My Ministry Manifesto

Introduction

The way we perceive the Kingdom of Heaven informs how we practice ministry. Not only must we have sound theology when we participate in the ministry of the Kingdom, but we also must put this theology into practice. Any ministry must be lived out through the life lived by the Spirit, which means that we must maintain a right relationship with God and with those around us. If we wish to be satisfied in ministry, we must first begin with the upkeep of our own spiritual lives, both on a personal level as well as on a corporate level. Ministry should never be done alone. In one way or another, ministry is something that is shared by the community in which the same Spirit – the Spirit of Christ – dwells.

My Theological Understanding of the Life of the Kingdom

In the Via Salutis, or the Way of Salvation, we see Christ’s redemption of fallen humanity at work within us. Before we are saved, we have no desire to serve God. God speaks to us through His Holy Spirit before we are saved in an act that a number of people call prevenient grace, or grace that goes before. This means that before we were seeking God, God was seeking us. Before we were calling to Him, He was calling to us. Without this act of prevenient grace in our lives, we would not seek God. We would be left in our natural state imparted to us by our first parents, doomed to sin and death, without even understanding our need of salvation. But through His prevenient grace God calls out to us, though we may not recognize Him at first.

Salvation is a process. Many people have a difficult time knowing at what exact point they were saved. This is especially true of individuals who have grown up in Christian families and in the church. These people can often identify key points where they made significant progress in their salvation journey. It is good, especially in cases where the individual cannot remember a time in their lives when they did not believe in God or even when they weren’t a Christian, to think of salvation as something that is continuous. Salvation is not limited to one moment in time. It is a progression of one coming closer to God. In this way, salvation includes the time before the person prayed “the sinner’s prayer” when they were willingly moving towards God as well as the time afterwards when they continue to make choices that reflect their devotion to God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

Part of a person’s salvation process is the coming to a realization that they need to be saved. They recognize the great peril they are in and are distressed by it. Through prevenient grace, the Holy Spirit causes the individual to recognize that they need to make a choice about whether or not they are going to follow God.

We eventually come to an understanding of our need of a Savior, and we surrender our lives to Jesus in repentance so that we may be saved. God is faithful, and He saves us. This can be called the act of justification, meaning that we are no longer condemned for our sins because we have surrendered them to God through Christ and have been forgiven.

We experience justification through faith. It is not by works that we are pardoned and saved, but by faith. God makes us spotless in His sight through faith which comes by His grace working within us. We are made righteous through faith. We believe God and have faith in Him whom we cannot see directly, and God declares us to be righteous. The Bible says the same thing of Abraham. It says that “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3).

We are made new in Christ so that we no longer live for ourselves and for the sinful nature. We continue to die daily to the self and the sinful nature by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit through the salvation we have found in Christ. We experience regeneration.

We are made new day after day as we grow in our relationship with God. As we continue on in our now redeemed lives, we have many opportunities to turn back to the old way of living in sin. The Holy Spirit works within us letting us know what is pleasing to Him. As we go on living, the Holy Spirit reveals to us even more areas of our lives we were not aware of that we need to surrender over to Him. If we continue to surrender these areas of our lives over to God as He reveals them to us, we eventually come to the point where we decide by God’s grace that we will always surrender everything over to God – both the known as well as the unknown. We choose that we will always say “yes” to God no matter what. This point of experience is referred to by a number of people as “entire sanctification.” Sanctification is a process that continues for the rest of our lives, and even in the afterlife, where our salvation will be made complete. The apostle Paul wrote of the future day of salvation as well as the present day. In the future day of salvation, we will be made like Christ in His glory. Our selves having been restored to the people Christ created us to be. In the meantime, we must remember that Christ’s salvation is also at work in us today. Our life does not begin when we die and go to Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven breaking into the kingdom of this world is an important element of our present faith in Christ as well as our eschatology. The way we perceive the Kingdom of Heaven informs the way we practice our ministry. Our ministries should not have the sole-goal of getting people to say the sinner’s prayer so that they can go to Heaven. There is more to Christianity than this. The mentality of getting people to "accept Jesus" so that they can go to heaven is actually off-center of what we are called to be as Christians. That view is one that is escapist. It is almost as though we were all just waiting to get into heaven because that is when life really begins. But this is not true. Life is also now, and we must live for more than an escapist feeling that all we need to do is pray so we can go to heaven. We cannot minister to people in this way. The Kingdom of Heaven is now, not just in the eschaton. We need to remember this when we evangelize people. We are not just getting them ready for Heaven. We are equipping them for life in this world as well, recognizing that Heaven starts now, not when we die.

