Pastor John Wright

There is one sermon not written by John Wesley, but by his brother, Charles, in the Standard Sermons. What I am noticing in ways never before is how the Wesleys' understand the Christian life, not in "relational" terms of a human being with God, but in terms of the gift that human beings might participate in God in Christ by the Spirit through a faith that works through love. Salvation is nothing more nor less than the participation in God.

This is a difficult concept for us who have been formed by the modern world that sees all things, including ourselves, as independent entities that may relate to other entities, but do so as one object to another. Yet God is not another object for John and Charles Wesley, nor an entity to be "brought into relationship" to us. God is God, the eternal, unchangeable, unfathomable Creator of all things who has redeemed us humans in Christ and called us back to God through the Holy Spirit. God is not an agent to be collapsed into our lives, but the Love in which all things, including ourselves, find the origin and true end, the Alpha and Omega. To receive the Spirit, then, is nothing more than participating in the very divine nature. This is another remarkable quote from Charles Wesley's sermon, "Awake, thou that Sleepest."

10. Yet, on the authority of God's Word, and our own Church, I must repeat the question, 'Have you received the Holy Spirit?' If you have not, you are not yet a Christian. For a Christian is a person that is 'anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power.' You are not yet made partaker of pure religion and undefiled. Do you know what religion is? -- that it is a participation of the divine nature; the life of God in the soul of humans; Christ formed in the heart; 'Christ in you the hope of glory'; happiness and holiness; heaven begun upon earth; 'a kingdom of God within you; not meat and drink,' no outward thing; 'but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit'; an everlasting kingdom brought into your soul; a 'peace of God, that passes all understanding'; a 'joy unspeakable and full of glory'?

11. Know you, that in "jesus Christ, neither circumcision avails anything nor uncircumcision; but faith that works by love'; but new creation? See the necessity of that inward change, that spiritual birth, the life from the bead, that holiness? And are you thoroughly convinced that without it no person shall see the Lord? Are you labouring after it? -- 'giving all diligence to make your calling and election sure,' 'working out your salvation with fear and trembling,' 'agonizing to enter in at the strait gate'? Are you in earnest about your soul? And can you tell the Searcher of hearts, "You, O God, are the thing that I long for! Lord, You know all things; You know that I would love You!'