Is Christian Perfection Possible?

According to Article Ten of The Church of the Nazarene, “entire sanctification is that act (work) of God, subsequent to regeneration (justification), by which (regenerate) believers are made free from original (inbred) sin, or depravity, and brought into the state of entire devotement to God, and the holy obedience of love made perfect.”[1] This sounds wonderful, but the obvious question would then be: is this the experience of the church? Are Christians capable of being made perfect in love and are they capable of experiencing freedom from original sin? As Nazarenes, we say we believe this to be the case, but does this concept actually ring true to our own experience? Do we find that we have been set free from original sin and that we have been made perfect in love?

Article Ten of The Church of the Nazarene states that the experience of entire sanctification is known by many other terms or names. At the 2009 General Conventions of the Church of the Nazarene a number of lines were added to Article Ten of our Articles of Faith. One of these added sentences states the following on entire sanctification: “This experience is also known by various terms representing its different phases, such as ‘Christian perfection,’ ‘perfect love,’ ‘heart purity,’ ‘the baptism with or infilling of the Holy Spirit,’ ‘the fullness of the blessing,’ and ‘Christian holiness.’”[2] These are all different names for the same experience, or at least different aspects of the same experience. Different groups of Christians have different names and different understandings of this idea of Christian Perfection and what it exactly looks like.

This understanding of a second work of grace is not limited to only our denomination. Other groups within the universal church have also preached this concept or a concept similar to the one that we claim for ourselves. Nazarenes claim the doctrine of entire sanctification, but so do other denominations, such as the Wesleyans, the Free Methodists, and the Salvation Army. Though they may differ slightly in the way they present this belief, the belief is relatively the same. Other denominations at least believe that God has called His people to holiness, believing the words of Scripture which say that without holiness no one will see the Lord. The Catholic Church especially seems to have placed a great emphasis upon the need for heart-holiness, though honestly it would seem that many parishioners have lost a proper understanding of what this actually means.

I believe that Christian Perfection is a possibility in the Christian life. I believe that God calls us to be holy, and that he expects that we will let Him work His holiness within us. I do not believe that we can become holy on our own strength. It is God’s work in us. The Apostle Paul writes, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”[3] I also believe that because of The Fall we are inclined to sin since birth. We are born into sin, which means that we cannot help but sin. The Psalmist writes, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”[4] It is a natural part of who we are. However, I also believe that God can rescue us from this bondage to sin and the sinful nature. I believe that He works His grace in us before we even know Him or respond to His promptings, and I believe that we have the choice of whether or not we will follow after Him with all of our hearts and with all of our minds. This is the choice that we have, but even if we choose to follow after Christ, we still struggle with sin because we cannot work out holiness inside of us. We must allow God to fill us with His Spirit. I believe that we receive the Holy Spirit when we choose to follow after Christ. When we come to Christ, I believe that we must surrender all over to Him and not hold anything back to the best of our knowledge. There may be areas in our lives that we do not necessarily give over to God at this point, but I believe that God will make known to us at the proper times whatever remains in us that we need to give over to Him. I believe that the believer is sanctified by the Spirit at the moment of salvation. However, I also believe that the moment of salvation may not necessarily be an obvious moment or a distinguishable time in the life of the believer. I think that some people sort of just find themselves as a part of the church. Some seem to somehow get incorporated into the church and find themselves as believers through community experience, and some people are simply born into the church and do not even remember a time when they were not Christians. However, I also think there comes a point in time even for these people who have believed in God all of their lives where they must make a conscious decision to continue to embrace this faith, aware that the choice is theirs. Also, if they have not been baptized in water, they should choose to do so at some point. All of this having been said, I think that the Holy Spirit lives in all believers regardless of their level of maturity. I think that we grow in Christ, and that over time we become more and more in tune with the Spirit of Christ. To be honest, I am unsure what to do with the idea of “instantaneous entire sanctification.” It seems like entire sanctification could be something that happens in an instant, but also something that happens overtime. I think I like the distinction made by H. Orton Wiley between the idea of purity and maturity. He said that purity is the instantaneous work of God in the heart of the believer, but that maturity is something that we grow into.[5] I think I like this idea because it kind of explains the problem we have run into when discussing when entire sanctification takes place in the life of the believer. Is it instantaneous or is it process? Wiley asserted that being made pure before God is instantaneous and I am inclined to agree with him on this. It would seem to me that there is no such thing as being partially pure, and that something or someone is either pure or they are not pure. I think it would make sense to have a pure heart, but still be growing in maturity.

I think that entire sanctification should not necessarily be something that occurs at a crisis moment. While I think that this is a valid scenario, it seems that entire sanctification is something that might not look a whole lot different in the life of the believer than the way their life looked the day before they became entirely sanctified. It seems to me that if they truly have surrendered their lives over to God that God would respond to this by giving them more and more grace. Honestly, the concept of entire sanctification confuses me, but maybe that is alright. Maybe this is because there will always be an element of mystery to the nature of God and the way that nature is imparted to us.

