BLJ: Today, we look at several typical responses when people resist entire sanctification. We must always be ready to give an answer when we are sharing our faith to others.
Is Christian Perfection absolute perfection?
It is not. We know of no writer who has ever taught any such perfection in man. God's moral perfections are like an infinite ocean, as boundless and fathomless as immensity. Up to this perfection neither man, nor angel, nor seraph can ever come. Between the highest degree of human perfection, and the perfection of God, there is the difference between the finite and the infinite. Absolute perfection belongs to God alone. In this sense, there is none good but one, that is God." The lightest, sweetest, and most lovely angel in Paradise is infinitely below absolute perfection.
25. Is Christian perfection the same as Angelic perfection? It is not. Angels are a higher order of intelligences; they are innocent and sinlessly pure. The fire of their love burns with an intensity, and their services are performed with a precision and rectitude not possible to mortals. In this world we must be content with Christian perfection; when we reach heaven we shall be equal unto the angels." Christian perfection or holiness is a perfection according to the capacity of a man, and not according to the capacity of an angel, or a glorified saint.
26. Is Christian perfection synonymous with Adamic perfection?
It is not. There is a wide difference between a pure-hearted Christian saved by grace, and unfallen Adam in his Paradisiacal glory; a difference in range of powers, innocency, and grounds of justification. Adam was justified by works, and was free from the broken powers, and infirmities of fallen human nature.
Every creature of God may be perfect after its kind, and according to its degree. Angels, cherubim, and seraphim are all perfect, but their perfection falls infinitely below the absolute perfection of God. There is a gradation which belongs to all the works of God, and hence there are various sorts and degrees of perfection. Angels are perfect in their order and place; they are perfect as angels, but imperfect in comparison with God. Each sphere of being has its normal limits; God alone has absolute, infinite perfection; the angels have a perfection of their own, above that of humanity; fallen but regenerate and sanctified man has also his peculiar sphere in the mediatorial economy; and the highest practicable rectitude, whatever it may be, is his perfection, and is Christian perfection.
Christian perfection is a perfection of love, pure love in a fallen but purified soul.
In the very nature of things, the term perfection is used in various senses, and must be limited and qualified when applied to any being but God; and yet those who reject the doctrine, of Christian perfection seem to affix to the term but one single idea, and that the idea of absoluteness -- implying absolute perfection.
To apply absolute perfection, or angelic, or Adamic perfection, to the terms given in the Bible, significant of Christian perfection, which is a modified, relative perfection, such as may be asserted of an entirely sanctified Christian, is as illogical as it is common among the opponents of this doctrine.
Mr. Wesley adopted the term perfection because he found it in the Scriptures; (see question 1;) he deemed St. Paul and St. John sufficient authorities for its use. The Christian world has also largely recognized the term in the writings of Clement, Macarius, Kempis, Fenelon, Lucus, and many other writers both Papal and Protestant.
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