Holiness, Sanctification, and Christian Perfection — Unit 2: Initial Sanctification and the Continuing Struggle with Sin

Key Verse

"And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." (1 Corinthians 6:11, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain Wesley's teaching that justification is what God does for us and sanctification is what God does in us.

2. Describe what changes at the new birth, including freedom from the rule of sin.

3. Explain what Wesley meant by "sin in believers," and the difference between sin that remains and sin that reigns.

4. State the main views of Romans 7 and 1 John 1:8, and give the Wesleyan answer to the objection that believers cannot be free from sin.

5. Counsel a believer who has fallen into sin, using Scripture and Wesleyan teaching.

The Voice of This Unit

This unit is written from inside the Wesleyan tradition, for Wesleyan students. It is theologically conservative: the Bible is God's inspired Word and our final authority. Other faithful Christians read the passages in this unit differently, and we state their views fairly before we answer. Course 2 treated the way of salvation as a whole. Here we look closely at the first part of sanctification, the part that begins when a person is born again, and at the struggle with sin that every believer knows.

Two Words: Justified and Sanctified

Our key verse puts together three things God has done for the Corinthian believers. They were washed, sanctified and justified. Paul's list shows that the new life has more than one side.

John Wesley put the matter in a simple way. Justification is what God does for us through His Son. He forgives our sins, and He counts us as right with Him. Sanctification is what God does in us through His Spirit. He renews us in His image and makes us holy. Wesley taught that the two happen together at the beginning. When a person is justified, he is also born again, and in the new birth the work of sanctification begins. Wesley saw the new birth as the beginning of holiness. Many other Christians have drawn a similar line between a change in our standing and a change in our nature.

This is clear in Scripture. Paul writes that God saved us "through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5). He writes, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). Jesus told Nicodemus that no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again (John 3:3, 5). The new birth is not only a new label. It is the gift of new life.

We call this beginning "initial sanctification." It is real holiness, but it is the start of a road, not the end. The New Testament uses the word "saints," that is, "holy ones," for all believers, even for the troubled church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:2). They were holy because they belonged to God, and they were called to become holy in conduct.

What Changes at the New Birth

Paul teaches in Romans 6 that the believer has died to sin's rule. He asks, "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" and answers, "Certainly not!" (Romans 6:1-2). He says that our old man was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be done away with, and that we should no longer be slaves of sin (Romans 6:6). He then gives a promise: "For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace" (Romans 6:14). In another place he says that those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24).

John says the same. "Whoever has been born of God does not sin" (1 John 3:9). He also says that the one born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him (1 John 5:18). If we read these verses alone, a Christian might think that no believer ever sins. But John also writes about sin and forgiveness in the same letter, as we will see. Wesley preached a sermon on this subject, "The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God." He explained that John's words describe the believer's life as a whole. A true child of God does not live in willful sin, and does not go on in sin as a way of life. Many interpreters note that John uses a verb form in these verses that suggests a continuing action. A believer may stumble. He does not return to sin as his master.

This is a large thing. A person who was once a slave of drunkenness, hatred, lust or greed is, by the grace of God, set free. He does not simply feel sorry. He receives power. Every pastor has seen such changes, and it is the glory of the gospel. The Wesleyan tradition has always insisted that the gospel promises real freedom from the rule of sin now, not only after death.

The Continuing Struggle: Sin in Believers

Yet every honest believer knows another side. After conversion the old desires do not always disappear at once. Paul writes to the Galatians that the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and they are contrary to one another (Galatians 5:17). He tells believers in Rome that if they live according to the flesh they will die, but if by the Spirit they put to death the deeds of the body, they will live (Romans 8:13). He calls the Corinthians "babes in Christ" and says they are still carnal because of envy and strife (1 Corinthians 3:1-3). The writer to the Hebrews tells believers to lay aside the sin that so easily ensnares us (Hebrews 12:1).

Wesley took these texts very seriously. He preached about them in two sermons: "On Sin in Believers" (1763), and "The Repentance of Believers" (1767). In the first, he argued against a view held by some of his Moravian friends, whom he loved and respected, that a person who is justified is at once cleansed from all sin. Wesley said this is not what the Bible teaches, and it is not what Christians find in themselves. A believer, he said, may have no outward sin and yet still feel an inward tendency to pride, anger, self-will or unbelief. He used the language of "the flesh" and "inbred sin" for this inward tendency.

Wesley then drew a distinction that clears much confusion. There is a difference between sin that reigns and sin that remains. In the unbeliever sin reigns: it rules, and he obeys it. In the believer sin does not reign, but it remains as an inward tendency that he must resist by the power of the Spirit. Because it does not reign, the believer is not under condemnation. Paul says, "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (Romans 8:1). A temptation that arises within is not yet a sin that has been committed, so long as the believer does not consent to it. Wesley wanted believers to be neither careless nor in despair.

Here the Wesleyan tradition holds two truths at the same time. First, a believer is truly free from the rule of sin and has power to say no. Second, a believer still has an inward weakness that needs further healing, and he must watch and pray. The teaching of Units 3 to 5 about Christian perfection begins from this point: Wesleyans believe that God promises to deal with that remaining inward weakness and to fill the heart with love.

