Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 NLT
I find it interesting when editors of hymnals find it necessary to correct an author’s theology. For instance in Charles Wesley’s well-known “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” the second verse seems particularly troublesome. Here is the way it appears in most contemporary hymnals:
“Breathe, oh breathe thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast;
Let us all in thee inherit, let us find that promised rest.
Take away our love of sinning, Alpha and Omega be;
end of faith as its beginning, set our hearts at liberty.”
That is lovely, except that that is not what Wesley said. He said “…let us find that second rest. Take away our bent to sinning,…” In fact, the entire verse is speaking of that phase of Christian experience which John and Charles Wesley referred to as Entire Sanctification (as in 1 Thess 5:23 above). They believed that through the fullness of the Holy Spirit a person could find a rest not only from the guilt of sin, but also from it power. This is the second rest of faith, as a result of which a person becomes prone not to sin. In this sense Jesus is the beginning of salvation and he is also the end of it. The person who has not experienced the second rest is only partially saved; they have not experienced all that Christ’s death has procured for us: a heart that has liberty from the power of sin.
“Entire Sanctification” does not mean that a person is so holy now that they cannot sin. Neither does it mean that no further growth in holiness is necessary (or even possible) for the believer. It means that everything necessary (full surrender giving the Holy Spirit complete control, and the faith to believe all of God’s promises) has taken place so that God has complete ownership and control of the life. The question is not: is such a thing possible? The question is: is this what the Bible teaches? The answer is: it does. Wesley is correct.
Called To Be Transformed 