandments. Of course this all follows from truths we have already studied under Questions 13 through 18. 

The FACT that no mere man can keep the commandments

There are covenantal qualifiers to catch first.

The words no mere man excludes Christ, who is no “mere man”; and 5he words since the fall includes all in Adam. That is the first breakdown that explained the sin nature.

However, even after regeneration, though we are no longer in Adam legally, yet the sin nature is not eradicated until glorification. Now that is important because the answer to Question 82 seems to want to drive home two points to us. On the one hand, the unbeliever needs to know that there is nothing he can do, by means of moral effort, to satisfy God’s righteous requirement. He will have to be justified by faith alone in the merits of Christ alone. On the other hand, even the believer needs to be reminded of this.

Where the doctrine of justification by faith alone is not taught, and where the evangelical use of the law is not pressed home to the heart, those who identify as Christians may have received the idea that salvation by grace is like an etch-a-sketch. They may think that Christ’s work wipes the slate clean in such a way that we start over in obedience. Such a view is as much a false gospel as the unbeliever who would be justified by works. In fact, it makes unbelievers out of professing believers.

We could express this in a short-hand version—innocence, sin, regenerated, and glory—or more precisely in what Thomas Boston called, in his Human Nature in Its Fourfold State: (a) Primitive Integrity; (b) Entire Depravity; (c) Begun Recovery; and (d) Consummate Happiness or Misery. These correspond to Augustine’s line of reasoning that man before the fall was both able to sin, and able not to sin (posse peccare, posse non peccare); then after the fall, not able not to sin (non posse non peccare); then with regeneration, able not to sin (posse non peccare); and finally in the eternal state, unable to sin (non posse peccare).

There are passages on the universality of sin. Every single person sins on a regular basis.

“Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins” (Ecc. 7:20); and “there is no one who does not sin” (1 Kings 8:46).

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us … If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 Jn. 1:8, 10).

Every single person only sins in their “religious orientation” as well.

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10-12).

“all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isa. 64:6).

There are also passages on the reason that this obedience is impossible.

Our total disobedience is rooted in a total inability.

“For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7-8).

Our inability to know the depths of our sin proves that we cannot address it in obedience: “Who can discern his errors?” (Ps. 19:11)

Our inability goes down to the level of intentions.

“for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21)

The EXTENT to which no mere man can keep the commandments

All in Adam sin daily.

Some will object that the Bible never explicitly says that we sin “every day.” “Show me those exact words!” we may even hear. The basic problem with this objection is no different than when people complain that words like Trinity and active obedience and covenant of works are “nowhere in Scripture.” The concept is taught. In the case of all people sinning daily, simply consider a passage early in the Bible:

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).

Now if it is true that “every intention” is sinful and that this evil is “continual,” then it follows that this happens not only every day, but every moment! The trouble here is that this light view of sin results from a light view of God’s holiness and his law. We are incredulous at the charge of sin because we do not understand what makes sin so utterly sinful. 

None in Adam ever obeys perfectly.

Supposing someone says, “But what about those rare moments when we do obey?” But this still misunderstands what sin is because it misunderstands what holiness and righteousness are. The thing in God is perfect, therefore the standard is perfect. 

As the Westminster Confession (VII.2) says,

“The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.”

Scriptural testimony that it is not some common obedience that we fall short of, but that “righteousness” and “purity” are never attained by those in Adam’s race.

“Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you” (Ps. 143:2).

“Who can say, ‘I have made my heart pure; I am clean from my sin’?” (Prov. 20:9)

This highlights that evangelical use of the law we have been applying for each of the commandments. Paul says, 

“Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:19-20).

Paul is not saying that this is all that the law does. Remember, there are two other uses besides the evangelical use. But in relation to justification before God, the great contrast is between (a) faith alone or else (b) works of the law. Turretin comments that, 

“In the destitute state of sin, the use of the law cannot be ‘justification’ because it was weak in the flesh. It is not said to have been given for life, but ‘because of transgressions’ (Gal. 3:19).”1

The WAYS in which no mere man can keep the commandments

All break the commandments in thought.

We have already seen from Genesis 6:5 how even down to the level of our every thought, man is always sinning. But what constitutes such mental sins?

Sins of thought can be thought of as those of the heart. And this is where sin starts.

Since “the law is spiritual” (Rom. 7:14), and, coming through the sword of the word as it does, it must be “discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).

