1.1 Filled with the Holy Spirit (part 1)
5. Given all this background in the Old Testament, how in the world did Wesley and the Wesleyan tradition come to associate holiness with perfect love?
To be honest, I'm not sure I picked up this connection too much growing up in the holiness tradition either. Growing up, holiness seemed to be much more about the things you didn't do -- a negative concept -- than the things you did do. What I heard was that, when you got sanctified, you stopped doing things.
As an aside, let me make at least something I think is an observation. As I went to seminary, I began to loosen some of the "standards" of holiness I grew up with. I started eating out on Sunday. I started going to movies. I can't remember what the subject was, but at one point my father exclaimed, "What don't you do?"
I found this a revealing question. My father was a reasonable, kind-hearted man. He was not a legalist by any means. Still, growing up in ultraconservative holiness circles, his framework of the Christian life was primarily formulated in duty and in what you didn't do. At his funeral, I noted that he was a "good and faithful servant," but I'm not sure how often he felt like a son. Steve Deneff and David Drury captured this important concept in their book Soul Shift. [1] In our spiritual development, at some point we should fully feel the fatherly love of God for us as his children. We are not merely servants of God.
I believe I have observed that those who have remained in the conservative holiness movement often retain this character. It is a culture of "don't." When I worked at Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU), I remember hearing some people puzzle that students from holiness Bible colleges seemed more inclined to do their graduate work at a school like Bob Jones rather than IWU even though we were more closely aligned with them theologically. It made sense to me, though, because it seemed to me that Bob Jones was more aligned with them culturally -- a culture of don't.
In politics, there is a tendency toward a "law and order" approach. That is to say, it seems to me that the holiness tradition tends to lean more toward stopping wrong than toward advancing good. My friend the late Keith Drury once observed that the children of the holiness movement often retained a certain rigidity in their temperament even after they had become more mainstream. It might show up in the way they dressed -- not in standards but in excessive tidiness. Some went to the opposite extreme and became rigid in their rejection of conservatism -- long hair and a complete disregard for rules.
Often, he suggested, after having mocked their parents for their rigidity on one set of issues, they would grow up to be rigid on another set of issues. Without realizing it, they had become their parents. But instead of railing against hair length or jewelry, now they railed against something else. The issues had changed, but the spirit of "don'tness" had remained.
I will leave that aside with you to hammer out the details in your life with God.
6. The New Testament does retain the element of "don't" in its sense of holiness. It is a clear part of the equation. Being sanctified means an end to sin. "Without holiness, no one will see the Lord," Hebrews 12:14.
But there is so much more to holiness in the New Testament than endings. Holiness also involves empowerment for good. Being set aside to God means being empowered by God. It means being plugged into God. I remember a pastor talking about how, when he was sanctified, he stopped getting angry as much. Yes! That's wonderful. But there is even more, God's power can not only stop uncontrolled anger. It can positively start a loving attitude toward others.
This was quite a shift in my understanding of what holiness was. But it was a key part of John Wesley's understanding. For him, Christian perfection was a perfection in love. Entire sanctification for him was about perfect love. In the last century, the Nazarene Mildred Bangs Wynkoop (1905-97) reminded the holiness movement of this focus. [2] Like me, she grew up with a sense that holiness was about the removal of the sin nature from a person. She reminded our tradition that it was much more about a relationship with the God of love.
I feel like it's important to make another aside here. The concept of love is in danger today from more than one front. It used to be endangered because of its trivialization. Love was the shallow, dreamy, ultimately self-gratifying emotion of the late 60s. This sense of love was really selfish and not about true love. In 1982, James Dobson reminded the culture that sometimes love has to be "tough." [3]
Whatever you think of the details of his approach, it is clear biblically that discipline is part of love. Hebrews 12 is very clear that God's discipline is an act of love. How so? To get us back on track. After all, the path that departs from God is a path of self-destruction. Discipline is not primarily about punishment -- the punitive view of "don't." It is about redirection -- the positive goals of true lovingkindness.
At the moment, love is endangered from a more insidious direction. The culture of don't can become toxic with its sense of law and order. At its worst, the culture of don't turns on love and becomes its enemy. I have recently seen Christians begin to vilify empathy, even calling it "toxic empathy." This is don't culture gone amok, and it is of the Devil.
It is one thing to correct a shallow sense of love as self-gratification. It is one thing to remind those who have difficulty disciplining because they have a compulsion to be liked. It is another thing to turn on love and treat it as the enemy.
True empathy is nothing other than loving your neighbor as yourself. This is the command of God. No exceptions appear in Scripture. If you want a don't, "don't hate" is a bigger one than whatever one you want to see enforced. This is the whole of the Law and the Prophets, Jesus says (Matt. 22:36-40). Jesus puts it another way in Matthew 7:12: "Everything that you would want people to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."
This is the Golden Rule, and it is another way of expressing empathy. Empathy is getting into the experiences of someone else. Empathy is being able to see a situation from the standpoint of those who are in it. If there is a danger to empathy, it is that it would prevent discipline. And as we have mentioned, discipline is part of love because you wish the good of the other.
But beware that the Devil trick you into hate in the name of law. Know thyself. Receive the Holy Spirit, and let the light of God fill you. Ironically, the holiness culture of don't can lead to spiritual darkness.
There are levels of sin, as we will see in the next chapter. Let's pose a trick question. In God's economy, which is the greater sin, to be too loving or to be too hateful? The question is wrong, of course. It is never a sin to love, and it is always a sin to hate people (Matt. 5:21-22). Love can be misguided, but it cannot sin. Other psychological dynamics can be disguised as love, but authentic loving is never wrong.
However, the quest to stop sin can blur into genuine hatred toward the sinner. Hatred can clothe itself in righteousness. This is nothing other than sin disguising itself as godliness. It is something we must guard our hearts against. Human nature is prone to self-deception and, before you know it, you can be swallowed up in darkness.
7. As surprising as it is, the New Testament regularly associates holiness with love toward one another...
[1] David Drury and Steve Deneff, Soul Shift: The Measure of a Life Transformed (Wesleyan Publishing House, 2012).
[2] Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism (Beacon Hill, 1972).
[3] James Dobson, Love Must Be Tough (Tyndale House, 1982).
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