The Great Debate: Romans 7

Many students ask about Romans 7:14-25. Paul says there, "For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do." He ends with the cry, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Is Paul speaking of a Christian?

Three main views exist, and a fair teacher states them all. Many early Greek-speaking Christian writers took Paul to be describing a person under the law who is awakened to his sin but not yet free. Augustine in his later writings, and the Reformers after him, took the passage as the experience of a mature believer. Some modern interpreters think Paul is speaking in a literary way, for Israel or for humanity under the law, and not for himself.

Wesley held that Romans 7 describes a person who is under the law and not yet delivered, though awakened by the law. We follow this reading. Our reasons are that Paul says in the same passage that he is "sold under sin" (7:14), while in 6:18 he says that believers have been "set free from sin"; and that the cry for deliverance in 7:24 is answered in Romans 8:2: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Those who read the passage as a Christian's experience point out that Paul speaks in the present tense, and that the person delights in God's law "according to the inward man" (7:22). We reply that an awakened person under the law can delight in the law, and that Paul may be using a vivid style to describe what he lived through. A wise pastor does not need to win this argument. Whichever reading is held, Romans 8 stands as the answer: the Christian life is a life in the power of the Spirit.

The Objection from 1 John 1:8

The most common objection to Wesleyan teaching is found in 1 John 1:8: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Reformed teachers, remembering a phrase of the Reformation, simul justus et peccator, "at once righteous and a sinner," say that the believer is always both. They add that anyone who claims freedom from sin is deceived.

Our answer. We agree with John. A believer who says he has no sin deceives himself. In this unit we have said that sin remains in believers, and Wesley said it too. We also agree that all believers always depend on the mercy of Christ, and that no one is justified by his own goodness. But John does not stop at 1:8. He goes on: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1:9). Then he says, "My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (2:1). The aim of the gospel is that we not sin, and the provision for failure is forgiveness. John does not say that sin is necessary. He says that sin is not to be excused, and that Christ is able to cleanse. The Reformed answer is sincere and has taught many to trust Christ alone. We simply say that Scripture offers more: cleansing, not only forgiveness.

When a Believer Falls

What then of the believer who falls into sin? Wesley's sermon "The Repentance of Believers" teaches that repentance does not end at conversion. Believers need to repent when they find sin in their hearts or have fallen in their lives, and to trust Christ afresh. This is not a return to the first repentance, which led to justification. It is the humble honesty of a child who is already in the family.

The Wesleyan tradition, however, also teaches that sin must not be taken lightly. A believer can fall into willful sin and, if he persists in it and in unbelief, can lose the life he was given. This is the doctrine of conditional security, which Course 2, Unit 9 treated in full. We note here only that the same Scripture that offers an Advocate also warns the careless. A believer who falls should repent quickly, confess, and return to Christ, and the church should help him to be restored (Galatians 6:1).

The means of grace are God's ordinary ways of helping us stand: prayer, the reading and hearing of Scripture, the Lord's Supper, fasting and fellowship with other believers. Unit 7 studies them in detail. For now, remember that growth in holiness is not a matter of effort alone. It is God who works, through the channels He has given.

Pastoral Application

A man in your congregation was converted a year ago. He had been a heavy drinker, and for months he was free. One weekend he became angry with his brother and drank again. On Sunday he sits at the back and does not come to the altar. He says to you, "I thought I was changed. Now I think I was never saved."

You do not scold him, and you do not say "it is nothing." You first help him see that his sorrow is itself a sign that the Spirit is working in him. You read 1 John 1:9 and 2:1 with him, and you ask him to confess to God what he did. You remind him of Romans 6:14: sin shall not have dominion over him. You help him see that his failure is not the way of life God gave him, and that God has power for him. You ask him to meet with you each week and to join a small group. You ask him to pray, read the Bible, and avoid the places and people that lead him astray. Finally, you tell him that God promises to deal with the inward weakness that made him fall, and that this is the hope of the next units.

Summary

Wesley taught that justification is what God does for us and sanctification is what God does in us, and that the two begin together at the new birth. At the new birth the believer is truly changed and freed from the rule of sin (Romans 6; 1 John 3:9). Yet sin remains as an inward tendency (Galatians 5:17; 1 Corinthians 3:1-3), and Wesley taught the difference between sin that reigns and sin that remains. Romans 7 is read in three ways, and Wesley took it to describe the person under the law. Against the objection from 1 John 1:8 we reply that John also promises cleansing and forgiveness, and that he writes so that we may not sin. A believer who falls should repent and trust Christ again, and the church should help restore him. The remaining inward weakness leads to the promise of Christian perfection, studied in the next units.

Further Reading

• John Wesley, "On Sin in Believers," "The Repentance of Believers," "The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God," and "The New Birth," in his Sermons.

• John Wesley, Notes on the New Testament, on Romans 6-8 and 1 John.

• John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1766).

• The Methodist Articles of Religion (1784), on sin after justification.

• Charles Wesley, hymns on the new birth and on the struggle with sin.

• Holiness Through the Ages (Coleman, Danielson and Parry), the Master's textbook for this course.

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