This is an endeavor to thrust into prominence two ideas which have been generally presupposed when discussing Wesley’s thought. This effort aims to show that John Wesley regarded the ideas of love and law as indispensable in Christian thought because they refer to integral elements in the redemptive activity of God.

The plan to be followed in discussing the ideas of love and law in Wesley’s thought includes both historical and analytical approaches. These are expected to provide the basis for some remarks regarding the perennial relevance of Wesley’s views when consideration is being given the problem in Christian thought of the relation of love and law.

Until he was twenty-two, John Wesley’s interest in the Christian religion was largely the product of his training. He was taught a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, a respect for the Church, and a profession of piety. The dominant religious note of his parents had come to be High Church Anglicanism.¹ In its religious aspect the term High Church meant belief in the undivided church of the first three centuries of the Christian era, including the rituals, creed, and practices. High Church also meant the Anglican Church as reformed first by Cranmer and later by Laud.² High Church leaders in Anglicanism appealed to the Ante-Nicene church fathers against the authority of the Roman Catholic Church on the one hand and the continental reformers, Luther and Calvin, on the other.

The year 1725 was a very eventful year in the religious development of the twenty-two-year-old Wesley. It began with his expressing to his parents his desire to enter holy orders. It was given considerable impetus through the influence of Thomas a Kempis. He wrote to his parents on May 28, 1725: "I was lately advised to read Thomas a Kempis over which I had frequently seen, but never much looked into before. I think he must have been a person of great piety and devotion."³ As he read The Christian Pattern by a Kempis, Wesley was stirred by deep religious feeling. The effect which it had upon Wesley was to show "that true religion was seated in the heart, and that God’s law extended to all our thoughts as well as our words and actions."⁴ Here is the dawning of the realization that God’s law covers the whole of one’s life.

During the same eventful year of 1725, Wesley was greatly influenced by another writer, Jeremy Taylor, and his Rules and Exercises for Holy Living and Holy Dying. He related the effect in the following words: "Instantly I resolved to dedicate all my life to God … being thoroughly convinced … that every part of my life (not some only) must either be a sacrifice to God, or myself, that is, in effect, to the devil."⁵

A year or two later Wesley began reading William Law’s Christian Perfection and A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. Through Law’s influence, Wesley came to see more clearly then ever the comprehensive of the law of God, inward as well as outward, he could consider himself in a state of salvation.

Law, as well as a Kempis and Taylor, had awakened Wesley to religion; however, the influence of these men upon him was to encourage undue as well as unwarranted emphasis upon man’s duty and obligation. This emphasis was injected into the little society which he and Charles helped form for the purpose of cultivating religion and Bible study. One of the first items to be executed by these young men was a drawing up of a system of rules. This little group of ordered lives quickly drew public attention and became known for rigorous discipline. In conjunction with a disciplined life-style, there was great emphasis placed upon the Bible. This was directly related to the High Church influence of ready acceptance of biblical authority.

From 1735 to 1738, Wesley was a missionary in Georgia. It appears that he has come to the New World with expectation of carrying out the purpose of the Holy Club among the Indians. The Holy Club made apparent the kind a spiritual life that was considered the ideal, that ideal being a life of personal sanctity. Righteousness before God was to be sought by means of the rules of the Holy Club and the works of the law. The result was disillusionment. In despair of spirit concerning his religious activities in Georgia, Wesley wrote: "It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity. But what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why, what I the least of all suspected, that I, who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God."⁶ In later years and in a calmer mood Wesley reviewed these sever words of self-indictment. He somewhat modified the verdict he wrote against himself. In a footnote Wesley said, "I had even then the faith of a servant, though not of a son." Wesley’s experience in Georgia was the final outcome of the religious development that had its beginning in 1725, when he had set out resolutely to live the Christian life according to the law of God. He recognized that the law was spiritual and that it was good. Moreover, he had sought to live according to its mandate, Yet, he had been compelled to confess failure. He found his experience a counterpart to that described by Paul in the seventh chapter of Romans. "I was still ‘under the law,’ not ‘under grace’;…for I was only striving with, not freed from sin."⁷

The year 1735 was important for Wesley for another reason than going as a missionary to Georgia. On board the ship Simmonds Wesley met Moravian missionaries bound for Georgia. In the course of the voyage, the ship encountered very stormy weather. That ordeal awakened Wesley to the contrast between his Christianity and that of the Moravians. While he contemplated the positive threat of death, he observed the Moravians having no fear and no sense of guilt. He never forgot that voyage.

