The Scripture Way of Salvation

In the middle of the revival

John Wesley (1703–1791) lived and died a priest of the Church of England. After the evening of 24 May 1738 in Aldersgate Street, London, when he felt his heart "strangely warmed" Wesley, Journal, he preached in the fields from 1739 and gathered converts into societies and classes (Wesley and the Methodist movement). He published The Scripture Way of Salvation in 1765, in his sixties, with a quarter of a century of revival behind him. Its text is from Ephesians 2:

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9

It came out as a storm over Christian perfection was dying down. From about 1760 many Methodists testified that God had filled their hearts with perfect love, and some talked as if they were as perfect as angels or could never fall. George Bell, a former soldier, foretold the end of the world for 28 February 1763, and Thomas Maxfield, one of Wesley's earliest lay preachers, left him that year with part of the London society. Wesley kept the doctrine without defending its excesses, and in 1766 set out what he had always taught Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection.

From the other side came an older charge, "roundly and vehemently affirmed for these five-and-twenty years" III.3, that he taught justification by faith but sanctification by works. The sermon answers both, and many scholars count it his best short statement of the way of salvation. Under the model deed of 1763 his sermons and his Explanatory Notes on the New Testament became Methodism's doctrinal standard; this one came too late for the 44 ‘standard sermons’ British Methodists have traditionally counted, but is among the 53 that others count, following his collected Works, whose later editions number it 43. The English is Wesley's own, in the 1872 edition of those Works.

Two little words, three questions

Religion, Wesley begins, has often been made "intricate, complex, and hard to be understood" intro. 1, though in its native form it is plain and simple. "The end is, in one word, salvation; the means to attain it, faith" intro. 1, and those two words are "the marrow, as it were, of the whole Scripture" intro. 2. So he asks what salvation is, what the faith is by which we are saved, and how we are saved by it intro. 3.

Part I, in nine paragraphs, traces salvation from the first stirrings of grace to entire sanctification; Part II, in four, defines faith; Part III, in eighteen, shows how faith justifies and sanctifies, "the main point in question" II.4. Wesley numbered the paragraphs (I.2 is the second of Part I). The library holds the whole sermon, about 4,600 words. It stands last in the library, after Calvin's Institutes and Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, and maps their way in a single sermon.

Salvation now

Salvation here is not first of all "the going to heaven, eternal happiness" I.1: "it is a present thing" I.1, reaching "from the first dawning of grace in the soul, till it is consummated in glory" I.1. It begins before anyone seeks God, in what Wesley calls "preventing grace" I.2, or prevenient grace: the Father's drawings, the light of the one who "gives light to everyone" (John 1:9), and the Spirit's convictions in every heart, though "the generality of men stifle them as soon as possible" I.2.

The salvation of the text has "two general parts, justification and sanctification" I.3. "Justification is another word for pardon" I.3, our pardon and acceptance procured by "the blood and righteousness of Christ" I.3. And "in that very moment, sanctification begins" I.4: we are born again, and "there is a real as well as a relative change" I.4, as God pours his love into our hearts (Romans 5:5). Like Calvin, Wesley distinguishes justification and sanctification without parting them (Institutes III.11; see New birth and the indwelling Spirit).

New believers easily reason, "I feel no sin; therefore, I have none" I.5. Soon they find "sin was only suspended, not destroyed" I.6: "the flesh craves what is contrary to the Spirit" (Galatians 5:17), and pride, anger or unbelief stirs in them, "though not conquering" I.6. Wesley calls as witness Macarius, "fourteen hundred years ago" I.7, whose homilies, many scholars now think, an unnamed Syrian monk wrote late in the fourth century.

From the new birth "the gradual work of sanctification takes place" I.8, and we wait for entire sanctification, "a full salvation from all our sins" I.9. "But what is perfection? The word has various senses: here it means perfect love. It is love excluding sin; love filling the heart, taking up the whole capacity of the soul" I.9. Wesley draws it in Paul's words:

Rejoice at all times. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in every circumstance, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

His note on these verses says, "This is Christian perfection. Farther than this we cannot go; and we need not stop short of it" Wesley. It is not, he made plain elsewhere, freedom from mistakes, weakness or temptation, but love for God and neighbour ruling the heart Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection.

By faith, as you are, now

Faith, in Part II, is the "certainty of what we do not see" (Hebrews 11:1); the Greek elegchos is "a divine evidence and conviction (the word means both) of things not seen" II.1. More particularly, faith is a conviction "that Christ loved me, and gave himself for me" II.2 (Galatians 2:20). So it "necessarily implies an assurance" II.3, for the Spirit "testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children" (Romans 8:16). The Westminster Confession holds instead that assurance is not of the essence of faith Westminster Confession 18.3, and Wesley himself later spoke more gently of those whose assurance was weak.

