Preface: A Sanctification Story

I want to take a brief pause from my writing on hermeneutics to crank out a little book I've been wanting to write on entire sanctification. I'm thinking of the title, "A Brief Guide to Wesleyan Holiness" (suggestions welcome). Last year Chris Bounds did an ordination course on Holiness, not to mention a book he co-authored. Steve Deneff also did a microcourse on "Understanding Holiness."

But none of these really satisfy me. Not long after working with these courses, I thought I would take a shot. I've played around with the outline, trying to find an optimal approach. So here we go. A Preface and five chapters. Here's the Preface.
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Preface: A Sanctification Story
1. I grew up regularly hearing sermons about “getting sanctified.” As a boy, I quickly learned that I needed to “get saved” so I would go to heaven when I died (or when the rapture happened). But salvation wasn’t the end of the journey. There was another crucial experience after salvation that I needed as well, and I needed to begin seeking it as soon as I was saved. That is, I also needed to be entirely sanctified.

I was never a touchy-feely, experiential person growing up. I often felt like I stood outside my emotions looking on. I identified with Spock in the original Star Trek series. He had deep emotions, but they were buried out of sight and under lock and key. Probably because of what I heard preached and modeled, I associated the experiences of salvation and sanctification with emotional experiences -- experiences that I did not immediately find forthcoming despite my willingness and regular prayers for them.

2. As a side note, I have found Chris Bounds’ analysis particularly insightful on the timing of sanctification. [1] He observes that the Wesleyan tradition has sometimes preached a "longer way" to sanctification, sometimes a "shorter way," and sometimes a "middle way." In his later years, John Wesley himself (1703-91), the originator of our tradition, tended to see "Christian perfection" as something that only a few would experience. Even then, it would mostly be toward the end of their lives. However, there are precedents for all three views in Wesley's preaching and writings.

In the 1830s, a woman in New York City named Phoebe Palmer (1807-74) tried to reclaim some of Wesley's earlier optimism that sanctification could happen much sooner in life and be the regular experience of believers. In Palmer’s time, many Methodists leaned toward the "longer way" view of sanctification, seeing it as a gradual process rather than an immediate experience. [2] She began to teach a "shorter way" to sanctification -- one available immediately by faith.

This is the view that would inspire the holiness revivals of the late 1800s, and it was the view of holiness with which I grew up in the late 1900s. Unfortunately, it sometimes disintegrated into what Keith Drury called "two tripism" in his classic book, Holiness for Ordinary People. [3] There are stories of people who, after just returning from the altar to get saved, were told that they needed to turn around and go right back to get sanctified. You might get saved one Sunday and then go to get sanctified the next.

In Holiness, Bounds describes the view of the Church of the Nazarene as one where, if you completely surrender everything to God, you should believe by faith that you have been entirely sanctified whether you have a noticeable emotional experience or not. [4] You might call it a "name it claim it" view. Say everything is God's and claim by faith that you are sanctified.

By contrast, Bounds suggests that the most appropriate approach is the "middle way." [5] On the one hand, it is more optimistic than to relegate sanctification to a few lucky ones right before they die. At the same time, the shorter way can border on a heresy known as Pelagianism. Pelagius (ca. 354-418) more or less taught that we had it within our own power to choose God and do good. The church would deem this a heresy, teaching that we can only do good and choose God when God empowers us to be able to do so. [6]

The "name it, claim it" view of sanctification seems to put sanctification into our hands and into our power. Some versions of the "shorter way" risk making sanctification seem like a human decision rather than a divine work. We can become sanctified at a time of our choosing. Bounds, on the other hand, insists that sanctification is always a matter of God's choosing. By God's grace, we can prepare ourselves. We can cooperate with God's grace to consecrate and surrender ourselves, but sanctification is ultimately God's act rather than our act. Accordingly, the timing is up to God. 

