Today we begin a new series looking at what we as Methodists believe. And more specifically things that we believe that are unique to Methodism. This series is really based on the fact that one of the questions I get asked the most by people from outside the church is what is it that Methodists believe that make us different from other denominations. After all, if we believed the same thing as others there would be no reason for us to be separate. And I know that some of you have gotten the same question, and so this is to help all of us be able to articulate who we are. Now one caveat is that we are not going to be talking about everything, especially where there is overlap, say about the trinity or the resurrection, more orthodox positions, because even if there are slight differences, they aren’t big enough to answer that question what makes Methodists different. And we begin today with the thing that is definitely unique to methodism and that is our understanding of grace. I know many people who have become Methodists specifically because of our idea and practice of grace, and that includes several ministers who have converted as adults. But before we get into the weeds of what that means, a little bit of background and context.
Grace is a word we use a lot, but we never really define it. We just sang about god’s grace being greater than all our sin, so is grace then about forgiveness, or is something more. At the end of this message we’ll sing Amazing Grace, and the grace that that saved John Newton, and so is grace then about salvation? Is it about healing? Is it about relationship? And then there’s the fact that we call the prayer before a meal grace, and is that something entirely different? What is this grace thing all about? Great questions. There are several meanings of grace in scripture, although both the Hebrew and Greek words have a connotation of favor. In the Hebrew scriptures it’s about a sense of graciousness or goodwill. Think of Psalm 145 which says that God is gracious and full of compassion, so mercy is a part of this understand of grace.
In the New Testament grace can mean forgiveness and it can
also have that sense of favor, but one of the meanings is of a favor that a
benefactor does for someone else, the beneficiary. And even though the word
grace does not actually appear in the synoptic gospels, we can see this grace
in Jesus’ healings and table fellowship, amongst others. In John, grace appears
in the prologue, but is probably best expressed in John 3:16 “for God” the
benefactor, “so loved that world that he sent his only son,” the favor, the
gift being given, “to that everyone who believes in him”, the benefactors, “may
not perish but have eternal life.” Now I would argue that verse 17, which says
that Christ came not to condemn the world but to save it, is just as important,
and in some instances more important, because of some groups’ teachings about
God, but this gives us an idea of grace as a sense of favor, of mercy, of gift,
of forgiveness and salvation, amongst other things, and that’s probably a great
place to start and this idea of grace is found in the earliest church.
In Paul’s writings, which are the earliest Christian
writings we have, he already has an emphasis on grace, as it is often how he
begins his letters in offering the grace of Christ. And as we heard in today’s
passage, he also wants to emphasize that it is a gift freely given to us by God,
not earned or deserved because of what we do. John Wesley built upon this and
described grace as God’s “bounty, or… [God’s] free and underserved favor… it
was free grace that ‘formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into him
a living soul,’ and stamped on that soul the image of God…” There is a clear
relational aspect of grace in Wesley’s understanding of grace. In a more modern
setting, the Book of Discipline, which is the book that outlines the structure
and beliefs of the Methodist church says that grace is “"the undeserved,
unmerited, and loving action of God in human existence through the ever-present
Holy Spirit.” So that makes everything as clear as mud, right? Well, there’s
one more thing to put what Wesley’s articulation of grace in context and that
is we have to compare it against the sense of salvation, or grace, given by
John Calvin which has been reduced to the acronym of tulip.
The T stands for total depravity, which means that there is
nothing redeeming or good about humanity. This idea is probably best
articulated by the puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards whose most famous sermon,
and one of the most famous in the history of America, is Sinners in the Hands
of an Angry God. Edwards, in one of several analogies, says that we ae like a
spider hanging over a fire and that God would be completely justified in
cutting the thread and sending us into destruction. Not a great view of God and
for me emphasizes the condemnation not the redemeption. The U stands for
unconditional election, and that means that we have no ultimate control of our
salvation, it’s all set-up by God, and it’s predetermined. If you’ve heard
about predestination that’s what this is about, although technically Calvinism
has double predestination although we don’t get to that until theology 202. The
L is for limited atonement, which is the Christ did not die for everyone, but
for only a limited few, known as the elect. The I stands for irresistible
grace. That is, we have no control over whether we get to accept God’s grace or
not. It’s sort of forced on us. And finally, the P stands for preservation of
the saints, also referred to as once saved always saved. And so, if you are
saved, there is nothing at all you can do about it to lose your salvation. As
someone said, you could shoot someone on fifth avenue, and you’d still be
saved.
Now, for fairness’ sake I do want to point out that this is
condensing Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion, which runs more than 1000
pages, into a couple of bullet points, and my purpose here is not to demean
Calvinism, although I don’t agree with it, nor am I defending this theology. And
to answer a question I get a lot: Yes, there are plenty of people and
denominations that are Calvinist. There has actually been a resurgence of
neo-Calvinism in recent years, but most churches if they have reformed in their
names are Calvinist, as are Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ, and
also some Episcopalians, which has a very wide theological umbrella.
And the final piece is to know before we get to Wesley is of
a theologian by the name of Jacob Arminius, who was a Calvinist and set out to
write a biblical defense of Calvinism, and realized he couldn’t and so
formulated a new theology that said that God wants us to be happy, that we are
made in the image of God, which means we have to have some good in us, and that
Christ died to offer salvation to everyone, known as universal atonement. So
technically, we are Arminian in theology, but Wesley was to take this and make
it unique to the Methodist movement. Although I do want to note that the first
time the term Methodist was used was in relation to Arminius and his followers
as they had a new method of theology.
