Wednesdays with Wesley: What Christian Perfection is...

What is Christian perfection then?

Wesley begins by saying that, "Indeed, it [Christian perfection] is only another term for holiness. They are two names for the same thing. Thus everyone that is perfect is holy, and everyone that is holy is, in the Scripture sense, perfect."

Part of this holiness was the restoration of our power not to sin. Christians do not continue in sin. They are freed from the power of sin. The power of sin has been destroyed and therefore no longer has dominion over them. Wesley does not mean that all Christians will not sin, but he does insist that "whosoever is tempted to any sin need not yield; for no man [or woman] is tempted above that he [or she] is able to bear." After all, what would it mean for God to give us a command and then not give us the power and grace to obey that command? Wesley refuses to believe in such a God and consequently takes seriously Jesus's words to go and sin no more. Of course, what does Wesley mean by sin? I do not mean to play with words; however, I do agree with Colin Williams who states:

It is clear that Wesley's view of perfection depends upon a distinction between two kinds of sin. In terms of sin in the absolute sense, as measured by the "perfect law," there is no such thing as perfection in believers. It is in terms of the sin of conscious separation from Christ that there can be perfection--a perfection of unbroken conscious dependence upon Christ.

This tension and twofold distinction of sin illustrates how Wesley could be asked if those who are entirely sanctified are sinners and respond, "Explain the term [sinner] one way, and I say, Yes; another, and I say, No."

Ultimately, Christian perfection is more a category of love than a category of sin. It involves an intense focus on the love of God and neighbor, these two being always linked for Wesley. Entire sanctification means a reordering of our desires where we participate in loving the right things, doing so only by the grace of the One who loved us first. Wesley said this love is "the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto them." This quote is from The Marks of the New Birth (1748). Eight years earlier Charles Wesley employed the exact same language when he wrote:

Jesus, thine all victorious love shed in my heart abroad; then shall my feet no longer rove, rooted and fixed in God. O that in me the sacred fire might now begin to glow; burn up the dross of base desire and make the mountains flow! O that it now from heaven might fall and all my sins consume! Come, Holy Ghost, for thee I call, Spirit of burning, come! Refining fire, go through my heart, illumine my soul; scatter they life through every part and sanctify the whole.

Christian perfection makes love of God and neighbor a natural response. The entirely sanctified are transformed in such a way "that whosoever desires may look into their hearts and see that only love and God are there." Needless to say, a heart that contains only love and God has no room for sin.

Christian perfection is a gift from God. Entire sanctification is something God does in us. Holiness "never becomes our possession." This is why it can happen either gradually or instantaneously if God decides to pull a Divine shortcut. Wesley comments that, "what God hath promised He [God] is able to perform and tht He [God] is able and willing to do it now." We, like God, have a role to play in Christian perfection. Christians are to "seek it earnestly so that they might find it speedily." When Wesley was asked if entire sanctification is ordinarily not given until a little before death he replied, "It is not to those who expect it no sooner nor probably ask for it." In other words, if you do not expect Christian perfection or ask for it, you will not get it. We are to be continually striving after it. Our waiting for Christian perfection is active, for "God does not, will not, give that faith, unless we seek it with all diligence."

Could this, expecting to be made perfect in love in this life, happen to the whole of creation? Eschatology might be the only thing harder to get agreement upon than Christian perfection. When the World Council of Churches met in Evanston they admitted that, "We are not agreed on the relationship between the Christian's hope here and now and his [and her] ultimate hope." For Wesley, Randy Maddox is convinced that, "a growing insistence on the redemption of all creation runs through Wesley's late writings." Williams agrees that"

The 'whole animated creation' will share in this new creation, being delivered from its present bondage to evil occasioned by the Fall, and sharing in 'the glorious liberty of the children of God' so that there shall be truly 'a new heaven and a new earth.'

Truly, Wesley envisioned a Christian world. Wesley saw the petition "Thy kingdom come" as:

Offered up for the whole intelligent creation, who are all interested in this grand event, the final renovation of all things by God's putting an end to misery and sin, to infirmity and death, taking all things into his own hands, and setting up the kingdom which endureth throughout all ages.

I have a hard time reconciling Wesley's eschatology where all of creation is made perfect in love with Wesley's belief in a real Hell with people in it. Wesley describes Hell as a place:

Where they [the wicked] will 'gnaw their tongues' for anguish and pain...there the dogs of hell--pride, malice, revenge, rage, horror, despair--continually devour them. There 'they have no rest day or night, but the smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever.'

For Wesley, judgment is lasting. If some are punished forever, how then is all of creation redeemed? Despite a few possible inconsistencies such as the one just mentioned, Wesley held fast to his teaching that:

To crown all, there will be a deep, an intimate, an uninterrupted union with God; a constant communion with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, through the Spirit; a continual enjoyment of the Three-One God, and of all the creatures in him!