I know that when we are saved we must repent of our sins, and that this means that we must turn away from that which separates us from God. God’s Spirit living in us helps us to know what we should do and what we should not do, and that His Spirit does not act with some sort of rigid moralism. The Holy Spirit speaks to us in love for our own good, for the preservation of our soul. The Spirit checks us, and we feel guilt when we do something that goes against God’s best for us. I think that repentance is something that happens at the time of salvation, but I also believe that repentance is something that needs to continue on throughout our lives. It would seem that this might contradict what I said earlier about Christian Perfection being possible, but I do not believe this to be so. I believe that even those who have been perfected in love continue to repent. I think that this ongoing repentance is actually a sign of being perfected in love. This does not mean that the believer has let sin rule over or master them. It means that they are aware of their need of a Savior. They are aware that no matter how close they are to God, there is always the potential for sin in this life. Does this mean that the sinful nature is not truly eradicated within those who have been made perfect in love? No, I do not think so. I think that the potential for sin is always there, and that we act upon that in one way or another. We either allow God to have His way in us, or we choose to follow our own way in sin. John Wesley believed that the entirely sanctified believer did not truly sin, but that they carried infirmities in this life. He believed that these were not truly sins because they were not committed willingly against a known law of God, but he believed that we still needed to repent of these infirmities.[6] I would agree with this idea because I recognize that we do carry infirmities even after being entirely sanctified, and I believe that repentance is something that necessarily continues on throughout the believer’s life. However, I am unsure of Wesley’s idea of infirmities to a certain extent. He says that they are not true sins, so it would seem that the entirely sanctified believer is free from committing true sins, but this seems faulty to me. It seems as though those who have been entirely sanctified actually do commit “true sins,” meaning that even those who have been entirely sanctified have time where they willfully transgress a known law of God. If this is not the case, then I am not sure I have ever met anyone who has truly been entirely sanctified. However, I do believe that the Spirit works in the heart of the believer, convicting them of their sins and calling them to repentance. I also believe that those who have been entirely sanctified do not behave in the same way as those who do not have the Spirit behave, and even differently than believers who do have that Spirit but who simply may have not yet been entirely sanctified. But this is not simply an issue of behavior, it is an issue of the transformation of the heart. Paul writes, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”[7] The believer who has been entirely sanctified is a believer who not only has the Spirit of God living in them, but whose own spirit has been changed by the Holy Spirit. The love of God is overflowing from them because they have allowed God’s love to fill them completely. This is why I believe that Christian Perfection is possible. It is not something that we do ourselves. It is the entire transformation of our own personal spirit by the love of God in the Holy Spirit. God is love, and where God is there is love. So if God is within every aspect of a person, their heart, their soul, their mind, their strength, then the love of God will be present and evident in every aspect of that person. The love of God is perfect, and this is how Christians can be made perfect. It is not anything that they have done. It is all by the grace of God. It is the grace of God that called out to us before we knew Him, it is His grace that causes some to not even remember a time when they did not believe, and it is His grace that fills us with His Spirit and allows us to make room enough for His love, and for Him Himself.

Irenaeus believed that God’s goal in creation was that mankind would be united with Him, and that they would continue to grow in their relationship with Him. He believed that God created us in His image as well as His likeness and with the potential to be more than what we are, but that sin entered our world and we fell, thus interrupting this process. He believed that Christ would have come as a human, God made into flesh, regardless of whether or not there was a fall, because God’s goal has always been to be united with us. This does not mean that we will one day become God or gods, but it means that not only did the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ restore the likeness of God within us, but it also restored our potential to become more than what we are. We are able to be united with God in love through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the body of the Church.[8] This concept is known as recapitulation, and it bears resemblance to the regeneration at work in believers. In this view, the sinful nature truly is eradicated within the church, and this not just in a heavenly state, but on earth. In Christ, who showed us how mankind was created to be, we see the collision of heaven with earth. God will establish His kingdom on earth in fulfillment of Christ’s prayer and the prayer of the Church, who is the bride of Christ, “May it be on earth as it is in Heaven.” The kingdom of Christ is not only spiritual, but physical. The two cannot be separated. Christian Perfection is not just perfection in the spiritual sense, but in the physical sense as well. The likeness of God has been restored within us, and one day our physical infirmities and diseases will be removed as well. God dwells in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and we are united with Him through Christ. God is with us now, and He will continue to be with us. This is in agreement with the last recorded words of John Wesley upon his deathbed, which were, “Best of all, God is with us.”[9]



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[1] (eds.) Dean G. Blevins, Charles D. Crow, David E. Downs, Paul W. Thornhill and David P. Wilson. Manual/2009-2013 Church of the Nazarene. Kansas City, MO: Nazarene Publishing House, 2009, 33.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Phil. 2:13
[4] Ps. 51:5
[5] Mark R. Quanstrom. A Century of Holiness Theology. Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 2004, 86.
[6] John Wesley. On Sin in Believers, Sermon 13, 1763.
[7] 2 Cor. 5:17
[8] Irenaeus. Against Heresies.
[9] (ed.) Anonymous. How to Pray: The Best of John Wesley on Prayer. Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour Pub., 2007, 96.