And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:4)
Under Old Testament law, a sacrifice was regarded as perfect if it had no disease. It was complete if it had all its members. Yet such perfect sacrifices were passive. James explains the value of patient endurance (hupomone). The work of perseverance is the means to perfection and completeness in us. It should not lead to fanatical stubbornness. Rather, it should lead to a character that is free from defects. James uses the term teleios five times (1:4 [twice]; 1:17; 1:25; 3:2). No other New Testament book uses it as much in proportion to its length. The emphasis is on character, not works. James will discuss works in 2:14–26. Perfection is a matter of moral character, not human endeavor. This is where the Stoics went wrong.
Many preachers stress that our progress is never complete. Commentators often write that this perfection is eschatological. Even Wesley was impressed with the phrase from François Fénelon, “my progress is without end.”((Tuttle, “John Wesley,”1164; Tuttle, Mysticism in the Wesleyan Tradition, 156.))
However, the words of James indicate that something is complete. This text contains the adjective teleios twice; first describing the full effect of perseverance and second describing the Christian as finished, mature, or complete. This verse also contains the word holokleros, an adjective that also occurs in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and is translated entire, complete, or whole. The two synonyms emphasize a perfection in which the believer is adorned with every Christian grace and lacking nothing that God requires.((Wesley, Notes, 597.))
Certainly, it is not our perseverance that is complete. We must continue in the faith until death. According to James Adamson, “James continues the Old Testament idea of perfection as a right relationship to God expressed in undivided obedience and unblemished life.”((Adamson, New International Commentary on the New Testament (1976), 55.)) In this sense we can be “finished” Christians. Our character may be made whole, even if we are still growing.
Confusion at this point can lead to a denial of the possibility of entire sanctification. On the other hand, holiness authors such as J. A. Wood distinguished between purity and maturity in his book. Wood wrote Purity and Maturity in 1876. According to Barry Hamilton, the paradigm of purity and maturity was a popular rhetorical device among holiness preachers.((Hamilton, William Baxter Godbey, 127.)) In Purity and Maturity Wood contended that purity is a state arrived at by an instantaneous second experience. It cannot be obtained by growth in grace. After the crisis experience, we then grow into maturity. However, Wood had little to say about maturity in Purity and Maturity. In contrast, John Hunt defined entire sanctification as purity and maturity.((Hunt, Letters on Sanctification, 7.))
Is entire sanctification the culmination of a process of growth or the basis for spiritual growth? Holiness preaching has tended to represent the time between conversion and sanctification as a temporary, and hopefully short, period marked by frustration and spiritual defeat. Entire sanctification represented the solution to this frustration and defeat.
Leo Cox observed that Wesley did not make the same distinction that Wood made concerning purity and maturity, noting that “where Wood emphasized the instantaneous character of cleaning as in a moment, Wesley was more insistent on a gradual cleansing from the beginning of sanctification at regeneration to its completion in entire sanctification.”((Cox, John Wesley’s Concept of Perfection, 93, 121.))
James 1:4 certainly implies that this deeper work comes through the process of testing. Yet trials alone do not produce perfect Christians. Richard S. Taylor explained that “suffering does not sanctify.”((Taylor, The Disciplined Life, 53–54.)) Trials reveal to the believer his or her need of a deeper work of God’s grace, which is administered by the Holy Spirit. Joseph Sutcliffe explained:
The object of patience is to give a perfection to the Christian character, and seldom have we known anything approaching to it, but where the graces have been matured by a succession of trials, and where patience has had its perfect work. Sanctified afflictions formed the man after God’s own heart and gave a finish to the piety of Abraham and of Job. Afflictions are eminently adapted, under the influence of patience, to make us habitually prayerful, to keep us deeply humbled before God, and to inspire us with meekness of wisdom.((Sutcliffe, Commentary, 2:957–58.))
Daniel Whedon, who edited Methodist Quarterly Review for over twenty years, observed that this perfection is not a sudden product, but growth. It is a practical perfection, based on a human measure, realizable in this life. It consists in a degree of spiritual and moral power, through divine aid, of resisting temptation, avoiding sin, and attaining excellence. To the extent that the Christian possesses that power he a perfect Christian. And it is not so much a “second blessing” as a consummation of the first one.((Whedon, Commentary, 5:157.))
