What is Christian Perfection? Ryan Danker
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- čas přidán 7. 08. 2024
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For hundreds of years the church has preached a gospel of grace but has typically limited it to conversion and the forgiveness of sins. In the 18th century, God raised up John Wesley and the people called Methodists who experienced and preached the penetrating character of the gospel as the powerful work of God to overcome sin and radically transform lives. This is what John Wesley meant by Christian perfection, or entire sanctification. Christian perfection, then, is the work of God in the heart of a person that actually makes it possible to genuinely love God and love neighbor, no longer being captive to sin. Not only is there evidence for this doctrine in Scripture, it also provides a more holistic and mature understanding of the work that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are doing in the world.
Watch this Seven Minute Seminary by Ryan Danker as he describes John Wesley's doctrine of perfection and explains why its so critical of a vision for the church.
Read scripture without placing man's doctrines between the lines and this is exactly what message you will find. May the revelation of God's truth and promises be seen by those who long for Him.
Amen
"Doctrine" is not a dirty word ( though I hated it the first decade in the Lord when still caught in the hyper-faith arena).
Doctrine is how we precisely state to another or others what we believe and don't believe. It's merely a language of communication.
This is a Wesleyan/Methodist thread. Such are not sola scriptura. Believed is a quadrilatetal approach to God's Truth, the written Word preeminent.
SEVEN
REASONS FOR CHRISTIAN SINLESS PERFECTION
1.HEBREWS 10:14
For by single offering He
has perfected forever those who are being made holy.
Our sinless perfection is made
possible when Christ’ purchase us with His blood. Our sinless perfection is
accomplished by the cross when God through Christ has made us holy, perfect and
blameless in His sight.
@@IsaacLikesGames have you got an answer?
A Collect for Grace
O LORD our heavenly Father Almighty and everlasting God who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day; Defend us in the same with thy mighty power and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger; but that all our doings being ordered by thy governance may be righteous in thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, 1789)
Hello Ryan, been Methodist for 20 years now and am a Youth Pastor continually looking to dig deeper.
At the end you summarized the concept of perfection as:
being made whole in love
and you mentioned in your video that as Methodist we don’t have so much a focus on sin but filling our hearts with love so that there is no room for sin.
I have recently been diving deep into the concept of “The Fear of the Lord”. Which to me basically means to honor the God of all Creation, the miracle worker, the life giver with our complete trust and OBEDIENCE.
I have come to think about the relationship between live and Obedience and they seem to be almost interchangeable. Or at least you can’t have LOVE without OBEDIENCE.
Love requires rules. Love without rules becomes abusive and demented as proven by man every day.
I think it short changes God and man to think that “all we need is love”. We need love with obedience to God’s principles in order to “move on toward perfection”. And it is more so that God would be perfecting us not that we are becoming perfect. Obedience means following his rules and getting our will lined up with his.
Would love to here your thoughts. Thanks and God Bless!
The fullness of God's Love operates when we get out of and stay out of Its Way. It neither needs us to add anything to it, nor...(guess that was it).
That's where our obedience plays into it.
Titus 2:11 for the Grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, that we should live soberly, righteously, Godly, in this present world. Wesley got this teaching from the Bible.
He needs to perfect his bow tie, ha God bless you brother
Paul tells us "not to sin"
Yes, has The Lord God helped you to stop sinning once and for all?
@@newkingdomwarriornumberunk5313 no but I want to be won over totally by Jesus. I want him to destroy my idols totally and to give me the knowledge / revelation I am forgiven and that I can go and sin no more.
@@DiscoverJesus That is wonderful. 🙂 If you ask Him to help you stop sinning once and for all and baptize you with the Holy Spirit, He will help you stop sinning and you'll be saved. I did so about 8 years ago, and my life was changed ever since. Now thanks to the Lord, this is the greatest year of my life. Oh, by the way, I have a theorem that was given to me by The Lord God, that proves He exists. If you'd like to hear some of it, just let me know. 🙂
1 John 1:8 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
One of the books I've ever read on this subject is, A Theology of Love, by Wynkoop.
