Those of you who know me personally are probably aware that my favourite Christian hero is John Wesley. I have often said that when I get to heaven, AFTER meeting Jesus and my wife,

I will be first in line to meet brother Wesley just to shake his hand or give him a big hug - if we are allowed to do that!  The reason for this is because when I was studying Church history for my degree, I had to write a major essay on him and the more I read about him the more impressed I was by his life and ministry.

 

Wesley was born in 1703 and trained to become an Anglican clergyman but he did not experience conversion until he was born again at the age of 35 from which time, he began preaching the gospel. From 1741 onwards, he travelled every year for the next 50 years, preaching all over England, Scotland and Wales and he also visited Ireland 42 times, a total of 250,000 miles.

 

Beyond his many achievements there are much deeper reasons why I admire him so much, let me explain.

 

Wesley the Man

 

We all have feet of clay and I am not under any illusion that Wesley was a superman – he was a human with his own faults and failures like all of us have - but even in them he managed to rise above them.  Probably the biggest mistake of his life was made when he married Mary Vazeille in 1751.  It’s a long, complicated story, but at 48 years old, Wesley married this widow more because he wanted to be married, than for love of the person or because he had an assurance of God’s blessing on the union.

 

It was not a sin, but it was a mistake, because she turned out to be totally the wrong person for him and caused him great distress for about twenty years although they spent little time

together as he refused to be side-tracked from the vast ministry that was going on by this time. She treated him shamefully on many occasions and was not very ladylike, while he remained calm and gracious towards her.

 

John Wesley’s sister in law, wife of his brother Charles, said this about him: “John was born

with a temper which scarcely any injuries could provoke… This disposition peculiarly qualified him to govern -but he was far from demanding submission, and his gentleness and forbearance rendered him so much the object of love amongst the people who placed themselves under his care.”

 

His sweet character is further illustrated by the way he treated children. There was one

occasion when a child was sitting on the stairs going up to the pulpit from which John was going to preach.  Instead of ignoring the little one he stopped to kiss her on the way up.  On another occasion he filled his coach with children and took them for a ride around the town for an hour which was a great treat for them. One of the best tests of character is whether children like you.

 

It's never easy being a leader and John Wesley had his share of being opposed, misunderstood and badly treated both by members of the public and fellow Christians but there was a calm serenity about the man.  He never lost his temper or replied to people in a harsh way. John always believed the best about people – he considered that their failure was a momentary

lapse and so he forgave freely.

 

On a number of occasions rough men in the crowd would shout at him in a threatening way as he was preaching and he would go over to the individual and take him by the hand, look into his eyes and speak kindly and gently to the person. His own words give an insight into his attitude to life: “I feel and grieve; but by the grace of God, I never fret (worry)… I am discontented with nothing... I see God sitting upon His Throne and ruling all things well.”

 

A man of vision

 

In many ways Wesley was a modern innovative man. He was widely read and interested in all aspects of life, including medicine (his book Primitive Physic reached 23 editions), politics, discovery and invention. He showed a great interest in Benjamin Franklin’s Treatise on Electricity which he prophesied would be improved on in the future.

 

He also had clear goals in his ministry with methods for achieving them. As an evangelist he wanted to “beget, preserve and increase the life of God in the souls of men.”  He did this by preaching the gospel in the open air in a way that anyone could understand. He spoke with simplicity and straightforwardness, he preached Christ, he preached the Bible in a winsome

but also direct way.  Here is an example:

 

“Say not then in your heart ‘I once was baptised - therefore I am now a child of God’… how many are the baptised gluttons and drunkards, the baptised liars… the baptised thieves and extortioners?... Verily I say unto you ‘Ye are of your father the devil.’”

 

Wesley’s other great goal was to:

 

“Reform the nation, particularly the church, and to spread

scriptural holiness throughout the land.”  

 

How many churches or denominations across the world have that vision today?  

