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"The Assurance of Salvation" Romans 8:12-17 "So then brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – 13for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, Abba! Father! 16it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him" It is appropriate on the occasion of this tercentenary of the birth of John Wesley to remember some of the distinctive themes of John Wesley’s preaching and teaching. During the next three days I shall speak about John Wesley’s teaching on "The Assurance of Salvation," "A Present Salvation," and "A Sacramental Piety." It is also appropriate that we remember that John Wesley does not stand alone as an authority for United Methodist Christians. We do revere him; like Francis Asbury, the leader of the Methodist movement in America in the 18th century, we can call him our "Daddy." Yet Mr. Wesley must be placed in the context of the whole Christian tradition. He may influence us only insofar as he faithfully represents the larger Christian tradition and, more importantly, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ found in the witness of the prophets and the apostles. To forget that Mr. Wesley is only a part of the larger Christian tradition would be to make him our idol. Let there be no Wesleyolatry among us! Mr. Wesley himself was not trying to build a religion around himself. What he was trying to do was to recover the faith and the practice of the Primitive Christian Church of the first three hundred years before Christianity emerged with the culture as the religion of the Roman Empire. When Mr. Wesley was a student at Oxford University his girlfriends gave him a nickname: they called him "Mr. Primitive Christianity." He acquired this moniker because he had a passion for Primitive Christianity before A.D. 325. Indeed, I believe the key to understanding his whole ministry is to see it as an attempt to recover the purity and vitality of Primitive Christianity. So then, when we today reflect upon the Wesleyan heritage we should not be trying to glorify Mr. Wesley himself or his legacy; rather we should be learning from him what Primitive Christianity is all about. In his magisterial work on the development of Christian thought and life titled The Christian Tradition, Jaraslov Pelikan locates John Wesley in the history of Christianity as one of the proponents of a theology of the heart. While this may be too narrow an understanding of Mr. Wesley’s teaching, it is true that one of the characteristics of his teaching is that Christianity is a religion of the heart. Mr. Wesley believed that one of the marks of Primitive (or original) Christianity was that it was felt in the heart as well as believed with the mind. One of the major themes of Mr. Wesley’s preaching and teaching that emphasizes how Christianity is a religion of the heart is his doctrine of the assurance of salvation. What made John Wesley a controversial figure in The Church of England in the middle of the 18th century was his teaching about the assurance of salvation. There were other reasons why he was controversial. Certainly, his methods were controversial. His method of preaching in the fields to the thousands of working people who came to hear him rather than preaching in the churches to the few who happened to be there was very controversial. Nevertheless, it was his message, not his methods, that stirred the most controversy in The Church of England. Specifically he aroused opposition because of his teaching of the doctrine of assurance of salvation. What did Mr. Wesley mean by "the assurance of salvation"? He meant that when someone is justified by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, then she or he will experience an inner assurance in her or his heart that she or he is saved. It is sometimes thought that Mr. Wesley’s message started a stir in The Church of England because he began to emphasize the doctrine of justification by grace through faith. Yes, it is true that many Anglican priests had muted the doctrine of justification. Yet what caught everyone’s attention was not Mr. Wesley’s preaching that we are justified by faith in Christ rather than by our works, but the preaching that we will receive in our hearts an inner assurance that we are justified. When Mr. Wesley preached about justification, he first proclaimed Jesus Christ. His favorite text was 1 Corinthians 1:30-31: "[God] is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’." In Christ, God took the initiative for our salvation. Christ died for us on the cross so that we might be forgiven and reconciled to God. Through Christ we are "justified" or made right in our relationship with God. Mr. Wesley also proclaimed that we receive this "justification", or right relationship with God, through faith. Faith is our personal response to what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. In the words of the Baptismal Covenant, we confess Jesus Christ as our Savior and put our whole trust in his grace. Then, in addition to proclaiming Christ as our Savior and faith as our personal reception of his gift of salvation, Mr. Wesley added that we shall receive an inner assurance that we are saved–that we are forgiven our