Had he not met the Moravians, he would not have been transformed. Paul was a legalist until he encountered Christ. In the same way, Wesley encountered Christ through the Moravians and only then was empowered.
Ummm, no, it happened when Wesley encountered GOD'S GRACE given the Moravians, to be more exacting - which I had to be, jealous for God's glory.
@@brotherjim5904 Well said, HIS glory, HIS presence with, in and through the Moravians, then through the Wesleys.
Amen!
Yes, Amen
I don’t know a single Christian Methodist or not that actually believe they’ve gotten to a point where they have totally stopped sinning.
That's because no one does, well, except a few who have greatly deceived themselves. As long as there is still time in this life we will sin again. Period. Jesus' meaning is very simple as far as I can tell. Just a couple verses before he tells us to love those who persecute us, demonstrating that this is a quality akin to God, pointing out that God is kind to the evil and the good, rather than only to the good. By saying "be perfect", which could also be translated "be complete" or "be whole", he is suggesting that to only love those who love you is to be lacking, incomplete. To use this verse to suggest that we are to be sinless is to take it out of context.
Being perfect before God (not people) can be, made synonymous with "walk[ing] in the Light, as He is in the Light" - at least in part.
It is not not ever sinning, it is when we do sin, immediately being aware, immediately being convicted, immediately repenting instead of justifying/excusing, immediately asking forgiveness, immediately receiving it, immediately getting back on the horse of our journey.
When we instantaneously receive the fullnes of Agape' Love, and are being perfected in as we learn to get the heck out of its Way (Heb. 4:9), sin will outwardly manifest less and less....
..and when those times come when we think we've "arrived," God will remove that Agape' to an arm's length away, we will realize our arrogance of self returning, and then again do the above.
We do not possess God's Love - it hopefully possesses us. It belongs to Him. It rests upon us to be used as the Holy Ghost wills it so. We are clothed with it, I suspect. Its a heavenly repose.
Our responsibility: give up, let Him.
I agree. Overall Wesley was right on what he taught
Amen!
@@Kevin-pe1kj
More or less :)
All I want to do is fix this guys bow tie.
You obviously suffer from sinless perfection, aka, obsessive compulsory disorder ?! 😂👍✅
Yeah I’d love to meet a sinless Christian. I haven’t met one yet. What I see in sinless perfectionist is either pride and arrogance or someone overly anxious killing them selves to try to be sinless.
The Never Ending Then meet Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:34. After that meet John in 1 John 3:6-9. After that meet Peter in 1 Peter 4:1-2. You think that when they wrote this they would say “Yes I am sinner”? I think not.
When I first read some if Wesley's stuff on a website posting The Wesleyan Heritage Library CD, the website owner also used the phrase you reference, "sinless perfection." I, too, was taken aback
I've since learned that the term is a misnomer because it leads to incorrect connotations.
I know of no one who both claims to have the instantaneously given Grace of Love's fullness, and who claims to never sin - with the possible exception of the website owner I reference, and I hope I misunderstood them.
I also did not hear the man doing this video at all claim such thing.
Ummmm...well...not sure where to begin on this one, or even if I should...hovering.
I had to chuckle when he quoted John as saying that for most, Christian perfection is manifested as someone is dying. Dang.
I really, really hate the sound of the phrase "Christian perfection." Even less irritating would be using Christian perfectness, implying a process rather than a culmination. But that, too, would give way to incorrect connotations, since the actual process is what precedes so-called entire sanctification; the result, love's fullness, being an instaneous event as stated.
Entire sanctification, too, a misnomer and I assert to an even greater extent then the afore. Kindly let me objectively and subjectively explain.
An axiom I coined 2 or 3 decades ago - also posted in another comment somewhere in my channel:
Man (yeah, was written in pre-PC days), even born-again Christian man, will always limit theology to either that which they've personally experienced, or what they're willing to yet undergo and have [God's]/the Faith to believe.
