Sermons from St. Paul UMC

Becoming Love

Philippians 3:12-15 (NRSVue)

Most of us think of salvation as a moment — the line you crossed, the prayer you prayed, the night everything changed. But Wesleyan theology has always insisted that grace doesn’t stop there. In the fourth message of The People Called, we open Philippians 3 and find Paul pressing toward something he hasn’t reached yet. Not because he isn’t saved, but because salvation was never meant to be a finish line. It was meant to be a starting line. Sanctifying grace is what God does after the pardon — the patient, persistent work of shaping us into the people we were created to be. Wesley called the goal of that work Christian perfection. It is not flawlessness. It is love made complete. Love for God and love for neighbor so thoroughly formed in us that it becomes the natural grain of who we are. We are not there yet. Neither was Paul. But grace keeps going, and so do we.

Preached by Rev. Dylan Ward | June 28, 2026