 

As a teacher, holiness was his great theme all through his life and ministry. Dr Skevington Wood in writing about this said: “It is insufficient for the gospel preacher to confine himself to the bare message of salvation. Even in addressing the unconverted it is necessary to stress the resultant life of holiness.  Those who are being invited to tread the Christian way have a right to know where they are going.”

 

Wesley was not afraid to copy and adapt the successful methods of others. He adopted the Moravian idea of putting his converts into groups which he called ‘classes’ that met at least once a week for pastoral care and discipleship. In this way there was follow-up and consolidation of the fruits of revival.

 

A hard-working man

 

Having a clear-cut mandate for ministry, Wesley worked tirelessly to achieve it - and to borrow a phrase from the Apostle Paul he worked “harder than them all.” But he did not only concentrate on his own ministry, he mentored many others as well.

 

Great men and women are those who by their own personal gifts and talents make a mark themselves but who can also envision, train and release others to do the same.  From the earliest days Wesley attracted other men and women of quality around him and the great measure of his success is seen in what they were inspired by him to accomplish too.

 

In his own lifetime he released 300 travelling evangelists and 1,000 local preachers. He provided training and materials for this growing company of preachers most notably through his Notes on the New Testament and Christian Library (in fifty volumes) that included the choicest books of practical divinity, beginning with the Apostolic Fathers, (illustrating how broadminded he was) edited and abridged by himself.  

 

The following quotation from a plaque in Wesley’s Chapel in London is a fitting tribute to the man and his accomplishments:  “In zeal, ministerial labours and extensive usefulness, superior perhaps to all men since the days of St Paul, regardless of fatigue, personal danger and disgrace, he went through the highways and hedges, calling sinners to repentance and publishing the gospel of peace.”

 

A man of integrity

 

One of the great tests of a man’s integrity and values is what he does with his money. Wesley could have been what we now call a millionaire. He earned a vast amount from his publications but he gave most of it away. He personally lived on £28 per YEAR in the early days rising to

£50 per year in later life when, at the same time, he was giving away over £1,000 a year for the ministry and to the poor. During his lifetime he gave away over £30,000 which in today’s money would be over 5.5 million pounds.  

 

In his own words he said “Money never stays with me. It would burn me if it did. I throw it out of my hand as soon as possible, lest it should find its way into my heart.”

 

Thus he was well qualified to give us this advice: “Do you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?” The question is: ““Not, how much of my money will I give to God, but, how much of God’s money will I keep for myself?”

 

A man against slavery

 

Before his conversion, Wesley first came into contact with slavery when he went to preach at the British colony of Georgia in America between 1736 and 1737.  He was not happy seeing

the way slaves were treated on the plantations and on his way back by ship from America, which took 3 months, he taught a black man to read and write.

 

Two hundred and fifty years before the Black Lives Matter Movement, John Wesley wrote the influential ‘Thoughts Upon Slavery’ in 1774. In it, he attacked the Slave Trade and slave traders, and proposed a boycott of slave-produced sugar and rum. In August 1787, he wrote to the Abolition Committee to express his support. In 1788, when the abolition campaign was at its height, he preached a sermon in Bristol, one of the foremost slave trading ports. In those days, an anti-slavery sermon could not be preached without considerable personal risk to the preacher and a disturbance broke out.

 

Wesley supported William Wilberforce who was trying, with much opposition, to get the Abolition of Slavery Bill through the British Parliament. In fact on February 24, 1791 just six days before his death at nearly 88 years old, the last letter Wesley wrote was addressed to Wilberforce in which he encouraged him:

 

“O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it. Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance, that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a law in all our Colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this!”

 

He also wrote: "Give liberty to whom liberty is due, that is, to every child of man, to every partaker of human nature. Let none serve you but by his own act and deed, by his own voluntary action. Away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion. Be gentle toward all men; and see that you invariably do with every one as you would he should do unto you."

 

Conclusion

 

John Wesley along with his brother Charles and his friend George Whitfield, were key figures in the First Great Awakening, a revival which went on throughout his lifetime and gave rise to other great revivals that occurred right up to Azusa Street at the beginning of the twentieth century and beyond.