Part of the sanctifying process is that we become the disciples of Jesus. Becoming a disciple of Jesus means more than simply being taught to do good things, though that certainly is a part of it. Discipleship involves taking on the same spirit as that of the teacher – becoming like the teacher, and exercising the same kind of authority as that of the teacher. Jesus told his disciples that they would do even greater miracles than what they had seen Him do. Christ gave the believers His own authority when He breathed on them and they received the Holy Spirit (John 20:21-2). He placed all authority that has been given to Him into the hands of his disciples (Matt. 28:18-20), and we are His disciples. We live by the same Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God Who proceeds from both the Father and the Son and who dwells within us. The filling of the Spirit and the sanctification process are parts of being a disciple.

God’s prevenient grace works in our lives before we are saved, and His sanctifying grace works in our lives once we are saved. It continues to work in us throughout our lives. When we do something that goes against God’s will, the Holy Spirit lets us know, and gives us the opportunity to surrender this part of our lives back to God. God’s saving grace is present in the act of salvation. However, God’s saving grace is also present both before and after salvation. It is what makes both prevenient and sanctifying grace possible.

My Understanding of Core Values for Ministry

Our central goal in ministry is to always place God first in our lives. This is the most important thing we can do. Before we can minister to others, we must love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). In order to be successful ministers we must maintain a daily devotional life and be consistent in prayer. As a couple engaged in ministry together we must also continue to set aside regular times to pray together, for each other and our ministry.

Another goal in our ministry is to love people and to minister to them. The second most important part of ministry is to love our neighbor (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 19:19; 22:39; Mark. 12:31; Luke 10:27; Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14). We must reach out to those in need around us regardless of their ethnic background, lifestyle, or religious beliefs. We must learn to see people as Jesus would and to treat everyone we meet with the love of Jesus. We must be imitators of God in our life and conduct, remembering that it was God’s kindness that led us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). We must serve both the physical as well as the spiritual needs of the people we encounter. Jesus came not only to redeem the spiritual aspect of mankind, but the physical aspect as well. The physical and the spiritual are deeply connected. When we minister to someone, we minister to the whole person.

In ministry, we must be ready to develop disciples. We must realize that any ministry we are a part of does not depend on us, it is God’s work; therefore, any ministry we start or obtain should not end when we move on to a different assignment. We must train up other people to minister as we have done and to minister in whatever way they feel God is calling them to serve. We are not to make carbon copies of ourselves. We must invest in the gifts and strengths of others and let them use them to the best of their abilities without forcing our own particular interests upon them. We must also be willing to work as a team and in community, both with each other as well as with other ministers of Christ. We must also allow other people to minister to our needs and not allow ourselves to think that we can do it all on our own. We must be willing to accept gifts and generosity from others. In a very real way, refusing to accept gifts from others as a way of showing your unworthiness is actually an arrogant response. It sends a message that you do not need or want anyone but yourself.

My Succinct Summary of the Gospel

As a result of the original sin of Adam and Eve, all of mankind is fallen. Not only do we carry the burden of Adam and Eve’s original sin, but we also carry the weight of our own personal sins. Adam and Eve also serve as types of who we are as people – people who have been separated from God through rebellion. By our fallen nature, we are prone to depravity, meaning that all who have been given the opportunity to choose between what is right and what is wrong have chosen the wrong over the right. Our sin means that we are no longer in a right relationship with God. We are separated from Him (before salvation) and stand condemned to die in our sins and then be separated from God for eternity in hell. In order to restore a right relationship with us, God sent His only Son into the world to die for us and pay the penalty that our sins deserved. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, we can now enter into a right relationship with God. Our burden of guilt is removed. We can be set free from the works of the devil in our lives. God assumed human form, taking on the role of servant. What He assumed, He redeemed. He became mortal so that we might become immortal. He died so that those of us who die will be saved. He lowered Himself to the lowest reaches of human experience so that the lowest reaches of human experience might be redeemed. We are called to be imitators of Christ, filled with His Spirit.

