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March 14, 2006
March 14, 2006

Nothing that Wesley says and teaches us makes sense without Jesus Christ. Wesley lived in a day that sought a foundation for all rational human beings in either a universal human experience or in an "objective history as recorded in the Bible." Our day continues this path, especially within the Protestant Church and some sections of Catholicism. Thus you have the division in the Body of Christ seen in the distinction between American evangelicals and mainline Protestants.

For Wesley there is only one foundation -- Jesus Christ. This foundation only emerges by faith -- a faith that opens one to the illuminating presence of God in all things. It is this quote that we find in "The Witness of our own Spirit."

But whoever desires to have a conscience thus void of offence, let him see that he lay the right foundation. Let him remember, 'other foundation' of this 'can no man lay than what is laid, even Jesus Christ.' And let him also be mindful, that no man builds on Him but by a living faith; that no man is a partaker of Christ until he can clearly testify 'The life which I now live I live by faith in the Son of God' in Him who is now revealed in my heart; who 'loved me, and gave Himself for me.' Faith alone is that evidence, that conviction, that demonstration of things invisible whereby the eyes of our understanding being opened, and divine light poured in upon them, we 'see the wondrous things of God's law; the excellency and purity of it; the height, and depth, and length, and breadth therof, and of every commandment contained therein. It is by faith that, beholding 'the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,' we perceive, as in a glass, all that is within ourselves, even the inmost motions of our souls. And by this alone can that blessed love of God be 'shed abroad in our hearts,' which enables us so to love one another as Christ loved us. By this is that gracious promise fulfilled unto all the Israel of God 'I will put My laws in their mind and write (or engrave) 'them in their hearts' (Heb viii 10); hereby producing in their souls an entire agreement with His holy and perfect law, and 'bringing them into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.'"

Posted by johnwright at March 14, 2006 4:00 AM

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