In this wide-ranging historical and doctrinal address, Dr. Lloyd-Jones surveys nearly 250 years of perfectionist teaching within the evangelical Protestant tradition. Beginning with John Wesley's doctrine of "entire sanctification" in the 1740s, he traces three distinct schools — evangelical, ethical, and psychological — through figures such as Charles Finney, the Pearsall Smiths, and the Keswick Convention, examining both their historical origins and their theological defects. His analysis is not abstract: it is governed throughout by the conviction that departures from biblical teaching carry real pastoral consequences, and that the church cannot afford to misunderstand what the New Testament actually teaches about holiness and the Christian life.<br><br>Against each school of perfectionist thought, Dr. Lloyd-Jones brings the exegetical weight of the Pauline epistles — particularly Romans 6, 7, and 8 — to demonstrate that sanctification is neither an experience to be received in a crisis moment, nor a condition achieved through passive surrender, but a progressive work in which the believer actively mortifies sin through the power of the Spirit. The sermon concludes with a sober assessment of where the Keswick movement stood by the time of its centenary and with a call to return to the historic Reformed understanding of the Christian life, rooted not in psychological technique but in the great doctrinal "therefores" of the New Testament.
