Saved and Being Saved

This comes from quite a lengthy discussion (or argument, one might say) with my wife; a conversation in which at times I must confess I was not very gracious and made some connections between what I was hearing her say and a competing view of sanctification to Wesley (that of Calvin)...that is, I essentially called her understanding of sanctification a Calvinistic one. Not a wise move, Jeffrey. In essence, we were agreeing on the content of Christ's saving work but were having difficulty with semantics, specifically on the language of whether or not there is a problem with the idea that one is "being saved."

The conversation came up as we were talking about the upcoming class on Methodism that I'll be leading at church and when we got to talking about the language and understanding of salvation according to our tradition, we got hung up on this issue. We were both comfortable with the language of the concept that one who has put their faith in Christ is appropriately called "saved." This (in the Wesleyan framework) is traditionally referred to as justification and is the mark of those who are "believers" or put differently will be in heaven for eternity.

Then I turned the conversation toward sanctification and said something like, "There is no salvation without sanctification." What I think she heard in that was that if someone does not become sanctified before their death, then that person would not enjoy heaven. This isn't what I meant, but my point was to say that if we understand the ordo salutis (or "order of salvation") to include not solely (and perhaps not even primarily) the work of pardon, but also the power of being set free from sin, then that naturally means that sanctification is appropriately in the realm of our theology of salvation (soteriology). And while there is disagreement among Wesleyans about whether or not there is an instantaneous moment of sanctification (where absolutely everything is done out of full love for God and neighbour), there is agreement that God's sanctifying grace is a dynamic process (or a gradual one). As such, I used the language that we as Wesleyans believe that although we "are saved" there is a significant sense in which we "are being saved." The difficulty Carrie and I ran into was that she was equating "saved" with "justified" whilst not wanting to limit the full realm of "salvation" to "justification."

Is the concept that "We are being saved" (without denying the fact that "we are saved") too difficult for Protestants to handle? Is it really possible to hold to both of these affirmations?