itself in prayer, with all the graces we have received
us and with us are pleasing to God. Consequently, we learn that we cannot serve God unless our tongue, hands, and heart are used by God and the Spirit to do what God would have us do.
If we were not utterly impotent, our good works would be our own property. But now they belong entirely to God because they flow from God and from God's grace. While giving rise to our works and making them sanctified, God is honored in us through them.
One of the cardinal rules of religion is to lose no opportunity to serve God. Because God cannot be seen, we are to serve God in our neighbor. God receives such service as if it were done to God in person, standing visibly before us.*
God does not love people who are inconsistent, or good works that are sporadic. The only thing pleasing to God is a life and service that resembles God's own constancy and faithfulness.
A constant attention to the work that God entrusts to us is a mark of solid piety.
Love fasts when it can and as much as it can. It leads to all the means of grace and applies itself in all the outward works it is able to do. It flies, as it were, like Elijah over the plain to find God upon his holy mountain.'
God is so great that greatness is given to the smallest thing that is done for God's service.
Happy are they who are sick or even lose their life for doing a good work.
God frequently conceals the part that we children have in the conversion of other souls. However, whenever a soul is converted to God, we may boldly say that one of the chief causes is the person who persistently intercedes before God for that conversion.
Charity cannot be practiced correctly unless ¢ first, we perform it the moment God gives the opportunity, and ¢ second, we depart immediately afterward to offer it to God in humble thanksgiving. We do this for three reasons:
1. to return to God what we have received from God; 2. to avoid the dangerous temptation that emerges from the very goodness of these works; 3. to unite ourselves to God, in whom the soul expands itself in prayer, with all the graces we have received and the good works we have done, to draw from God new strength against the bad effects these very works may produce in us if we do not make use of the antidotes God has ordained against these poisons.
The true way to be filled anew with the riches of grace is to strip ourselves of it. Without this it is extremely difficult not to grow faint in the practice of good works.
Good works are not complete in their own right until they lose themselves in God. This is a kind of death to them. It
resembles the death of our bodies. For it is only in death that the body, losing itself in the glory of God, shall attain immortality. In this spiritual death, good works are stripped only of all earthly and mortal pride.
O that in me the sacred fire Might now begin to glow, Burn up the dross of base desire, And make the mountains flow!
Fire is the symbol of love. The love of God is the beginning and the end of all our good works. But truth surpasses symbol. The fire of divine love has this advantage over mateO that it now from heaven might fall,
And all my sins consume!
Come, Holy Ghost, for thee I call, rial fire: it can return to its source and raise with it all the good works that it produces. In so doing it prevents corruption by pride, vanity, or any evil mixture. This can be done only when these good works have their beginning and their end in God. This is done through deep gratitude that plunges
Spirit of burning, come!
Refining fire, go through my heart, ~ Illuminate my soul; | Scatter thy life through every part, the soul into God as into an abyss. All that it is and all the grace and works for which it is indebted to God must be returned to God. This is a gratitude through which the soul seems to empty itself of good works so that they may return
And sanctify the whole.
Collection, #351, stanzas 7-9 to their source, like rivers seem willing to empty themselves when they pour themselves into the sea.
When we have received any blessing from God, we need to withdraw, if not into our prayer closets then into our hearts, and say, "I come, Lord, to restore to you what you have given. I freely relinquish it, to enter again into my own insignificance. For what is the most perfect creature in heaven or earth in your presence but an empty vessel capable of being filled with you and by you? It is like the air that is empty and dark and capable of being filled with the light of Hebrews 6:1: the sun that withdraws every day and returns the next. There
"Therefore let us go on toward peris nothing in the air that either possesses this light or resists fection, leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith toward God." it. O give me the same ease of receiving and restoring your grace and good works! I say your grace and good works, O
God, for I acknowledge the source from which thy spring is in you, and not in me."
Philippians 3:15:
"Let those of us then who are mature 26. In the year 1764, upon a review of the whole subject, I wrote down a summary of what I had observed in the following short suppositions:
[perfect] be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, (1) There is such a thing as perfection, for it is mentioned this too God will reveal to you." again and again in Scripture.
(2) It does not precede justification, for justified people are to "go on toward perfection" (Hebrews 6:1).
1 John 4:18:
"There is no fear in love, but perfect (3) It is not reserved for the time of death, for Saint Paul speaks of living people who were perfect (Philippians love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love."
3:15).
(4) It is not absolute. Absolute perfection does not belong to human beings, nor to angels, but to God alone.
(5) It does not make a person infallible. No one is infallible 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: while he or she remains in the body.
(6) Is it sinless? It is not worth the effort to argue. Perfec- "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all tion, as understood here, is salvation from sin.
(7) It is "perfect love" (1 John 4:18). This is the essence of circumstances; for this is it. Its properties, or inseparable fruits, are rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks in the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).
Christ in all his offices: Wesley believed that Christ's death and resurrection were the culmination of his past ministry. He went on to say that Christ in all of his offices is the foundation of his present work. Wesley frequently taught that Christ must be preached in the three offices of (8) It grows and matures. It is so far from being incapable of increase that one perfected in love may grow in grace far swifter than before.
(9) It is capable of being lost. We have numerous examples of this, but we were not thoroughly convinced of this until five or six years ago.
(10) It is constantly both preceded and followed by a gradual work.
