You may
not remember, but we are in a series on holiness. We have dealt with some other matters for the
last several months, but now we are ready to take up again the issue of
holiness.
You may need to look back at previous posts, to
remind yourself of what we have covered.
First, we defined holiness not as primarily being good, but being wholly
devoted and completely set apart for God.
Then, talked about holiness in the Old Testament and how God created
people to be holy, set apart for him, and how he called the nation of Israel to
be holy. Next, we looked at the call to
holiness in the New Testament. Finally,
we saw how the early church maintained its holiness under pressure of
persecution by the Roman Empire and how holiness was maintained by the monastic
movement, monks and nuns, in the midst of the corruption of the church of the
Middle Ages.
Now, we turn our attention to
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, and his view of
holiness. Wesley took seriously the call
to holiness found in the Bible and all the verses we have looked at in previous
articles.
Never one to beat around the
bush, Wesley wrote and preached a sermon with the provocative title: “Christian
Perfection” which you can read at http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-40-christian-perfection/. Wesley, however defines Christian perfection
very carefully.
First, Wesley says that
Christians are not so perfect as to be free from imperfections that arise from
illness and disability, ignorance, error, or temptation. As human beings, we will always be limited in
these ways. All of this is a result of
what is called original sin, the sin and brokenness we are all born with and
that is in the world we are born into.
Next, Wesley talks about how
Christians are perfect. According to
Wesley, each and every individual Christian can, by the grace of God working in
us and by the power
of the Holy Spirit, avoid all willful sin.
To understand this, we need to understand Wesley’s definition of sin,
which may be different than the one many of you are carrying around. For Wesley, as sin is a willful
violation of a known law of God. In
order to be a sin, an action has
to both be known to be wrong and done on purpose.
So, here is the good news: You
cannot sin by accident. The bad news is
that this raises our level of responsibility and our need for God’s forgiveness
through faith in Jesus Christ. We all
have physical and mental
limitations, but those limitations are not sins. We all make mistakes, but
mistakes are not sins, and sins are not mistakes. We all face temptations, but temptations are
not sins, unless we give into them.
Next time we will talk about
how to get to holiness, or at least begin the journey to it.
