Perfect Love

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

No part of Wesley’s teaching has been more admired, more attacked or more misunderstood than his doctrine of Christian perfection. Late in life, in a letter, he called it the grand depositum which God had lodged with the people called Methodists, the particular truth they existed to keep alive. His enemies said it was pride dressed as piety. Some of his friends made it into something he never taught. And many modern readers, hearing the word perfection, assume at once that he meant something no honest person could believe. This chapter sets out what he actually taught; the next sets out, in his own words, what he did not.

Where it came from

Wesley’s own account is in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, a short book he first published in 1766 and revised later, which is in the Ochorus library. It is partly a history of his own convictions and partly a collection of questions and answers from his Conferences.

He traces the doctrine back to 1725, when, at twenty-two, he read Jeremy Taylor’s Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying and resolved to dedicate his whole life to God. The next year came Thomas à Kempis, and after that William Law. And from 1730, he says, he began to be homo unius libri, “a man of one book,” regarding none, comparatively, but the Bible. What he found there was a call to love God with all the heart and to be holy as God is holy, and he could not believe that such commands and promises were meant to remain empty.

On 1 January 1733 he preached before the University of Oxford a sermon called The Circumcision of the Heart, and in the Plain Account he points back to it as proof that his teaching had not changed. There he had defined the circumcision of the heart as “that habitual disposition of soul which, in the sacred writings, is termed holiness”, and he had said, with Paul, that love is the fulfilling of the law and the end of the commandment.

And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. DEUTERONOMY 30:6

What it is

What, then, is Christian perfection? Wesley’s answers are strikingly consistent, and strikingly simple. It is loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves. “It is nothing higher and nothing lower than this,—the pure love of God and man; the loving God with all our heart and soul, and our neighbour as ourselves.” In another place: “Pure love reigning alone in the heart and life,—this is the whole of scriptural perfection.” And in the short paper he added at the end of the book in 1767, Brief Thoughts on Christian Perfection: “By perfection I mean the humble, gentle, patient love of God, and our neighbour, ruling our tempers, words, and actions.”

Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. MATTHEW 22:36–39

Notice the words: humble, gentle, patient. Wesley’s perfection is not a state of spiritual achievement that sets a person above others. It is love, and love of a very lowly kind. In the same book he warns that love is the highest gift of God, and that all visions, revelations and manifestations whatever are little things compared to it.

Why he believed it possible

Wesley’s argument was always from Scripture. God commands us to love Him with all our heart. He promises to circumcise our hearts to do so. Christ prayed that His people might be sanctified. Paul prayed that the Thessalonians might be sanctified wholly, and added that He who called them was faithful and would do it. John wrote that perfect love casts out fear, and that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. Wesley could not believe these were empty words.

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. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:23–24

He also pointed, gently, to the prayers of his own Church. In the Communion service Anglicans prayed every week that God would so cleanse the thoughts of their hearts by the inspiration of His Holy Spirit that they might perfectly love Him. Wesley asked simply whether they meant it.

How it comes

As the previous chapters have shown, Wesley taught that sanctification begins at the new birth and grows gradually. Believers are made more and more dead to sin and alive to God. But he also believed that God could, and often did, bring this work to a point of completion in a moment, cleansing the heart from sin and filling it with love. This, too, comes by faith, not by works. In the Brief Thoughts he says that this perfection “is always wrought in the soul by a simple act of faith”, and so in an instant, but with a gradual work both before and after.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 JOHN 1:9

And he insists that it is not the end of growth. There is, he says, no perfection of degrees, none which does not admit of continual increase. The one who loves God with all his heart can love Him more tomorrow, as the heart itself is enlarged.

What it looks like

Wesley’s descriptions of the perfected Christian are full of the ordinary virtues. Such a person, he writes, rejoices evermore, prays without ceasing, and in everything gives thanks. He has been cleansed from pride and has put on bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness and longsuffering. Whether in ease or pain, sickness or health, life or death, he gives thanks from the ground of his heart to the One who orders all for good. He loves his enemies. He serves God with all his strength.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 2:5

Why it matters

Whatever one concludes about Wesley’s more detailed claims, the heart of this teaching is a challenge the church cannot afford to ignore. Many Christians expect very little of the Christian life. They expect to be forgiven and to struggle, and they do not expect to be changed much. Wesley refused to accept this. He believed that God’s grace was greater than our sin, and that the love of God could fill a human heart and rule a human life, not only in heaven but here.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Read Wesley’s definition slowly: the humble, gentle, patient love of God and our neighbour, ruling our tempers, words and actions. Which of these words most searches you?

2. Do you expect God’s grace to change you deeply in this life, or only to forgive you? Ask Him to enlarge your expectation.

3. Pray the Communion collect this week, meaning every word: that God would cleanse the thoughts of your heart, that you may perfectly love Him.

4. Choose one relationship in which your love is impatient or proud, and ask God for His love to rule it.

5. Read the first few sections of A Plain Account of Christian Perfection in the Ochorus library.

A PRAYER

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, cleanse the thoughts of my heart by the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit, that I may perfectly love You and worthily magnify Your holy name.

You have commanded me to love You with all my heart, and You have promised to circumcise my heart to do it. I believe You mean what You say.

Fill me with humble, gentle, patient love for You and for every person, and let it rule my tempers, my words and my actions.

And whatever measure of love You give me, let me always be growing in it, until I see You face to face. Amen.