Each person who responds to God’s grace (Titus 2:11) and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ (Rom 5:8; 1 John 2:2) by confession of sin, remorse, repentance, faith and obedience instantly receives the great gift of salvation. This gift includes but is not limited to the following:
- Redemption (Rom 3:24; 8:23) - You are freed from the bondage of sin for the first time in your life.
- Forgiveness (Mat 6:9-15; 1 John 1:8-10) – You are forgiven your sins by God.
- Justification (Rom 3:21-26) – You are declared righteous by God; this legal declaration is valid because Christ died to pay the penalty for your sin and lived a life of perfect righteousness that can in turn be imputed to you.
- Adoption (Rom 8:23; Gal 3:26; 1 John 3:2) – You are a joint heir with Jesus to the Kingdom of God.
- Regeneration (John 3:1-21) - The Holy Spirit makes known to you the will of God and helps you discern truth from lie. He occupies and purifies all the rooms of your heart into which He is invited. For the first time in your life you are not a prisoner of sin. You are free to pursue the path of righteousness. This is the first day of your Christian life and you are a new creature in Christ. This is the mechanism of your redemption.
- Sanctification (Heb 6:1; 1 Pet 1:13-16) - You are led by the Holy Spirit along the path toward holiness; this is a lifetime journey.
- Reconciliation (Eph 2:11-22) - You are reconciled with all other believers.
- Unification (Eph 3:1-11) – You are united with all believers in the Church of Jesus Christ.
- Glorification (Rom 8:30) – You will complete the journey along the path of sanctification when your mission in this life is done.
This section examines the teaching of a Methodist Theologian on regeneration and sanctification. (See also Sections 1.3, 3.5, 3.6, 3.15, 4.5 and 11.7 of Theology Corner)
The actual word for regeneration occurs only twice in the New Testament (Mat 19:28; Titus 3:5). It means “to be again” and could therefore be used to describe a rebirth as in John 3:3, 5, 7 and 1 Peter 1:23. Regeneration is the change which God works in the soul when He brings it to life, when He raises it from the death of sin to a life of pursuing righteousness. Regeneration is the starting point in the pursuit of holiness. So let’s take a step back and review the meaning of holiness.
Holiness is the attribute of God which permeates all other attributes. It is the state of who He is and the act of what He does; it is absolute purity of will, intellect, heart and action. Certain words such as love, integrity, righteousness, sanctification, morality, ethics and character, have no meaning aside from the holiness of God. Holiness makes God perfect in being, wisdom, power, justice, goodness and truth.
Since man is created in God’s image, every human possesses a soul comprising a will, intellect and heart and every human is capable of action. As with God, holiness in man is both state and act. My state is holy if my will, intellect and heart conform respectively to the will, intellect and heart of God. My acts are holy if they flow from a holy state and are the acts God would do in my place.
Sin is all things not holy. The state of my will, intellect and heart is either holy or sinful; my acts are either holy or sinful. The intersection of sin and holiness is the null or empty set. Holiness and sin are disjoint sets or mutually exclusive events in the sample space of all possible states and actions.
Although much of reality is part of a causal chain, God does not determine my free will decisions and I will not always select the path of holiness. Also, my intellect is finite, my wisdom is flawed and I am fully capable of justifying sin by logic and reason. Finally, my human heart is deceitfully wicked and cannot be trusted (Gen 6:5; Ps 14:1; Prov 12:15, 14:12, 20:9; Isa 32:6; Jer 17:9; Mat 15:19; Mark 7:21; John 5:42; Acts 28:27). Given my flawed human soul, how can I ever hope to be holy?
The key that unlocks this mystery is a recognition that I cannot hope to be holy unless the Spirit of God occupies and purifies my will, my intellect and my heart. I cannot lift myself up by my own bootstraps and become holy in the absence of the Holy Spirit. Prior to my salvation, the Holy Spirit relentlessly exercises His prevenient grace to call, awaken, draw near, convict, save and empower. He leads me from one step to another as He finds response in my heart and disposition to obedience. After salvation, the Holy Spirit wants to occupy and purify every room of my heart, make known to me the will of God, help me discern the truth, be Lord of my life and keep me on the path of repentance, faith and obedience. But the Holy Spirit will never force Himself on me. I can, for example, tell Him that certain rooms of my heart are “off limits” to Him and He will comply. Of course, my progress along the path of sanctification will cease at that point and the Holy Spirit will allow me to experience the consequences of my rebellion in this life.
