Holiness Is Not a Methodist Thing. At least, it shouldn't be.

Matt O'Reilly
Jun 10
4 min read

Updated: Jun 11

Wesleyans talk a lot about holiness, but we don't have a monopoly on it.

It's easy for Methodists to think of ourselves as the holiness people. After all, an emphasis on sanctification - and entire sanctification at that - has been central to our sense of identity. At our best, the people called Methodists have called the larger church to embody that "holiness without which no one will see the Lord" (Heb 12:14). We stand on the conviction that it would be detrimental to the people of God if we were to lose sight of the Christian life as holy life. But with this emphasis there comes a danger.

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Holiness, Identity, and Distinction

If an emphasis on holiness is part of our identity, then we run the risk of thinking holiness marks us out from other Christian traditions - that holiness is our thing and other traditions focus on other things. The danger arises in this: distinction is inherent to group identity. Anytime you can identify something that you share in common with another person that also distinguishes you from someone else, then you have found a marker of group identity. It's what makes "us" in contrast to "them."

Think about your favorite sports team. You could see a complete stranger in public and notice they are wearing your team's colors and logo, and you would feel a sense of shared identity. A sense of us-ness. You don't even know the person, but you identify with them. Now imagine if you saw someone shortly thereafter wearing the colors of your team's rival. Suddenly, you've got an "us" versus "them." That experience of team loyalty creates a sense of identity in contrast to other fan bases. Find something that unites you with one or more others in contrast to some other person or group, and you've found one of your group identities.

Methodists are currently in the process of recovering a robust commitment to the doctrine of holiness. That's good. And it's a fun time to be a Methodist. There's a sense of vocation, a sense of purpose, a sense that we are recovering something essential to our identity as faithful Wesleyans. But we need to be careful to clearly articulate what it means to be a people who emphasize holiness.

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Holiness for Us and Them

And there's a crucial distinction to be made. Our identity is not that we're the scriptural holiness people. Instead, we need to think of ourselves as the spread scriptural holiness people. Here's the difference.

I'm glad holiness is a major focus of Methodism again, but we can't think holiness belongs to us alone and not to the whole church.

If we only think of ourselves as the holiness people, then we risk becoming isolated. We risk focusing on our own holiness and neglecting the increasing holiness of the whole church. We could become a "holy huddle" as it's sometimes said. And this has happened at times in the history of Methodism. If we slide into thinking holiness is our thing - its for us - then we could be in a position to forget that holiness is for them, too.

The earliest Methodists understood that their identity was marked by the spread of scriptural holiness. That's why God raised them up: to reform the nation, especially the church, and to spread scriptural holiness across the land. Early Methodism set out not to create a sect focused on the holiness of the group in isoltion from the larger church. No, they set out to renew the larger church by offering a serious vision of whole church's sanctification.

And now with the launch of the Global Methodist Church we've incorporated the "spread scriptural holiness" language into our mission statement. And now it's essential for us to embrace and embody that.

The Methodist vocation has always been to call the larger church to holiness.

Our Methodist Identity and Vocation

Our calling as people in the Wesleyan Methodist tradition is not to keep holiness for ourselves. It's to offer holiness to the broader church and to the whole world. You could say the whole story of the Bible is about a holy God preparing for himself a holy people to fill the whole world. The Great Commission envisions a world entirely sanctified. In the Bible, "holiness" is the word for the normal Chrsitian life, whether that person is Methodist or Presbyterian or Baptist or something else. Our vocation as Methodists is to invite other traditions and those outside the faith to experience the perfect love of God in Christ and the Spirit such that they come to embody his holy character. We are committed to this because we are committed to the flourishing of human beings made in the image of God. And we recognize that people flourish when they grow in holiness.

If we Methodists are going to be faithful, we must remember that holiness isn't a Methodist thing. It's a Christian thing. Our job is to remind the larger church of that.

We're not the scriptural holiness people. We're the spread scriptural holiness people.

Dr. Matt O’Reilly (Ph.D., Gloucestershire) is Lead Pastor of Christ Church in Birmingham, Alabama, Director of Research at Wesley Biblical Seminary, and a fellow of the Center for Pastor Theologians. A two-time recipient of the John Stott Award for Pastoral Engagement, he is the author of multiple books including Free to Be Holy: A Biblical Theology of Sanctification, Paul and the Resurrected Body: Social Identity and Ethical Practice, The Letters to the Thessalonians, and Bless the Nations: A Devotional for Short-Term Missions. Follow @mporeilly on X and @mattoreillyauthor on Instagram.