As an earlier blog post stated, there are several names used to describe the same experience of having one’s heart cleansed from inbred sin, carnality, or the old man. Today, we use the term perfect love. This is not absolute perfection, but instead, it refers to a state where you love God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself. There is nothing in your heart that hinders you from such love. From J.A.Wood’s, “Perfect Love,” we read the following regarding the character of the evidence of entire sanctification:
“It is just as strong, positive, and reliable as can be given to substantiate any fact. Indeed it is the very strongest of all evidence.
1. The testimony of consciousness. This testimony we can no more doubt than we can doubt our existence. No testimony is more certain than this. By it we know we live and breathe, love or hate, sit or stand, or walk, and that we are joyful or sorrowful, happy or wretched.
2. The testimony of God—‘The witness of the Spirit.’ This testimony is divine, direct, and positive. The Holy Ghost is the witnessing Spirit.”
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church described how you could know you were sanctified wholly: “I can know it no otherwise than I know that I am justified. ‘Hereby know we that we are of God,’ in either sense, ‘by the Spirit that he hath given us.’ We know it by the witness and by the fruit of the Spirit.”
If you are entirely sanctified you will have an inner witness from the Holy Spirit that the divine work has been done. Do you have the witness? Has the work been done?
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