Wesley's Explanatory Notes

John Wesley and the Methodist revival

John Wesley was born in 1703 at Epworth, a small town in Lincolnshire in the east of England, one of the many children of the rector, Samuel Wesley, and his wife Susanna. When he was five the rectory burned, and he was the last of the children to be rescued, from an upstairs window; he is said to have seen himself ever after as a stick snatched from the fire (Zechariah 3:2). At Oxford he became a fellow of Lincoln College and was ordained a priest of the Church of England. There he, his younger brother Charles and a few friends met to read the Bible, received Communion often, and visited prisoners and the poor. Other students laughed at their rule-bound way of life and called them Methodists, and the nickname stuck.

In 1735 the brothers sailed to the colony of Georgia in North America, John as a missionary. He came home two years later discouraged, troubled by the calm faith of the Moravian Christians he had met on the voyage. On the evening of 24 May 1738, at a meeting in Aldersgate Street in London, someone read aloud from Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. Wesley wrote in his journal that his heart was warmed in a way he had not known, and that he received an assurance that Christ had taken away his sins. Justification by faith alone, and the Holy Spirit's witness to it in the heart, became the centre of what he preached for the rest of his life.

The next year, at George Whitefield's urging, he began to preach in the open air near Bristol, to coal miners who never went to church. For the next half-century he travelled on horseback through England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, preaching to working people and the poor, and gathering those who were converted into societies and small weekly classes where they watched over one another. Charles gave the revival its voice in thousands of hymns. Wesley died in London in 1791 still a priest of the Church of England; the Methodists in Britain became a separate church mostly after his death, while in America the Methodist Episcopal Church was formed in 1784 with his blessing. Korean Methodism began in 1885 with American missionaries such as Henry Appenzeller, and the Holiness churches, the Salvation Army and the Church of the Nazarene also have their roots in the Wesleyan tradition.

The Notes on the New and Old Testaments

At the end of 1753 Wesley fell so ill that he feared he would die. While recovering, early in 1754, he began his notes on the New Testament, and the Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament came out in 1755. In the preface he says he did not write for the learned but for plain people who know only their mother tongue, yet love the word of God and want to save their souls. For their sake he kept the notes as short as he could, so that the comment would not crowd out the text. Above the notes he printed his own revision of the King James Version, changed in many places.

In the same preface Wesley explains that he had meant to set down only what occurred to his own mind, but once he came to know the Gnomon (1742) of Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752), a Lutheran Pietist scholar in Württemberg, he changed his plan. A gnomon is the pointer of a sundial, and Bengel's notes point: they weigh single words in short, pointed sentences. Wesley translated many of them and abridged many more, and he also drew, he says, on the lectures of the Anglican John Heylyn and on the expositions of two Nonconformist ministers, John Guyse and Philip Doddridge. On 1 John 5:7 he simply sends the reader to Bengel's arguments about the disputed verse, which, he says, "will abundantly satisfy any impartial person" Wesley, 1 John 5:7.

The book soon became more than one man's notes. From 1763 the model deed for Methodist preaching-houses bound the preachers in them to teach no doctrine other than that contained in Wesley's Notes on the New Testament and his sermons. The two became the doctrinal standard of Methodism, and many Methodist churches still name them among their standards today.

The Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament followed in three volumes in 1765 and 1766. They are, for the most part, a heavy abridgement of Matthew Henry's Exposition and of Matthew Poole's Annotations, and Wesley's preface acknowledges how much he owes to Henry. Both were Reformed Nonconformists of the generation shaped by the ejections of 1662, so the Arminian Wesley was freely using the work of men who differed from him on predestination. On the first verse of Genesis a sentence of Henry's survives nearly word for word: our place as human beings should remind us of our duty as Christians, "always to keep heaven in our eye, and the earth under our feet" Wesley, Genesis 1:1.

Wesley did not simply copy, though. On 1 Samuel 19:6 he quotes Henry by name with approval Wesley, 1 Samuel 19:6, and on Genesis 9:4 he names him to disagree: "Mr. Henry indeed has a strange conceit" Wesley, Genesis 9:4, a reading that, Wesley says, does such violence to the text that it is enough to mention it. Even so, Henry's voice and Poole's are heard more often than Wesley's own in the Old Testament notes, and only the New Testament notes became a standard of doctrine.

How Wesley reads Scripture

A Wesley note sets down a few words of the verse, then a dash, then a short gloss. On John 3:1 the whole note on the ruler Nicodemus is "One of the great council" Wesley, John 3:1. On Romans 13:10 he gives the reason love fulfils the law in a single line: "For the same love which restrains from all evil, incites us to all good" Wesley, Romans 13:10. Where Henry preaches through a passage, Wesley, like Bengel, points to its words one at a time.

