Full Salvation

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:23

In the early 1880s Catherine Booth gave a series of addresses on holiness at Exeter Hall in the Strand, the great London meeting place of evangelical societies, alongside her husband. They are printed at the end of Godliness, together with shorter pieces on enthusiasm and on the hindrances to holiness, and they are the fullest statement of what the Army called full salvation. It was the doctrine closest to her heart. Everything else — repentance, faith, the Spirit’s power — was, in her mind, leading here.

Saved from sin

Her first concern was to make clear what she was talking about. Holiness, she said, is “being saved from sin! — sin in act, in purpose, in thought!” Not saved from the penalty of sin only, but from its power and its presence in the heart. She had no patience with a gospel that promised forgiveness for yesterday and nothing for tomorrow. Pardon without power, she said in another sermon, would leave her in the mud again by the next night.

Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. TITUS 2:14

The central purpose of the gospel, she told the Exeter Hall crowds, is purity of heart. If that is not so, she said, she would give up the whole question and admit herself utterly deceived. She read the New Testament epistles and found them full of commands to be holy — not to count oneself holy, but to be it. A religion that could not do what it commanded, she thought, would be a mockery. If Christ cannot heal me, she said in the fourth address, He has left Himself no choice but to condemn me. “If He cannot restore me, He must condemn me.”

Infirmities are not sins

She was careful to guard the doctrine from its caricatures. She did not teach that a holy person is free from mistakes, weakness, ignorance, illness or temptation. She spent part of one address answering those who insisted that every infirmity is a sin. Paul, she pointed out, gloried in his infirmities, which he could hardly have done if they were sins. An infirmity is a defect of mind or body, a limitation that grace can overrule; sin is a wilful choice against the known will of God. Temptation is not sin either. Christ was tempted in all points as we are, and was without sin, and she told troubled hearers that a strongly excited appetite, resisted, brings no condemnation at all.

My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 2 CORINTHIANS 12:9

Nor did she teach that holiness is a human attainment. In her short address on the hindrances to holiness she defined the blessing, memorably, as “human weakness, leaning with all its weight upon Divine power.” Those who had grasped that, she said, had no temptation to think themselves better than others, for they knew themselves to be the weakest of all.

A definite blessing

What made her teaching distinctive was her conviction that this cleansing is a definite experience, entered by faith at a particular moment, after conversion. She spoke of it in the language of the holiness movement: a second step, a higher level, the land of Canaan beyond the wilderness. Many Christians, she said, had come up to the border of that land again and again and turned back through unbelief. In Enthusiasm and Full Salvation she urged her hearers to see “that this holiness is a real, definite blessing,” a level on to which the mass of professing Christians had scarcely looked.

Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. HEBREWS 7:25

The conditions were the ones she always named: a full consecration of the whole self as a living sacrifice, the putting away of everything the Spirit convicts, a willingness not to be conformed to the world, and then faith to receive. And the hindrance, she found, was nearly always the same. Not doubt about the doctrine, but some one thing held back — money that ought to be given, a circle of friends that would have to be offended, a habit that would have to go.

The perfect heart

In the sermon on The Perfect Heart she gave the doctrine a warmer and more biblical frame. The eyes of the Lord, the prophet told King Asa, run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him (2 Chronicles 16:9). What is a perfect heart? She gave the lowest interpretation she could, she said, to avoid controversy. It is a heart loyal to God whatever the consequences, like David’s. It is a heart obedient to all the light it has, which has stopped picking and choosing among the commandments. And, at the root of everything, it is a heart that trusts God, like Abraham’s.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. MATTHEW 5:8

Weighing it

Here the reader must think carefully. Her teaching on entire sanctification as a distinct experience after conversion is held by the Wesleyan and holiness churches, and by many sincere believers. It is rejected by many others, equally sincere, who read the New Testament as describing holiness as a lifelong growth rather than a single crisis, and who find sin still present in the best of saints until the end. The disagreement is old and honest, and this book will not pretend to settle it. The danger on her side is that people claim a clean heart they do not have, or despair because the experience does not last. The danger on the other side is that people settle comfortably into defeat and call it humility.

What should not be lost is the thing she was most anxious to say: that God means His people to be holy, that Christ is able to save to the uttermost, and that we should expect far more of His grace than most of us do. She said once that if she did not believe Christ strong enough to destroy the works of the devil and bring us back to God’s original pattern, she would throw the whole thing up. One does not need to share her doctrine of a second blessing to share that confidence.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 1 JOHN 1:7

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask honestly whether you expect Christ to save you from sin, or only from its penalty. What would change if you expected more?

2. Distinguish in your own life between infirmities and sins. Stop condemning yourself for the first; stop excusing the second.

3. Name the one thing that most often stands between you and a whole-hearted surrender. Pray over it until you can give it up, or until you know you are unwilling.

4. Read Romans 12:1–2 and offer yourself, body and all, as a living sacrifice, in words of your own.

5. Whatever your view of a second blessing, ask God today for a perfect heart: loyal, obedient and trusting.

A PRAYER

Holy God, You have called me to be holy, and I have made my peace with far less. I have expected forgiveness and not expected change.

I am weak, and I know it. Let me lean the whole weight of my weakness on Your power.

Take the thing I have held back. Cleanse my heart, and make it loyal, obedient and trusting toward You.

You are able to save to the uttermost. Do it in me, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.