Ministry Vision

We must keep in mind our mission statement – to love God, to love people, to make disciples – essentially, to bring Heaven to earth. We must maintain a daily devotional life and be consistent in prayer. We must take part in the fellowship of believers, ministering and being ministered to. We must find the correct spiritual disciplines for us to practice on a personal level in order to draw closer to God and to hear His voice more clearly. The spiritual disciplines are not to be seen as something to be feared or as a way of earning favor with God. They are to be seen as one of the ways we are able to better connect with God and be in tune with His Spirit. [1]

We must not be distracted by abstract scenarios based on how we think our lives ought to be lived in a sort of Jesus-mindset. We must instead learn what Jesus actually did in his own life-situation. When we do so, we learn that Jesus was a rabbi. He knew the entire Hebrew Scriptures by heart, and he had learned this through intense studying and memorizing since he was a child. One of the first things we must do if we truly wish to be like Jesus is to study the Scriptures and to know them and the message of God within them in our hearts.

Jesus fasted, and through the act of fasting one can see how Jesus was strengthened by this. Instead of relying on food to feed ones appetite, when fasting one is forced into recognizing a hunger within them of a different sort – a spiritual hunger. When this spiritual hunger is recognized and fed, then one has the ability to endure temptation and be victorious. Worship is both personal and corporate. Jesus also practiced the discipline of solitude. This was not just during his forty day fast in the wilderness where he was tempted by the devil. Jesus is also seen practicing solitude with prayer during His actual ministry. Jesus is recorded as having gone off into the hills by Himself away from all of the crowds and commotion in order to pray and to be alone with God. This was beneficial to Him and may be beneficial to the Christian in their walk. This is especially true for those involved in ministry. While we need to spend alone time worshiping God, we also need to take part in worship services with others, with those to whom we will minister and with those who will minister to us.

We must learn to see people as Jesus would and to treat everyone we meet with the love of Jesus. We must reach out to those in need around us regardless of their ethnic background, lifestyle, or religious beliefs. We must serve both the physical as well as the spiritual needs of the people we encounter. We must be able to preach and teach the word of God in a way that people can understand. We must be able to relate to those to whom we minister on a personal level and not be disconnected from them. We must speak truth into their lives, and we can do this best by knowing them on a personal level. We must be friends with those we minister to, not only speaking the truth of God to them with our words, but demonstrating the attitude of Christ in our life and actions. We must minister to all people: the poor, the rich; the well, the sick; the mentally challenged, the intellectually brilliant; the beautiful, the ugly; the evil, the righteous.

As we lead people into right relationship with Christ, we must keep in mind that conversion is a process that last a person’s entire life. We tend to think of conversion as being at a specific point in time, and while it is helpful to look back and take notice of pivotal points in one’s own salvation journey, we must also keep in mind that our faith is something that grows and develops as we grow closer to God. It should never be stagnant. In ministry, we must remember that getting people to pray the sinner’s prayer is not adequate. While it is good and is an important part of the conversion experience, it is not all there is. Conversion should not be viewed through a linear perspective where at one point one becomes converted. The conversion process is one in which an individual makes many steps in coming closer to Christ.[2] A conversion is not complete after “the second blessing” either. It is moving toward completeness. We must train up people in the faith and the knowledge of God, teaching them what God expects and showing them by example the life lived by the power of the Spirit. We must train up other people to minister as we have done and to minister in whatever way they feel God is calling them to serve. We must also be willing to work as a team and in community, both with each other as well as with other ministers of Christ. We must teach them salvation through Christ as revealed in the Bible, and the life of the Spirit.

