Salvation and Perfection

Have you had the experience of discovering something that you already knew, but because it was phrased in a new way, suddenly the truth of it impressed itself upon your mind?  

I've had that experience in recent months.  In part it came from a conversation I had with someone about John Wesley's conception of salvation as being saved from sin in the fullest sense: not only from the guilt of sins past (which we call "justification" or pardon), but also from actually continuing to commit sins, that is, being saved from the rut of committing the same sins over and over (this spiritual healing of our sin-sick souls, we call "sanctification").  John Wesley freely spoke of the goal of Sanctification as "Christian Perfection" or "perfection in love", by which he meant nothing other than becoming like Jesus Christ in our Love of God and Love of neighbor (see Matt. 5:48).  

It means bearing the image of God, just like Him who is the perfect image of God (Col. 1:15); which is our primal vocation (Gen. 1:26-27).  So Christian perfection means the righting of something that went wrong in God's ordered creation, it means standing back up that which had fallen.

In connection with this, I've not been able to shake Jesus' words from John 5:6 lately, where he asks a man who has been crippled a very long time, "Do you want to be healed?"  I preached on this text a few weeks ago, and it has stuck with me.  On the occasions when I am conscious of being tempted, I find that those words seem to float to the top of my mind.  Do you want to be healed?  Do you want to be made well in your soul and in your desires?

The temptation among Evangelicals and other Christians as well, is to focus being saved entirely on being forgiven and set right with God and set free from guilt and judgement.  This is the vitally important starting point that cannot be neglected, and there is joy in heaven whenever anyone experiences that justifying grace of God.

Yet Jesus is not through with us at that point.  He wants to not only save us from the effects of sin, but he wants to save us from sinning.  He wants us to be healed.  

"Saved" is bigger than is often assumed, it seems to me.

Rev. George MacDonald

I've recently run across a quote from the saintly and, frankly, at times idiosyncratic and unorthodox 19th Century Scottish Preacher, George MacDonald (who was much beloved by C.S. Lewis) along similar lines:

I can well imagine an honest youth, educated in Christian forms, thus reasoning with himself - ..."the Lord said, 'If you would be perfect, go, sell that you have.'  I cannot be perfect; it is hopeless; and he does not expect it." - It would be more honest if he said, "I do not want to be perfect; I am content to be saved." Such as he do not care for being perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect, but for being what they call saved.  They little think that without perfection there is no salvation - that perfection is salvation: they are one. 

MacDonald is concerned that we use the comforting message of saving grace as an excuse not to obey, not to be faithful, not to carry the cross and follow Christ.  Splitting apart Justification/Forgiveness and Sanctification/Soul-Healing from one another may be precisely what gives rise to what Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship, called "Cheap Grace."  It happens when I'm content to be saved by grace and accepted by a loving God, but am not willing to be challenged by grace to go on to perfection (Heb. 6:1).  

But, as John Wesley might say, Jesus wants to save you from sin...and from sinning.