Pastor John Wright

Wesley taught us well that the Christian life is more than mere forgiveness -- that life in Christ is a new life. In his sermon "The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God", he writes "justification and the new birth are, in point of time, inseparable frome ach other, yet they are easily distinguished. . . . Justification implies only a relative, the new birth a real, change. God in justifying us does something for us; in begetting us again, God does the work in us. The former changes our outward relation to God, so that instead of enemies, we become children; by the latter our inmost souls are changed so instead of sinners we become saints. The one restores us to the favor, the other the image of God. The one is taking away the guilt, the other the taking away of the power, of sin."

Wesley thus goes on to describe the life of the new birth, a life in God, what God in Christ by the Spirit does in us. This is of tremendous importance for our lives together. We live in a day of mere 'nominal' Christianity -- becoming a Christian involves only a name that persons take after some sort of experience of forgiveness. There is a life in God, a life in Love, that we must live in as Christians. The quote is a bit extensive, but speaks of this new birth in contrast to a life "not sensible" of God.

I. 6. Before that great change is wrought, although he subsists by God, in whom all that have life 'live, and move, and have their being,' yet one is not sensible of God; one does not feel, one has no inward consciousness of God's presence. God does not perceive that divine breath of life, without which one cannot subsist a moment, nor is one sensible of any of the things of God; they make no impression upon the soul. God is continually calling this person from on high, but God is not heard; the ears are shut so that the 'voice of the charmer' is lost, 'charm one never so wisely.' One sees not the things of the Spirit of God, the eyes of the understanding being closed and utter darkness covering the whole soul, surrounding the person on every side. It is true that one may have some faint dawnings of life, some small beginnings of spiritual motion; but as yet he has no spiritual senses capable of discerning spiritual objects; consequently, he 'discerns not the things of the Spirit; one cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.'

7. Hence the person has scarce any knowledge of the invisible world as this person has scarce any intercourse with it. Not that it is afar off: no: the person is in the midst of it; in encompasses round about. The other world, as we usually term it, is not far from every one of us: it is above and beneath, and on every side. Only the natural human discerns it not; partly because this person has no spiritual senses, whereby alone we can discern the things of God; partly because os thick a veil is interposed as one knows not how to penetrate.

8. But when one is born of God, born of the Spirit, now is the manner of existence changed! The whole soul is now sensible of God, and one can say, by sure experience, "You are about my bed and about my path'; I feel You in all my ways: 'You beset me behind and before and lay Your hand upon me.' The spirit or breath of God is immediately inspired, breathed into the new-born soul; and the same breath which comes from, returns to God: as it is continually received by faith, so it is continually rendered back by love, by prayer, and praise and thanksgiving; love and praise and prayer being the breath of every soul which is truly born of God. By this new kind of spiritual respiration, spiritual life is not only sustained but increased day by day, together with spiritual strenth and motion and sensation; all the senses of the soul being now awake, and capable of discerning spiritual good and evil.