God’s Grace Part 3

Introduction

Today is week 12 of our catechism sermon series!

We made it! Together!

For those of you who made it to the consecration service on Friday evening, thank you so much!

It was wonderful!

For those who could not make it, you were certainly missed!

We had a great time, and I just want to reiterate my gratitude for all the work that was done on Thursday and Friday in preparation for the service.

We had so much to do, and we accomplished so much!

it was such a special time in the life of our church!

Today, we will be talking about sanctifying grace and Christian perfection.

Now, some of you might be thinking…Christian perfection, aren’t those words oxymorons?!

Well, maybe in some of our experiences!

But not to John Wesley, they weren’t.

John Wesley wholeheartedly believed that it was possible for people to become perfect in Christian love.

He received a lot of criticism for his interpretation of sanctification, and he published several articles and a book on the subject to explain and defend his views.

But before we dive too deeply into John Wesley, let’s define what sanctification is and how it works in our lives.

Sanctification

Last week we talked about how Wesley defined grace: prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace.

I want you to go back to our illustration from last week, where we are on an expedition in the jungle.

For those of you who were not here, I will recap what we talked about last week.

We imagined that we were on an expedition in a dense, and lush jungle.

We were equipped with a backpack, a hat, and a machete.

We worked up quite the sweat while hacking our way through the undergrowth.

Suddenly, we come upon a clearing, which surprises us.

We can hear some low rumbling as we cross the clearing.

When we get to the edge, we can see that there is a huge, sheer cliff.

And the source of the rumbling becomes obvious - it is a wide and roaring river down at the bottom of the chasm.

It is clear there is no way across. We cannot climb down, we cannot wade across the river.

Thankfully, we see a suspension bridge.

Now unfortunately, this suspension bridge has seen better days.

It’s not broken, but it is worn and it is small. There is only room for one person to cross at a time.

We can see the river below through the slats in the bottom of the bridge.

We know that to continue on our journey, we will have to step off of the safety of the clearing and onto the bridge.

This will take some courage, and a definite decision point.

Do we go back the way we came? Or do we attempt the bridge?

Last week, we discussed that the journey to the clearing was where we experience prevenient grace.

God has been drawing us to the clearing and to the bridge.

God draws us to himself and prepares our hearts to make the decision to follow him.

The moment we step off of the jungle cliff and onto the bridge is our moment of choosing Christ.

It is the moment of salvation and justification, and we receive God’s justifying grace, which puts us in right relationship with him.

Now, if all we had to do was step off the cliff onto the bridge and we would be instantly transported to eternal life, or made perfect, then that would be a piece of cake!

As it is, stepping off the cliff onto the bridge is only just the beginning of our spiritual journey!

We have to trust God that we will make it across this rickety bridge and to the other side!

The journey across the bridge is where we experience God’s sanctifying grace.

So what does sanctification mean?

It simply means that the Holy Spirit, which is our gift from God, works within us to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ.

It is so that we might experience God’s grace, his love, and his holiness in our life, right now before we go on to eternal life.

It is also so that we might share the love of God with others in this life and spread the good news of the gospel.

Sanctification makes us more like Christ, for the benefit of those around us.

Try as we might, we cannot produce righteousness in our own lives. This holiness can only come through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Now, we must do our part.

We cannot just sit back and expect the Spirit to do all the work while we keep doing what we have always done.

2 Corinthians 7:1 “1 Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”

We are responsible for making the choices we know are the right ones, and that are good for our bodies and our spirits.

The choices we make, along with the Holy Spirit’s promptings, and God’s grace all work together for our good and to make us more and more like Jesus.

Certainly we have all seen this in our own lives.

We can look back on our younger days, back to the time of our salvation, and see how far God has brought us, all the many things he has revealed to us, and how this has changed our lives.

*Pause*

Sanctification can also be described as the “circumcision of the heart.”

Just like outward circumcision, God skillfully and mercifully cuts away the parts of our lives that do not conform to his image and to his righteousness.

