What is Christian perfection?

Hi, from the Salvation Army, you're listening to Words of Life. Welcome back to Words of Life.

I am so excited. Honestly, it's an honor to get to share this new series with you starting today. This is a six week series on the topic of holiness, and it's a panel discussion led by Lieutenant Colonel Vern Jewett. He's actually the host of our show, The Holiness Podcast, and he's joined by Lieutenant Colonel Ken Leich. He's a retired officer who preaches on the topic of holiness all over the southeast. And then we're also joined by Bill and Diane Urey.

They are the Salvation Army's national ambassadors of holiness, and they travel all over the U.S. reminding the church why we need to keep the topic of holiness a priority. So I just pray that this series is such a blessing to you. Enjoy. God, we need you. Guide us, inspire us, convict us, show us your way. May we live a life that reflects who you are to the world around us. In Jesus name.

Amen. Hi, this is Vern Jewett, the host of The Holiness Podcast, and we're excited to welcome you today to a panel discussion about the wonderful gift and experience of holiness as it is offered to Christians and God's desire for Christians. I want to introduce you to Reverends Bill and Diane Urey, who are the Salvation Army's national ambassadors for holiness and teach holiness on a full time basis.

Welcome. We're so glad that you could join us. And then you have two retired Salvation Army officers, Colonel Ken Leich, who lives in South Carolina with his wife Dawn and is a teacher of holiness and a student of holiness. We're so thankful that you could join us. And both Ken and I are retired Salvation Army officers from the Southern Territory.

I'm Lieutenant Colonel Vern Jewett. So we want to invite you to get your Bibles, have them close by and open your hearts so that God can speak to each of us as we just share about this wonderful teaching in scripture and truth in Christian living. That God wants us to live in an open and dynamic relationship with him where we can be set apart as holy and pure and sanctified. Those are terms we're going to talk about. We want to kind of begin with an overview, and Ken's going to say a word about the setting in the Near East that brought the people of Israel and God acting and bringing his plan of salvation for the world to us. And then we'll just move from there. We do have a topic for this first podcast, which is the question, what is entire sanctification? So, Ken, why don't you give us a little background?

Sure. I think it's important to realize that it's an overarching theme. It's not found in a verse here or a verse there. It's all through scripture, this idea of be holy as I am holy. That's the God of the Old Testament and the unique aspect of the ancient Near East. All of a sudden, the Hebrews come into the ancient Near Eastern area, and there's this linear history as opposed to the cyclical history of the idols and the many gods, the polytheism of the day.

So, God deliberately acts, shows his character, who he is, that he's holy, and he's holy in his essence, and he wants his people to act accordingly. So, there you have it. It's not just an idea that you can pick and choose from scripture. It's pervasive all the way through from Genesis to Revelation. I think it's important to start there. And I think the Old Testament drives home the idea, many times, of an undivided heart.

Yeah, Ken, I would agree. I would say with you that to know the essence of God is probably the primary focus of every human, every person. And a lot of things we hear about God, like his sovereignty or his mercy, biblically, I think we're accurate in saying that all of that is couched in his essential nature as holy.

The only problem I have with that is sometimes I think we miss the love aspect of that. So, we as Wesleyans, I think, would say that the highest thing you can say about God in his nature, three persons, is holy love. So, every time we talk about holiness, we're always saying equal things about love. Whenever we talk about love, we're also talking about his holiness. And that, I think, is an important balance in all of scripture, but also as it applies to our lives. If I'm going to understand what an entire sanctification is, I'm going to have to know how those two words should permeate my heart and my mind. I think, for me, what's been very helpful as I teach this and approach this with people on a one-to-one basis or from a pulpit is to make sure that people understand.

And that I remember this all the time. Holiness is not a what? It's not a doctrine. First and foremost, holiness is God himself. It's not an it.

Right. And very important that we don't call sanctification even an it. But holiness is the triune God of holy love. Before anything was ever created, who he is, what you talked about, who he is, and he's love, he's three persons. And that raises our eyes. He is three persons in communion with one another who are self-offering. They don't think about themselves.