So, as a generalized analogy, let's say there are 6 things available to a mortal, lettered a through f. If someone obtains a, and they don't believe b and c genuinely exist, are not even aware of the existence of d, e and f, then their belief system is limited to only a.
Suppose a few [See-more (get it?) and] discover both a and b...
Suppose a John Wesley or = comes along and assigns those letters to the mountaintop experiences of their Christian walk, the baptizings [my word] they've undergone [a cleansing + empowering replacement combo]. Further suppose they've never heard of anyone anywhere who's received the latter 3 of the 6 letters of blessings, such never even entering their thought process. But they're full knowing that to have b is rare, and both b AND C!?!
So, for such, a + b + c = the full manifestations of God in people, hence entire sanctification. But it's only entire to them because that is all they know exists in the universe.
I am at least very, very thankful that seminary students are still being taught Wesley's "entire" (sorry, I had to make it satirical) sanctification theology. And I assume the psychology [- in addition to reality -] behind Wesley declaring the vast majority don't have it until death, so that those in the pulpits aren't prevented from teaching it if they are themselves not a recipient. [I wonder how much actually plays out, though.]
But on the plus side of a 1-minute mgmt.: the Word says when we see Him face to face, we will be like Him. The nine Fruits of the Spirit allow the mental assent to seeing Jesus' persona, but apparently that falls short. However, just because all will see Him fully THEN, it doesn't exclude the possibility here and now for a few so consumed, neither should someone think it nearly impossible for a, b and c in their mortal journey.
As for d, e and f? Think NINE Fruits (yeah, I know, many teach the other 8 are subservient to Love). Think Wisdom. Think?? - I will have to get back to you on that one.
Think beyond the above axiom; think beyond the personal testimonies of others; think death upon death to one's self.
["...whoever loses his life for My sake will [fully] find it."
Perhaps the prerequisite: "...he who hates his life in this world...."]
[Edit additions]
Aha, okay, I found it.
In the concluding 3 points of Wesley's "Christian Perfection," he does indeed state that the time of perfection is in part instantaneous "generally [at] the instant of death," BUT he follows it with "[or] it may be ten, twenty, or fourty years before." I prefer and suggest the latter.
Why do people do that? Why are truths used out of context? Wesley's point regarding when sanctification/perfection is received, was within a very terse paragraph. It would've required only an additional 5 or 10 seconds to verbally share both time frames. Why say only the one, and imply its near impossibility before death? (Rhetorical; socratic.)
The breastplate of (CHRIST's) Righteousness is given to us after we vow (swear) allegiance to JESUS, because HE has justified us, through HIS Supreme Blood Sacrifice of Atonement, as the LAMB of GOD !
But, what does Romans 8:4 state ?
'The righteous requirement of the Law's might be fulfilled in us 🐑🐑🐑, who walk according to the [HOLY]❤️SPIRIT !! 👍✅😀
Speaking of "breastplates," of my top 3 or so favorite books: The Christian in Complete Armour by William Gurnall, abridged, especially Vol. 2 (so that you don't go numb before finishing Vol. 1 - each about 600 pages if I recall).
So... the Book of Common Prayer... and where is scriptural support?
scriptural support would be the entire Bible sir.
Sin is our choice.
John Wesley was not a Wesleyan nor called one so perhaps you shouldn't be either. I follow Christ ("anointed one") so I am a Christian ("little anointed one"). Now that's a perfect perspective to be in line with and the path to fully understand perfection. John W. had many fine qualities of Christ which we should emulate but only insofar as that we emulate it by giving credit to Christ (the source of such qualities). Let's keep it simple and give honor and credit to whom (Christ) it is due.
+Lewis Wright you are right except John Wesley may or may not be considered Methodist depending on your definition of "Methodist." It depends on whether you are talking about the movement or the denomination.
SEVEN
REASONS FOR CHRISTIAN SINLESS PERFECTION
1.HEBREWS 10:14
For by single offering He
has perfected forever those who are being made holy.
Our sinless perfection is made
possible when Christ’ purchase us with His blood. Our sinless perfection is
accomplished by the cross when God through Christ has made us holy, perfect and
blameless in His sight.