We ought to pray that God would identify any unclean or undesirable parts in our hearts and that he would cut them off, leaving only healthy and clean flesh.

Now, how does this sanctification happen?

Is it all at once, or is it slowly over time?

Well, John Wesley believed that it could happen either way.

He writes in his journal of a woman he encountered who he believed had experienced entire sanctification all at once.

Now, this is not the typical story.

Certainly scripture and experience tell us that entire sanctification is a process, and that it takes our whole lifetime, and many will not experience it at all.

So what makes it possible for those who claim to have achieved Christian perfection?

Christian Perfection

To answer that question, we will take a closer look at the theology of our friend and founder, John Wesley.

John Wesley took Jesus’ commandment in Matthew 5:48 very seriously:

Matthew 5:48 “48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Now, as Christians who have been in church for a large part of our lives, we have been taught that being perfect is not possible for people, and the only perfect person was Jesus.

John Wesley is not contradicting that.

But what he is saying is that it is possible for someone to be so filled with the love of God, that love dictates their every thought, all their words and every action.

This “entirely sanctified” state does allow for people to make mistakes, to be limited in knowledge, and to be subject to human frailty and to death.

But John Wesley argued that people who have reached this place have eliminated intentional and willful sin from their lives.

If this sounds impossible, and highly unlikely, then it can probably be said you aren’t quite there yet!

And neither am I.

Just ride in the car with me during school pickup!

John Wesley believed that an instant cleansing of the believer of sin was possible, and that someone could experience deep transformation all at one time.

But, he also acknowledged that even more sanctification was needed after those events.

He also believed that most of the Christian life was a gradual growing in grace and holiness in Jesus Christ.

He wrote in his journal that he himself never experienced Christian perfection, but he had encountered people who had.

John Wesley emphasized the point that this grace and sanctification was not reserved for “super Christians,” but that this grace was available to all professing believers.

So, how do we achieve this entire sanctification?

Well, some of it depends on us, and the amount of time that we spend seeking God, his grace, and submitting ourselves to his will.

If we only attend church on Sunday and do nothing else during the week to feed our souls, then it is likely this sanctification process will be longer than someone who spends time with God each day.

If this is what we choose to do, then we may never reach our full sanctification potential in this life.

But, if we will seek God with all our hearts, love him completely, not holding anything back, and maybe most importantly, spend long periods of time in his presence, then we will experience sanctification.

No one is able to choose the pace at which we are sanctified, but it stands to reason that the more of ourselves we devote to God, the more his grace will change us from the inside out.

It’s important to mention that we cannot force any of this change within ourselves.

God is the only one who changes hearts. We cannot change ourselves no matter how much we want to or how much effort we put in.

It is important that we remain humble and surrendered to Christ and his will for us.

Just as a potter finds it much easier to work with warm, pliable clay than with cold and stiff clay, God finds it easier to work us into who he has made us to be when we are soft and pliable.

Spending time in prayer, in worship, practicing fasting, taking Holy Communion, fellowshiping with believers, reading scripture, and performing acts of mercy were all ways that John Wesley believed we could experience sanctifying grace.

He called these the “ordinary channels” through which we could expect to receive God’s grace.

John Wesley was also careful to say that this sanctifying grace could be experienced now, not just when we pass into eternal life.

So, even though we cannot change ourselves, or even predict the pace at which we receive sanctifying grace, we can participate in activities in which God’s grace is available to us.

It is our job to work in partnership with the Holy Spirit to see real change in our character and to make sure we are always moving toward God.

Conclusion

And so, going back to our illustration, after we have the courage to step off the cliff onto the bridge, we must allow God to lead us by the hand across the bridge, no matter how scary it looks.

We can either move back towards the jungle and away from God once we are on the bridge, or we can follow him as closely as possible, moving ever closer to the other side of the chasm.

We do have a choice!

But, We are never alone on the bridge.

Jesus is there, waiting, to guide us to the other side, where a whole new life awaits us!

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.