Preface: A Sanctification Story
1.1 Filled with the Holy Spirit (part 1)2.1 What is holiness? (part 1)
2.2 What's love got to do with it? (part 2)
7. As surprising as it is, the New Testament regularly associates holiness with love toward one another. 1 Peter 1:15-16 is a good place to start. First, it quotes Leviticus 19:2 -- "Be holy because I am holy." Remember that Leviticus puts some instruction in that category that isn't really moral -- not wearing clothing of mixed thread, for example. In the Old Testament, being holy is much more about keeping the particulars of the covenant -- some of which we would call "ceremonial" -- rather than morality as we think of it today.
But in the fuller revelation of 1 Peter, sanctification means a purified heart that results in love toward one another. "Since you have purified your souls... love one another fervently with a pure heart" (1:22).
Now, we are finally getting to the heart of how Wesley understood entire sanctification. For Wesley, entire sanctification was about perfect love. He called this perfect love, "Christian perfection."
8. Once again, Wesley's exegesis was "pre-reflective" in many regards. As a "pre-modern" interpreter who wasn't really wired to read the biblical text inductively, he read his system into the text at times when it wasn't exactly there.
For example, the KJV of Hebrews 6:1 says to "go on unto perfection." Reading his definitions into the words, he took this as an injunction to go on to Christian perfection in love. However, most modern translations rightly translate teleiotes here as "maturity." In context, the strong food the author wants the audience to move on to is arguably a deeper understanding of the sacrificial offering of Christ. It has little to do with moral perfection.
Similarly, take Matthew 5:48, which is sometimes translated, "You will be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." This verse is relevant to the question of entire sanctification, but it has nothing to do with Wesley's "order of salvation" (ordo salutis). The Common English Bible gives us the sense of this verse better when it renders it, "Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete."
Matthew 5:43-48 is the culmination of a chapter in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is teaching what it truly means to keep the Law. It is not just about keeping the Law on the surface -- I didn't actually kill someone or have an affair, so I'm good. It's about being complete (or "perfect") in our law-keeping. We don't even hate others. We don't even lust at others (or get a divorce to be with someone legally).
In the final paragraph of this chapter, Jesus sums up what it means to fulfill, to be "complete" in your keeping of the Law. It is not just loving your friends. It is loving your enemies as well. It is being like God, who gives good rain to both good farmers and bad ones. He gives the good sun to both bad farmers and good ones. He is complete or "perfect" in his love, not partial or skimpy in his love depending on whether you are loyal to him.
Matthew 5:48 was thus not about a second work of grace. It was about a love we are to give both to friend and foe. That is what Matthew means by being "perfect."
The English word perfect threw Wesley off. After all, he was a perfectionist by nature, and it led him to frequent bouts of self-doubt. In the New Testament, it almost always refers either to maturity or completeness. Perhaps only once -- in James 3:2 -- does it have any sense like we typically think of in English.
9. Nevertheless, the association between holiness and love is genuinely there in the New Testament. Holiness has a negative association with sin -- those who are sanctified should not have sin. But holiness has a positive association with love -- those who are purified will love others. In the next chapter, we will explore how this movement from sin to love works. It will be no surprise that it happens through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, as we saw in chapter 1.
This makes sense because the New Testament says that God's nature is love (1 John 4:7-8). In fact, we could actually define sin as that which is contrary to the love of God and others. Think about it, when Jesus was asked to identify the greatest commandment, he said it was to love God and neighbor. All the Law and the Prophets, he said, are derivative of these (Matt. 22:36-40). Paul says the same thing in Romans 13:8 -- the whole Law can be summed up in the love of neighbor.
If love is what all of God's commandments are about, then sin by definition must be everything that is contrary to the love of God and neighbor. Here we see the essence of what holiness is about. When God empowers us to love him and others, by definition we move away from sin and toward holiness. The more we love, the less we sin. And the more we love, the more we are in line with God's holiness.
10. Among all the passages in the Bible that I highlighted in orange, 1 Thessalonians 5:23 is one of the ones that is mostly still standing. "May the God of peace himself sanctify you all completely, and may your whole body, soul, and spirit be kept blameless at the arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ."
There are still some aspects of this verse in context that we should clarify. For example, it is directed to an entire congregation. We tend to read it in terms of me -- individualistically. But it is much more a matter of a whole congregation, plural, collectively.
Secondly, Paul was not picturing a regimented theological event. He gives the goal -- you should be completely set aside to God, completely done with sin ("every form of evil," 5:22), and completely full of love toward God and each other. (He doesn't mention that last bit but no doubt he would agree if we asked him.) That's the goal and you need to get there by God's power (5:24).
Wesley and we Wesleyans have systematized this verse. That's ok as long as we know we are going beyond what the text had in mind. In later chapters, we will suggest that there is an implied system here even if it was not in Paul's mind.
What we will see is that, while Christians should be completely done with sin from the moment they come to Christ, they typically aren't. We often haven't given everything to Christ at conversion because we don't even know what we need to give. The result is that we often come to a moment of crisis and decision even after we have initially come to Christ and had our sins forgiven. The crisis is the decision of whether I will give everything to Christ or withhold some from God?
This moment of full surrender is logically necessary for God to give me the fullness of the Spirit. And without the full empowerment of the Spirit, I will not be able to love completely. Nor will I be fully sanctified. The logic reconstructs the Wesleyan sense of entire sanctification without overreading the key biblical texts. More on this logic of sanctification in the remaining chapters.
1 comment:
Thanks for this one.
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