They're other-oriented. Mutually so, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit always giving of themselves to one another before anything was ever created. That is who God is. So when we think about what holiness is, we must start there. It is a communion, a relationship of people, persons who always are focused on what is best for another. So when we think of holiness for us, we have to start there. Our holiness has to reflect other-oriented nature.

So that just always helps me that holiness, if I can stop calling it a what and approaching it as a doctrine alone, it's God himself, the triune God. And that's the purpose of God calling Israel and bringing his plan of salvation and his purpose for creating us into existence. They were always to be set apart or holy so that God's message of salvation could be taken to the world. Now, the Old Testament is a story of a bit of a fickle nation that failed in that, but that's the purpose.

I love your focus on the other orientation. The two things that existed according to the Bible before the foundation of the world that we know were love and communication among the Trinity. Let's raise the issue and the term entire sanctification. This is a term that is biblical. It's very well known among the Wesleyan world and all Bible students, of course. 1 Thessalonians 3, 24 and 25 says it's the privilege of all believers to be entirely sanctified.

So, let's just start talking about the question I'll suggest from some reading that we did together to kind of provoke our thinking and some of our discussion here. A statement was made that entire sanctification is something that God does. I think it's very important that God does it.

Even when he says, be holy, the way we are holy is that God is the one who makes us holy. It's something that God does in our lives after we believe in Jesus. It's an act of faith to go to that next level of entire sanctification. Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

The other implication is, and your neighbor as yourself. Simply put, it's that kind of a wholehearted giving over to God and wanting to live like Christ. And maybe part of our beginning should be Wesleyan theology teaches us that salvation is made up of justification, which leads to regeneration, which leads to sanctification. And justification is the wonderful thing that happens along with a lot of other things when we are saved, when we accept Jesus by faith and our heart is changed. It is something that happens at a point in time and it begins our life with Christ, but sanctification is what takes place the rest of our lives. It's progressive and it can lead us to a point of entire sanctification, which means that we are in a living dynamic relationship with God where we can live for him. I love how you set us up in the beginning by talking about the nature of God and nature of all of scripture.

I think that's really important. For me, for years, I was confused about this entirety thing because I didn't connect that command that we are to yield our entire will to the Lord to the whole nature of who God is. We talked about his holy love and the flow of scripture.

I mean, I feel really dumb. You all are biblical scholars here and I'm learning from you. I sat back and I thought, what's the whole Bible about?

This is how dense I am. I didn't notice, had never noticed that the Bible starts with the Holy Spirit making all of creation. He's ordering it all and he's the last person to Trinity in the last chapter who's there at the end. I thought, have I missed the whole point that the Holy One, of course the triune God, but the Holy Spirit's form in creation makes creation for that reality, entire holiness. We know that heaven is going to be entire holy love for eternity, so something in the middle has been messed up.

And so for me, just generally, you've got three eras. You've got I am holy, be ye holy, which we've mentioned. Jesus and the demons recognize he's the Holy One, the incarnate Holy One of God.

And then Thessalonians, which is the church saying, well, we believe what God has said about himself and about us. He's entirely holy. He can make me what he wants me to be.

I want to be made like the one I love. So let that love flow in. And as Vern said, it's the entire sanctification. It's what God does in us.

Absolutely, yeah. And so I was confused on this thing. I've got to get something where my will is going to be given to Jesus and kept coming to altars and doing and pushing, which is not totally wrong. I've got to yield myself to him. It was an un-theological approach.

It was more of an anthropological. It's about me, not about God. And that was a big mistake for me. I like to always remind myself God has called us to be holy.

It's not an option. The great thing about that is he's provided a way for us to be holy. And that's how I view the word sanctification. He sanctifies us. Exactly what you said, Vern.

He does this. And so we go back to the nature of the triune God. He offers himself because he loves us. Holiness is what we're made for. We're created for that.

Thank you for joining us for this first session. The word sanctification and the word holy have the same root. You can almost replace them anywhere in scripture for one another.

To be sanctified is to be holy. And that's what God wants for us. So we're going to pursue this further and talk further about the wonderful plan God has for us to be in a living, dynamic relationship with him. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support. You can subscribe to Words of Life on your favorite podcast store or visit salvationarmysoundcast.org. Join us next time for the Salvation Army's Words of Life. These are the words, these are the words, these are the words of life. These are the words, these are the words, these are the words of life.