The Holiness Inheritance

The doctrine gave rise to the Holiness movement and, through it, shaped Pentecostalism, which often framed sanctification as a distinct experience of grace. It is affirmed within the Wesleyan and Pentecostal traditions and distinguishes them from the Reformed view, which holds that sin remains in the believer throughout life and perfection is reached only in glory. The affirmation expresses an optimism about the transforming power of grace in the present life, central to the Methodist emphasis on holiness of heart and life.

Nineteenth-century American revivalists, Phoebe Palmer prominent among them, recast Wesley's teaching into what the Holiness movement called a second definite work of grace, an experience many Holiness preachers taught should be sought and received instantaneously through consecration and faith, a sharper and more crisis-oriented emphasis than Wesley's own more gradual account of growth in perfect love. This Holiness theology fed directly into the Pentecostal movement that emerged from the 1906 Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, where early Pentecostal leaders initially taught sanctification as a second work of grace prior to, and distinct from, the subsequent baptism in the Holy Spirit, before many Pentecostal bodies later simplified the sequence.