"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
Jesus in The Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5:48
Today, I'm thankful for The United Methodist Church's teaching on Sanctifying Grace.
When I was being brought into full connection as a clergy person in Oklahoma Conference of The United Methodist Church, I remember the bishop asking me the historic questions.
The first is, "Have you faith in Christ?" Of course!
The second is harder, "Are you going on to perfection?" Um, what? Does this mean, am I a perfectionist?
Those who have studied our doctrines in seminary understand that John Wesley asked about Christian perfection with regards to love and not perfectionism which is a more modern psychological understanding. In fact, within our Book of Discipline, ¶ 102 on "Our Doctrinal Heritage" has this to say about it:
Sanctifying grace draws us toward the gift of Christian perfection, which Wesley described as a heart “habitually filled with the love of God and neighbor” and as “having the mind of Christ and walking as he walked.”
So, clergy are expected to answer "Yes" to the second question as well.
Then the bishop asks the third question, "Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?"
Please note that this question includes the clause, "in love" because we all answer "yes" to this as well.
As we look at the quote from the Sermon on the Mount I posted above, this is a great example of why we don't take the Bible literally in all places and why we do put it into context of the rest of the passage. Within this scripture, Jesus is talking about loving your enemies. The perfection he speaks of is in regards to how we love those who would do us harm. This is not an easy thing to do and so Jesus sets the bar high for his disciples.
As I think about what this means for my life, I look at it as trying to wish for no harm to come to anyone. The difficult piece of this comes when you feel attacked. You may actually (at least in the short term) wish that they would get what's coming to them.
Can I bless them instead?
This is what sanctification means to me. It means that we become more Christ-like in our lives. Please know that we do not attempt this outside of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
If we remember Paul's words to the Galatians, he writes that the fruit of the Holy Spirit is exemplified in "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." In other words, Christians should strive to show these characteristics more than not.
I think it is important that we teach that this is a process and that we don't get there overnight.
This is made clear in the fourth historic question that clergy answer, " Are you earnestly striving after it?"
Our answer is yes. There's no way we could reach perfection in love in this lifetime unless we work at it. And we work at it with God's help.
I'm not there yet. But I do believe that I'm closer today than I was when I first answered these questions all those years ago. This may come as a surprise to some people but there you go!
How do you work on becoming more Christlike in your life? What are the barriers that keep you from getting there? Are there people in your life that you find difficult to love? It is important to remember that these people do not instruct us how to live. Rather, we look to Jesus Christ.
Ah, the first question which all of us may need to answer: Have you faith in Christ?
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| Some days this is what my spiritual life looks like! |
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