Wesleyan View
A second view of sanctification besides
the Lutheran view is the Wesleyan view. The Wesleyan view, while distinguishing
between sanctification and entire sanctification, believes that Christians can
be entirely sanctified in their earthly lives. Christians are sanctified at the
moment of salvation, but then there is a process of entire sanctification,
which is “the experience of being made perfect in love” (96). The perfection
that Wesleyans argue for is not a “sinless perfection,” but rather “The loving
God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. This implies that no wrong
temper, none contrary to love, remains in the soul and that all the thoughts,
words, and actions are governed by pure love.”[1]
Wesley maintained a distinction between “sin” and “mistakes,” noting that sin
is “a voluntary transgression of a known law” while imperfections (such as
mistakes, faults, etc.) are an “involuntary transgression of a known law.”[2]
Wesleyan sanctification views this ability to love God perfectly as realized in
an instantaneous moment, even though the process leading up to this moment was
not instantaneous. Wesley notes, “That Christian perfection is that love of God
and our neighbor which implies deliverance from all sin…that it is given
instantaneously, in one moment.”[3]
Furthermore, the believer’s state after the experience still allows room for
grace to work, so that the believer is to continue to grow in love and
knowledge for Christ. Wesleyan sanctification relies heavily upon the Holy
Spirit to give believers a “second blessing” after conversion so that they are
able to reach this state of perfection. Personal experience also factors in
heavily, in that while only the Scripture could establish a doctrine,
“experience was a necessary confirmation” that the doctrine was correctly
understood (96). Finally, Wesleyan sanctification does not hold to original sin
in the sense that humans are responsible for Adam’s sin (only for their own
personal sin) and locates the source of sin outside the human heart, which has
been completely made clean. Wesley states, “it is only of grown Christians it
can be affirmed they are in such a sense perfect, as, secondly, to be freed
from evil thoughts and evil tempers. First, from evil or sinful thoughts.
Indeed, whence should they spring?...If therefore, the heart be no longer evil,
then evil thoughts no longer proceed out of it.”[4]
The Wesleyan view of sanctification does
have strengths that should be commended. First, unlike the Lutheran position
and like Scripture, there is a distinction made between justification and
sanctification. Secondly, there is a strong emphasis on the role of the Holy
Spirit in the sanctification process, so sanctification is not based entirely
on human efforts and willpower. Thirdly, the Wesleyan view has a high regard
for loving God, and tries to cultivate this love for God through holy living.
The Wesleyan view reminds Christians that even after they made “perfect,” they
still have room to grow, and cannot be spiritually lazy.
[1]John Wesley, A Plain
Account of Christian Perfection (London: Epworth Press, 1952), 42.
[2]Wesley, Christian
Perfection, 45.
[3]Wesley, Christian
Perfection, 41.
[4]Ibid., 19.
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