Sermon 43: “The Scripture Way of Salvation”

Religion, Wesley argues, is complicated and difficult to understand. But “the genuine religion of Jesus Christ” is simple and easy to understand; anyone can understand what is required. Wesley sums it all up in two words: the goal is salvation; the means of realizing that goal is faith. The purpose of the present sermon is to unpack the meaning of these two words.

Salvation is a present thing

Salvation is, for starters, more than a merely future reality. Wesley doesn’t want to exclude “the going to heaven” here, but he points out the basic, naive understanding of the preaching text for the present sermon. His excerpt from Ephesians 2:8, “Ye are saved through faith,” includes a stative, passive participle form of the verb for “save” that can, as Wesley points out, be read to suggest a present state: you have been saved. Wesley thinks of salvation as embracing the entire journey of grace from the initial overtures to its full consummation.

Preliminary Grace

He starts by describing preventing grace. “Prevent” comes from Latin and originally meant something like “to come before” (pre + venio). Wesley is using the word in this sense - he’s not talking mainly about grace that stops something from happening, but grace that goes before us - grace present to us before we have a chance to respond to it; grace that makes it possible for us to respond to it. These “drawings of the Father” get stronger the more we surrender to them, though by the same token we can resist and stifle them (which is what Wesley thinks most people do). Most contemporary theologians use the phrase “prevenient grace” to describe what Wesley calls preventing grace; 19th century Methodist theologian William Burt Pope helpfully calls it “preliminary grace.”

Grace that will pardon and cleanse within

The next step on the way of salvation is justification, which Wesley identifies with pardon for sin purchased by the blood of Christ. Following immediately upon justification is the new birth, which Wesley sometimes calls “initial sanctification.” There is an initial release from sin, but eventually the power of sin makes itself apparent once again in the life of the believer. This leads, finally, to sanctification. This gradual process slowly over time replaces our sin with love until, eventually, all sin is gone and nothing but love for God and neighbor remains. Wesley calls this variously entire sanctification, Christian perfection, or perfect love.

Faith is perception

The faith that saves, for Wesley, is the capacity to perceive God and the love of God in our life. Wesley leans on Hebrews 11:1 here: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (NIV). He places a lot of stock in his understanding of one Greek word, elegchos; modern translators usually render it “assurance” (NIV) or “conviction” (LSB), but King James (1611) has “evidence,” and the even older Tyndale (d. 1536) has “certayntie.” Wesley favors both “evidence” and “conviction.” Faith is where the Holy Spirit both opens our eyes and sheds light on the things of God so that we can ‘see’ them. This includes both the assurance that Christ died for me to rescue and redeem me and the confidence to trust in God as his adopted child. Faith is a form of spiritual sense perception, analogous to sight, that God blesses us with.

Faith is the condition of justification

Faith, repentance, and fruitfulness are all in different ways necessary for justification. But faith is the only thing that serves as a condition for our justification. Repentance and fruits of a changed life are only necessary conditionally (if a person has time and opportunity) and remotely (because they support faith). Whatever necessity repentance and fruitfulness have, it is derivative and subservient to the necessity of faith, which Wesley insists is the only “condition” of our justification.

Faith is the condition of sanctification

Sanctification parallels justification in how it relates to repentance and the fruit of good works. Faith is the only condition for our sanctification, just as it is for our justification. Repentance and fruitfulness are different in kind than those of justification because of the work of God in the believer that has happened in the meantime. Because of God’s grace working in us, there is no longer any guilt here, but we are invited to repent of the sin still remaining in our hearts and lives. God’s grace is making us new, but we are still helpless to do good apart from grace.

Works necessary to sanctification

Wesley invites the justified believer to pursue works of piety (essentially a standard list of means of grace) and works of mercy (he offers representative examples of good works) as we “wait for complete salvation.”(III.10) As with justification, these good works are necessary to full salvation, but they are only necessary conditionally and remotely. By conditionally, Wesley is making allowances for cases where there might not be opportunity for such works. By remotely, Wesley calls these fruits necessary because of the way they sustain and grow faith. Faith, once again, is properly the only condition of sanctification.

There is no danger in expecting full salvation

In III.12, Wesley argues that even if he is wrong about his call to the believer to expect Christian perfection in this life, such a call, rightly understood, has no danger, since it will just lead the believer to do the things he should be doing anyway! Wesley is not backing down from the truth of this teaching; he is simply pressing for the teaching with every rhetorical trick he can muster.

What is that faith that perfects us in love?

The faith by which we are sanctified is the “evidence and conviction” – or we might return to his earlier talk of faith as perception – that:

1. God promised to make us holy in the Scriptures.
2. God can do what he promises.
3. God can do it now. The only thing left is acquiring the faith – again, think perception – that he has done it, that God has perfected us in love. For Wesley, this is something that can sometimes seem to happen gradually, but it is best understood as an instantaneous process. (Elsewhere Wesley argues that logically there must be a moment where the last bit of sin is removed from the human heart.) He closes with the invitation: “Look for it then every day, every hour, every moment! Why not this hour, this moment? Certainly you may look for it now, if you believe it is by faith. … If you seek it by faith, you may expect it as you are; and expect it now.” (III.18)