Conclusion

Within our ministry, we must always seek to maintain the mind of Christ within us. Just as Christ made time to study the Scriptures thoroughly, we must also take the Scriptures to heart and know them. Just as Christ did not discriminate in those to whom He ministered, reaching out to both the rich and the poor, we must also do the same, recognizing that it is not those who are well who have need of a doctor (Matt. 9:12; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:31). God reaches out to all people. Also, just as Christ took time to practice the spiritual disciplines, we must also do the same, being renewed in mind and spirit through prayer, self-examination, meditation, fasting, silence, and solitude, among others. We must recognize that while we are Christ’s ambassadors, we are not superheroes. We can do nothing without Christ, and we will not truly display the life of the Kingdom if we do not share the responsibilities of our ministries with those in the community of believers who are equipped to partake in the ministry we share. God has not called us to be isolated in life or in ministry. The life of the Kingdom and in ministry is one lived in community.

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[1] Willard, Dallas. The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. Harper Collins Publishers: New York. 1988. 265 pages.

[2] Smith, Gordon T. Beginning Well: Christian Conversion and Authentic Transformation. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL. 2001. 233 pages.

Why Death?

What place does death have in the world?

Why do we die?

Why do things break and fall apart and decay? Why is there destruction?

As Christians, we have been taught that because of sin, death entered into the world. And that because of the one sin of Adam and Eve, all humankind was cursed to sin and to suffer and to die. This is what we call the Fall of Man and Original Sin. Because of that original sin committed by our first parents in the Garden of Eden, all of humankind and all of creation is fallen. And this is why we experience pain and suffering and this is why we die.

We have also been taught that as humans, we have only existed on earth for a relatively short period of time. Scientific findings place the existence of Homo sapiens to go back for only about 200,000 years. During that time, humans increased in knowledge of themselves and of the world around them. At the same time, throughout those 200,000 years humans experienced death. Their bodies experienced sickness and decay and they died, just like every other plant and animal on the face of the earth.

So at what point do we say death entered into the human condition? Evidence would say that death existed long before humans were formed. Our pre-human ancestors lived and died much as we do now. And their ancestors did the same. The Neanderthal was a close cousin to Homo sapiens. Neanderthals were very much like humans. They wore clothing, they communicated verbally, they participated in art, and they had an awareness of the spiritual. These creatures were so human-like, and yet they were not fully human. Their genetic code was certainly different from Homo sapiens, and yet similar enough that both species seemed to experience life in much the same way. Neanderthals were certainly sentient beings, and yet they were not truly human.

What are we to do with this? Both humans and Neanderthals, as well as the several other more fully evolved species of primates I have not mentioned, experienced death. They mourned for their dead, they suffered from pain when they were injured, they experienced sickness and frustration. All of these things have been blamed on the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, all of these things have been blamed on Homo sapiens, and yet, all of these things existed before Homo sapiens were created. Humans and Neanderthals and the other similar species all had a common ancestor – one also considered a primate. This primate also experienced death, yet this ancestor did not experience death in the same way. This creature was incapable of seeing the world in the same ways in which his human and Neanderthal descendants could. His brain was not designed to comprehend these greater intricacies of the created order. He could not ponder death and pain in the same way his descendants would. He was truly an animal without sentience. And while he may have been able to recognize to a certain extent the tragedy of death and the sorrow all creatures experience when a loved one dies, he did not experience these things in a fully cognizant way. His life depended upon instinct and upon his sensory capabilities. He experienced life through his senses, and while he did think, his thought could only go so far before his baser instincts kicked in. This was what he was created to be.

And yet this study of the evolution of the genetic code of primates fails to answer the question of where death came from. We believe that death entered the world through the sin of people, and yet death obviously existed at the time of this primate ancestor, before humans existed. We cannot say that this ancestor is the cause of the suffering we experience in the world, for he was not capable of the sin which we believe brought death into the world. As Wesleyans, we often say we believe that sin is only truly a sin if it is committed willingly and if the person who commits the sin is aware of what they are doing and that what they are doing is wrong. Surely, humans and Neanderthals and the like were capable of this kind of sin, and surely this primate ancestor was not. He was not capable of sin, because he was not aware of the ability to sin. So if we are to blame death on sin, we cannot blame it on him because he did not sin, and if we are to blame death on the specific sin of humans, we also run into trouble because death existed before humans, before creatures were capable of sinning.

