{"id":1097,"date":"2013-05-16T15:12:37","date_gmt":"2013-05-16T15:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.all-creatures.org\/blog\/?p=1097"},"modified":"2013-05-23T19:18:27","modified_gmt":"2013-05-23T19:18:27","slug":"christian-perfection-18-to-walk-as-he-walked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.all-creatures.org\/blog\/christian-perfection-18-to-walk-as-he-walked\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Perfection – 18: To Walk As He Walked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christian Perfection – 18: To Walk As He Walked<\/h2>\n
\"Lamb<\/a>
Lamb of God<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By: Frank L. Hoffman
\nJesus said, “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is\u00a0 perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)
\n(Wesley’s writings are in bold)<\/p>\n

Throughout A Plain Account of Christian Perfection<\/span>,\u00a0 John Wesley continually refers to our walking as Jesus also walked, which we\u00a0 specifically discussed in Chapter 5.\u00a0 However, because of the importance of\u00a0 our understanding this important concept of Christian perfection, we are\u00a0 discussing it again here in this Chapter.<\/p>\n

Let’s begin by looking at the Biblical passage from which\u00a0 comes this understanding of walking with Jesus (1 John 2:4-6):<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and\u00a0\u00a0 does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;
\n5.\u00a0 but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of\u00a0\u00a0 God has truly been perfected.\u00a0 By this we know that we are in Him:
\n6.\u00a0 the one who says he abides in Him ought himself\u00a0\u00a0 to walk in the same manner as He walked. \u00a0 NAS<\/p>\n

The apostle John’s words are extremely strong.\u00a0 The\u00a0 person who calls himself or herself a Christian is also one who is saying, “I\u00a0 have come to know Him,” and am following Him.\u00a0 If such a person is not\u00a0 “living” the commandments that Jesus commanded us to follow, which are fulfilled\u00a0 through unconditional love (Matthew 22:37-40), then the apostle John says that\u00a0 such a person is a liar and that the truth of Jesus Christ is not in them.<\/p>\n

The key to our understanding of how we walk with God\u00a0 (Jesus) is love.\u00a0\u00a0 To have the love of God perfected in us is a state\u00a0 of being; it is not something we achieve by doing.\u00a0 Love produces the good\u00a0 works, not the other way around.\u00a0 The way we physically live, speak and act\u00a0 is a reflection of our spiritual being.\u00a0 However, as the apostle Paul\u00a0 discusses extensively, and as we have already discussed, our physical being is\u00a0 constantly subjected to the lusts and desires of this corrupted world.\u00a0\u00a0 While both of these opposites, the perfection of God’s love and the corruption\u00a0 of the world, are as real as light and darkness, or hot and cold, or good and\u00a0 evil, they are all controlled by the “positive” and not the “negative”. In other\u00a0 words, light cancels out darkness and the truth cancels out the lie.<\/p>\n

Most people consider the opposite of love to be hate, but\u00a0 it is really fear; and as the apostle John also tells us “perfect love casts out\u00a0 fear” (1 John 4:18).\u00a0 Thus, the more we love, or the more that God’s love\u00a0 is perfected in us, the less fear we should experience.\u00a0 Similarly, the\u00a0 more light we have, the less darkness; the more heat, the less cold; and the\u00a0 more good, the less evil.\u00a0 Going along with the world, giving\u00a0 into\u00a0 ungodly peer pressure, or just acting upon our lusts or pride are expressions of\u00a0 our fear of not being accepted or of missing out on something we want.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But God’s perfect love can change our desires, if we truly want them to be\u00a0 changed.<\/p>\n

Thus, we could say that our Christian perfection is the\u00a0 spiritual state of being in which God’s love is truly perfected in us.\u00a0 And\u00a0 once God’s love is perfected in us, then it becomes increasingly more evident in\u00a0 our physical life (speech and actions).\u00a0 This is when we learn to walk as\u00a0 He walked.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, let’s look at what Wesley wrote in Part 15:<\/p>\n

About a year after, namely, in the year 1742, we\u00a0\u00a0 published another volume of hymns.\u00a0 The dispute being now at the height,\u00a0\u00a0 we spoke upon the head more largely than ever before.\u00a0 Accordingly,\u00a0\u00a0 abundance of the hymns in this volume treat expressly on this subject.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And so does the preface, which, as it is short, it may not be amiss to insert\u00a0\u00a0 entire:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“(1) Perhaps the general prejudice against Christian perfection may chiefly arise from a misapprehension of the nature of it.\u00a0 We willingly allow, and continually declare, there is no such perfection in this life as implies either a dispensation from doing good, and attending all the ordinances of God, or a freedom from ignorance, mistake, temptation, and a thousand infirmities necessarily connected with flesh and blood.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have found that there seems to be in many sectors of\u00a0 Christianity a deception that seeks “a dispensation from doing good”.\u00a0 This\u00a0 is done through an attempt to use scripture to justify evil and perverted acts,\u00a0 rather than following those attributes evident\u00a0 in perfected Godly love.\u00a0\u00a0 As an example, they attempt to justify war by citing Cornelius, a Roman soldier,\u00a0 who became a Christian.\u00a0\u00a0 They justify hunting by emulating Nimrod and\u00a0 Esau, two men who were evil.\u00a0\u00a0 They justify the horrors of factory\u00a0 farming because Jesus supposedly ate a piece of fish.\u00a0 They justify\u00a0 destruction of the environment and the torture of animals because God gave us\u00a0 “dominion”, rather than following its true meaning of “stewardship”.\u00a0 These\u00a0 are just a few of the many examples by which people try to justify their evil\u00a0 intent and deny any portion of Christian perfection.\u00a0 It’s as if there is a\u00a0 deliberate attempt to distort Ephesians 2:8-10 to say “we are saved by grace for\u00a0 evil works, which God prepared before hand.”<\/p>\n

