Entire Sanctification

[michaelmonfre]

What Is Entire Sanctification?

Did Charles Wesley Believe He Was Entirely Sanctified?

[Onesimus85]

"This life, therefore,
is not righteousness but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it.
The process is not yet finished but is going on.
This is not the end but the road.
All does not yet gleam in the glory but all is being purified."

-Martin Luther "Defense and Explanation of All the Articles," Second Article (1521).

This helped me to undersand that the process of sanctification is an on going process. As for entire sanctification, I have yet to fully understand it, guess I'm not there yet.

[WiredSpirit]

Entire sanctification is a state of perfect love, righteousness and true holiness which every regenerate believer may obtain by being delivered from the power of sin, by loving God with all the heart, soul, mind and strength, and by loving one's neighbor as one's self. Through faith in Jesus Christ this gracious gift may be received in this life both gradually and instantaneously, and should be sought earnestly by every child of God...


...
We believe this experience does not deliver us from the infirmities, ignorance, and mistakes common to man, nor from the possibilities of further sin. The Christian must continue on guard against spiritual pride and seek to gain victory over every temptation to sin. He must respond wholly to the will of God so that sin will lose its power over him; and the world, the flesh, and the devil are put under his feet. Thus he rules over these enemies with watchfulness through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Read More (http://archives.umc.org/interior.asp?ptid=1&mid=1656)

In other words, when United Methodists talk about sanctification, we're not talking about living "above sin" like the Church of God and other Charismatics teach.

You know how you can tell the difference between a brand new Christian who just got involved in the church and one who's been in church for awhile and seeks to live a Christian life all the time? When everyone they work with and talk to in the secular world just knows something is different about that person, and its positive. I believe that this is an example of the kind of sanctification we're talking about, when the Holy Spirit finds a home in that person and begins to work through them.

[Onesimus85]

hmm... looks like WS has taken a peak into the Discipline... thanks

[WiredSpirit]

hmm... looks like WS has taken a peak into the Discipline... thanks

Yeah, I tend to do that with theological/doctrinal questions like this.