John Wesley and Perfection

 

In John Wesley’s Sermon #40 Christian Perfection, which he wrote in 1741 and included in all editions of Sermons on Several Occasions (not to be confused with his tract A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, which he published in 1777), he says,

There is scarce any expression in Holy Writ which has given more offence than this.  The word ‘perfect’ is what many cannot bear.  The very sound of it is an abomination to them.  And whosoever ‘preaches perfection’ (as the phrase is), i.e. asserts that it is attainable in this life, runs great hazard of being accounted by them worse than a heathen man or a publican.  And hence some have advised, wholly to lay aside the use of those expressions, ‘because they have given so great offence.’

I read this and I think, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”  Christian perfection is something that Wesley believed was possible in this life.  But he was quick to say that perfection is not something we do; perfection is something God does in us.  Wesley speaks of it at great length and I’ll not repeat all of that here.

What I do want to pursue for a moment is observation that some of Wesley’s contemporaries were put off or even offended by the discussion of perfection.  He further reports that some – and we infer that the “some” are preachers and class leaders – in order to avoid offending anybody, threw out the term perfection altogether.

Some would say that perfection is unrealistic.  They claim that to take the command of Jesus from Matthew 5.48: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect...  is to set the bar too high.  Or they maintain that Jesus is engaging in hyperbole and that this is the only way to understand perfection.  So, when Wesley and others preached that perfection was real and the will of God, some folks were offended.

I hear the echoes of Wesley’s observation all around me today.  When the church calls its members (or the world) to a high-road morality the hearers don’t engage in debate.  They don’t indulge in academic or spiritual discourse.  Instead they frequently express offense and they demean the church or its spokespersons and then stomp off.  They don’t dispute the claim or call that the speaker makes.  They offer no alternative, nor do they build a reasoned case of their own.  But they get offended.  They let everyone know about it.  And their sense of offense becomes the central issue and the moral bidding gets lost.

Wesley found these circumstances to be a colossal frustration and a misuse of emotional energy.

As I say, not much changes.