May 24, 1738, is a day known to a great many Methodists. It is the day John Wesley came to a living faith in Christ and assurance that his sins had been forgiven. We rightly remember this day.
So, too, should we recall the days that came before. If May 24 was the climax of the story, the days — even the years — that came before set the stage. In his journal, Wesley recounts a letter he wrote to a friend that the shared his turmoil and despair in the three days before May 24, which he called days of “continual sorry and heaviness in my heart.”
“I see that the whole law of God is holy, just and good. I know every thought, every temper of my soul ought to bear God’s image an superscription. But how I am fallen from the glory of God! I feel ‘that I am sold under sin.’ I know, that I too deserve nothing but wrath, being full of abominations: And having no good thing in me, to atone for them, or to remove the wrath of God. All my works, my righteousness, my prayers, need an atonement for themselves.”
I genuinely wonder how a 30-something bachelor clergy member in the United Methodist Church today would be treated if he were to express such a troubled state of soul. Would we start by trying to argue him out of his premises. I fear we would.
I fear that a lot of the energy in “counseling” young Rev. Wesley would be to to shake him loose of “fundamentalist” reading the Bible and his obsession with wrath and sin. I fear we would try to talk him out of a sense of his own sinfulness rather than seek to pray him through it.
How would we respond to him when he insists that he deserves nothing but wrath from God and that there is nothing good in him at all? How would we answer when he says that his prayers themselves are an offense and require their own atonement because they do not spring from a true faith in Christ’s saving work? How would he score on the psychological evaluation, I wonder.
And yet, please recall, this is exactly the state of soul that made Wesley ready for May 24. It is this despair and desperation that made what happened that evening on Aldersgate Street in London a day many Methodists still rejoice over.
Hear how Wesley further wrote to his friend in the days before.
“O let no one deceive us by vain words, as if we had already attained this faith! By its fruits we shall know. Do we already feel ‘peace with God,’ and ‘joy in the Holy Ghost?’ Does ‘his Spirit bear witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God?’ Alas, with mine He does not.”
This is the result of what we often call prevenient grace. Here is the conviction that comes upon a sinner in whom God grace has stirred up a sense of his own powerlessness and need. What sad words are those he writes. He seeks peace and has none. He desires joy, and cannot find it. He longs to know himself to be a child of God, and yet the Spirit remains silent.
Is it possible that United Methodism would hold Wesley up as a model in this day? Could we imagine a United Methodism in America that points to words like these and says, “This is the way to real faith.” I fear we would view Wesley — if he were among us — as a fanatic or a fundamentalist rather than as the father of our movement.
How wonderful it would be if we could learn to teach our people to find themselves in a place where they could pray with Wesley, “O thou Saviour of men, save us from trusting in anything but Thee! Draw us after Thee! Let us be emptied of ourselves, and then fill us with all peace and joy in believing; and let nothing separate us from thy love, in time or eternity.”
This is the prayer that might once again be answered in this way, “I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for my salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
Wouldn’t it be great if United Methodism could pray that prayer?
Do you want that, too?
John Meunier 