Wesley believed that the opposition to Christian perfection grew out of misunderstanding rather than genuine resistance to the holy life. Those persons who are serious about their faith journey want no part of a false piety or an unrealistic expectation about how one can live. These persons want an authentic faith that grows out of and is nurtured by a vital relationship with the living God. And this is precisely what Christian perfection proposes to be.

Do you want to go on to perfection? If not, where do you want to go? The church and the world could be transformed if every person who claims Christ as Savior were to intentionally walk this road to perfection. May it always be the road for you.

—Reuben Job, A Wesleyan Spiritual Reader, 208

This week I am going to post some of John Wesley’s writings on Christian perfection because I think they get at the heart of what it means to be a Christian and are certainly appropriate for the Lenten season. Wesley’s writings seem to be consistent with what St. Paul was getting at in Sunday’s NT lesson from Philippians.

I especially appreciate Job’s last paragraph quoted above. Once you understand what Wesley meant by “Christian Perfection” why would you not want to go there?

What do you think? Register and chime in with your own experiences this week.

They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered over to human hands. He will be killed, and after three days he will rise.” But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it. They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

—Mark 9:30-35 (TNIV)

It was not a banner day for Jesus’ disciples. Here Mark gives us another example of their continuing failure to understand the true nature of Jesus’ saving mission and the kind of Messiah he fashioned himself to be. Indeed, Jesus’ disciples are not alone in their misunderstanding of the atoning nature of his death. Even today, there are many who deny that Jesus’ death atoned for our sins and at one time I was among those who did. The thought of God punishing his Son by torturing him to death repulsed me. Of course, in so thinking, I failed to comprehend the inseparability of the Holy Trinity and the impossible predicament of the human condition. I failed to take sin seriously enough. I failed to see that this was God himself bearing the just punishment of our sins.

This is hard stuff to think about and reflect on, but it is the heart of the Good News. When we begin to realize that we have a crucified God and not a vengeful or bloodthirsty One, we are freed to respond to God’s great love for us with joyful and grateful obedience. This, of course, is the essence of our Lenten journey (and beyond). Today, think about this crucified God of ours who loved us and gave himself for us so that we could live with him forever. Think about an appropriate response on your part to that great and gracious love and then ask God to help you respond in kind.

It is amazing how the sweetness in this often distressing life is still so great that it causes us to have such a fear of dying. Even those who believe that they will pass through death to a life without death, still wish that they could avoid going through the dying to get there.

—Sermon 280

Life is nothing but a race toward death, a race in which no one can stand still or slow down, even for a moment. Those who live many years and those who live only a few days run with equal speed.  Just as a long journey does not mean that travelers slow their steps, so on the way to death those who take more time proceed no more slowly than those who seem to reach the goal more quickly.

—City of God

As you look ahead in life you begin to realize that all of us are going to die someday. In your infancy you look forward to being a child. When you are a child you look forward to being a teenage. As a teen, you look forward to being a young adult. In your days of young adulthood you look forward to being middle-aged. When you reach middle-age you look forward to old age. But when you finally get old you realize that there is nothing more to look forward to in this life. There is no age after old age.

—Letters 213.1

I am not sure if we would all agree with Augustine about looking forward to old age per se. But that misses his point. We are mortals and have a finite life span. We have to live every day like our last because it may be. Where are you building your life’s capital? In a 401 account or in God?

O God, who has given us the great and saving truths of your gospel: grant us, we ask you, to live amid these things, to meditate on them and to seek them; for one who goes on seeking, finds. Help us, therefore, to learn those things on earth, the knowledge of which shall abide with us in heaven. Grant this for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

—Jerome