Holiness to the Lord

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

When Finney arrived at Oberlin in 1835, the college held its services in a great circular tent, a hundred feet across, that his friends in New York had paid for. From the top of the centre pole flew a streamer bearing, in large letters, the words Holiness to the Lord. It was a fitting banner. At Oberlin Finney’s attention turned increasingly from the conversion of sinners to the sanctification of believers, and the teaching he and his colleagues developed there made Oberlin famous and suspect in equal measure. This chapter sets out what he taught and weighs it.

Why he went looking

Finney explained in his Memoirs how he came to the question. His revival work had shown him the great weakness of Christians. Older church members made little progress, and fell back from a revival state even sooner than the young converts. He was dissatisfied, too, with his own want of stability in faith and love. So he asked whether there was not something higher and more enduring than the church was aware of — whether the gospel had not provided promises and means for establishing Christians in a higher form of life.

Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 3:12

He studied the Methodist teaching on sanctification, but could not accept it, because it seemed to him to deal almost entirely with feelings. He examined the antinomian perfectionism then being published in New Haven and elsewhere, and rejected that too. But after searching the Scriptures he became convinced, as he put it, that “an altogether higher and more stable form of Christian life was attainable, and was the privilege of all Christians.” He preached two sermons on Christian perfection at the Broadway Tabernacle, and later set out the doctrine at length in his Systematic Theology.

What he taught

The core of the Oberlin teaching, in Finney’s words, was that entire sanctification was taught in the Bible “in the sense that it was the privilege of Christians to live without known sin,” and that abundant means were provided for attaining it.

It helps to remember how Finney understood sin. For him, as we saw in chapter eleven, sin is a voluntary act of the will; the holy heart is a supreme choice of God’s glory. Sanctification, then, is the strengthening of that choice until it governs every movement of the mind. In Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts he wrote that when this preference gains perfect control, it brings a person back to where Adam was before the fall, and constitutes perfect holiness. Since the will can choose, and since God commands us to be holy, it must be possible to live in unbroken consecration.

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. MATTHEW 5:48

He urged young converts not to rest satisfied with the standard of older Christians, but to aim at being holy until they were as perfect as God. And he told one earnest woman who asked how to obtain sanctification that she must make a thorough and universal consecration of herself and all she had to Christ, and then believe for the sealing of the Holy Spirit.

His own experience

Finney’s teaching was bound up with his own experience in Boston in the winter of 1843. For weeks he rose at four to pray and search the Scriptures. He struggled to consecrate himself more deeply than ever before, and found that he could not give up his invalid wife unreservedly to God’s will. When at last he did, he said, he gave up everything — his family, the church, even his own salvation — to God’s disposal. That evening the question came to him: what if God should send him to hell? He saw that it was impossible. “Hell could be no hell to me, if I accepted God’s perfect will.” A vein of joy opened that lasted for years. His prayer ran out into Thy will be done, and he found a rest in God he had never known.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. ISAIAH 26:3

When Lydia died a few years later, the same rest held him. After a night of anguish, he wrote, it was as if God asked him whether he had loved her for her own sake, and if so, why he grieved that she was with Him. From that moment his sorrow was changed.

The controversy

The Oberlin teaching was attacked on every side. Ministers warned their churches against Oberlin; one, Finney recalled, called its doctrines worse than Roman Catholicism. The charge was antinomian perfectionism, which Finney indignantly denied. Charles Hodge and others criticised his Systematic Theology. Later, B. B. Warfield subjected the whole Oberlin theology to a searching critique.

Much of the criticism was unfair. But the central objection was serious, and it still stands.

Where care is needed

The problem is that the Oberlin doctrine achieves its high standard by narrowing the definition of sin. If sin is only the deliberate, voluntary transgression of known law, then a Christian may indeed be free of it for long stretches. But Scripture’s idea of sin is wider. It includes the sins we do not know we commit, the disordered desires beneath our choices, and every falling short of the glory of God.

Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults. PSALM 19:12

The apostle John, writing to believers, said: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Paul, near the end of his life, said he had not already attained. The holiest Christians in history have been the most conscious of their remaining sin. A doctrine that invites believers to claim they are living without known sin risks making them either proud, if they think they have arrived, or despairing, if they know they have not.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 1 JOHN 1:8

There is also the burden it placed on assurance. Finney taught that persistence in holiness is a condition of salvation. Joined to a teaching that entire sanctification is attainable, this could leave earnest believers watching their own consecration anxiously, rather than resting in Christ.

What remains

Yet Finney was right about much. The Christian life is meant to be one of real, growing holiness, not a resigned coexistence with sin. God commands us to be holy, and He means it. Consecration — giving ourselves and everything we have to God without reserve — is a real step that many Christians have never taken. And the rest Finney found in the will of God in 1843 is a genuine and beautiful thing, available to every believer. The mistake is not in aiming high. It is in supposing that we can ever measure our arrival.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask whether you have settled for a Christianity with no real expectation of growth in holiness.

2. Is there anything — a person, a plan, a possession — you have never yielded to God’s will without reserve? Bring it to Him today.

3. Pray David’s prayer for cleansing from secret faults, and ask God to show you sins you have not noticed.

4. If you are tempted to think you have arrived, read 1 John 1:8–10 slowly. If you are tempted to despair, read it again.

5. Seek the rest Finney found: to say from the heart, Thy will be done, about the thing you fear most.

A PRAYER

Holy Father, You call me to be holy as You are holy. I confess that I have often been content to be less.

I give myself to You again — my family, my plans, my possessions, my future. Do with me as seems good to You.

Cleanse me from secret faults, and keep me back from presumptuous sins. Let me never say I have no sin.

And keep me in perfect peace, my mind stayed on You, until You sanctify me wholly at the coming of my Lord. Amen.