sins, in a right relationship with God, and accepted as God’s children. This added emphasis upon receiving an inner assurance of salvation made the message of Mr. Wesley seem dangerous to many in The Church of England. He was denounced as an "enthusiast." In 18th century England "enthusiasm" did not mean what it means to us today: it meant what we might call religious fanaticism. Mr. Wesley’s critics thought that he was teaching people to trust in their own inner experiences or impulses or visions rather than teaching people to trust in Christ. The famous Anglican Bishop Joseph Butler tried to forbid Mr. Wesley from preaching in his diocese, and he said, "The pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing." Another famous Anglican Bishop, William Warburton, complained that Wesley was an "enthusiast" who was driving people mad; he said Wesley’s form of enthusiasm "soon rise(s) into madness when unchecked by reason." Many Anglican priests refused to allow Mr. Wesley to preach in their parishes because they believed that he taught an enthusiastic doctrine of the assurance of salvation. Some evangelical priests did not come to his support because they believed the gift of inner assurance was not necessarily offered to all believers although they granted that it was offered to some. Throughout his ministry, Mr. Wesley rejected the accusation of his critics that he was an "enthusiast." He claimed that he was doing nothing but teaching what the Primitive Church had taught, which is that every believer will receive an inner assurance that she or he is saved. The classical text in Holy Scripture for Mr. Wesley’s doctrine of assurance is Romans 8:12-17. The apostle Paul wrote, "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…." Wesley interpreted the apostle Paul’s statement as a promise to every Christian believer that she or he will receive a definite personal assurance of salvation upon believing in Jesus Christ. This promise of assurance is a mysterious gift of the Holy Spirit who, said Mr. Wesley, "makes an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly witnesses to my spirit, that I am a child of God; that Jesus Christ [has] loved me, and given Himself for me; and that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God." In the Methodist revival, there was great joy among believers because they experienced this assurance Mr. Wesley taught them to expect. Indeed, John Wesley himself was changed on May 24, 1738, when he attended a meeting of a religious society on Aldersgate Street in London where he had an experience of assurance. Now emphasizing the doctrine of assurance probably can produce "enthusiasm." The emphasis upon a feeling in the soul of a believer can be misunderstood as an invitation for the believer to trust in her or his own feelings rather than to trust in the gospel of Christ as the source of a right relationship to God. The key to avoiding the danger of enthusiasm is to maintain the proper balance between objectivity and subjectivity. That is, the subjective experience of assurance must be understood as a response to the objective truth that "God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us." And the objective truth that "Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ….because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." Mr. Wesley himself acknowledged the balance between objectivity and subjectivity in both his preaching and in his testimony about his own experience of assurance. In his two chief sermons about assurance he first emphasizes the mysterious objective act of God’s Spirit making testimony to our soul: he titles the first sermon "The Witness of the Spirit." In ways we cannot understand, the Holy Spirit gives divine testimony to our hearts that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, and it is true for me. Then he emphasizes the subjective perception of this divine testimony is our own soul: he titles the second sermon "The Witness of Our Spirit." Our own conscience is able to perceive that we have been saved by Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, and we rejoice in all that God has done for us and all that God is doing in us now. In Mr. Wesley’s testimony about his own experience of assurance there is this same balance between the objectivity of God’s gift of salvation and the subjectivity of his assurance of having received this gift. Albert Outler observed that Wesley’s testimony of his experience of assurance at Aldersgate on May 24, 1738, can be read from the perspective of both the objective encounter of God with Mr. Wesley’s soul and his subjective experience of this encounter. Listen to the emphasis in his testimony when it is read objectively: "I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my 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." The accent here is on the objective work of the Spirit in warming his heart and giving him the good news of salvation. Now listen to the emphasis in his testimony when it is read subjectively: "I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my 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." The accent here is upon what John Wesley felt as he received the operations of the Holy Spirit