Part III begins, "Faith is the condition, and the only condition, of justification" III.1. What, then, of repentance and "fruits meet for repentance" III.2, the fitting fruit the Baptist demanded (Matthew 3:8)? They are necessary "in some sense" III.2, but not as faith is: only "if there be time and opportunity for them" III.2, and only "remotely necessary; necessary in order to faith" III.2. The thief on the cross had no time for fruits, yet heard, "today you will be with Me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43).

Sanctification works the same way: "exactly as we are justified by faith, so are we sanctified by faith" III.3. Yet there is "a repentance consequent upon, as well as a repentance previous to, justification" III.5, and it "implies no guilt, no sense of condemnation, no consciousness of the wrath of God" III.6. It is a conviction of the sin that remains in the regenerate, though it no longer reigns, as Article IX of the Church of England also confesses Thirty-Nine Articles, art. 9, so that "we are now more ashamed of our best duties than formerly of our worst sins" III.7. With it go works of piety and of mercy III.9: "This is the way wherein God hath appointed His children to wait for complete salvation" III.10. Yet faith alone is "immediately and directly necessary to sanctification" III.13.

What, then, is the faith by which we are "saved from sin, and perfected in love" III.14? First, a conviction that God has promised it, as he did of old:

The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love Him with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.

Deuteronomy 30:6

Then that he is able, since "with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26) III.15; that he is able and willing to do it now, for "Is not a moment to Him the same as a thousand years?" III.16; and that he does it, so that the believer knows "the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7) III.17.

Perfect love may be "gradually wrought in some" III.18, Wesley allows, but God "generally" gives it at once, and so: "expect it by faith; expect it as you are; and expect it now!" III.18 Whoever thinks "I must first be or do thus or thus" III.18 is seeking it by works. The sermon ends, "Christ is ready; and He is all you want. He is waiting for you: He is at the door!" III.18, and a hymn verse turns the call into prayer.

Christians have received this way, and entire sanctification above all, differently. The Reformed confess that sanctification reaches the whole person "yet imperfect in this life" Westminster Confession 13.2, and that "even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience" Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 114. In their order of salvation God's effectual call and regeneration give rise to faith; for Wesley, one enabled by prevenient grace believes, and is justified and born again at once. Lutherans call the Christian at once righteous and a sinner Luther, Lectures on Galatians, hold that "the whole life of believers should be penitence" Thesis 1, and see growth as a daily return to baptism Luther, Small Catechism. See also Holiness and perseverance.

Catholics teach with Trent that justification begins from God's prevenient grace through Jesus Christ Council of Trent, Decree on Justification, ch. 5, that all the faithful are called to the perfection of charity Lumen Gentium 40, and that a purification unfinished in this life is completed after death (purgatory). The Orthodox speak of theosis, a sharing by grace in the life of God, and with Gregory of Nyssa of perfection as endless growth rather than a second gift received in a moment; yet Wesley loved Eastern writers such as Macarius, and many scholars hear an Eastern note in him. The Holiness movement of nineteenth-century America made the instantaneous ‘second blessing’ central, and the Church of the Nazarene, the Salvation Army and the Korean Holiness churches stand in that stream. The Pentecostal movement that grew from it stressed a baptism in the Spirit after conversion Assemblies of God, Statement of Fundamental Truths; its churches differ on entire sanctification as a second work of grace.

Reading it well

Few short texts hold salvation by faith alone and holiness of heart and life so firmly together. On justification Wesley speaks with Luther and Calvin; with the Fathers he will not give up the hope that God means not only to pardon us but to fill us with love. For Methodists the sermon is a doctrinal standard, and many Methodist churches still ask candidates for the ministry the question Wesley put to his preachers, whether they are going on to perfection; for other Christians it is a searching partner in conversation.

The sermon argues by question and answer. Lines in quotation marks, such as "But does not God command us to repent also?" III.2, are objections and inquiries, not Wesley's views, like the objections in Aquinas's Summa; his answer follows each. ‘Condition’ does not mean merit: our best works are "so far from having anything meritorious in them" III.7, and perfect love is sought "as a poor sinner that has still nothing to pay, nothing to plead" III.18.

Some words have changed: to prevent is to go before, as in the Prayer Book's "Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings" Book of Common Prayer; meet is fitting; tempers are dispositions; to want is to need. Among a few misprints, five stands for give (II.4) and till for fill (III.15).

Some claims are hard. Wesley calls the instantaneous gift "a plain fact, of which there is evidence enough to satisfy any unprejudiced person" III.18; Christians of other traditions ask whether Scripture teaches it, and many in his own tradition now stress lifelong growth more than a moment. Yet his ‘now’ is not meant to make anyone anxious; it frees us from waiting to be better before we come. See also What is repentance? and What is faith?

The sermon ends where the letter to Laodicea does:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him, and he with Me.

Revelation 3:20