Wesley on Love and Godliness
All you need is love. That’s what the Beatles sang in 1967, and that’s what many people seem to believe. Love was also a major theme of John Wesley’s preaching in 18th century England, but Wesley would disagree with the Beatles. That’s not all John Wesley thought God required; that’s not how he read his Bible.
To be sure, love is what distinguishes the altogether Christian from the almost Christian. Love is an essential element of true Christianity; it’s not the optional icing on the cake. In Wesley’s view, however, love does not replace or supersede the requirements of common decency or the law of God; it crowns them with God’s glory.
I’ve been living this week with the text of Wesley’s sermon, The Almost Christian. In Wesley’s view, you aren’t really what God wants you to be as a Christian until you love him with your whole heart and your neighbor as yourself - and are filled with genuine faith. That doesn’t mean that Christians are free to ignore God’s behavioral requirements in the name of love.
The Almost Christian and the Altogether Christian
Wesley divided his sermon into two sections: the almost Christian and the altogether Christian. In dividing the sermon like this, Wesley is not using the rhetorical framework “Not A but B.” On the contrary, the logic of his sermon is “Not only A, but necessarily B as well.” Wesley begins the second section with the question, “What more than this is implied in the being altogether a Christian" (emphasis added).
In the first section, Wesley describes three levels or stages of almost Christian behavior, each of which builds on and includes the previous. To describe them as almost Christian is not to disparage or diminish them. It simply means that by themselves they are insufficient. Wesley describes each of these behaviors in positive terms and assumes that the altogether Christian will continue to exhibit them.
Then Wesley describes three interlocking components of altogether-Christian existence: love of God, love of neighbor and living faith. The second section does not reject the practices of the first; it assumes them. I am not aware of any place where Wesley made the argument, “The law says you must or must not do this certain thing, but love says the opposite.” Wesley does not play love off against the law.
Heathen Honesty
Wesley begins by describing what he calls heathen honesty. Here he includes common notions of justice, mercy and truth, some of which overlap with elements of the Old Testament law in general, and the Ten Commandments in particular: no stealing, no cheating or defrauding, no false accusations or swearing in court. Tell the truth.
Wesley’s estimation of common decency extends to the care of those in need. Good people don’t exploit the poor. Even the honest heathen, Wesley says, understand the need to feed the hungry and clothe the naked with the surplus of one’s worldly goods.
These values are not exclusively Christian and they are definitely not the sum total of Christian virtue. Neither may they be discarded just because the world shares them. Christians do not share all the world’s values, but we do share these with honest society. Note that Christians are not letting the world set their agenda here. We don't let the world tell us what is right; rather, we see God's law incompletely and imperfectly written on fallen human hearts.
For some Christians today, the stage of human justice is the end goal of Christian existence. It’s what being a Christian is all about. For Wesley, it was only the beginning.
The Form of Godliness
Wesley continues by addressing what he calls the form of godliness. Christians live in obedience to the distinctive demands of the Christian faith. The world may not accept these values or even understand these values, but Christians live by them.
Christians do not do what God forbids: they don’t take the name of the Lord in vain and they don’t need oaths to tell the truth. They don’t profane the Lord’s day (or allow it to be profaned by “the stranger that is within his gates”). They don’t commit fornication or adultery or uncleanness, and they refrain from every action that might lead in that direction. Here again, Wesley clearly begins with elements of the Ten Commandments. Some aspects of the Ten Commandments we share with the world. Other aspects are distinctively Christian (or Jewish, if you like).
It’s interesting that Wesley places the commandments on sexual behavior in the distinctively Christian category. The world may not understand our sexual mores, but we nonetheless live by them. They are an indispensable component of the holiness required of God’s people.
Wesley does not limit himself to the Ten Commandments when describing the Christian’s form of godliness. Christians don’t get drunk or give themselves to riotous behavior or adorn themselves with costly apparel. Moreover, they don’t speak evil of others; their speech is always edifying. They live peaceably with others and don’t return evil for evil. They don’t willingly hurt anyone, but live by the golden rule.
In doing good for others, Christians don’t confine themselves to “cheap and easy offices of kindness.” They toil and sacrifice on behalf of others. And in doing good for others, they pay attention to the soul as well as to the body. The Christian “reproves the wicked, instructs the ignorant, confirms the wavering, quickens the good and comforts the afflicted” in leading people to saving faith in Christ.
Christians don’t leave people in sin and error for the sake of love; far from it. To ignore sin and call it grace is not in the least Wesleyan.
Christians use the means of grace to grow in holiness and seek the face of God. The Christian “constantly frequents the house of God” and takes it seriously. Christians engage in family and private prayer.
Sincerity
The final characteristic of Wesley’s almost Christian is sincerity. The good behaviors of honest heathenism and revealed religion are not faked for other purposes: to impress the neighbor or to gain an advantage in the world - or even out of mere habit or an unwillingness to be out of step with society. The Christian (even an almost Christian) does these things in order to please God.