3. After much agony, I did testify to salvation. I experienced a moment of peace that I could point to as the moment of my salvation. Then, the agony began again – seeking the experience of sanctification. If I had known the teaching of Bounds, I could have rested in God’s timing. But that is not the way I heard the preaching on this topic. Whether intentional or not, the preaching I grew up with put the responsibility for sanctification on me.

More than once, I heard sermons use the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32 as a model for sanctification. “If you want to be sanctified enough,” the sermon went, “if you will not let God go until he blesses you, then he will sanctify you.” In other words, being sanctified was about how much I wanted it. If I would truly give everything to God, then he would certainly bless me with sanctification if I wanted it enough.

In my opinion, this preaching was basically Pelagian. Yes, we need to get to a place of full surrender to God. When the Spirit reveals aspects of our lives that we have not given fully to God, we need to hand them over. But then the waiting begins. God gets to choose when we will experience his work in us. We have no reason to think he will delay long, but it is an important truth that it is God's decision.

4. It was a January morning in my first year of college. I would drive back to college in two steps. The first stint would take me four hours to my sister's house. Her husband pastored a church and the parsonage was next to the church. Then the next day I would drive the rest of the way.

As I drove north, I began to agonize over entire sanctification. "If you really wanted the experience," the voice in my head said, "you would not leave Lakeland for Central until you had received the blessing." I had the picture of Jacob wrestling with the angel in my mind. "If you were really serious about entire sanctification, you wouldn't go back to college until you were sanctified."

My past experience told me that it could be a long time before I felt something. I had struggled off and on to have the feeling that I was saved for years. How long would it take before I felt like I had experienced sanctification? I wanted to get back to college!

Yet I felt like I must wait. I had just felt a call to ministry. My whole vocation was going to be focused on preaching the word and being a spiritual model. I had to clear up the matter of my sanctification. 

I finally surrendered. Yes. I wouldn't leave Lakeland until I had experienced entire sanctification -- even if I missed the spring semester.

At that moment of surrender, I felt a release and a great peace. When I arrived at the church in Lakeland, I went into the sanctuary and thanked God. My trip was not delayed.

5. Looking back, I thank God for his mercy. I doubt that God was behind the moments of torture that I experienced on that drive. Perhaps it was my own neurosis. Perhaps it was the Devil testing me. But the Lord stooped to my weakness, and for that I am grateful.

I have reflected much more extensively on the Wesleyan doctrine of holiness since those days in college. My ministry came to focus especially on teaching Scripture, and I was particularly interested in the biblical view of holiness during my studies. In fact, part of the reason I ended up focusing on Hebrews was its teaching on sanctification.

In the following pages, I want to share some of the insights that I believe came out of those years of study. I have remained Wesleyan. Nevertheless, my understanding of various verses has been refined over the years. I continue to believe that all believers will ideally come to a point where they need to surrender everything to God. And it is only then that we can have the fullness of the Spirit empowering our lives. 

I invite you to explore the topic of "entire sanctification" with me.

[1] Matt Ayers, Christopher T. Bounds, Caleb T. Friedeman, Holiness: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Theology (InterVarsity, 2023), 334-41.

[2] Kevin M. Watson, Doctrine, Spirit, & Discipline: A History of the Wesleyan Tradition in the United States (Zondervan, 2024), 204-7.

[3] Keith Drury, Holiness for Ordinary People 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, 2004).

[4] Holiness, 337.

[5] Holiness, 355-58.

[6] The difference between Wesleyans and Calvinists is not about God's empowerment but about the role of our wills. Calvinists view God's grace as entire and all-or-nothing. Saving grace is like an on-off switch that God either turns on entirely or he doesn't. Salvation is a matter of "monergism" -- the sole action of God.

By contrast, I've likened the Wesleyan view of God's grace to something more like a dimmer switch. God turns up his grace enough for us to signify a desire for more if we choose. Then he turns his grace up more until eventually we are regenerated. In this case, our empowered wills cooperate with God's grace. Salvation is a matter of synergism -- a working together of God's will with our will.

Wesleyans therefore reject Pelagianism just as Calvinists do.