The Wesleyan Way, Part 5: Made Perfect in God’s Love
The Wesleyan Way, Part 5:
Made Perfect in God's Love
September 8, 2024
Ordinary Time
Philippians 3:10-12
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Since 1773, every pastor about to be ordained in the Methodist Church is asked a series of questions by their bishop in front of the gathered conference assembly. These nineteen questions are known as the "historic questions," because they date back to John Wesley, the British evangelist and organizer who founded the Methodist revival movement.
A few of the questions have to do with pastoral care. For example, Will you diligently instruct the children in every place? Will you visit from house to house? Some of them are aimed at economics and time: Are you determined to employ all your time in the work of God? Are you in debt so as to embarrass you in your work? (Still working on that last one.) There is a question about trusting the scriptures as adequate sources of divine revelation and a few about honoring and upholding the institutional life of Methodism. But the ones I want to linger with today are the first four, and they go like this:
1. Have you faith in Christ?
2. Are you going on to perfection?
3. Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?
4. Are you earnestly striving after it?
And the answer to each of these must be Yes.
Faith in Christ. Okay, that seems like an obvious requirement for Christians. But what's up with these three questions about perfection -- going on to perfection, expecting to be made perfect in love in this life, and striving after such a thing?
If you're thinking that perfection is an idea that can really hurt people in the church, maybe because you've been hurt by it yourself, you're absolutely right. When participating in church is about presenting and maintaining the appearance of a perfect life or or perfect faith or perfect family to others, it can do a lot of damage. If church is about constantly measuring and monitoring ourselves and others -- are we doing and saying all the "right" things? -- it sucks all the joy out our fellowship. We become mean to ourselves and less forgiving of others.
Perfection as a kind of pristine spotlessness has to do with performance, legalism, and conformity, and aren't these tight, airless spaces precisely what Jesus came to break open for us? How many of us have found freedom in the fact that Jesus was perfect so that we don't have to be, and that "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). At the heart of the gospel is this liberating mercy: Our imperfections don't disqualify us from grace; they make us perfect candidates for it!
So why in the Methodist Church are we concerned with "going on to perfection"?
I'd like to try to answer that today as a way of wrapping up our series on Wesleyan spirituality. We've explored four other lasting characteristics of our tradition: experiencing divine love on a personal level, combatting social and economic injustices, organizing members into small groups of mutual empowerment, and singing. We end today with the hope of being made perfect in love in this life, a hope that is not just for pastors, but for all of us. John Wesley once said in a sermon that Christian perfection is “the glorious privilege of every Christian.”[1]
John Wesley did not invent the concept of "Christian perfection." He inherited it, and across his whole life he was engaged in debates about whether or not it was possible for ordinary people to experience it. Christian perfection is the idea that a person who has trusted in Jesus' grace and received the Holy Spirit ought to think and act and love the way that Jesus thinks and acts and loves, that is, perfectly. The Holy Spirit is God, and God is perfectly loving and forgiving. If God dwells in us, that should make a difference. As time goes on, our lives should become more and more transparent to God's life, and our love for others should more and more reflect God's love for us.
Another phrase that Wesley used a lot which is more-or-less interchangeable with Christian perfection is "entire sanctification." To sanctify something is to make it holy, to set it apart and devote it to God. Sanctification is the process of yielding more and more of who we are to the love and service of God. Sanctification requires opening all the dark nooks and crannies of our hurt to the healing light of God, so that they can become sources of power rather than shame. Entire sanctification means that this yielding and opening are complete, and no conscious thought, desire, or act deviates from our love and devotion.
It's important to make a distinction here. We hear perfect and we think No way. People are mortal, finite, prone to accidents and misunderstandings; we aren't all-powerful, we aren't all-knowing, and we can control so very little of what happens to us and around us. And that's all absolutely true. The Greek word often used in the New Testament to convey the idea of "perfection" is the word teleios. (If you're into philosophy it comes from the word telos, meaning end, goal, or purpose.) Teleios means that something has fulfilled its purpose or achieved the goal for which it was made. Perfection understood as teleios is about fruition, ripeness, maturity. Energy, movement, and growth. Perfection is not about being static in a bland, stifling conformity but about growing patiently and devotedly toward the One who is good.
