Every time someone joins the church where I serve, I always try to explain a bit about what makes Methodism distinct. Sometimes, people grew up in a Methodist Church but, as often, they had an experience in a different tradition or else no church background at all and I want them to know what this is all about. I always share, like in my first article for this newsletter, that Methodism, at its core, just wants to be about making faithful Christians. However, I also talk about places where Methodists put a lot of weight where other traditions don’t.
One of those things is a doctrine that Wesley taught which he called “Christian Perfection.” In my experience, people don’t like that name at all. People often have an instinctive rejection of anything with the word “perfect” in it. One of the ways that we in the GMC have tried to avoid that reaction is by using the phrase “entire sanctification” as a synonym. In fact, you find “entire sanctification” more often in our Book of Doctrines and Discipline than “Christian perfection,” although all our historic questions for ordinands use the language of perfection.
I understand the desire to avoid using a term with such baggage, but I wonder if we miss the beauty that Wesley was getting at.
Let’s step back from the language for a moment and ask some practical questions. Which do you believe is the more powerful force? Sin or grace? Put that way, it is hard for a Christian to say anything but grace. How about this question? In which part of your life do you think that sin is more powerful than God’s grace? In which part of your life do you think God either doesn’t want you to be redeemed or else is not able to redeem you?
In the end, all Christian Perfection is really saying is that grace is stronger than sin, that God wants to save all of ourselves, even where we are most broken. It is a conviction that redemption starts in this life and continues to grow and that we never get to the point in our lives where we can say that God is done working in us and we just are stuck in our sin.
Now, that being said, I wonder if sometimes we want to resist a doctrine of Christian Perfection because we secretly don’t want every aspect of our lives to be redeemed. Perhaps we have areas of our lives where we kind of like to keep God out of it. Maybe we even have sins in our lives that we quietly nourish and enjoy and we don’t like the idea of having to turn that part of our lives over to God. If that is the case, then our problem isn’t with Christian Perfection, it is with God, because God has made it clear that he wants us to turn our whole hearts to Him.
Whether you call it Christian Perfection, Entire Sanctification, or even just the goal of being a Christian in general, this is a precious treasure of our theological heritage. Let us keep it and preserve it, even when it is hard.
