It usually is true that before we can receive a blessing from God we have to know the promise is in the Bible. This is true of being saved. It is true of the gifts of the Spirit, including speaking in tongues. It is true of Divine healing. Once we know God has given the promise we can choose to believe and pray until we receive.

The same is true of victory over sin. Once we see such victory is scriptural we can choose to believe and pray until we receive.

I'll tell you what got me started on this essay. Sal Manoguerra called me up and told me something that took place in his Bible study, a mix of Baptist and Pentecostal people.

Sal teaches much the same thing that I do. A man in the group said to the effect, "No one ever told me before that you could get victory over sin. I supposed you just had to live with it. I have had a problem with anger. Every time I lost my temper I felt convicted but did not know I could get victory over it. Now I have faith for victory over anger and it has been weeks since I have given way to this sin."

When Sal relayed this to me, I said "That's it! That's just exactly right and so simple and practical!"

You might wonder at my delight over this episode. The story is as follows.

Over thirty years ago I was writing about the Tabernacle of the Congregation, a chapter called "The Holiness of the Tabernacle." I had always been taught the conventional Christian wisdom that all of us are sinners and Christ came to forgive us and bring us to Heaven. We cannot keep the commandments in the New Testament because of our sinful nature. They were written to show us our need of a Savior. We are saved by grace and not by works. This is the difference between the new covenant and preceding covenants. As long as we are in this world we have to sin. No one is perfect, etc.

Something clicked in by brain as I was writing. I began to search the New Testament to see what it actually stated. To my amazement it was plain that the New Testament did not teach what I had been taught, that very little was said about imputed righteousness but a great deal about righteous behavior.

Then the two goats of the Day of Atonement came to my attention. The one goat was slain and its blood sprinkled in the Holy of Holies, typifying the blood atonement made by the Lord Jesus on the cross, the forgiveness of sin.

The second goat, also a goat of atonement, was left alive and led away into the wilderness, typifying the removal of sin.

After that the sixth chapter of the Book of Romans made sense.

Since that time it has been a long, torturous journey, trying to become clear about the role of deliverance from sin in the Christian salvation, trying to understand what is unscriptural about the traditional teaching of a "state of grace."

To be continued.