In the preface to the Old Testament notes Wesley urges readers to keep a constant eye on the analogy of faith: the connection and harmony of the great doctrines that run through the whole of Scripture. He names original sin, justification by faith, the new birth, and inward and outward holiness, and his notes keep returning to them. On justification he stands with the Reformers. Faith justifies "not as it is a work, but as it receives Christ" Wesley, Romans 3:28, and "Faith, with an empty hand, and without any pretence to personal desert, receives the heavenly blessing" Wesley, Ephesians 2:8. But he never stops at pardon. "To be born again, is to be inwardly changed from all sinfulness to all holiness" Wesley, John 3:7 (New birth and the indwelling Spirit).

On grace and election Wesley stood with Jacobus Arminius, and late in life he even named his monthly magazine The Arminian Magazine. He believed that grace always comes before any human response, and that it is given to everyone. This is called prevenient grace, the grace that goes before. The light that gives light to everyone in John 1:9 is, he says, "what is vulgarly termed natural conscience" Wesley, John 1:9: what people commonly call conscience, as if it were simply part of human nature, is in fact a light from Christ. When the Father draws people to the Son, it is not by force but "by the strong and sweet, yet still resistible, motions of his heavenly grace" Wesley, John 6:44.

So he reads election as God's choice of those he foresaw would believe. In Ephesians 1 the chosen are those "whom he foreknew as believing in Christ" Wesley, Ephesians 1:4. The chain of Romans 8:30, he argues, does not say that exactly the same people are called, justified and glorified, nor deny that a believer may fall away: "He only affirms that this is the method whereby God leads us step by step toward heaven" Wesley, Romans 8:30. Jacob and Esau in Romans 9 stand for two peoples, Israel and Edom, and he adds, "This does not relate to the person of Jacob or Esau" Wesley, Romans 9:13.

Reformed Christians read the same passages differently. The Westminster Confession teaches that God chose his own in Christ out of free grace and love alone, without any foresight of faith or good works as the condition (3.5), and the Synod of Dort answered the followers of Arminius that faith itself is God's gift flowing from election (The five heads of Dort). For Henry, Romans 8:30 is "a golden chain, one which cannot be broken" Matthew Henry, Romans 8:30. Wesley can be sharp. On 1 Peter 1:2 he calls the predestination taught in his day "Cruel respect of persons" Wesley, 1 Peter 1:2, and charges it with making holiness needless. What he had in view was a teaching he believed led people to neglect a holy life; but the Reformed confessions themselves say that God chose his people to be holy (Ephesians 1:4), and Reformed readers are unlikely to recognise their faith in his description. In the same note he writes that in God's appointment "promise and duty go hand in hand" Wesley, 1 Peter 1:2, a line both traditions could say. What is predestination? and the lesson Grace and election set out the views side by side, and Can salvation be lost? takes up whether a believer can fall from grace.

A second mark of the Wesleyan tradition is assurance.

The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Romans 8:16

The Spirit witnesses, Wesley writes, "by a testimony distinct from that of his own spirit, or the testimony of a good conscience" Wesley, Romans 8:16. A believer does not only infer from the evidence of a changed life that he is God's child; the Spirit tells him so directly. Reformed Christians also teach an assurance given by the Spirit, but the Westminster Confession adds that it does not belong to the essence of faith, so a true believer may wait long for it (18.3). Wesley himself is known to have spoken more gently in later years of those who fear God but do not yet have this assurance.

The third mark is Christian perfection, sometimes called entire sanctification.

Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:48

The Greek verb is in the future tense, and Wesley reads the verse as a promise as well as a command: "Therefore ye shall be perfect" Wesley, Matthew 5:48. The perfection he means is not freedom from mistakes, weakness or temptation, but love for God and neighbour ruling the heart and driving out deliberate sin (Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection). "The love of God contains the whole of Christian perfection" Wesley, Colossians 3:14. On Philippians 3 he notes that "There is a difference between one that is perfect, and one that is perfected" Wesley, Philippians 3:12: one is fitted for the race, the other ready to receive the prize. The Reformed confess that sanctification reaches the whole person but remains imperfect in this life, with remnants of corruption in every part (13.2), and Lutherans speak of the Christian as at once righteous and a sinner. How does a Christian grow holy? and Holiness and perseverance compare the views.

What it is good for, and its limits

The great strength of Wesley's notes is that they are short and clear. Read a verse, then a line or two of Wesley, and the key word of the verse and its meaning are usually in front of you. A newcomer to the Bible will not get lost in them, and a preacher or teacher can see the point of a passage at a glance. The brevity is not cold, either. On the words that God is love, he writes: "This little sentence brought St. John more sweetness, even in the time he was writing it, than the whole world can bring" Wesley, 1 John 4:8.

The notes also show how the evangelical revival of the eighteenth century read the Bible. Conviction of sin, forgiveness received by faith, the witness of the Spirit and growth in love recur on page after page, and the note on 1 John 4:18 gathers the whole way into one sentence:

A natural man has neither fear nor love; one that is awakened, fear without love; a babe in Christ, love and fear; a father in Christ, love without fear.

Wesley, 1 John 4:18

And a book that brings together a Lutheran Pietist, a Reformed Nonconformist and Anglican scholars carries something of the generous spirit Wesley urged on Christians who differ: that they might still join hands in love.

