Few phrases in Christian theology raise more eyebrows than Christian perfection. For some, it sounds unrealistic. For others, it sounds dangerous. Yet for John Wesley, Christian perfection was neither a claim to sinless flawlessness nor a license to ignore God’s commands. It was, at heart, a vision of a life fully shaped by love.
Wesley believed that holiness and love belong together. To speak of perfection was to speak of perfect love, love that fills the heart, directs the will, and orders the whole of life toward God and neighbor.
What Wesley Meant by Christian Perfection
Wesley defined Christian perfection with remarkable clarity. In A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, he wrote that it is “nothing higher and nothing lower than this, the pure love of God and man.”
This love is not about never making mistakes. Wesley was clear that Christians remain finite, fallible, and dependent on grace. Christian perfection does not eliminate ignorance, physical weakness, or human limitation. What it does address is the orientation of the heart.
For Wesley, a perfected Christian is one whose intentions are wholly devoted to God, whose desires are purified by grace, and whose actions flow from love rather than fear or self-interest.
Holiness Is Not Lawlessness
One common misunderstanding of Wesley’s teaching is the fear that an emphasis on love leads to moral laxity. Wesley rejected this outright. Love does not replace obedience. Love fulfills it.
Drawing on Scripture, Wesley insisted that the moral law remains God’s gracious guide for holy living. As the apostle Paul writes, “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10, NIV).
In Wesley’s theology, obedience divorced from love becomes legalism, while love divorced from obedience becomes sentimentality. True holiness holds them together. As Kenneth Collins explains in The Theology of John Wesley, love is the animating principle that brings the law to life rather than setting it aside.
Love as the Shape of the Holy Life
Wesley’s emphasis on perfect love reflects Jesus’ own summary of the law. When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength… and love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30–31, CEB).
Christian perfection is simply the Spirit’s work of bringing believers into full alignment with these commands. Thomas Oden, in Classic Christianity, reminds us that holiness is not primarily about rule keeping but about participation in the life of God. Wesley would have nodded in agreement.
This is why Wesley often spoke of holiness as happiness. A heart ruled by love is free from the tyranny of sin’s divided loyalties. It is not coerced into obedience but drawn into joyful faithfulness.
Perfection as a Gift of Grace
Crucially, Wesley never taught that Christian perfection is achieved through human effort alone. It is a work of grace from beginning to end. Justifying grace forgives. Sanctifying grace heals. Perfecting grace completes the work of love in the believer.
Wesley believed this work could occur gradually or, in some cases, in a decisive moment of deeper surrender. Either way, it remained God’s work, received by faith and sustained by the means of grace such as prayer, Scripture, the Lord’s Supper, fasting, and Christian conferencing.
As Kevin Watson notes in A Blueprint for Discipleship, Wesley’s vision of perfection was inseparable from the practices that shape Christian character over time.
Why Perfect Love Still Matters
In an age suspicious of holiness language, Wesley’s vision offers a needed correction. The goal of the Christian life is not mere moral improvement or religious activity. It is love made complete in us.
Perfect love does not make us arrogant. It makes us humble. It does not make us careless. It makes us attentive to God and neighbor. It does not remove our need for grace. It deepens our dependence on it.
Wesley’s question still presses us today: If God is love, and if salvation is God’s work of restoring love in the human heart, why would we settle for anything less?
A Prayer for Perfect Love
Gracious God,
Pour your love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Cleanse our desires, order our wills,
and teach us to love you with our whole being
and our neighbors as ourselves.
Bring your work of grace to completion in us,
for the sake of Christ our Lord. Amen.
R Y A N S T R A T T O N 