The hope of perfection

From Richard Heitzenrater’s Wesley and the People Called Methodists:

Wesley was convinced that his position on justification and sanctification was crucial to the goal of spreading scriptural holiness. His preaching and organization had taken on quite a different shape from those of Whitefield over the years, in no small part because evangelism itself takes on a different form when holiness is the goal. … The possibility of perfection in love through grace was the distinctive and defining message in Wesley’s revival, and the very organization of the movement itself, as a network of disciplined small groups, was designed to nurture that hope of perfection in the lives of the Methodists. The fact that many Calvinists and Evangelicals, within and without the Church, could not agree with this doctrine did not deter Wesley from his single-minded vision of reforming the land.

 

I heard a preacher on the radio yesterday repeating that common line: No one is perfect. We never will be perfect. But we can be authentic.

Henri Nouwen writes something similar at the end of his book The Wounded Healer.

It is a commonplace idea.

And it is one that the entire Wesleyan project was set against.

No, I cannot achieve perfection through my own efforts. Not even with the help of God will I overcome the weakness of the flesh that gives rise to errors and mistakes. But, by the grace of God, Wesley preached, I can be perfected in love.

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

To speak Wesleyan is to understand that the words “perfect,” “holiness,” and “sanctification” all describe the same thing. Scholars may well point out shades of difference, but they are mere shadows. The central thrust of Wesley’s ministry was to spread holiness — that is perfect Christian love — across the land.

Open air preaching, itinerant preachers, societies, classes, bands, hymnals, pamphlets, conferences, and all the other apparatus of Methodism came into being to accomplish this mission.

Of course, not everyone shared Wesley’s zeal. He spent a great deal of energy trying to prod, goad, and pummel Methodists into being Methodists. They settled in.

But to claim the Wesleyan mantle and to name him on our theological geneology should require of us an awareness of the very thing that made Wesley Wesley. We believe men, women, and children can be made perfect in love by the grace of God. We expect it. We preach and teach it. We live it.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

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