While we cannot base our theology from one verse alone, Wesley used this very text to make a final statement on Christian perfection. In 1784 his sermon “On Patience” first appeared. Albert Outler explained, “Clearly, the sermon’s main theme is not ‘patience,’ but rather ‘perfection,’ as a requisite virtue in one’s further progress on the way to Christian maturity.”((Outler, BE Works, 3:169.)) Outler wrote that this sermon contains the strongest emphasis to be found anywhere in Wesley’s writings on “entire sanctification as a second and separate work of grace.”
Wesley explained in this sermon that the perfect work of patience produces the perfect love of God which constrains us to love every person. It produces the mind of Christ. At the moment we are born again, there is a general change from inward sinfulness to inward holiness. Entire sanctification is not a new kind of holiness. However, there are degrees of holiness. Everyone that is born of God, although he may be only a babe in Christ, has the love of God in his heart. But the faith of a babe in Christ is weak, generally mingled with doubts and fears. As he grows in holiness, he increases in love until it pleases God, after the Christian is thoroughly convinced of inbred sin and of the total corruption of his nature, to take it all away, to purify his heart and cleanse him from all unrighteousness. Until this happens, all his holiness is mixed. But now he loves God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. So, Jesus now reigns alone in his heart.
But how does this happen? Does God work gradually or instantaneously? In Thoughts on Christian Perfection Wesley explained that a person may be dying for some time but is not properly said to be dead until that instant when the soul is separated from the body.((Wesley, BE Works, 13:74.)) In his sermon “On Patience,” Wesley argues for an instantaneous work. John L. Peters summarized Wesley:
Such maturity implies and usually requires considerable time. But in Wesley’s thought the temporal element is not necessarily the regulative factor. Spiritual maturity is more nearly consequent upon perception, faith, and dedication. The process of maturation may be lengthy or brief—all in relationship to the exercise of these factors.((Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism, 64–66.))
Wesley concluded his sermon with an appeal to believe that God has promised to deliver from all sin and fill with all holiness. Then we must believe that he is able to save to the uttermost. We must also believe that he is willing and willing to do it now. He will then enable us to believe it is done, and patience shall have its perfect work. But “none therefore ought to believe that the work is done, till there is added the testimony of the Spirit, witnessing his entire sanctification, as clearly as his justification.”((Works, 11:402; BE Works, 13:174.))
Sangster noted that Wesley also pushed back against the misinterpretation of James 3:2, “For in many things we all stumble.”((Sangster, The Path to Perfection, 51.)) Wesley argued that this must not be true of all Christians, because in the same verse James references some who are perfect.((Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, § 12.)) The same Greek word patio occurs in 2 Peter 1:10 where we are promised that we need never fall—if we make our calling and election sure.
But stumble does not always mean sin or apostasy. Wesley argued that this “is not proof at all that the person so speaking is not perfect.” He goes on the explain that we can become startled or flustered “while the soul is calmly stayed on God and remains in perfect peace.”((Wesley, Thoughts on Christian Perfection, Q 21.)) He also explained that we do not sin if our emotions, thoughts, works, and actions spring from love. But in another sense this love does not make us infallible. Therefore, even the most holy still need Christ.((Wesley, Farther Thoughts upon Christian Perfection, Q 8.))
However, in his sermon “Christian Perfection,” Wesley also argued that those described in James 3:2 did commit sin, but James is not referring to himself or to any real Christian. Rather, it describes those who teach faith without works (2:20).((Wesley, “Christian Perfection,” Sermon #40, 2.17.))
Sermon Suggestions
- Change—When you are born again, you will realize a general change from inward sinfulness to inward holiness.
- Cultivation—As you increase in holiness, you will experience an increase in love toward God and humanity.
- Conviction—The trials of life, however, will reveal where you are lacking. The Holy Spirit will convict us when such deficiencies stem from our sinful nature.
- Completion—God has promised to deliver from all sin and fill us with all holiness. We must believe that he is able to save to the uttermost. We also must believe that he is willing and willing to do it now. He then will enable us to believe it is done, and patience shall have its perfect work.
“May the Spirit of Christ give us a right judgment in all things, and fill us ‘with all the fullness of God,’ that so we may be ‘perfect and entire, wanting nothing.’”((Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, § 21.))