Christian Perfection I

At a glance

Relevant Scripture

“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

Matthew 5:48 KJV

UECF.NET summary

Finney begins the whole collection with the command that gives the book its urgency: ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’ He is careful, first, to say what this cannot mean. It cannot require the natural perfections that belong to God alone — His eternity, omnipotence, or infinite knowledge — since these are not moral qualities but simply what it means to be God, not man. Nor does Christian perfection mean an end to temptation, to the ordinary trials of embodied life, or to what he calls the believer's continuing warfare with sin's pull. Perfection, as the text uses it, is moral: the will brought into full and willing agreement with the law of God, which asks nothing more, and nothing less, than whole-hearted love for God and an equally impartial love for one's neighbor.

Having cleared away the misunderstandings, Finney argues that this kind of perfection is both a present duty and a real possibility, not a distant hope reserved for heaven. It is duty because the gospel never lowers the law's own standard; if God cannot rightly ask for less than whole-hearted love now, no dispensation excuses less. And it is attainable, Finney insists, because God does not command impossibilities, because Scripture's promises of sanctification are stated without qualification (he singles out Paul's prayer that God would ‘sanctify you wholly’), and because the Spirit's entire work in a believer's life is aimed at exactly this end. He closes by answering the objections he expects: that habit is too strong, that the body's appetites cannot be mastered, that even the apostles confessed imperfection, and that professing perfection breeds pride or fanaticism. His answer to each is the same — the difficulty is never a lack of power in the gospel, but a lack of faith to take hold of what has already been promised.

Main theological themes

• The command to be perfect is a call to moral, not metaphysical, likeness to God — love without self-interest, not the incommunicable attributes of deity.
• The gospel does not relax the law's demand; it supplies, by faith, the power the law alone could never give.
• Unbelief, not the strength of habit or the frailty of the body, is the real reason full sanctification is rare.

Key ideas

• Perfection here means entire, willing conformity to the law of love, not equality with God's nature or an escape from every trial of life.
• Because God commands it, the ability to obey it — in the moral sense of a willing heart — must exist; otherwise God would be requiring what no one could ever do.
• Scripture's promises of sanctification (such as 1 Thessalonians 5:23) are not hedged with 'partly' or 'someday' — they describe a real work meant for this life.
• Objections drawn from habit, bodily appetite, or the apostles' own confessions of shortfall answer the wrong question; none of them show that the remedy Christ offers is insufficient, only that it is seldom fully trusted.

Important concepts

• Natural vs. moral perfection — Natural perfections are what belong to God's essential nature (eternity, power, knowledge) and are never asked of creatures. Moral perfection is the willing rightness of a heart's love, which Scripture does command.
• Disinterested benevolence — Finney's term for love that seeks the good of God and others for their own sake, without self-interest folded quietly back into the motive.
• Moral inability — A now-classic distinction (Finney credits Jonathan Edwards) between lacking the faculties to obey (natural inability) and simply being unwilling to obey (moral inability) — the second is not a true excuse.

Related Bible references

• 1 Thessalonians 5:23–24
• 2 Peter 1:4
• Ezekiel 36:25–27
• 1 John 1:9
• Philippians 2:12–13

Practical Christian application

• Name one area where you have quietly assumed God does not really expect full obedience, and bring it honestly to Him in prayer this week.
• Instead of multiplying resolutions, practice bringing a single recurring temptation to Christ by faith, asking Him to do in you what effort alone has not done.
• Read 1 Thessalonians 5:23–24 aloud as a prayer for yourself, noticing that Paul expected God to answer it, not merely to forgive its absence.

Questions for study