What Perfection Is Not

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

Wesley spent almost as much energy explaining what Christian perfection is not as explaining what it is. He had to. The word itself invited misunderstanding, and both his critics and some of his followers seized on it. His sermon Christian Perfection, on the text above, is built on this pattern: first, in what sense Christians are not perfect; then, in what sense they are. A Plain Account of Christian Perfection returns to the same distinctions again and again. Anyone who wants to be fair to Wesley, or to learn from him safely, must hear these qualifications in his own words.

Not perfect in knowledge

First, he says, Christians are not perfect in knowledge. They are not so perfect in this life as to be free from ignorance. They know, with all the saints, the love of Christ; but they do not know a thousand things about God’s ways, about the world, even about themselves. Nor, second, are they free from mistake. “A man may be filled with pure love, and still be liable to mistake.” He may misjudge a fact or a person or the meaning of a text of Scripture.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 CORINTHIANS 13:12

Not free from infirmities or temptation

Third, Christians are not free from infirmities. By this Wesley means all those inward and outward imperfections that are not of a moral nature: weakness or slowness of understanding, confusion of thought, heaviness of imagination, slowness of speech, impropriety of language, and a thousand nameless defects of conversation or behaviour. These are found in the best of people. He is careful to say he does not mean what some people call their infirmities, such as drunkenness or taking God’s name in vain, which are simply sins given a gentler name.

Fourth, Christians are not free from temptation. Our Lord Himself was tempted, and the servant is not above his master. Wesley summarises the whole in one sentence of the sermon: “Christian perfection, therefore, does not imply (as some men seem to have imagined) an exemption either from ignorance or mistake, or infirmities or temptations.”

For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. HEBREWS 4:15

Still needing Christ

The most important qualification comes in the Plain Account, and it answers the charge that Wesley’s teaching made people independent of Christ. Every mistake, he says, is a transgression of the perfect law, and so even the most perfect Christian still needs the atoning blood. “The best of men still need Christ in his priestly office, to atone for their omissions, their short-comings”, their mistakes in judgement and practice, and their defects of various kinds.

Here Wesley makes a distinction that is vital for understanding him. There is sin, properly so called, which is a voluntary transgression of a known law. And there is sin improperly so called, which is an involuntary transgression of a divine law, known or unknown. Both need the atoning blood. But he believed that the first could be overcome by grace in this life, while the second remains until death. “I believe there is no such perfection in this life as excludes these involuntary transgressions”. And so he adds, famously: “Therefore sinless perfection is a phrase I never use, lest I should seem to contradict myself.”

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

Not a fixed state

Nor did Wesley believe that perfect love, once received, could not be lost. He says plainly in the Plain Account that it is exceeding common for people to lose it more than once before they are established in it. In his Brief Thoughts he explicitly retracts several expressions in the Methodist hymns that implied such an impossibility. And, as the previous chapter noted, he insisted that there is no perfection of degrees that does not admit of continual increase. Perfect love is not a summit where one sits down. It is a love that grows.

He also admitted uncertainty about when it usually comes. In the same Brief Thoughts he says that he believes the instant is generally the instant of death, though it may be ten, twenty or forty years before. That is a far more modest claim than many who came after him made.

The danger he saw most clearly

Wesley knew what could go wrong, because he saw it go wrong. In the Plain Account he describes how, in 1762, when there was a great increase of the work of God in London, enthusiasm broke in among some who professed perfection. Two or three began to take their own imaginations for impressions from God, and to suppose that they should never die; others fancied that they could not be tempted, that they would feel no more pain, and that they had the gift of prophecy. Some were soon got above instruction, and a handful of what he calls honest enthusiasts foretold that the world would end on a fixed day in February. They gave, he says, huge occasion of offence to those who opposed Christian perfection.

His response was a series of plain warnings to those who believed they had received perfect love. “Watch and pray continually against pride.” He points out that it is pride not only to ascribe to ourselves what we have, but to think we have what we have not. “Beware of that daughter of pride, enthusiasm.” Beware of judging others by your own feelings. Beware of antinomianism, of thinking that because you are filled with love you need not have so much holiness. Beware of self-indulgence, of censoriousness, of schism.

Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. 1 CORINTHIANS 10:12

These warnings are among the wisest things Wesley wrote. They show that he did not imagine perfect love to be a safe place. It is the place where pride is most subtle and most dangerous.

An honest assessment

Even with all these qualifications, many careful Christians have not been persuaded, and it is right to say why. If sin is defined narrowly as a voluntary transgression of a known law, perfection becomes easier to claim, but the definition may be too narrow. Scripture calls sin whatever falls short of the glory of God, and many of the deepest saints have found themselves more aware of their sinfulness as they grew in grace, not less. Some who followed Wesley taught an instantaneous second blessing with far fewer qualifications than he gave, and pastoral harm followed.

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips. ISAIAH 6:5

Yet Wesley’s central aim — that the love of God should fill the heart and rule the life — is beyond reproach, and his qualifications show that he was not the proud perfectionist of caricature. He himself, so far as the record shows, never publicly claimed to have attained it. The reader who takes from him a longing for perfect love, an expectation that God can do great things in a human heart, and a deep suspicion of spiritual pride, has taken what is best.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. List Wesley’s four things perfection does not remove: ignorance, mistake, infirmity and temptation. Which have you wrongly treated as proof that you are not growing?

2. Remember that the best of Christians still need Christ as priest. Thank Him today for His continual intercession.

3. Read Wesley’s warnings against pride and enthusiasm, and ask which one you most need to hear.

4. Is there anyone you judge by your own feelings? Ask God to correct you.

5. Read the questions and answers in the middle section of A Plain Account of Christian Perfection.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, I have not already attained, and I am not already perfect, but I follow after, that I may lay hold of that for which You laid hold of me.

Thank You that You are my great High Priest, and that I shall need Your blood every moment until I see You.

Fill me with Your love, and guard me from pride in whatever You give. Keep me from thinking I have what I have not, and from judging others by my feelings.

Make me humble, teachable and patient, and let me grow in love all my days. Amen.