In a previous blog entry, I wrote about Biblical preaching and the Wesleyan understanding of the Bible’s role in faith and practice. In the process of writing that post, I remembered a conversation I once had with someone who made a statement that took me aback: “Oh, that’s right…you have a Wesleyan-Arminian background, so you don’t talk about sin.”
Let me “speak the truth in love” about that statement: The assertion is uninformed at best and an expression of theological illiteracy/stupidity at worst. There are indeed preachers within the larger Methodist family of faith who, out of ignorance or reluctance, tend to avoid the subject in their messages, but I am aware of many pastors in other theological traditions who are guilty of the same negligence in their proclamation of the Word. Regardless of current realities in Wesleyan-Arminian or other pulpits, the FIRST step in understanding Wesleyan theology is to understand the extent and tragedy of human sinfulness. John Wesley wrote, “We know no gospel without salvation from sin.” He preached and taught that every human being is a sinner in need of God’s saving grace; no part of human existence has ever escaped sin’s contaminating and calamitous impact (Psalm 14.3; Romans 3.10). In fact, Wesley’s longest treatise was entitled The Doctrine of Original Sin; According to Scripture, Reason, and Experience (1757), and in his sermon “Original Sin” he definitively described the sinfulness of the human condition and humanity’s desperate need for God’s grace.
So, what is sin? Wesley’s definition of sin was “voluntary breach of the law of love.” Sin, in essence, is broken relationship with God and, as a necessary corollary, with others (Genesis 3-4). The rupture is deliberate; it is not something that catches us off-guard and unaware, but instead it is something that “originates” in each of us. Wesley viewed sin as a disease caused by the intentional violation of God’s will that spreads itself “over the whole man, leaving no part uninfected.” In other words, sin is a deeper reality than any individual acts of rebellion or disobedience; as has been noted by many authors, we are not sinners because we commit sins, but rather we commit sins because we are sinners.
Wesley believed that Adam perfectly and completely bore the image of God as God had designed for him prior to the Fall. However, everything changed in the Fall: the “Imago Dei” was fundamentally corrupted. The moral characteristics of the image vanished, while the natural characteristics, though not totally wiped away, experienced significant impairment. Human beings preserved some capacity for rationality, emotion, and will, but these capacities were seriously reduced and limited. These capacities alone were insufficient to enable human beings to come to God. Right relationship between God and humanity was lost; separation was the result. Spiritual sickness leading to death was now the diagnosis of the human condition. In the words of Wesley, “the glory departed.”
Wesley continued his emphasis on the extent and calamity of sin by stressing its universality. Every human being has been infected by the disease sin; “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3.23 NIV). Wesley did not attempt to define how all of us participate in Adam’s original sin; he simply affirmed that we all died in Adam. He did not turn to theological speculation for evidence of this; he simply pointed out the reality of everyday human conduct. He wrote, “The fact I know, both by Scripture and by experience. I know it is transmitted; but how it is transmitted I neither know nor desire to know.” For Wesley, the problem of sin is a problem infecting the very nature of what it means to be human. Any attempt to liberate ourselves from it will ultimately end in futility. The answer is not extrication; the answer is transformation.
Wesley wrote extensively about the effects of sin. He asserted that sin leaves us deadened toward God, which he described as death to the soul. He wrote, “It does not appear that man naturally has any more idea of God than any of the beasts of the field; he has no knowledge of God at all; no fear of God at all, neither is God in all his thoughts.” In other words, the sinner doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Wesley also noted that sin results in imprisonment to self. Without a relationship with God as a supreme point of reference, the only available option is to, in effect, idolatrously worship oneself as a “god.” Wesley saw the results of this all around him in his day, and he observed that those that make themselves their own god labor under the worst kind of slavery. They are slaves to self-will, dominated by appetites of the flesh, enticed by worldly vices, and deceived by false hopes and vain dreams. Most importantly, he affirmed the great Biblical truth that sin leaves us totally and completely unable to change. Wesley preached that even someone under conviction needed grace to experience victory: “Now he truly desires to break loose from sin and begins to struggle with it. But though he strive with all his might, he cannot conquer; sin is mightier than he.”
It is important to note that Wesley never spoke of sin’s nature or its effects without also speaking of the remedy. There is a cure for the disease. One of his favorite Biblical texts was, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1.15 KJV). God took the initiative. He sought us. He provided the healing medicine. In Christ and through His cross there is deliverance, and it is all by God’s grace. Wesley preached that “whatsoever good is in man, or is done by man, God is the author and doer of it. Thus is his grace free in all; that is, no way depending on any power or merit in man, but on God alone, who freely gave us his own Son, and ‘with him freely giveth us all things.’”
Come, O Thou all-victorious Lord! Thy power to us make known; Strike with the hammer of Thy Word, And break these hearts of stone.
O that we all might now begin Our foolishness to mourn; And turn at once from every sin, And to our Savior turn.
Give us ourselves and Thee to know, In this our gracious day; Repentance unto life bestow, And take our sins away.
Conclude us first in unbelief, And freely then release; Fill every soul with sacred grief, And then with sacred peace.
Impoverish, Lord, and then relieve, And then enrich the poor; The knowledge of our sickness give, The knowledge of our cure. -Charles Wesley
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