WW: “Salvation by Faith”

Salvation By Faith

“By grace ye are saved through faith.”
- Ephesians 2:8 -

CONTEXT:

Weds, May 24th, 1738:

In my return to England, January, 1738, being in imment danger of death, and very uneasy on that account I was strongly convinced that the cause of that uneasiness was unbelief; and that the gaining a true, living faith was the “one thing needful” for me. But still I fixed not this faith on it’s right object: I meant only faith in God, not faith in or through Christ. Again, I knew not that I was wholly ovid of this faith; but only though, I had not enough of it…

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate-Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing they change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely wormed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for 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.

If you go and read John Wesley’s journal entries from the days between his “Aldersgate” experience above and the preaching of the sermon “Salvation by Faith” on the Festival of St. Barnabas, June 11 at the University of Oxford, you will find a man working out in his personal experience the substance of his proclamation from Ephesians 2:8, especially the themes of faith and salvation.

Albert Outler, also notes that the Moravian elements of the sermon are qualified by echoes from the Book of Homilies (as in the claim that salvation involved the power not to commit sin – see especially the homily “Salvation of Mankind“)

CONTENT: 

1. The relationship between Grace and Faith - Wesley brilliantly begins by differentiating between “grace” and “faith”: “If then sinful man find favor with God, it is ‘grace upon grace’… ‘By Grace’, then, ‘are ye saved though faith.’Grace is the source, faith the condition, of salvation…. Now, that we fall not short of the grace of God, it concerns us carefully to inquire…” Wesley then goes on to inquire on the condition of faith and the scope of salvation.The subtlety of this beginning is profound. If you begin not with God’s grace as source, then you may stumble into the heresy that one’s faith is both the source and condition of salvation. This is the misinformed argument that I face amongst my Reformed brethren, “Is it your faith or what Jesus did that saved you.” The underlying question being, “does your faith independent of anything God does or doesn’t do bring about salvation?” Wesley, I believe would say no. It is only by God’s grace that ‘he loved us enough while we were yet sinners to send Jesus Christ  to die and save us.’  It is by grace through faith.
   
2. The scandal of particular faith - Wesley doesn’t just say that all you need is any form or flavor of faith, but a faith of a particular genre, “It is faith in Christ – Christ, and God through Christ, are the proper object of it.” Furthermore, it is not just a faith of mental assent, “Confess with thy mouth and believe with thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead”If you look at the other categories of faith that Wesley uses in this sermon, “Faith of a heathen”, “Faith of a Devil”, “Faith of the pre-easter Apostles”, then you find in fact that truly ‘the road to destruction is wide and spacious, but the narrow gate leads to life, and few find it.” For Wesley, the linchpin of the faith by which one is saved is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, not just mentally assented to, but an ingestion of truth whereby the reality of the Gospel becomes “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.”  I love the scope of Wesley’s definition of Christian Faith:”Christian faith is then not only an assent to the whole gospel of Christ, but also a full reliance on the blood of Christ, a trust in the merits of his life, death, and resurrection; a recumbency upon him as our atonement and our life, as given for us,and living in us.… It is a sure confidence which a man hath in God, that through the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven, and he reconciled to the favor of God; and in consequence hereof a closing with him and cleaving to him as our ‘wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption’ … or, in one word, our salvation.
3. Scope of Salvation -For Wesley “salvation” wasn’t just a ‘get out of hell card’ or an ‘escape from the fallenness of creation’ or a ‘say this prayer and be saved’ genre of salvation. As the quote above illuminates, salvation is personal: it involves the second person of the Holy Trinity, Christ Jesus and it involves each one of us as people (in other words, “God has no grandchildren”, but sons and daughters through Christ).Salvation also is  ”presently powerful”: Salvation isn’t just something you wait for when you die, but can be experienced in this life. Forgiveness is linked with formation- our desires, actions, ‘modes of being’, are transformed to the likeness of Christ – even the guilt of sin is transformed in our salvation in Christ.
4. Objections - What preacher you know today at the end of his or her sermon will say, “and now for some objections to preaching so and so.” Then to answer the objections with humility, sobriety, and grace.Objection 8 is particularly interesting to me because of Wesley’s distancing of his presentation of “salvation by Faith” against that of the church of Rome (a claim again that some theological camps wrongly make by ascribing Wesley’s teaching to a romish semi-pelagian heresy). He also says that this doctrine, “by grace through faith” is called by the Church of England to be the foundation of the Christian religion and the reason for “popery” being driven from the land. He even references Martin Luther in a very flattering way.

COMMENTS:

As an Anglican priest, theologically educated in the Wesleyan tradition, I am thankful the Reverend John Wesley. He is not only a gift to Methodism, to Wesleyanism, to later Anglicanism, but to entire Body of Christ. He is a saint that is truly worthy of his feast day (which in the Church of England consequentially falls on May 24th, but in the Episcopal Church USA on the 3rd of March).

When I read Wesley, I am always struck with how comprehensive his sermons are. He doesn’t just tell you to do this and do that, but advances a cogent argument, a well defined pathway that lets you wrestle through the layers of theological extremes that clutter and distract you from the road. Wesley is also someone who lived out his sermons. Part of my plan this year as I go through the 52 Standard Sermons is to also read through the journal entries before and after each sermon delivery date. I want to become better friends with John Wesley this year, and perhaps, this friendship will be a means of grace by which to I will grow in love and knowledge our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is my prayer for us all.

By: rmKocak
1/3/12

Written in conjunction with the Standard52 Project