in his soul of warming his heart and giving him the good news of salvation. When Mr. Wesley speaks of a feeling in the heart he means not only an emotion or affection but also a perception or sense of the soul of the action of God. Over the long years of his ministry Mr. Wesley did moderate his teaching of the doctrine of assurance. As the years passed, he came to acknowledge that there were some believers who might lack this experience of inner assurance. Yet he never conceded that the experience of an inner assurance of salvation is something unusual. He believed that it was God’s purpose to fill God’s children with the certainty and the joy of their salvation. Because of physical illness or emotional immaturity there might be some Christians who were not able to fully receive this inner assurance, but all Christians should pray for it and expect it as the good gift of God. What are the implications of Mr. Wesley’s doctrine of assurance for us today? Surely, it causes each of us personally to examine her or his heart. Do I possess the joy of my salvation that comes from the witness of God’s Spirit with my spirit that I am a child of God? If I do not have it, then I need to attend more to the means of grace–prayer, searching the Scriptures, the Lord’s Supper and Christian conversation–in order to be awakened to what God has done for me in Jesus Christ and to what God is doing in my life now. Also, the doctrine of assurance equips us to be in mission as the church today. We are living in a culture in which many people are hungry for spiritual certitude. People know that human reason is important for discovering the truth to live by, but they also believe with Pascal, who wrote, "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know." Their hearts yearn for a spiritual certitude that transcends reason because it is a gift of the boundless mystery we call God. One of the important books that describes the religious yearning of young people in America today is Colleen Carroll’s The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy. Colleen Carroll is a journalist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who visited dozens of churches and synagogues and interviewed hundreds of young adults in America. She describes their spiritual yearnings in a postmodern culture of ethical relativism and religious pluralism and a rejection of the Enlightenment-era emphases on reason, science and progress. She says that "these young adults are not content to search forever. They want answers. For them, the search is not an end to itself; it is a means to an end." Those of us who have grown up with the cliché, "The questions are more important than the answers," will not understand this generation. It is not that they are trying to deny the mystery of God or of life: indeed they passionately embrace the category of mystery. It is just that they expect the church that teaches that the mysterious God has revealed God’s self to give them something to believe and a way to live. Yet they are not just searching for doctrines to believe and a discipline to follow; they are also looking for an experience of spiritual certitude. Colleen Carroll tells the story of Liz Sperry, a bright-eyed philosophy student in her early twenties. Liz still recalls the answer her father gave her when she inquired about the afterlife as a child. "When you die," he told her, "you’re just compost." She says she found his answer really depressing. Liz says she did attend a Methodist church for awhile, but its leaders seemed more preoccupied with boosting self-esteem and adopting Christianity to fit their lifestyles than giving her something to believe and a way to live. In her public school she received big doses of self-help psychology. Her life changed when a former boyfriend visited her. He had accepted Jesus into his life, and he gave her a Bible to read. What struck her was Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. "He was definitely afraid of what would happen if he gave himself over to the will of God," she said. "And I was afraid that if I gave my life to God, I would become a different person. I wouldn’t want to be myself anymore." But as she read Jesus’ prayer of surrender, "not what I want, but what you want," she decided to offer the same prayer to God. Liz said, "I felt there was something in me, running through me. I can only describe it as electricity, or water. I’d never felt anything like that before. I hadn’t felt that from any human being. That really got my attention. I knew there was something to Christianity. I had this conviction that I would keep pursuing it, even apart from my boyfriend." Liz’s yearning for spiritual certitude is shared by many in our culture. If there is one group of Christians who should be able to understand it and respond to it, it is those of us who learned from Mr. Wesley that the promise of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we who put our trust in Christ will receive the inner experience of the assurance of our salvation. As Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn "How Can We Sinners Know":
Reprinted from the May 2003 Virginia United Methodist Advocate
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