Three days that made Aldersgate possible

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?

Wesley’s wager

As we move toward the closing paragraphs of John Wesley’s sermon “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” we come to two points that were always very important to his preaching, and therefore were formative to the movement known as Methodism. First, sin persists within us even after we have been justified, which means we cannot rest easy just because we have “been saved.” Second, God is fully capable of doing what he has promised to do, which means we should expect full salvation in this life. Both of these points are central to what we mean we Methodists speak of going on to perfection, and they are at the heart of what Methodism a distinctive movement within the church.

Let us read it in Wesley’s words rather than mine.

11. Hence may appear the extreme mischievousness of that seemingly innocent opinion, that there is no sin in a believer; that all sin is destroyed, root and branch, the moment a man is justified. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone talk like this in my experience as a Christian. I don’t recall anyone ever saying that they were totally free of sin now that they were baptized or had prayed for forgiveness and salvation. But I have known people who live in some way like they believe this to be true.

This shows up in at least two ways in the lives of Christians. The first type is the Christian who treats salvation as a kind of transaction — like buying fire insurance. Once they have made the deal, they are now covered in the event of disaster. There is really nothing else to do now. There is no real call to change or to live in connection with a Christian community or practice any spiritual disciplines. Such a person rarely would say they no longer have any sin in them, for they often hold on to sins that are too precious for them to let go, but they do live in the belief that such sins no longer have an consequence for them.

The second type is the Christian who carries a burden of guilt of shame because they believe that now that they have been saved they should no longer experience sin or temptation. Of course, they do experience temptation and sin residing in them, which leads them fret about their salvation or to disappointment with the church or even God. They expected to be free of all struggle, and yet still they do.

By totally preventing that repentance, it quite blocks up the way to sanctification. There is no place for repentance in him who believes there is no sin either in his life or heart: consequently, there is no place for his being perfected in love, to which that repentance is indispensably necessary. Here Wesley speaks more to the first type than the second, but both are equally robbed of the full work of God in their lives. Because they have been taught or they have constructed for themselves a theology that treats the moment of justification as the full work of salvation, they remain forever as infants in the faith, unable to experience the real power God’s grace in their present lives.

As Wesley would write elsewhere, the blessing of salvation is not merely a far off thing. It is not only a reward waiting for us in heaven and the resurrection, but it is a blessing that we can experience right now. It is a present thing.

12. Hence it may likewise appear, that there is no possible danger in thus expecting full salvation. Here is the linkage. If we think sin is eradicated the first moment we believe, we will not continue to repent and continue to grow in grace. We, therefore, will not experience the power of grace, and we will not expect to be made perfect in love.

If we believe that God needs to work in us and will work in us, however, there is no harm in us expecting and believing that God can do what he is aims to do. We are not damaged in any way if we expect God to truly purify our hearts so that we love him perfectly and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Perhaps, some of us would argue against that. We might be like the man who was in a Bible study I once taught. When I explained that attending church does not get us into heaven, he asked why he had bothered coming for so many years. Perhaps some of us would say that we are wasting our time to repent continually and engage in the works of piety and mercy that God has appointed as means by which God’s grace remakes us. Perhaps we would ask “What is the point of doing all that God calls me to do if I am wrong about this point of doctrine?”

I pray, dear reader, you are not one of those people. But for such people, Wesley had this to say:

For suppose we were mistaken, suppose no such blessing ever was or can be attained, yet we lose nothing: nay, that very expectation quickens us in using all the talents which God has given us; yea, in improving them all; so that when our Lord cometh, He will receive His own with increase. Do we follow the point? Do you remember the parable of the talents? The master left each servant with a sum of money and departed. Those two who had been diligent and grew what the master had given them into a greater sum were praised and welcomed into their master’s happiness. The one who had sat on his hands and did nothing was thrown outside.

We are living this parable right now. The master has gone and will return, and when he does there will be an accounting. Have we taken what he placed in our hands and given it increase?

If we believe that God might and can give us full salvation in this life, provided we cooperate with the work of the Spirit, then the worst thing that could happen from such a life is that we will be met like the servants in the parable with the words “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

How could we ever call that a waste of our lives?

And the best case is that as we expect to be made perfect in love, God may actually complete this work in us. Our hearts may at last know what it is to be full of nothing but the love of God and the love of our neighbors. The darkness may at last be driven out, even on this side of eternity, and we might walk in the full power and peace and purpose that only God can give us.

