What does it mean to be holy? The Bible says, “For I am the LORD that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:45 KJV). As God says here that He is holy and we are to be holy, we understand that being holy does not mean being or doing something physical. After all, Jesus says, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24 KJV).
If holiness is not something we can do, then it must be something we can be. “Sanctification is the divine act of making believers holy—that is, bringing regenerate people’s spiritual and moral condition into conformity with the legal status established at justification” (Thorsen p. 273).
Sanctification simply means that God takes saved people and changes them from the inside out to be like His Son. When asked if one is entirely sanctified, the question means are we consecrating ourselves to the lordship of Christ. Dunning puts it this way, “Thus in the salvation process, God accepts man just as he is and at that moment begins the process of making him into the kind of person He intends him to be. This latter is the working of grace that is described in a shorthand way by the term sanctification” (p. 474).
There are differing beliefs on how one is sanctified or made holy. One of the ways Catholic and Orthodox Churches believe a person may grow spiritually is through participating in the sacraments. “Faithful observance of the sacraments provides grace to bless, keep, and nurture Christians into greater conformity with Jesus” (Thorsen p. 274).
Protestants also encourage participation in the sacraments of Communion and baptism. These certainly can draw one closer to God, but Protestants thought that Catholics put too much emphasis on the role of the sacraments to perfect believers. “Instead,” Thorsen says, “the reformers believed that the scriptures revealed people to be sinfully depraved, incapable of contributing to their justification or sanctification” (p. 275).
Martin Luther, one of those reformers strongly believed in depending only on God’s sovereignty. Through the blood of Jesus we are made righteous. However, Luther also thought that even though we are saved, we are also still sinners.
John Calvin, another reformer, “also emphasized the utter dependence of people on God’s grace” (Thorsen p. 276). Calvin, like Luther, thought that Christians are both righteous and sinful, and participation in spiritual disciplines ought to come out of a grateful and thankful heart.
Perhaps, the easiest to understand is John Wesley’s views. He believed that the regeneration, or new birth that happens at conversion is to continue throughout the life of the believer. Sanctification occurs when that repentance which lead to conversion continues throughout their lives. “Wesley referred to this time of total consecration as entire sanctification or Christian perfection” (thorsen p. 277).
The Bible backs up this thought in 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.”
Now that we have explored what being holy is and how that sanctification is, the way to become holy, the question arises: wwhy?
“God wants people to believe and to relate with God in ways that foster and ever-growing and fulfilling sense of intimacy” (Thorsen p. 299).
God desires fellowship with us. Two verses in Scripture answer the question of why. First, we read in Deuteronomy 14:2, “For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth”. The second is in the New Testament and says, “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9 KJV).
God chose us. He chose us because of His great love. We love him, only because He loved us first (1 John 4:19).
This love is not a romantic feeling that comes and goes at random; it is a love that suffers long and is kind. It is a love that does not envy, is not puffed up or proud, seeks not its own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in evil but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, and hopes all things. It is a love that never fails (1 Corinthians 13).
“In speaking of love as the essence of spirituality, Thorsen states, “This word is not simply a cliche or reductionist portrayal of christianity. While reference to love seems simplistic, its substance is not simplistic in Scripture” (Thorsen p. 282).
Entire sanctification is loving Him as He loves us, in so much as we are able and giving our entire selves over to Him. Dunning quotes Wesley’s sermon On Patience, “Entire sanctification involves a love incompatible with sin. It is a love unmixed with sin, a pure love. Earlier sanctity was alloyed with sinful inclinations, which affected the soul. After the experience of perfect sanctification, however, there is no mixture of any contrary affections: All is peace and harmony after” (p. 467).
How is this accomplished? Love for God that is not spoiled or mixed up with a love for this world and its pleasures. Consecrating all to the one who created us. Allowing Him to have His perfect way in us. It happens as a gracious gift from the Spirit that we, in turn, offer back to Him.
“I suspect,” Austin says in our lecture, “that much of the confusion that has arisen in regard to the Wesleyan understanding of salvation is the result of taking that which is descriptive, and making it prescriptive.” Therefore, as he goes on to say, “I sometimes wonder if we might be more holy if we didn’t talk about it so much. Our talking has tended to draw our attention to the “experience” rather than to God, and has corrupted the very language we use when we try to articulate this experience of God’s love and grace.”
Perhaps Austin is correct. Maybe, it is high time we allow God to sanctify us to be His holy people and stop telling others how we think they should be holy.Works Cited
Austin, R. Roy, So Great A Salvation, Lecture
Dunning, H. Ray, Grace, Faith, & Holiness: A Wesleyan Systematic Theology, Beacon Hill Press, 1988
Thorsen, Don, An Exploration of Christian Theology, Baker Academic, 2008-2020
Shannon Wells 