The CatechismGlobal Methodist Church
Question 71 of 77 · Wesleyan Characteristics

What is the beauty of entire sanctification?

It is being delivered from the power of sin; loving God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength; and loving one's neighbor as one's self.

Catechism for the Global Methodist Church, question 71

Session 12Can you be made perfect?Opens at 10:12, where question 71 begins.
Commentary

Entire sanctification is the state of perfect love that Article XI of the Confession of Faith describes. It is obtained "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." Those three phrases come from the article, and the two commandments in them come from Jesus. Wesley defined Christian perfection in the same terms: a heart cleansed from sin and filled with love for God and neighbor.

Deliverance from the power of sin has to happen before love can fill a heart, because a heart still ruled by something else has no room for it. Article XI calls this a cleansing of the heart by the Holy Spirit, received by faith. Paul prayed for this for the Thessalonians: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5:23). "Completely" and "whole" are the words behind the adjective "entire."

To love God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength is the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:5, which Jesus called the first commandment: "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30). To love one's neighbor as one's self is Leviticus 19:18, which Jesus called the second, and he said of them, "There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:31). Paul taught how far the second commandment reaches. Every commandment about the neighbor is "summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself," so that "love is the fulfillment of the law" (Romans 13:9-10). He wrote the same to the Galatians, "For the whole law is fulfilled in one word" (Galatians 5:14), and warned them that Christian freedom exists "through love" to "serve one another" (Galatians 5:13).

The question calls this a beauty. Entire sanctification is a life in which the two great commandments have become the actual shape of a person's desires. For a Methodist the goal of the Christian life can be stated plainly: to love God entirely, to love the people God has placed nearby as one loves oneself, and to be set free from whatever in the heart resists that love. Article XI says this state is one "every regenerate believer may obtain."