We must cleanse ourselves from every 
pollution of flesh and spirit
BY JAY E. ADAMS 
Copyright 1994 by Jay F. Adams
ISBN: 0-9643556-1-2

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II Corinthians CHAPTER 7

1 Since we have these promises, dear friends, we must cleanse ourselves from every pollution of flesh and spirit, completing our holiness out of fear for God.

The word translated "pollution" in verse 1 can mean, "to smear over with filth." That is what God thinks of our sin. In a sense, all ministry is a process of cleaning up God's smeared children so as to make them more acceptable to Him. Counseling is one part of the ministry of cleansing Here it is the individual Christian that Paul exhorts to cleanse himself But, as every counselor knows, that is precisely the problem-when left to themselves, many Christians fail to do so. Usually their failure is the result of ignorance (they don't know how) and/or unwillingness. The biblical counselor wrestles with both.

God wants perfected Christians, those who are completed in holiness. Perfection in this life, in the sense of sinlessness, is impossible however, perfection in the sense of completeness is attainable. By completeness is meant that a Christian is working on every aspect of his life to cleanse it from filth and to perfect holiness in it. He wants to "lack nothing," as James puts it. It is the task of the counselor to help him become a teleios or "complete person" (James 1:4). The corresponding Hebrew word, found in Job 1:1 for instance, is tam. Both the Hebrew and the Greek words indicate someone who "has it all together." He is not sinless in any area of his life, but he is working on every area in order to bring it more and more into conformity to the Word of God. He is growing across the board.

Because God wishes this, it is the counselor's task to deal with more than presentation problems initially introduced by the counseled. As he progresses, if he uncovers other problems, at the minimum, he is obligated to point these out as well. And while he may not find it necessary or possible to take on every problem uncovered in every counseled, he may wish to tackle others besides those presented. At the very least he should inform the counselee of other difficulties that need to be encountered by him. It may be that, once aware of these, they can be handled by the counselee himself without help from another brother. But that does not mean that counselors may avoid dealing with interdependent problems. Some presentation problems are only solvable as previous ones are first dealt with.

That there are two aspects to every difficulty is certainly pertinent. Neither side may be discarded in favor of the other. Paul speaks of being cleansed from every pollution of flesh and spirit. That statement indicates that sin has a double face. Sin has corrupted both body and spirit. Man is totally depraved. That means that he has been corrupted in his internal self (variously described as "heart, soul, mind," and here as "spirited) as well as in his body. The spirit (the nonmaterial part of man viewed as independent of the body) ought to be the leading or ruling aspect of man. However, since it is corrupted it leads astray, and allows the body to do what it should not. It needs to be purified so that the Christian thinks and reasons and wills according to the Scriptures. The body too often takes the lead. It too has problems. Not only is it affected by sin in terms of defects and infirmities but sin dwells in its members (cf. Romans 6, 7). By that Paul means the body has become habituated to sin. The sinful nature within, with which man was born, has programmed the body to act under certain circumstances automatically, smoothly, comfortably and unconsciously in sinful ways.

This twofold nature of every problem faced by the counselor requires a double counseling response. The counselor must not only elicit agreement to the biblical change contemplated and an inner determination to work on it, but he must spend time helping the counselee to put this new way of life into effect. As the counselee is becoming rehabituated in some aspect of holiness (a process that takes at least 6 weeks of disciplined effort), the counselor monitors and corrects and, in various other ways, helps this process along. So there is an intellectual as well as a practical side to the process of change. In the latter, the theoretical determinations reached by the former are transformed into reality. Probably as many counseling failures may be traced to the lack of aggressively encountering counselee problems on a double front as for any other reason. Neither the cognitive side nor the sensory one can be neglected. They must be faced and handled in tandem. Those who emphasize heart change alone are as much at fault as those who emphasize behavior alone. 

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Copyright 1994 by Jay F. Adams
ISBN: 0-9643556-1-2
 

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