 

Looking back on the revival that had taken place, as he laid the foundation stone in 1777 at what came to be known as Wesley’s Chapel in London, John reviewed: "This revival of religion has spread to such a degree, as neither we nor our fathers had known.  How extensive has it been! There is not a town in the kingdom where some have not been made witnesses of it... Multitudes have been thoroughly convinced of sin... Now, so deep a repentance, so strong a faith, so fervent love, and so unblemished holiness, in so short a time, the world has not seen for many ages.”

 

All of that is why I want to shake John Wesley’s hand when I get to heaven!

 

“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.”

John Wesley

 

 

FOOTNOTES

 

Wesley has been called father of the Holiness Movement.  Most scholars would agree that the roots of the Holiness Movement – starting with the Methodist Churches of the 19th Century, the Camp Revivals of the 1850’s onwards, the Keswick Movement in England, the Salvation Army, the Church of the Nazarene and many other evangelical Holiness groupings and the Pentecostal Holiness Churches of the 20th Century, can all be traced back to the original teachings of John Wesley.  

 

John Wesley’s teaching on Holiness which he also referred to as Christian Perfection, Scriptural Holiness, Perfect love, Entire Sanctification can be summarised as three stages of holiness or states of Christian Perfection:

 

1) A Gradual Growth in Holiness (which begins with justification)

“When we are born again, then our sanctification, our inward and outward holiness begins; and thenceforth we are gradually to grow up into Him who is the Head... It is by slow degrees that he afterward grows up to the measure of the full stature of Christ.  The same relation therefore, which there is between our natural birth and our growth, there is also between our new birth and our sanctification.”

 

2) An Instantaneous Change (which can happen by seeking the experience)

He taught that this could be experienced in a moment from seeking after the experience earnestly through prayer and searching the scriptures, but it was all of grace not by man’s accomplishments. He fully endorsed the experience of others who were quite spontaneously experiencing a deliverance from sin from the earliest days of Methodism, having closely examined their claims.  He also taught that by seeking the instantaneous experience this would speed up the process of gradual growth in holiness as well, culminating in the full experience of entire sanctification.

 

3) A Constant Maintenance of Holiness (which continues on after the experience)

Wesley maintained that even for those who claimed to have had an instantaneous experience of being freed from sin, this could not be taken for granted. He expressed this very clearly on a number of occasions, such as in this statement:

 

“The holiest of men still need Christ, as their prophet, as the “Light of the world.”  For He does not give them light but from moment to moment, the instant He withdraws, all is darkness.  They still need Christ as their King; for God does not give them a stock of holiness.  But unless they receive a supply every moment, nothing but unholiness would remain.”

 

Possibly the best summary of Wesley’s three stages of Christian Perfection is found in his sermon Working out our own Salvation where he states:

 

“All experience, as well as Scripture shows this salvation to be both instantaneous and gradual.  It begins the moment we are justified... It gradually increases from that moment... till in another instant, the heart is cleansed from all sin and filled with pure love to God and man.  But even that love increases more and more till we “grow up in all things into Him that is our head” till we “attain the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

 

Summary:

1) Holiness follows on from justification

2) It is attainable in this life both by gradual and instantaneous experience

3) It is the gift of God’s grace through faith

4) It is the result of loving God wholeheartedly

5) Christian perfection does not exclude the possibility of making mistakes

6) There is always the possibility of falling

7) Spiritual growth should follow this state of grace

 

JOHN WESLEY QUOTES:

 

“By salvation I mean not barely according to the vulgar notion deliverance from hell or going to heaven but a present deliverance from sin a restoration of the soul to its primitive health its original purity a recovery of the divine nature the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness in justice mercy and truth.”

 

“I continue to dream and pray about a revival of holiness in our day that moves forth in mission and creates authentic community in which each person can be unleashed through the empowerment of the Spirit to fulfil God's creational intentions.”

 

Further words from Wesley can be found on the Quotes page.