Upon returning from Georgia, Wesley made acquaintance with Moravians in London, and on February 1, 1738, met Peter Bohler. This young man emphasized that true faith in Christ has two inevitable results: "holiness and happiness." Wesley looked upon this teaching as a new gospel. He resolved to seek it. On May 24, 1738, at Aldersgate, he experienced it. During the reading of Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, wherein is described the change which God works in the hear through faith in Christ, John Wesley said, "I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation…He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."⁸ Speaking of this event as an evangelical conversion, J. Earnest Rattenbury says: "Wesley’s conversion was that of a man who despaired of fulfilling his religious ideals and had given up all dependence on what he himself could do,…and who was found by Christ, when he was expecting nothing. He went to Aldersgate Street very reluctantly…He knew in that luminous moment that God had forgiven his sins, even his."⁹

Events which cluster around Aldersgate caused Wesley to shift his understanding of salvation from his own personal acts to the act of God in Christ. This represented a shift from understanding salvation in terms of meeting the demand of the law of God to receiving the love of God in Christ for salvation. This shift was from faith in self to keep the law to faith in Christ who made possible God’s love in forgiveness. The shift may be explained as movement from the religion of law to the religion of love.

The year 1739 was of exceptional importance in the life of John Wesley because the events of that year show him relying upon the High Church Anglican sources and also separating himself from the mystical excesses of the Moravians. He had formed a religious society in London on May 1, 1738. From the first, this society had felt the Moravian influence through Peter Bohler. Although it was connected with the Church of England, it maintained a definite admiration for the doctrine of the Moravians. While loyalty to the Church of England predominated, there were Moravian influences which gave cause for concern and later led to dissension in the Society of Fetter Lane. Twice in January of 1739 Wesley recorded in his Journal that he had met "enthusiasts."¹⁰ By this term Wesley consistently meant those who sought the end of religion, namely, forgiveness and salvation, without the ordained means of grace provided through the Church.¹¹

As Wesley endeavored to cope with the problems accompanying the growth of the society, he found that many new converts were brought into confusion by Moravian teachings. At this, Wesley refused to follow the Moravian teachings regarding Christian living and relied instead on his High Church Anglicanism. He exercised care that the societies which he formed should not be substitutes for the ordained services of the Church of England.

Wesley had come into possession of the great truth of the Reformation, justification by faith, through the Moravians, even though he had a knowledge of doctrine from the Articles of the Church of England. When some of the Moravians made certain deductions from the doctrine of justification by faith, such as the deduction that the law is made of none effect and the further deduction that the means of grace ordained by the Church are useless, Wesley rejected the deductions and relied upon his Anglican doctrine and practice. That is, he shifted the doctrine of justification from the context of Continental Protestantism to that of High Church Anglicanism with its stress on the Bible, the teachings of the elderly Fathers of the undivided Church, and the formularies of the Church of England. While this resulted in Wesley parting from the Moravians, it also resulted in helpful structuring of the societies which Wesley established for the nurturing of his converts.