So by “sins of the heart” or of “thought,” we are speaking of the most spiritual essence of sin—that sin in the design stage, where the sinner would do to the uttermost if only he could in the outermost of the world. If we have not broken the commandments “out there,” the law exposes that we have already broken it “in here,” in that wellspring of life. 

Sins “of the heart” are of inordinate desire, or “coveting” (cf. Ex. 20:17; Col. 3:5).

In God’s diagnosis of Cain’s heart in Genesis 4:7 in the words just before the murder of Abel, this archetypal example of the advance of Cain’s sin plays out the truth of James 4 that we saw—namely, coveting begetting the other sins of the second table. So John says, “We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous” (1 Jn. 3:12).

Sins “of the heart” are the root of those in deed, as in the Sermon on the Mount, 

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire … “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mat. 5:21-22, 27-28).

All break the commandments in word.

James tells us that “if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man” (3:2). But this is his teaching on the tongue, and when we find him concluding, “but no human being can tame the tongue” (v. 8), it follows that our own tongues condemn us. Paul reinforces the point: “Their throat is an open grave” (Rom. 3:12).

And then what does Jesus say?

“I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Mat. 12:36-37).

Here the tongue is called as a witness. It is not that the tongue could have done better in a sinner and “justified” us—that is, that by our speech we could have merited God’s favor. Rather, it is evidential. As Jesus says elsewhere, “How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Mat. 12:34). So, apart from Christ, our tongues will be most damaging among the prosecution’s witnesses on the Day of Judgment.

All break the commandments in deed. 

This is the easiest to establish, as it is the outside that we all see. And yet, some would even deny that they sin in deed—which leads us to our first point of application.

APPLICATION

Use 1. By this doctrine Perfectionism is refuted. But Brakel faces head on the objection that Many are said to be perfect. And the objection cites a series of passages that speak of an aspect of the process of sanctification, or else some Old Testament example of someone described as righteous or blameless, as in Noah, Job, or David in various Psalms.

“Answer. (1) It is evident that the persons mentioned were not perfect in every respect, for the sins of each have been recorded, so that perfection must be understood to refer to their uprightness. (2) There is a partial perfection which is expressive of being upright in all things and as such is the opposite of being hypocritical. We shall readily admit that there is such a perfection—yes, he is not a believer who does not possess this, for that is the new creature (2 Cor. 5:17), and the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). However, no one reaches the measure of perfection in this life.”2

A more difficult objection comes from the person who strings together the several statements in 1 John concerning the evidence of no longer sinning. So we are told,

“No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him … No one who has been born of God does sin, because his seed abides in him, and he is not able to sin, because he has been born of God” (3:6, 9).

Sam Storms offers ten interpretive alternatives, which have been held, to this reading—including perfectionism, but exclusing that John contradicts himself. I will summarize these as:

(1) notorious sins or “offenses against love” [Augustine, Luther]; (2) sin counted legally (cf. Ps. 32:1); (3) the old nature that sins, excluding any new nature; (4) ideal sinlessness in light of the new creation in anticipated form; (5) hyperbole appropriate to heated controversy; (6) a condition of one class of Christians that especially “abide” in Christ; (7) willful and deliberate, versus habitual or unconscious; (8) sinless perfectionism; (9) the sin that leads to death (e.g. 5:16); and (10) habitual, persistent, unrepentant sin.3

Incidentally, option 10 has the support of the particular Greek used in these verses. The participle for can easily be said to emphasize the person—“one who goes on sinning” or “one who sins”—rather than the focus being, quantitatively, on the sins. 

Aside from understanding the Greek and the function of these statements in John’s overall evidential purposes, one must remember the analogy of faith. If we interpret the less clear in light of the more clear, we are speaking of a few verses in John’s epistle that have to be placed in the incomprably wider context of all of the verses we just saw that make sinlessness utterly impossible (for any but Christ). It is quite irrational to operate the other way around—to dismiss them all on this reading of John when another reading is plausible. Rather, the weight of the evidence refutes the perfectionist reading of John. 

Use 2. This truth presses the evangelical use of the law on us daily. We are reminded as believers to make dilligent use of the law as mirror to expose our sin. If we sin daily, then we must confess daily. It is to those in Christian fellowship (1:1-3) that John writes,

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn. 1:9).

It is to those who can say, “Our Father” to whom Jesus teaches the prayer, “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Mat. 6:12). 

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1. Turretin, Institutes, II.11.22.9.

2. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, III:76-77.

3. Sam Storms, “10 Things You Should Know About 1 John 3:6 and 9 and Sinless Perfection in This Life” on the Enjoying God website.