The limits are just as plain. First, brevity has its cost. Hard verses often get a line, and Wesley seldom weighs other readings or gives his reasons at length. Some verses have no note at all, Psalm 23:1 among them.

Second, there are gaps in the app's text. The CrossWire module the app uses has no notes on Judges, 1 Kings, Jonah or Philemon, so Wesley cannot be read on those four books. A few chapters are empty as well, mostly passages that repeat another, such as 2 Samuel 22, which is nearly the same song as Psalm 18, and Isaiah 36, 37 and 39, which retell 2 Kings 18–20. Wesley's prefaces and his introductions to the books are not included.

Third, this is an eighteenth-century book. Wesley wrote before modern biblical scholarship, and on 1 John 5:7, following Bengel, he accepts as genuine the words about three witnesses in heaven, which the Berean Standard Bible, like most modern versions, does not have. In Revelation he follows Bengel's reckoning of prophetic days and years, and dates the beast's final overthrow to 1836 Wesley, Revelation 17:10. That year has long passed. Yet he closes his notes on Revelation with a prayer that holds the whole scheme loosely: "O God, whatsoever stands or falls, stands or falls by thy judgment. Defend thy own truth! Have mercy on me and my readers!" Wesley, Revelation 22:21. When will the end come? sets out how Christians have read these things.

Fourth, it carries the hard language of its age. On 2 Thessalonians 2, like Henry, Wesley takes the man of sin to point to the papacy, and says that "the Pope has an indisputable claim to those titles" Wesley, 2 Thessalonians 2:3. Wesley also wrote a conciliatory letter to a Roman Catholic, but Catholic readers will find such pages painful. On Matthew 27:25 he sees the crowd's cry answered in "the calamities which have ever since pursued that wretched people" Wesley, Matthew 27:25; yet on Romans 11 he looks forward to a day when "there will be a still larger harvest among the gentiles, when all Israel is come in" Wesley, Romans 11:26. Many churches today reject any idea of a curse resting on the Jewish people, and remember the harm such ideas have done.

In this app

In the reader, tap a verse and a bar appears at the foot of the screen; tap Study and a sheet opens with four tabs: Original, Commentary, Cross-refs and Topics. On the Commentary tab choose Wesley. Matthew Henry comes first, the Church Fathers next in the Gospels, and Wesley after them. In the four books Wesley does not cover, his name does not appear.

Henry comments by passage; Wesley comments verse by verse, sometimes taking two or three verses together. So the tab shows the one short note that covers your verse, under a heading such as John 3:8-10, and on a verse without a note it says there is no commentary. A few psalms also have a short outline folded above the notes.

Most notes begin with the words of the verse they explain, in the King James wording or in Wesley's own revision of it, and every Scripture reference inside a note is a link that opens the verse in the translation you are reading. The Korean app shows the notes first in the Korean translation, which renders every sentence, with a button for Wesley's English; where his wording of a verse differs from the Korean Bible, as in Matthew 5:48, the Korean follows his reading. The Korean app also has a page for each chapter's commentary, at addresses like /study/jhn/3/, where Wesley's notes on the chapter follow the other commentaries in verse order, with the English folded under each one.

Wesley's notes appear in search results under Commentary. In Settings, Offline reading can save the study data (original words, commentary, cross-references and topics) for use without a connection, and Study sources gives the credits. The name at the foot of each note links to the text at CCEL, and a Wesley link in these guides opens his note on that verse.

Reading it well

Read the verse first. Wesley's notes make little sense without the text beside them. Read it slowly, then find the words the note picks out and pair them up. What a Commentary Is and How to Read One gives the general principles.

Take Wesley's own advice. In the preface to the Old Testament notes he suggests setting aside a little time each morning and evening, reading with a single aim of knowing God's will and a settled resolve to do it, praying before and after, and often pausing to examine yourself by what you read. His short notes were written to serve that kind of reading.

Compare other voices. Read Henry, to whom Wesley owes so much, alongside him, and you will see where they agree and where they part. Where Wesley insists on Acts 13:48 that Luke "is not speaking of what was done from eternity, but of what was then done, through the preaching of the Gospel" Wesley, Acts 13:48, read Henry too, then go back to the verse and its context and ask what they say. It also helps to keep apart what Wesley stresses as a Methodist and what nearly all churches confess together. Justification by faith, the new birth and love are common ground; his accounts of Christian perfection and of assurance are one tradition's voice among several, to be weighed by Scripture.

Remember the sermons behind the notes. The note on 2 Kings 10:15 only explains Jehu's question to Jehonadab Wesley, 2 Kings 10:15, but Wesley preached on the same verse in his sermon Catholic Spirit, urging Christians who hold different opinions to give one another their hand if their hearts are right with God. The sermons are not in this app, but the model deed joined them to the notes as one standard, and each is best read with the other.

Finally, hold on to the verse Wesley called the sum of it all.

We love because He first loved us.

1 John 4:19

His note reads: "This is the sum of all religion, the genuine model of Christianity" Wesley, 1 John 4:19. In the end his brief notes read the whole Bible toward that one sentence.