“(2) First.\u00a0 We not only allow, but earnestly contend, that there is no perfection in this life, which implies any dispensation from attending all the ordinances of God, or from doing good unto all men while we have time, though ‘especially unto the household of faith.’ [Galatians 6:10]\u00a0 We believe that not only the babes in Christ, who have newly found redemption in His blood, but those also who are ‘grown up into perfect men,’ are indispensably obliged, as often as they have opportunity, ‘to eat bread and drink wine in remembrance of Him,’ [Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:24-26] and to ‘search the Scriptures’; by fasting, as well as temperance, to ‘keep their bodies under, and bring them into subjection,’ and, above all, to pour out their souls in prayer, both secretly and in the great congregation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“(3) We, secondly, believe that there is no such perfection in this life as implies an entire deliverance, either from ignorance or mistake, in things not essential to salvation, or from manifold temptations, or from numberless infirmities, wherewith the corruptible body more or less presses down the soul.\u00a0 We cannot find any ground in Scripture to suppose that any inhabitant of a house of clay is wholly exempt either from bodily infirmities, or from ignorance of many things; or to imagine any is incapable of mistake, or falling into divers temptations.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“(4) But whom, then, do you mean by ‘one that is perfect’?\u00a0 We mean one in whom is ‘the mind which was in Christ,’ [1 Corinthians 2:16] one who so ‘walketh as Christ also walked’; a man ‘that hath clean hands and a pure heart,’ [Psalm 24:4] or that is ‘cleansed from all filthiness of flesh and spirit’; one in whom is ‘no occasion of stumbling,’ and who, accordingly, ‘does not commit sin.’\u00a0 To declare this a little more particularly: we understand by that scriptural expression, ‘a perfect man,’ one in whom God hath fulfilled his faithful word, ‘From all your filthiness and from all your idols I will cleanse you [Ezekiel 36:25]: I will also save you from all your uncleannesses.’ [Ezekiel 36:29]\u00a0 We understand hereby one whom God hath ‘sanctified throughout in body, soul, and spirit’; one who ‘walketh in the light as He is in the light; in whom is no darkness at all, the blood of Jesus Christ His Son having cleansed him from all sin.’<\/strong><\/p>\n

“(5) This man can now testify to all mankind, ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ [Galatians 2:20]\u00a0 He is ‘holy as God who called’ him ‘is holy,’ both in heart and ‘in all manner of conversation.’\u00a0\u00a0 He ‘loveth the Lord his God with all his heart,’ and serveth him ‘with all his strength.’ [Deuteronomy 6:5]\u00a0 He ‘loveth his neighbor,’ every man ‘as himself,’ [Leviticus 19:18] yea, ‘as Christ loveth us’; them, in particular, that ‘despitefully use him and persecute him, because they know not the Son, neither the Father.’\u00a0 Indeed, his soul is all love, filled with ‘bowels of mercies, kindness, meekness, gentleness, long-suffering.’\u00a0\u00a0 And his life agreeth thereto, full of ‘the work of faith, the patience of hope, the labor of love.’\u00a0 ‘And whatsoever’ he ‘doeth either in word or deed,’ he ‘doeth it all in the name,’ in the love and power, ‘of the Lord Jesus.’\u00a0 In a word, he doeth ‘the will of God on earth, as it is done in heaven.’ [Matthew 6:10]<\/strong><\/p>\n

“(6) This it is to be a perfect man, to be ‘sanctified throughout,’ even ‘to have a heart so all-flaming with the love of God’ (to use Archbishop Usher’s words) ‘as continually to offer up every thought, word, and work, as a spiritual sacrifice, acceptable to God through Christ.’\u00a0 In every thought of our hearts, in every word of our tongues, in every work of our hands, to ‘show forth his praise who hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.’ [1 Peter 2:9]\u00a0 O that both we, and all who seek the Lord Jesus in sincerity, may thus ‘be made perfect in one!’ “<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the doctrine which we preached from the beginning, and\u00a0\u00a0 which we preach at this day.\u00a0 Indeed, by viewing it in every point of\u00a0\u00a0 light, and comparing it again and again with the word of God on the one hand,\u00a0\u00a0 and the experience of the children of God, on the other, we saw further into\u00a0\u00a0 the nature and properties of Christian perfection.\u00a0\u00a0 But still there\u00a0\u00a0 is no contrariety at all between our first and our last sentiments.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Our first conception of it was, It is to have “the mind which was in Christ,”\u00a0\u00a0 [1 Corinthians 2:16] and to “walk as he walked”; to have all the mind that was\u00a0\u00a0 in him, and always to walk as he walked; in other words, to be inwardly and\u00a0\u00a0 outwardly devoted to God; all devoted in heart and life.\u00a0 And we have the\u00a0\u00a0 same conception of it now, without either addition or diminution.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For anyone to challenge the ideals of Christian perfection\u00a0 is to also challenge the truth of Scripture.\u00a0 If Jesus knew it was\u00a0 impossible for us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, then why did\u00a0 He tell us to be perfect? (Matthew 6:10)\u00a0 If we were not to have the mind\u00a0 of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), then why did the apostle Paul tell us that all\u00a0 born again believers are given the mind of Christ?\u00a0\u00a0 If we were not to\u00a0 have the love of God perfected in us in a manner that would allow us to walk as\u00a0 Jesus walked (1 John 2:6), then why did the apostle John tell us to walk as He\u00a0 walked?\u00a0 We are told these things because they are true, and because they\u00a0 are possible, and because we can and should walk as He walked.<\/p>\n

Go on to: Christian Perfection \u2013 19: A Repentant Spirit<\/a><\/p>\n

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