And yet we cannot, as some have, just throw out centuries of church theology and millennia of progress in understanding how we relate to God and how our sin separates us from God and how death interacts with sin – not to mention the restorative work of Christ, which of all things oddly tends to be the most ridiculed by secularists. But at the same time, we cannot simply deny the evidence that science has given us, as others have, and say that evolution is a lie and the earth is only 6,000 years old while completely ignoring the overwhelming genetic and archaeological evidence against such claims.

As Wesleyans, we are not Fundamentalists. We believe that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God, but we do not mistake the word of God for the Word of God, which is Christ. We believe in the truth of the Bible, but we believe more so in the truth that is revealed in Christ. We do not believe that God simply dictated the words of Scripture to the people who wrote them down. We believe that those who wrote the Bible used their own minds and skills and incorporated their own thoughts and ideas into its pages while at the same time being influenced and led in a certain direction by the Sprit of God. This gives us room to say that perhaps some of things we read in the Bible reflect not so much the way God saw the world, but rather the way humans interacted with God within their own limited historical and cultural settings. If one were to take the Creation accounts in Genesis, for example, on a completely literal level, then one would have to conclude that the sky is actually a great glass dome overlooking the earth, behind which can be seen a great mass of blue water. Science has disproved this theory long ago, but this does not mean that the story is just a bunch of falsehoods and should not be trusted. On the contrary, this story paints a picture of the all-powerful God who created the heavens and the earth by his own will and love, and it shows how his image is stamped over all of his creation, and how people out of all of the creation were chosen to interact with God in a special way. All of these timeless truths are portrayed in a poetic way in Genesis, a way that the people of the time could easily remember. In addition to this, these truths are forever engraved upon an ancient near eastern understanding of the world, which believed in such things as the sky dome. These elements of the story do not detract from its intended message, even though some get overly distracted by them, rather they show how God has revealed himself in all generations, even to ancient near eastern people who did not fully understand the way the world operated on a grand scale, just as God continues to reveal himself today to us who do not fully understand the way the world operates on a grand scale.

And yet after all this time, we still do not have an answer as to exactly why death exists and how exactly the sin of humans is related to death. We believe that sin causes death, but what do we exactly mean when we say that? Death can have many different forms after all. Do we mean to say that all forms of death are a result of human sin? Do we believe that death came into existence because of sin? Or do we believe that the end result of sin is death? Does death truly exist in and of itself? Or is death merely the absence of life and all that truly does exist? Perhaps what we mean when we say that sin leads to death is that when we sin we die spiritually. Our sin cuts us off from the life-giving Spirit of God. So in a very real sense, our souls are being led to death when we sin. So maybe when we say that sin leads to death, what we are really saying is that our soul is dying when we sin.

However, this leads some other problems. While it is very true that our souls are dying when we sin, there is more to death than just a spiritual death. Some may argue that the spirit and soul of a person is all that matters, so a spiritual salvation from death is all that is required, but that ignores that fact that as humans we have been created to exist in both a spiritual and a physical sense. We are both physical and spiritual beings, and this cannot be ignored. The Gnostics believed that people were created from sinful matter, and the only way we could be free from sin was to die and live on as an eternal soul, but such an understanding denies the inherent goodness of God’s creation. We believe that God created everything good, and that this is not limited to some concept about an eternal soul. God made the physical as well as the spiritual, and he made both good. If we truly believe that, then what do we say when we say that sin only leads to spiritual death and not physical death? When we say that, we say that physical death is not truly bad. If only spiritual death is the result of sin, then that would mean that physical death must have come to be a reality by some other means. But do we really want to say this? Everything within us screams that when we lose a loved one, or when we are forced to see a loved one suffer physical pain or when we experience physical pain and suffering ourselves, that this is not the way things should be. If the creation was truly created good and our sin only leads to spiritual pain and death, then what is the deal with all of the physical suffering and death that we see? Where did all of that come from? And why do we resist it with all of our being? Something deep inside us tells us that it is all terribly wrong. And yet physical death and decay are a part of nature. Without physical death, the creation would not exist as it does. The created order is full of cycles and one of these cycles is the death of all things. As the creation continues to recreate and to replenish itself, it continues to discard the old and that which is no longer needed in order to make space for new creation. Is that all that physical death is? Is it just a natural part of the way the universe exists? Everything dies and decays after all – from people, to animals, to plants, to planets, to stars, to galaxies. And yet everything continues on regardless of death. People create more people before they eventually die. Plants make more plants. Even stars have a reproductive cycle. It would appear that everything in the universe was made with the purpose of eventually recreating itself in one way or another. Is physical death then, the way that nature makes room for new creations? Does physical death eliminate that which is less complete in order to replace it with something more complete? And what does such a belief say about us when we die? Are we to believe that the reason we die is to make room for better people, a more complete creation than we are, to come after us? Again, this type of thinking can also lead us into many additional problems.

