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John Wesley
John Wesley (1703 - 1791). English Anglican clergyman, evangelist, and co-founder of Methodism, born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, to a rector’s family. Educated at Oxford, where he earned an M.A. in 1727, he was ordained in 1728 and led the Holy Club with brother Charles, emphasizing disciplined faith. After a failed mission to Georgia (1735-1737), he experienced a transformative conversion in 1738 at Aldersgate, London, feeling his “heart strangely warmed.” Wesley preached over 40,000 sermons, often outdoors, sparking the 18th-century Evangelical Revival, and traveled 250,000 miles on horseback across Britain and Ireland. He authored 400 works, including A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1777), and edited The Christian’s Pattern. Founding Methodist societies, he trained 650 preachers and ordained ministers for America, influencing millions. Married to Mary Vazeille in 1751, their childless union strained, but his brother’s hymns enriched worship. A tireless advocate for the poor, he opened dispensaries and schools, and his 1787 sermon against slavery stirred abolitionism. Despite tensions with the Church of England, he never left it, shaping global Protestantism. His maxim, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can,” inspired generations to active faith. Wesley’s journals and letters, still widely read, reveal a legacy of practical holiness and social reform
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John Wesley emphasizes the significance of the heart in true religion, asserting that belief and justification come from the heart rather than mere understanding. He explains that confession with the mouth is essential for salvation, linking it to the concept of justification, which is God's act of declaring believers righteous through faith in Christ. Wesley highlights that justification is not just forgiveness but a declaration of righteousness that fulfills the law, allowing believers to embrace their relationship with God fully. He encourages a heartfelt belief that leads to genuine outward expressions of faith, reflecting the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.
Scriptures
Heart Religion
For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. Romans 10:10 This verse, in accordance with all of Scripture, reminds us that it is the heart that needs to be in our religion. Wesley comments: “for with the heart, not the understanding only, man believeth to righteousness - so as to obtain justification. And with the mouth confession is made - so as to obtain final salvation. Confession here implies the whole of outward, as believing does the root of all inward, religion.” Eugene Petersen’s Message translation of the Bible conveys the exuberance of this verse: “with your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: "God has set everything right between him and me!" ” What Petersen calls “setting right” is what Wesley calls “justification.” Justification is the judicial act of God, by which He pardons all the sins of those who believe in Christ, and accepts, and treats them as righteous in the eye of the law and as conformed to all its demands. In addition to the pardon of sin, justification declares that all the claims of the law are satisfied in respect of the justified. The law is not relaxed or set aside, but is declared to be fulfilled in the strictest sense; and so the person justified is declared to be entitled to all the advantages and rewards arising from perfect obedience to the law. It involves the crediting to the believer by God Himself of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. Justification is not the forgiveness of a person without righteousness, but a declaration that the person possesses a righteousness which perfectly and for ever satisfies the law, namely, Christ's righteousness. The sole condition on which this righteousness is imputed or credited to the believer is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. (Paraphrased from Easton’s Bible Dictionary) Believing this good news, not with your head but with a spiritually poor and mourning heart is the beginning of inward, Sermon on the Mount type religion from which outward, Sermon on the Mount type religion cannot help but flow. Who in heart on thee believes, He th’ atonement now receives, He with joy beholds thy face, Triumphs in thy pard’ning grace (340)
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John Wesley (1703 - 1791). English Anglican clergyman, evangelist, and co-founder of Methodism, born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, to a rector’s family. Educated at Oxford, where he earned an M.A. in 1727, he was ordained in 1728 and led the Holy Club with brother Charles, emphasizing disciplined faith. After a failed mission to Georgia (1735-1737), he experienced a transformative conversion in 1738 at Aldersgate, London, feeling his “heart strangely warmed.” Wesley preached over 40,000 sermons, often outdoors, sparking the 18th-century Evangelical Revival, and traveled 250,000 miles on horseback across Britain and Ireland. He authored 400 works, including A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1777), and edited The Christian’s Pattern. Founding Methodist societies, he trained 650 preachers and ordained ministers for America, influencing millions. Married to Mary Vazeille in 1751, their childless union strained, but his brother’s hymns enriched worship. A tireless advocate for the poor, he opened dispensaries and schools, and his 1787 sermon against slavery stirred abolitionism. Despite tensions with the Church of England, he never left it, shaping global Protestantism. His maxim, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can,” inspired generations to active faith. Wesley’s journals and letters, still widely read, reveal a legacy of practical holiness and social reform