My personal journey along the path of Holiness begins when God convicts me that my heart is as black as a lump of coal and when that realization causes me to feel great remorse. I then request an audience with God and say something like: “Almighty God, I come into Your presence confessing my sin nature and behavior, having remorse in my heart, wanting to repent, asking your forgiveness, forgiving those who have sinned against me, asking for Your mercy, receiving from You the far greater gift of salvation, believing I am saved by faith, the grace of God and the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ and intending to be obedient.” God responds by giving me the great gift of salvation. Part of this gift is the regeneration or initial sanctification of my soul. By this gift, the Holy Spirit begins to reveal the will of God and helps me discern truth from lie. He occupies and purifies all the rooms of my heart into which He is invited. For the first time in my life I am not a prisoner of sin. I am free to pursue the path of righteousness. This is the first day of my Christian life. This new life is a daily dying to sin and living to pursue righteousness; it constitutes a life of repentance, faith and obedience continually reaffirmed and renewed. It means allowing my will and intellect to become increasingly aligned with the will and intellect of God. It means letting the Holy Spirit occupy and purify an increasing number of rooms in my heart. It means works of Christian love flow increasingly from a heart that loves God and loves my neighbor.
The journey along the path of holiness begins with regeneration and continues down the path of sanctification. The journey begins with regeneration or initial sanctification which is the change God works in the soul when He brings it to life, when He raises it from the death of sin to a life of pursuing righteousness. The journey ends, for the vast majority of us, at death when we enter into the presence of God and our souls are, at long last, glorified; we are set free from the influence of sin and enveloped by the holiness of God.
But a question arises. Is it possible, in this life, for a human being to enter into the earthly analog of glorification sometimes called entire sanctification? How far can I travel along the road to holiness during my life on earth? Can I achieve, at least for some interval of time:
- Holiness in being and holiness in action
- Purity of heart, will, intellect and action
- Perfect love, integrity, righteousness, morality, ethics, and character
Can I at least allow the Holy Spirit to occupy and purify nearly every room of my heart? Can my human will become at least somewhat aligned with the will of God? Can my feeble intellect discern at least many important truths? Will the Holy Spirit give me a boost toward the top? Will He occasionally push me up so I can hang from the edge of the precipice? Can I be holy, for a while, until I am, once again, weighed down by my own
- Concupiscence
- Bad judgment
- Inconsistent will
- Weariness caused by the constant struggle against temptation
causing me to lose my grip and fall from the heights? Scripture suggests the possibility of, at least, hanging from the edge of the precipice for a time. (Oden, v3, p 241-244)
- God would not command the impossible. A mature, complete, continuing response to grace is enjoined repeatedly in Scripture (Ex 19:6; John 5:14; 2 Cor 7:1, 13:1; Heb 6:1, 12:14; 1 Pet 1:15-16). God would not require holiness in this life (Deut 6:5; Luke 10:27; Rom 6:11) if it were intrinsically impossible.
- God would not promise complete responsiveness to grace if it were intrinsically unattainable. A complete and mature life of loving holiness is clearly promised in scripture (Deut 30:6; Psalm 119:1-3; Isa 1:18; Jer 33:8; Ezek 36:25; Mat 5:6; 1 Thes 5:23, 24; Heb 7:25; 1 John 1:7-9).
- The apostles repeatedly prayed for the full and complete life of holiness and perfect love (John 17:20-23; 2 Cor 13:9-11; Eph 3:14-21; Col 4:12; Heb 13:20-21; 1 Pet 5:10). Were they deluded?
- Scripture identifies a few entirely sanctified persons (Gen 5:18-24; Gen 6:9; Job 1:8; Acts 11:24). A single instance establishes attainability.