While the evidence may lead us to believe that the natural way of the universe tends towards “survival of the fittest,” and while we cannot rule out such a claim, we must also recognize that such an understanding is limited when it comes to understanding death. We may be led to believe that physical death on its own is a good thing because it has helped lead to the creation which we see today and has driven the creation towards perfection. But does a natural physical death truly lead to a better creation, or just a different creation than what previously existed? Does death really make anything better? Or does it simply eliminate what nature perceives as lesser? One could argue that death not only eliminates the lesser and the imperfect, but it also eliminates that which is good. If we truly believe that the physical world was created good then why would anything in it need to be destroyed? And what are we to believe about ourselves? If God truly loves us, then why would he create us to die? While it might be easier for some to believe that death naturally occurs in creation in general, it is more difficult to claim that sentient beings such as humans, beings which we believe God loves personally and on an individual level, have been created to die and be replaced by other humans. Maybe that is how creation was meant to exist up to the point some branches of the primate family tree became sentient beings, but what about after this? Why does God let people die?

Perhaps the answer lies at the point in which the creation became sentient – the point at which the ancestors of homo sapiens and like-minded creatures were first given sentience. One could argue that a creature that cannot experience death on a cognizant level cannot ever have a problem with death. While a non-sentient animal can still experience death and pain on a sensory level, it does not ever have to wrestle with the meaning of life and death. However, we, as sentient beings, do. And this continues to beg the question, why do people experience physical death? It also causes one to wonder how deep physical death stings us, and not us only, but the rest of creation as well. We believe pain and anguish to be a bad thing on a cognizant level, but we also experience pain and anguish on an emotional and sensory level and it causes great unpleasantness to the point at which we recognize through our cognitive abilities that pain is a bad thing – not just because have the ability process that fact with our minds, but because our sensory bodies naturally feel that way when they are injured. This is true not just for us, but for the rest of the animal world. It is not just humans who dread pain and destruction. Animals also dread it on a very deep, though less cognizant, level.

So what does that lead us to conclude? It would seem then that while physical death is a natural part of the physical creation, it is also for some reason natural for the creation to fight against death. Why then is there this contradiction? One could perhaps say that without this resistance to death, the creation would summarily succumb to death. Without the natural tendency of the creation to resist death, death would be all that would remain and there would be no creation. If then, it is so important that the creation resist death so as never to fully succumb to it, why is death necessary at all? If God is the creator of the creation, then why did he allow a creation that includes death?

