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A Mary T. Hoffman Commentary from All-Creatures.org

 

"Joyful Curmudgeon" An oxymoron?
No! I see all the beauty of God's creation and I'm joyful.  At the same time, I see all the suffering and corruption going on in the world, and feel called to help expose and end it so that we may have true peace and compassion.

 


Christian Perfection – 26 May 2006
By Mary T. Hoffman

One of the books in our library is an old, slender, little volume entitled A Plain Account of Christian Perfection As Believed and Taught By The Rev. John Wesley.

Frank and I were so impressed by Wesley’s writings as recorded in this book – A Plain Account of Christian Perfection – that Frank began to write a detailed commentary of it, which is found on our web site at:
http://all-creatures.org/living/perf.html 

Frank prefaces his commentary with this heading: “True Christian living requires us to live according to Kingdom standards which bring Heaven to earth.”

The following statement forms the basis of “Christian perfection”:

Jesus said, "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)

Today I will touch on a few of Frank’s comments found in his review of John Wesley’s “Chapter 12-B: In What Sense Christians Are Perfect.”

In this section Frank explains about the animal sacrifices found in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament):

“In Chapter 1, the prophet Isaiah spoke out for God against the irreverent Israelites and even called the people who killed an animal as a sacrifice, without a truly repentant heart, murderers (v. 21). They killed without necessity or compassion. The people who made an animal sacrifice were to have great remorse for both the animal and their unintentional sin. Intentional sin was never covered by a sacrifice. Additionally, the last sacrifice occurred nearly 2,000 years ago, and He was Jesus.”

Here Frank writes about the connection of sport hunting and sin:

“Sport hunting,” the taking of pleasure in killing an animal, is obviously not a necessary act of survival. Also, because the killing is part of a “sport,” by definition, remorse and compassion are removed, which makes “sport hunting” a sin. A pious Jew recognizes this fact, as should all Christians.”

“Think about this as we continue with Wesley's writing, and remember that in the kingdom of heaven there is no death (Revelation 21:4). Likewise, we are not talking about hunting only, but all things outside the will of our Father who is in heaven.”

I will end this Blog with this quotation from Frank’s commentary:

“John Wesley is going back to the absolute basics of Christianity. To compromise these basic understandings is to allow Christianity to be hijacked by the devil, who is the father of sin and a liar. If we compromise any of the perfection of God's creation or of heaven, and say that these things don't apply to us upon this earth, we are saying that God is a liar and unable to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

The complete text of Frank’s comments on “Chapter 12-B: In What Sense Christians Are Perfect”, with quotations from John Wesley, is found in:
http://all-creatures.org/living/perf-12b.html 

For a chapter-by-chapter commentary, including Wesley’s quotations, up to and including Chapter 19-R, see:
http://all-creatures.org/living/perf.html 

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