Are you going on to perfection? Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life? Are you earnestly striving after it? Christian perfection -- it's about holy discontent and restless desire, always wanting more of God, always wanting to grow more mature in the ways of love. If God is love and God is infinite, then why would I impose limitations on what God can do in and through me?
Wesley really believed that anything was possible with God, and that through God, a human life could become perfectly Christlike. And he didn't make this stuff up; he took it from Jesus himself.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). And it's teleios here. "Be teleios, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is teleios." Fulfill your purpose, which is love, as your Heavenly Father, who is love, eternally fulfills His purpose. Be mature and complete, as God is mature and complete. Even Jesus is just riffing on Moses. Leviticus 19:2: "Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, 'You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.'" For millennia there have human beings who have wondered how deeply they could travel into love's territory, and if there is any hope today for the survival of the planet, for vitality in our churches, and for joy and equality in our neighborhoods it will come from people who have determined to earnestly walk that same way.
Someone who has ripened into love still stubs her toe, still accidentally says the wrong thing at the wrong time, still gets the flu or overdraws her checking account. Still has to ask others for help. The point is that no matter the experience, the throughlines are humility and compassion and the desire to learn and forgive. In John’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”[2] Paul says, "God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him" (Phil. 2:13).
In other words, the promised land of ripened love is where we all belong; from time to time we say to a leader in the faith -- be that a pastor or a layperson -- 'make a life out of going on a little ways ahead, and circling back to help us all get there together.' We do a massive disservice to our leaders when we expect everything of them except that they are actively growing in their own love of God. And we do a massive disservice to ourselves if we think the promised land of perfect love is only for these special few. It's for all of us. We are made in God's image. Each and every one of us is good, good, very good in God's eyes.
So, how do we get there? What does earnestly striving toward mature love look like? I ask because if we have to muscle our way to it ourselves, if it becomes an achievement, then it's just empty perfectionism again in another disguise.
Let's hear today's scripture again, from Paul's letter to the church in Philippi: "I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. 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." We've explored the second half of what's there, that the journey into perfect love is what we are "taken hold of" for, and that it is something we press on to take hold of.
But that first part is key to the process. Knowing Christ. Knowing his power through participating in his sufferings. Knowing his resurrection by knowing his death. The way of Christian perfection is actually the highest affirmation of our imperfections. It is when we let God into our suffering that the roots of perfect love take hold. The ways in which we suffer and the degrees to which we suffer are different person to person, but the good news is that Christ will not abandon us or cease to be with us in our suffering.
The book of James says, "Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you." Letting perseverance finish its work means patiently enduring what comes while actively asking God for help. When we go through life both vulnerably and trustfully, our resistances to grace can be cracked open, and God's love can flow.
God is not the puppet-master of our suffering. And God has zero tolerance for abuse. But in the course of a life, many things come our way that we simply have to endure -- tragedies, sicknesses, sleepless nights; messy relationships, stressful jobs, political uncertainties; failures, sacrifices, grief. The breakthroughs on our journey into love come when we have patiently endured these things without losing touch with our longing for God.
In our pain, Christ communes. In the stripping away of what is worn out and false about us, Christ communes. Jesus emptied himself, and was therefore exalted by God. His love moved downward, toward the ground, toward us. The way to perfection is a way downward. The miserable younger Wesley, who meticulously tracked every moment of his life in a journal to measure his progress on the way to perfection, became the elder Wesley, who was uncertain if he himself would ever reach it and was okay with that, because he was more concerned with approaching each new day humbly and faithfully and sharing God's love with others.
Today, we come to Christ's table. It's a table for all of us. And it's a table especially for the imperfect, the broken, the weak, the suffering, and the uncertain-- for us, who are nevertheless on our way to love's territory. This is nourishment for that journey, a miracle of a table that has been spread before us in the presence of our enemies. And for some of us it is not only nourishment for the journey but a very foretaste of that promised place: it is the Body of Christ, love Himself consumed and incorporated into our being. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1]Sermon 40, “Christian Perfection” (1741), §21, Sermons (Outler), p. 81.
[2]John 10:10, NRSV.