We have sketched briefly the historical situation, beginning in 1725 with Wesley’s awakened interest in the Christian religion, in which he recognized the law of God as the basis of Christianity. The High Church Anglicanism of his parents together with that of William Law dominated Wesley’s life for about ten years until Moravian influence appeared. For about three years, Wesley was confronted with a new view of Christianity in which the love of God was the basis. Justification was by grace. Such Moravians as Peter Bohler and Wesley’s own experience at Aldersgate in 1738 confirmed this new view. However, because of the Moravian rejection of the ordained means of grace given through the Church, Wesley was confronted with a major decision. He chose to separate from the Moravians and continue with the Church of England. This decision necessitated recognizing the law of God as essential for the Christian. It is now necessary to explore Wesley’s explanation of both the love of God and the law of God as essential in Christianity.

A clear statement of the differentiation which Wesley made between love and law appears in a letter written in 1751. He wrote: "I mean by ‘preaching the gospel’ preaching the love of God to sinners, preaching the life, death, resurrection, and intercession of Christ, with all the blessings which in consequence thereof are freely given to true believers. By ‘preaching the law’ I mean explaining and enforcing the commands of Christ briefly comprised on the Sermon on the Mount."¹² In An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, written in 1744, Wesley identified the essential element of love as manifested by God: "Whatever expressions any sinner who loves God uses, to denote God’s love to him, you will always upon examination find that they directly or indirectly imply forgiveness. Pardoning love is still the root of all."¹³ Dr. Scott Lidgett has found Wesley’s Journal filled with references to the love of God for man. Lidgett says, "The discovery of the love of God gives the key-note to Wesley’s preaching."¹⁴ Wesley’s understanding was that love is an inevitable and inseparable fruit of faith.

Moreover, Wesley understood faith as establishing the law. He devoted two sermons to this subject and gave them the general theme, "The Law Established by Faith."¹⁵ While Wesley was decidedly within the tradition of the Moravians and also of the continental reformation in maintaining that justification by faith is separated from the law, he also maintained that the law was not abrogated insofar as sanctification is concerned. In the celebrated quotation on Luther’s view of the law and good works Wesley: "Again how blasphemously does he speak of good works and the law of God – constantly coupling the law with sin, death, hell, or the devil; and teaching that Christ delivers us from them all alike… Here (I apprehend) is the real spring of the grand error of the Moravians. They follow Luther, for better, for worse. Hence their ‘No works; no law; no commandments.’"¹⁶

Wesley held that the law was associated with sanctification. The law has three specific uses in promoting sanctification in the believer. First, it convinces of the sin that remains in the believer. That sin is called "idolatry" and expresses itself in "pride" and "self-will."¹⁷ Second, the law impels the believer to Christ, in whom he finds strength for doing what the law requires. Third, it establishes hope on the basis that whatever the law commands we shall receive "grace upon grace, till we are in actual possession of the fullness of His promises."¹⁸

More important for Wesley than the exercise of faith for the purpose of experiencing salvation in a moment was the continual exercise of faith for the purpose of experiencing final salvation. Continuing in the faith is essential for the believer in both justification and sanctification. These are to receive "equal stress."¹⁹ Wesley sought to maintain these two elements of salvation in a correlative relationship. The key point in the correlation is that faith in a loving, forgiving God is the ground for both justification and sanctification.

Faith alone in God is sufficient for justification; here Wesley is in the Reformed tradition. However, Wesley’s distinctiveness is regarding sanctification. Here he maintained that faith for sanctification establishes the law as essential for accomplishing sanctification. Wesley devoted two sermons to the general theme, "The Law Established by Faith."²⁰ Also his series of thirteen discourses on the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount reinforced the view that faith establishes the law. Since Jesus Christ affirmed the law in His Sermon, all who believe in Him also believe in the law.

This cursory analysis of Wesley’s view regarding the indispensability of the ideas of love and law in Christian thought will need to suffice, under the present circumstances, in order that some remarks may be made concerning the relevance of his view for contemporary Christian thought.

A normative statement as to the perennial relevance of Wesley’s religious thought is given in the Methodist Discipline: "The gospel which Wesley thus found for himself he began to proclaim to others…His message had a double emphasis, which has remained with Methodism to this day. First was the gospel of God’s grace, offered to all men and equal to every human need. Second was the moral ideal which this gospel presents to men."²¹ Such a statement as this indicates Wesley’s perennial relevance.