Sincerity is “a real design to serve God, a hearty desire to do his will. It is necessarily implied, that a man have a sincere view of pleasing God in all things; in all his conversation; in all his actions; in all he does or leaves undone. This design, if any man be almost a Christian, runs through the whole tenor of his life. This is the moving principle, both in his doing good, his abstaining from evil, and his using the ordinances of God.”
Love and Faith
If a person does these things, what more could there possibly be? This is all that human beings can possibly do on their own power, and even these actions require the prevenient grace of God. To reach the next level - the level of full Christian existence - requires a miracle of God in the human heart, the convincing and justifying work of the Holy Spirit.
The first component is the love of God which, as Wesley describes it, is a much more overwhelming experience than commonly understood.
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." Such a love is this, as engrosses the whole heart, as rakes up all the affections, as fills the entire capacity of the soul and employs the utmost extent of all its faculties. he that thus loves the Lord his God, his spirit continually "rejoiceth in God his Saviour." his delight is in the Lord, his Lord and his All, to whom "in everything he giveth thanks. All his desire is unto God, and to the remembrance of his name." his heart is ever crying out, "Whom have I in heaven but Thee and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee." Indeed, what can he desire beside God Not the world, or the things of the world: for he is "crucified to the world, and the world crucified to him." he is crucified to "the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life."
In the words of the campfire chorus, God, “you are my all in all.” Such an overwhelming affection and singleness of focus is not the natural state of human beings, even those who do their best to please God.
The second component is love for one’s neighbor. Christians love their neighbors as themselves - and their neighbors include everyone, including one’s own enemies and God’s enemies. Christians love their neighbors not only as they love themselves, but as Christ loves them. Wesley finishes the paragraph with words from 1 Corinthians 13. This is actually the least developed theme in the entire sermon.
Wesley concludes with a discussion of faith, which “may be separately considered, though it cannot actually be separate from the preceding, which is implied in the being altogether a Christian; and that is the ground of all.” Faith is the foundation of everything. Through faith, we are born from God as children of God. Through faith, we escape condemnation and pass from death to life.
Wesley quotes extensively here from the Church of England's Homily on the Salvation of Man, one of the sermons in the Book of Homilies written to standardize theology across the church.
It is diligently to be noted, the faith which bringeth not forth repentance, and love, and all good works, is not that right living faith, but a dead and devilish one. For, even the devils believe that Christ was born of a virgin: that he wrought all kinds of miracles, declaring himself very God: that, for our sakes, he suffered a most painful death, to redeem us from death everlasting; that he rose again the third day: that he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father and at the end of the world shall come again to judge both the quick and dead. These articles of our faith the devils believe, and so they believe all that is written in the Old and New Testament. And yet for all this faith, they be but devils. They remain still in their damnable estate lacking the very true Christian faith.
The right and true Christian faith is not only to believe that Holy Scripture and the Articles of our Faith are true, but also to have a sure trust and confidence to be saved from everlasting damnation by Christ. It is a sure trust and confidence which a man hath in God, that, by the merits of Christ, his sins are forgiven, and he reconciled to the favour of God; whereof doth follow a loving heart, to obey his commandments.
Wesley ends the sermon with an appeal to his audience. To those who are not yet even almost Christians, that is the place to start: to “practice justice, mercy, and truth, as even the rules of heathen honesty require,” and to adopt the form of godliness, eschewing every forbidden practice, doing good and using the ordinances of God from a sincere heart. To those who do all these things and yet don’t know the faith and love of an altogether Christian, Wesley says to pray relentlessly until God provides what God promises.
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who now standeth in the midst of us, knoweth, that if any man die without this faith and this love, good it were for him that he had never been born. Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and call upon thy God: call in the day when he may be found.
Wesley’s categories, then, are like a multi-story building, with faith and love at the top.
| Faith | Love of God | Love of Neighbor | 4 |
| Desire to Please God (Sincerity) | 3 | ||
| Obedience to the Distinctive Demands of the Christian Faith (Form of Godliness) | 2 | ||
| Observance of Common Human Decency Shared Human Values (Heathen Honesty) | 1 | ||
Every floor is necessary. Faith and love do not do away with the requirements of justice and holiness; they complete them. For those seeking God, the building is structured as above. For those enlivened by the Spirit, the structure is inverted, with faith as the foundation.
| Godly Behavior Form of Godliness / Common Justice | 4 | |
| Desire to Please God | 3 | |
| Love of God | Love of Neighbor | 2 |
| Faith | 1 | |
Out of faith we love God and our neighbor. Out of love, we desire to please God alone. Because we desire to please him, we live in accordance with the form of religion he has provided, adhering to it out of allegiance to him and recognizing it as the life of true blessedness.
I close with Wesley’s final paragraph.
May we all thus experience what it is to be, not almost only; but altogether Christians; being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus; knowing we have peace with God through Jesus Christ; rejoicing in hope of the glory of God; and having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost given unto us!