(11) But is it in itself instantaneous or not? In examining this, Priest, Prophet, and King/Physician:
Christ the Priest offers forgiveness of sins. He restores us to relationship with God and, through continual pardon, helps us stay in relationship with God. Christians never outgrow let us go on step by step.
An instantaneous change occurred in some believers.
No one can deny this. Since that change, they have enjoyed perfect love. They feel this and this alone. They
"rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in everything."'" Now, this is all that I mean by perfectheir need for Christ in this office.
Christ the Prophet overcomes the power of sin for his people. He tion. Therefore, these believers are witnesses of the perfection that I preach. restores to us knowledge of God's "But in some this change was not instantaneous."
They did not perceive the instant when it happened. It is often difficult to perceive the instant when a person dies; yet there is an instant in which life ceases. And if ever will for human life through the revelation of God's law (see the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7).
Christ the King guides Christians on their way to holiness of heart and life. As they follow and obey his commands, they are restored to wholeness and perfected in love. sin ceases, there must be a last moment of its existence and a first moment of our deliverance from it.
"But if they have this love now, they will lose it."
They may; but they need not. And whether they do or not, they have it now. They experience now what we teach. They now are all love. They now rejoice, pray,
See Sermon 36, "The Law Estaband praise without ceasing. lished Through Faith, Discourse II,"
"However, sin is only suspended in them; it is not in The Works of John Wesley, including the following: destroyed." Call it what you please. They are all love today and they take no thought for tomorrow.
"We are not ourselves clear before God "But this doctrine has been much abused." So has that of justification by faith. But that is no reason for giving up either this or any other scriptural doctrine. unless we proclaim Christ in all his offices. To preach Christ as a worker that need not be ashamed is to preach him not only as our great "High Priest— taken from among humans and ordained "When you wash your child," as one says, "throw away the water, but do not throw away the child."
"But those who think they are saved from sin say they have no need of the merits of Christ." They say exactly the opposite. Their language is, for humans in things pertaining to God,' as such 'reconciling us to God by his blood' and 'always living to make intercession for us'—but also as the Prophet
Every moment, Lord, I want of the Lord, 'who became for us wisdom from God,' who by his word and his The merit of thy death!
Spirit 'is with us always,' 'guiding us into They never before had so deep, so unspeakable, a conviction of the need of Christ in all his offices as they have now. all truth.' And indeed he is remaining a King forever, giving laws to all whom he has bought with his blood, restoring those to the image of God whom he had Therefore, all our preachers should make a point of preaching perfection to believers constantly, strongly, and explicitly. All believers should mind first reinstated in his favor, reigning in all believing hearts until he has 'subdued all things to himself,' until he has completely cast out all sin, and 'brought in everlasting this one thing and continually agonize for it.
27.
[have now done what I proposed. I have given a plain and simple account of the manner in which I first received the doctrine of > righteousness."
perfection. I have also explained the sense in which I received, continue to receive, and teach it to this day. I have explained what I mean by that scriptural expression, both in whole and every part of it. I have drawn the full picture of it, without either disguise or covering.
I would now ask any impartial person, What is so frightful about this teaching? From where is all this outcry, which for these twenty years and more has been made throughout the kingdom as if all Christianity were destroyed and all religion torn up by the roots?
Why is it that the very name of perfection has been cast out of the mouths of Christians, indeed, discredited and detestable as if itcontained the most evil heresy? Why have the preachers of it been hooted
— at like mad dogs, even by those who fear God, and even by some of their own fellow Methodists, some whom they, under God, had helped become believers through the gospel? What reason is there for this, or what pretense? There is no sound reason. It is impossible that there could be.
But there are falsehoods in great abundance. Indeed, there is ground to fear that, with some who treat us in this way, it is simple dishonesty—no more than a false appearance from the beginning to the end. They wanted and sought opportunity against me, and here they found what they sought. "This is Mr. Wesley's doctrine! He preaches perfection!" I do. Yet this is not my doctrine any more than it is yours, or anyone else's that is a minister of Christ. For it is God's doctrine—peculiarly, emphatically God's. It is the doctrine of Jesus
Christ. Those are his words, not mine: "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.""
Who says you shall not be perfect, or at least not until your soul is separated from the body? Perfection is the doctrine of Saint Paul, the doctrine of Saint James, of Saint Peter, and Saint John. It is not Mr. Wesley's any more than it is the doctrine of everyone who preaches the pure and the whole gospel.
I tell you as plain as I can speak where and when I found this. I found it in the word of God, in the Old and New Testaments, when I read them with no other intent or desire but to save my own soul.
But whoever this doctrine belongs to, I pray you, what harm is there in it? Look at it again. Examine it closely on every side. In one view, it is purity of intention, dedicating all the life to God. It is giving
God all our heart. It is one desire and intent ruling all our habits and attitudes. It is devoting not only a part but all of our soul, body, and wealth to God. In another aspect, it is all the mind that was in Christ, enabling us to walk as Christ walked. It is the circumcision of the heart from all impurity, all inward as well as outward pollution. It is a renewal of the heart in the whole image of God, the full likeness of the One who created it. In yet another, it is loving God with all our heart, and our neighbor as ourselves.
Now, take it in any of these views you please (for there is no material difference), and this is the whole of perfection, as a succession of writings prove, that I have believed and taught for these forty years, from 1725 to 1765S.