- Certain texts that appear to argue for un-attainability can be explained on different grounds (Eccles 7:20; 2 Chron 6:36; Job 25:4; 1 John 1:8-10).
Here are some thoughts of Samuel Wakefield on regeneration and sanctification, including some from Wesley Works in italics.
“With respect to regeneration and adoption, we may observe, that though we must distinguish them as being different from each other, and from justification, yet they are not to be separated. They all occur at the same time, and they all enter into the experience of the same person; so that no man is justified without being regenerated and adopted, and no man is regenerated and made a child of God who is not justified. Whenever, therefore, they are mentioned in Scripture, they involve and imply one another, -- a remark which may preserve us from some error…Regeneration may be defined to be that moral change in man, wrought by the Holy Spirit, by which he is saved from the love, the practice, and the dominion of sin, and enabled, with full choice of will and the energy of right affections, to love God and to keep his commandments…The regenerate are born ‘not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God’ (John 1:13)…It is the image of God on the soul…It is Christ formed in the heart…It is freedom from the dominion of sin…(Wakefield, p 424-427)
That regeneration is not the same with sanctification. This is indeed taken for granted by many, who therefore speak of regeneration as a progressive work. But though this is true of sanctification, it is not true of regeneration, which is at once complete. Regeneration is a part of sanctification, not the whole; it is the gate to it, the entrance into it. When we are born again then our sanctification, our inward and outward holiness, begins; and thenceforward we are gradually to ‘grow up into him who is our head.’ This expression of the apostle admirably illustrates the difference between one and the other, and further points out the exact analogy there is between natural and spiritual things. A child is born of a woman in a moment, or at least in a very short time; afterward he gradually and slowly grows, till he attains to the stature of a man. In like manner a child is born of God in a short time, if not in a moment. But it is by slow degrees that he afterward grows up to the measure of the full stature of Christ. The same relation, therefore, which there is between our natural birth and our growth, there is also between our new birth and our sanctification.” (Wesley Works, Vol 1, p 406) (Wakefield, p 432)
George Allen Turner offers this interpretation of Wesley’s teaching on sanctification:
“In Wesleyan teaching regeneration is the positive side of justification and is instantaneous, while sanctification is the gradual work of the Spirit in inner transformation, although there is a time when this process may be consummated instantly in response to faith” (Turner, quoted in Grider, p 398)
Adam Clarke, a younger contemporary of Wesley, viewed the matter differently.
“In no part of Scripture are we directed to seek holiness gradatim. We are to come to God as well for an instantaneous and complete purification from all sin as for an instantaneous pardon. Neither the gradatim pardon nor the seriatim purification exists in the Bible.” (Clarke, quoted in Grider, p 398-399)
Adam Clarke taught that entire sanctification is an instantaneous event when the soul is purified from all sin so it can properly grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the issue of entire sanctification in this life, the Holiness Movement understood Clarke’s view to be scriptural instead of Wesley’s. (Grider, p 399)
A belief in instantaneous entire sanctification is, in fact, the foundation of the Holiness Movement and sets this movement apart from mainstream Methodism. It has been echoed by Holiness teachers through the centuries. J. A. Wood, Daniel Steele, C. W. Ruth, E. F. Walker, T. Cook, S. S. White, H. Orton Wiley, Richard Taylor, W. T. Purkiser and many others have followed Clarke instead of Wesley in teaching that entire sanctification should be instantaneous in this life and not the end goal of a process which may not reach culmination this side of heaven. A somewhat surprising advocate of this view is Oswald Chambers who wrote:
"The mystery of sanctification is that the perfections of Jesus Christ are imparted me, not gradually, but instantly when by faith [I] enter into the realization that Jesus Christ is made unto me sanctification. Sanctification does not mean anything less than the holiness of Jesus being made mine manifestly...Sanctification means the impartation of the qualities of Jesus Christ...In Jesus Christ is the perfection of everything, and the mystery of sanctification is that all perfections of Jesus are at my disposal, and slowly and surely I begin to live a life of ineffable order and sanity and holiness..." (Chambers, July 23rd)
It is important to clarify that Wesley taught both gradual and instantaneous entire sanctification.