Perhaps the reason why death exists in the physical world is because God had in mind to create humans – people made in his image who would have the ability to think for themselves, fully sentient beings. Perhaps God recognized from the beginning that once sentient beings were created, they would immediately have the ability to distinguish between two different ways of thinking and living, two different paths if you will. A sentient being would be capable of recognizing the difference between good and evil, and would also be capable of choosing which path to follow. A sentient being would have the ability to perceive with the mind what the rest of creation could only perceive through sensory input abilities. It would be able to perceive with the mind that which other animals only recognized by instinct. A sentient being would have the ability to go against instinct to the point of making decisions that would affect the rest of creation on a grand scale. A sentient being would be able to recognize death and destruction with its mind, and more than that, would be able to choose whether or not to reject death and destruction, or to embrace it. A sentient being would also have the ability to recognize others of its own kind and love them and be able to ponder his or her responsibility towards protecting them as well as his or her responsibility to the rest of the creation, the choice to treasure or to abuse. It would seem then that these first sentient beings right on down the present state of sentient beings in us as humans chose to try both paths. From that point on down to the present time, they have always wanted both the good and the bad. They have wanted everything. They wanted power over good and evil, and the power to decide what was good and what was evil. In other words, these first sentient beings, whose sentience has continued on in Homo sapiens for the past 200,000 years, have wanted to play the part of God. We have wanted to be masters over good and evil. People over the millennia have chosen to both treasure and to abuse each other as well as the rest of creation. As a result, the entire creation has become what we might refer to as “fallen,” to the point that even other animals fear humans and have the ability to be influenced by humans for better or for worse. It would seem that animals in today’s world have developed in such a way as to become permanently subject to humankind in many different ways. The mental abilities of many animals can even mimic those of the humans who interact with them. Animals in turn can experience shame or happiness or fear or hatred at the sight of a human, depending upon their interaction with humans.

What does this have to do with the presence of physical death in the creation? It would seem that God allows physical death in the creation in order to destroy that which is not good. It would seem that God recognized that when he created sentient beings that they would have the ability to choose between good and evil, and that they would choose both good and evil. This attempt to replace God by being masters over both good and evil is what led to what we would call spiritual death among people, in which the human soul is cut off from the life-giving Spirit of God, from which it came. Because people would experience spiritual death would seem to be the reason why physical death was also allowed to continue. God will not allow spiritual death to reign over people forever. This is why people experience physical death – so that their spiritual death will not remain in the creation. What about those who desired good more than the bad? We believe that God is gracious and that he does not want any person to be destroyed. What he wants to destroy is sin, and the reason for that is because sin destroys us, we who are his good creation. Sin must be destroyed in us before it is allowed to destroy us itself. Because of our desire to be master over both good and evil, we have become a self-destructive creation. Paul in the book of Romans writes that all of creation has been subjected to frustration because of us. Our sin has changed the course of natural history. Paul also writes that it is through Christ, who was God in the flesh, fully God and fully human, who committed no sin, that the creation may be restored. It is through Christ that we have the ability to become “children of God.” It is through Christ that our bondage and tendency towards sin is broken, and it is through his death and resurrection that we are set free from sin and death. We are not only set free from spiritual death and separation from God, which is what we call “hell,” but we are also set free from physical death. Christ physically rose from dead, and because of this we will also be physically raised from the dead. When Christ ascended into heaven forty days after his bodily resurrection, he was entering into God’s space. God’s space is separated from this space that we occupy on earth, but it is not far away. Through Christ, we have access to God’s space. Eventually, God’s space will be united with our space, and when this happened we will see that everything that was truly good about this world will never be destroyed. God’s good creation is eternal, both the physical and the spiritual creation. The reason physical death exists now is to provide for the ability to rid the created world of sin and everything that causes despair and separation from God. The final goal is essentially to remove hell from the creation and into its own space separate from God forever. All that was truly evil in creation, all that continually chose to reject God in the creation, and chose to reform itself into the image of hell (or the image of the absence of God) will be separated from everything that is good in creation. All that has become hell will be removed, and since it is the Spirit of God that sustains life, one could argue that in the absence of God’s Spirit, there would be no life, and in hell, all of creation that refused to submit to God’s redemption would cease to exist.

In the absence of sin and the desire to sin, we would then see a new creation, one where nothing good from the old creation was destroyed, where we would be reunited with loved ones who had previously died, and a place where death itself would be destroyed and there would no longer be any spiritual death for God would always be there, and there would no longer be any need for people to experience physical death, because sin would always be absent.


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Sources:

C.S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain. HarperCollins Pub., 1940.

NOVA. Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors. WGBH Boston, 2009.

St. Augustine. City of God, Book XIV.

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.