Isn’t that worth believing in? Isn’t that worth hoping for? Isn’t that worth wagering our life on? This was the question Wesley never ceased asking and urging on the people called Methodist.

Do these things and live

We have been reading John Wesley’s sermon “The Scripture Way of Salvation” for a good while now. He has been laying out and defending the doctrine that salvation by faith alone does not exclude works. Indeed, he insists such works are necessary to both justification and sanctification provided we have opportunity to engage in them. Here now, he comes to discuss some of the applications and implications of all this for the practical life of Christians and the teaching of the church.

9. “But what good works are those, the practice of which you affirm to be necessary to sanctification?” First, all works of piety; Just a short aside. The words “pious” and “piety” — like many religious terms — can have a negative connotation in our secular culture and even within Christianity. Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian who used to be a Methodist wrote many things for which I am grateful, but he also has written very dismissively of piety and pietism. I won’t go into his critique, but I will note that the 17th century Pietism movement was deeply influential on Wesley and Methodism. Phillip Spener’s Pia Desideria is available in a modern English translation for those who wish to learn more about it.

such as public prayer, family prayer, and praying in our closet; receiving the supper of the Lord; searching the Scriptures, by hearing, reading, meditating; and using such a measure of fasting or abstinence as our bodily health allows. Let us be clear here. Wesley is not advocating for these things as lovely little helpers to our spiritual life. He is writing and teaching that you cannot expect salvation in this life or the next if you have the opportunity to engage in these works and refuse to do so. The way we often talk about these things in church and the way our doctrine as Methodists speaks of them are widely divided from each other.

Yes, there are circumstances when people are literally unable to do some of these things. Some people cannot attend the public prayers, reading of Scripture, and service of the Lord’s Supper that we call “going to church,” but the number who cannot is far surpassed by the number who refuse or choose not to. Those of us who claim to love such people should be as agitated for them as we get for our openly blasphemous friends and relations. Both groups are missing the mark.

As I write these words, I am preparing for an Ash Wednesday service and the season of Lent. I am reminded of how in the contemporary church we often talk about “fasting” as a help or enriching practice for a spiritual life. In the “mainstream” Protestant church, I’ve heard many sermons where we talk about fasting from social media or somehow fasting by taking up a new activity or healthy habit. As I write this post, I am convicted that I need to pray and study more about the proper way to teach my congregation about fasting and abstinence and their importance to our salvation.

10. Secondly, all works of mercy; whether they relate to the bodies or souls of men; such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, entertaining the stranger, visiting those that are in prison, or sick, or variously afflicted; such as the endeavouring to instruct the ignorant, to awaken the stupid sinner, to quicken the lukewarm, to confirm the wavering, to comfort the feeble-minded, to succour the tempted, or contribute in any manner to the saving of souls from death. Sometimes the idea that Methodism has a both/and take on theological or practical questions gets abused. Sometimes it gets twisted into “you can believe anything and be a Methodist.” But the abuse of a thing should not blind us to its proper use.

Here we see Wesley insisting that the good works we are called to do are about the physical and spiritual needs of our neighbors. We are to care for their bodies and their souls. We should not ignore one so we can attend to the other. We should give them a hot meal. We should also give them Jesus.

And importantly, the “we” in this sentence is not about the church as a body but it is directed at each one of us as Christians. The works of mercy here are not things the church does on our behalf. It is something you and I are called to do ourselves because doing these works is how we work out our salvation. The mission committee can’t do that for you. The evangelism committee can’t do that for you. The pastor can’t do them for you. Only you can. Only I can.

Jesus calls each one of us to do these works as part of our repentance — our turning away from the false gods to the true and living God. We cannot delegate these things to others, and we cannot expect the blessing of God’s grace if we willfully refuse to heed the instruction of our Lord in these matters.

As Wesley sums it up: This is the repentance, and these the “fruits meet for repentance,” which are necessary to full sanctification. This is the way wherein God hath appointed His children to wait for complete salvation. We have two options. Either we can argue that God did not appoint these things to us, which some Christians will argue and did argue with Wesley, but if we join those arguments we cease to be Methodists, or we can accept that God has appointed these things but refuse to do them, in which case we can have no expectation of salvation in this life or the life to come. We cannot expect any of the sweet joys that come from walking in the way of Jesus or any of the peace or assurance that comes from obedience to our Lord if we willfully choose to ignore what we believe he taught us to do. And yet, how many of us do just that?