Holy Boldness:  Houghton’s Heritage

Dr. Douglas M. Strong

Today, I would like to talk with you about the biblical and theological grounding that provides the very foundation for Houghton’s existence.   The founders and forebears of Houghton were motivated by a particular biblical vision of the Christian life, and it was that vision that compelled them to establish this college.  You may think that you’re out in the middle of nowhere—and geographically you may be—but those who constructed this school envisioned this place in a spiritual way as the very center of God’s plan for reconstructing this world, and that reconstruction was to begin in the heart of each and every student who attended here.

Let’s pray together:

Almighty God, whose word is authority and power and whose way is love, grant to us today clear minds, understanding hearts, and willing spirits so that we may wisely appropriate your word of truth.  In the name of Christ we pray.  Amen.

          We will begin this morning with Jesus’ words, as found in Matthew 5:48.  Our Savior’s expression in this passage is unmistakably clear and to the point:  “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  There is no equivocation in Jesus’ phrasing, no qualification, no hedging.  But throughout the centuries, Christians have tried every possible way to squirm out of the implications of Christ’s admonition.  Sermons frequently restrict the meaning of the words of this verse, in effect saying that Christ didn’t really mean to say that, and mitigating Jesus’ expectation of holiness.  Even the NIV Study Bible tries to minimize the literal meaning of this verse.  Listen to what the Study Bible notes say:  “[In this verse,] Christ sets up the high ideal of perfect love.”  True enough.  But then it goes on to say the following:  “Not that we can attain it in this life.”  Well, that may be what the writer of the Study Bible wishes that the text said, but that’s not what it says!  What it says is:  “Be perfect.”

          John Wesley, the man for whom this chapel is named, did not allow for any such equivocation.  He accepted Jesus’ words at face value, refusing to limit God’s ability to change us completely, unwilling to lessen the power of Christ’s atoning work on the cross to eradicate sin.  As it is written in Hebrews 10:10:  “We have been made holy through the sacrifice of Jesus.”

          There are many scriptural references to God’s call for us to be sanctified.   In Philippians, Paul admits that he has not yet been made perfect, but his one aspiration is to press on to that goal.  Some of the most prominent biblical references to holiness are in the letter of I John.  Numerous times in that small book, believers are admonished to “be made perfect in love.”  But how can this be possible?  How are we to understand this?

          A key for interpreting these passages lies in who is doing the acting.  Note that we do not perfect ourselves.  By our own will it is never possible to make our selves pure.  According to the text, we are being made perfect; God is the one who sanctifies us, who transforms us to the uttermost.  In the words that we just sang, written by Charles Wesley (John’s brother and the other namesake of this chapel), “love divine” excels all other loves.  And it is that divine love that fills us.

          Another key for understanding God’s call to holiness is that the Greek word used in all of these verses about Christian perfection is a form of the word teleos, meaning spiritual wholeness or maturity.  So, holiness is really a kind of wholeness, in which God takes our fragmented and scattered and spiritually immature lives and reconfigures them into an integrated whole.  Christian perfection or holiness or entire sanctification is not a state that we can attain, a spiritual plateau that we can strive for.  No, Christian perfection refers to a dynamic, growing relationship with God that is so vital and all-encompassing that our entire being is continually being transformed into the likeness of Christ.

          Such a relationship is so filled with grace, there is no room left for sin.  If we allow God to sanctify us, our focus will not be on the elimination of sin—though that will occur—because that keeps the focus on ourselves.  Rather, our focus will be on the filling up of our soul by the Holy Spirit. 

          “The one thing needful,” according to John Wesley, is to recover the image of God, replacing the bondage of sin with the freedom of Christ’s love, replacing spiritual sickness with godly health.  The purpose of being born again, John Wesley insisted, is not only to escape hell, but is “to be formed anew after the likeness of our Creator.”  The words of Charles Wesley’s hymn continue this theme, in the form of a prayer to God:  “Finish, then, thy new creation.  Pure and spotless let us be.  Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in thee.”

          According to the Wesleys, God desires to renew us in the love of Christ, to restore us to the full image of God and to make a new creation in us.  Hear Wesley:  “This was the one end of our redemption; of all our blessed Lord did and suffered for us; of his incarnation, his life, his death.  All his miracles of love were wrought with no other view than to restore us to [spiritual] health and freedom [from the bondage of sin]… The will of God is solely our sanctification”—our recovery from the vileness of loving God’s creatures more than we love the Creator.   As we read in 2 Corinthians 5:17:  “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” 

Wesley believed that God’s new creation applies not only to us as individuals but also to the culture in which we live.  Don’t forget that our Lord commands us to pray:  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  Indeed, John Wesley expected that the spiritual transformation of the heart would affect the entire society, and so the eighteenth century Wesleyan revival in England addressed issues such as alcohol abuse, unfair economic policies, and the often destructive ways in which we distribute our resources.

          Nineteenth century American Christians also took Jesus’ admonitions seriously.  When the Wesleyan call to be made perfect in love was applied to the American context, many Christians took up the challenge and asked God to transform their lives and their nation.  And what they saw did not please them.  American society did not reflect God’s order or desire, nor did it reflect the democratic principles that America was supposed to espouse.