While it is true that his message was at variance with the largest part of eighteenth-century Anglican preaching, it is also true that his preaching brought Revival to England. It is highly significant that Wesley’s legacy consists mainly of Sermons and a Journal. These are primary sources in searching for Wesley’s contribution to Christian thought. Throughout the writings attention is given again and again to the ideas of love and law. Wesley treated these two ideas theocentrically and correlatively.

First, Wesley viewed love and law theocentrically. This lifted their origin out of the realm of the natural where there are distortions of true love and true law because of the presence of sin. Wesley did not view these as human inventions. Rather, he viewed them as divinely given. He accepted their supernatural origin. Moreover, he did not consider that one may have been derived from the other. They were separate and distinct, but their origin was in God. They are expressions of God and as such have an inner unity exclusively in God himself.

Second, Wesley viewed love and law in correlation. The correlation involves God’s redeeming love and His disciplining law, both of which are necessary and available for salvation. They interlock in a relation which provides for a maximum of both. Because of this interrelationship, love provides the basis for the liberty which there is in Christ, while law provides the incentive for the discipline which is necessary for the development of sanctification and moral character.

In viewing Wesley’s thought, we must see clearly that the issue is theocentricity and correlation. It is God who comes as love and as law. Wesley saw the righteousness of God in its activity of love and law, combating sin by providing a redemptive relationship with man, thus renewing him in the image of righteousness. Wesley could not understand the reason for the resistance which he encountered. His words are as relevant for our times as his. "Let not the children of God any longer fight against the image of God . ..Why should devout men be afraid of devoting all their souls, body, and substance to God? Why should those who love Christ count it a damnable error to think that we may have all the mind that was in Him? We allow, we contend, that we are justified freely through the righteousness and blood of Christ. And why are you so hot against us, because we expect likewise to be sanctified wholly through His Spirit?"²²

Wesley’s appeal was theocentrically based. Righteousness is the work of God through His love and law with man responding in faith to both. Faith in the love of God is the basis for justification. Faith which works by love establishes the law and is the basis for sanctification. In the development of Christian thought, this may be viewed as a synthesis of the Reformation doctrine of justification and the Catholic doctrine of sanctification.

Footnotes

1. J. Ernest Rattenbury, The Conversion of the Wesleys (London: The Epworth Press, 1938), p. 47.
2. Ibid., p. 49.
3. The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. John Telford (London: The Epworth Press, 1931), I, 15.
4. The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A. M., ed. Nehemiah Curnock (New York: Eaton and Maine, 1909), I, 466.
5. "A Plain Account of Christian Perfection," Works, XI, 366.
6. Journal, I, pp. 421-22.
7. Ibid., pp. 470-71.
8. Ibid., p. 472
9. Rattenbury, p. 112.
10. Journal, II, 130, 136.
11. "Minutes of Several Conversations between the Rev. Mr. Wesley and Others," Works, VIII, 316.
12. Letters, III, 79.
13. "Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part I," Works, VIII, 24.
14. J. Scott Lidgett, "Fundamental Unity," A New History of Methodism, ed. W. J. Townsend, H. B. Workman, G. Eayrs (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1919), II, 429.
15. "The Law Established Through Faith: I, II," Standard Sermons, I, 398.
16. Journal, II, 467.
17. "The Repentance of Believers," Standard Sermons, II, 381-382.
18. "The Original, Nature, Property, and Use of the Law," Sermons, II, 54.
19. "On God’s Vineyard," Works, VII, 205.
20. "The Law Established through Faith: I, II," Sermons, I, 398.
21. Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Church (Nashville: The Methodist Publishing House, 1956), p. 3.
22. "Christian Perfection," Works, XI, 445.

Edited by KimberLee Bingham for the Wesley Center for Applied Theology of Northwest Nazarene University, 2000.