          Some Christians were particularly distressed by what is sometimes referred to as America’s besetting sin—slavery, and the root sin of slavery, racism.  They saw slavery as an abomination against God, for African Americans were God’s children who were deprived of the right to their own bodies, they were exploited, and worse, they were denied the right to respond to the gospel due to the deliberate withholding of Christian preaching.

          The Methodist Church, Wesley’s heirs in America, at first continued his commitment to social reform and insisted that no church member could be a slaveholder.  But gradually, over the years, the Methodist Church gave up on its antislavery position in order to gain members in Southern states.  By the 1830s, some Methodists in places like Michigan, New England, and here in western New York, became frustrated.  They wanted a church that did not equivocate on the issue of slavery.  They called themselves “True Wesleyans” or “Wesleyan Methodists,” in order to emphasize their belief that they truly represented the Wesleyan message that a Christ-transformed life would result in holy living.  Eventually they formed a new denomination, the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, which is now called simply the Wesleyan Church.  This new denomination allowed no compromise with slavery, and it also insisted on temperance, equal rights for women, and a simple lifestyle so that the poor would not be kept from hearing the gospel by the snubbing and pretentiousness of affluent people.  In fact, Wesleyan Methodists believed that Christians should stay away from any practice or habit or lifestyle that compromised their witness to the gospel.   And all of these beliefs were based on their understanding of Jesus’ call to a sanctified life.

          Even after the Civil War, the Wesleyan Methodists never forgot their desire for a complete transformation, that God desires in us a renewed creation.  The founder of the college, Willard J. Houghton, represented that spirit.  He inherited the faith commitment of John Wesley and the early Wesleyan Methodists.  Listen to his words:   “Only the almighty power of [our] Great God can change these vile natures, and transform them into the image of God’s Dear Son.”  His calling, he said, was to lead people to Christ “until the whole town is converted to God, yes and the whole world. What a blessed world we would have if all men were bible Christians and had the great principles of supreme love to God and love for their fellow man established in the soul.”  We should set an example in our living, Houghton believed, in order to make the world better, in order to be engaged in the task of—in his words—“fixing up this world.”  My favorite quote of Willard Houghton’s is this:  The church of Jesus Christ ought to “light up this dark and sin-cursed world” by letting our “lights shine very clearly on the dangerous places, exposing the rocks and sandbars that the masses [of people] are striking.”  Houghton was echoing the scriptural passage from Philippians 2:15:  “You should shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.”

          What impresses me most about Willard Houghton is that he was a simple, relatively uneducated man who accomplished great things for God.  Hear these words, written about him after his death, by someone who knew him well:   “Brother Houghton was…not eloquent as a preacher.  He almost entirely lacked the polish and force which comes from accurate and advanced mental training.  Yet he was more sought after as a revivalist than any other man in the church…. [This was because] his spirit of devotion to God and the good of men, his irreproachable purity and sincerity, his self-denial, his holy boldness, his faithfulness to the word, his vital union with Christ, these spiritual qualities made him a man of power and gave him success in his high calling.”

          Sometimes it is difficult for me to be able to identify with spiritual giants like John Wesley.  But a person like Willard Houghton reminds me that no matter how seemingly insignificant our abilities, God wants to give us a vision for “fixing up this world” and the means to carry it out.  Houghton had the vision to start a school, one that was strong in faith, high in quality and low in cost.  Well, two out of three ain’t bad!  Houghton acted with holy boldness.  God was in the process of making him perfect and thus enabled him to act with courage and conviction.  He was shining like a star in the universe as he held out the word of life.

          So where are you in this story?  You are (or at least you can be) the living embodiment of this heritage, the next installment of God’s plan for fixing up this world.  But first you must allow God’s Spirit to make you holy.  Then you will be equipped to act boldly, living out the vision that God gives you.  And don’t think that your mission or ministry or vocation begins in the future.  God’s call to you is a present call; it starts right here, right now.

          How are you acting with holy boldness here at Houghton?  Get involved in outreach—ACO, ministry teams, serving others.  And much of that ministry can occur right here on campus.  Many people are hurting here—some visibly, some in hidden ways.  They may need someone to talk to, to pray with.  You can practice holy boldness by ministering to them.

          I want to tell you a story.  When I was a sophomore, a new girl named Marlene entered as a freshman.  We all noticed her.  She was thin, almost gaunt.  She had unkempt hair and poor clothes.  She was painfully shy.  Most noticeable was her posture.  She always had her head down and never looked anyone directly in their eyes.  Clearly, Marlene’s life had not been easy.

          The women on her floor of East Hall were an especially sharp group of women.  They were bright, outgoing, and good-looking.  Most importantly, they had a heart for God.  And it became evident to them that God had placed Marlene in the middle of their floor for a reason.  For that entire year, and beyond, they embrace Marlene.  They included her in everything.  As popular girls, they were invited to many events, and wherever they went, Marlene went.  They loved her with Christ’s love.

          And do know what?  At the end of their freshman year, Marlene was still a shy young woman.  But she held her head high and she looked you straight in the eye.  She was transformed, and so were the girls on her floor, for they, too, were being made perfect in love—in the spirit of John Wesley, Willard Houghton, and the early Wesleyan Methodists.  So, my brothers and sisters, “shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.”  Act with holy boldness.   Amen.