Now one of the geniuses about John Wesley, and there are
several ways that he was a genius, was that he could take ideas from all over
and make unique combinations of ideas and meld things into his own way of
thinking. And he was not only well traveled but also very well read, including
in the orthodox traditions, and so used things that other theologians might not
have. And so, he formulated three different types, or ideas about grace,
prevenient grace, justifying grace and sanctifying grace.
And so, appropriately enough, building off the idea of
universal atonement, Wesley wondered if Christ died for all then God’s grace
had to also be available to everyone, but how did that work and when did it
become available? Wesley postulated the idea of prevenient grace, or the grace
that comes before. That is God’s grace is in world as a part of the creation.
It surrounds us and indwells in us, even if we are not aware that it is there.
Indeed that is prevenient grace’s very power, that through the Spirit, or
through what Wesley called “natural conscience” we come to understand sin, or
the pangs of brokenness in which we live, we come to understand guilt, and we
feel a pull towards a vision that we are not just loved but are beloved just as
we are, and a desire to be even better or more than we are at the moment. That
God doesn’t just like us, but that God loves us, a good message for mother’s
day, and while prevenient grace is not about repentance or forgiveness, it
leads us towards those actions.
Wesley described prevenient grace as the front porch on the
house of faith. You see the porch, or you come to know it’s there, and you also
come to understand that you don’t just stop at the front porch. That’s the
beginning of the journey, not the end of the journey. This acceptance or
knowledge of prevenient grace might occur all at once, or it might take a
passage of time to be acknowledged. But the work has already been begun by God.
This is the father of the prodigal son watching the path waiting for his lost
child to return and running to great us and to prepare the fatted calf to
celebrate. And just like the prodigal son, Wesley said that it was our
understanding of our brokenness and the depths of that brokenness that helps us
to understand the depths of God’s love and forgiveness and grace. That in some
ways you can’t understand John 3:16 without understanding first the need for
that love of the world that God demonstrated by sending Christ. And once we come to understand God’s grace
and its call on our lives, and the need for God’s love and forgiveness in our lives,
and remembering that this if offered to everyone, a universal call, then we are
led into justifying grace.
When people talk about conversion experiences, and we will
talk about what is known as Wesley’s Aldersgate experience in two weeks, it is
this moment that is being addressed. This is the moment we are not only aware
of God’s grace and forgiveness and salvation and our need and desire for that,
but justifying grace is the moment we accept that grace on our behalf, which is
why this is also sometimes referred to as convicting grace, although that
misses a large part of justifying grace. Again, this can be sudden, or it can
be gradual, but it’s when we know that our sins have been forgiven.
We have to take the step, but that’s not our work leading to
faith of salvation, because then we might be able to brag about it. Some made
and continue to make that claim that Methodists are focused on works
righteousness. And so, I want to make clear that we believe that we are saved
by faith alone. The work is done by God, and the push in the right direction is
given by God, but we do have to respond, and we have to respond because unlike
Calvinism we believe that God’s grace is resistible. We can choose not to
accept Christ’s saving actions in our lives, and there are lots of times in
which we get to choose to accept or not. In fact, we get to choose every single
day. There is no preservation of the saints in Methodism, because every day is
a new opportunity for us to accept to enter into the journey of faith, as
justifying grace is the doorway to the house. And once we choose to enter the
journey, we are assured of God’s forgiveness and salvation. And, Wesley says,
the Spirit “bears witness that we are children of God.” Justifying grace then
is the outward and inward acceptance of God’s saving actions accomplished
through Jesus Christ. And when we enter into the doorway of faith then we are
seeking to live more and more every day like Christ. Seeking to deepen our
faith and relationship with God, and seeking the path of repentance and
forgiveness and striving for the path of righteousness to the best of our
ability, which is why it’s important to know that this is about more than just
conversion. Most people will spend most of their lives in this sense of
justifying grace.
What that also means is that justifying grace is sort of a sliding
scale. Sometimes we’re doing really good and we’re moving forward, and
sometimes we’re moving backwards, but we’re never standing still. And so it
doesn’t matter what you did yesterday or the day before, or really even last
hour, whether it was good or bad, because right now is a new opportunity to
love the Lord or God with all of our hearts and minds and to love our neighbors
as ourselves, which is known as personal and social holiness, which we get to
in two weeks. But the ultimate goal of this journey of faith is to reach the
final form of grace which is known as entire sanctification or also known as
Christian perfection. This is probably one of the most controversial Wesleyan
ideas, and still gets a lot of rejection from some portions of the church, just
as it did in Wesley’s time.
But John held onto this idea because Jesus tells us that we
are to be perfect as our father in heaven is perfect, and so Wesley said that
if Jesus commanded it then it must be possible, not after we die, but here and
now. Now this sense of perfection, as I mentioned in Lent, is not about “deliverance
from ignorance or mistakes” as Wesley said. But instead, it’s seeking to live a
Christian life to such a degree that our hearts become so full of the love of
God that we no longer willfully sin. It’s about rooting out sin so that we are
images of God, reflecting the full “moral and behavioral fruitfulness of God”
or the “holiness of heart and life” as Wesley said. In his lifetime, Wesley did
accept the testimony of some who said that they had reached entire
sanctification, they all happened to be women as well, but the final piece of
this is to know that this is not a permanent state. Again, it’s that constant
struggle that we face of sliding back and forth on this scale of seeking to
live like Christ and to love like Christ.
The final piece to know is that these are ideas of grace are
not just some ethereal things that exist out there, but that there are
practical ways that we come to know God’s and grow in God’s grace, which are
called the Wesleyan means of grace, and there are both personal and communal,
and they are also works of piety and works of mercy. Individual practices
include reading, meditating and studying the scriptures, prayer, fasting,
regularly attending worship, healthy living, sharing our faith with others,
doing good works, visiting the sick, visiting those in prison, feeding the
hungry, and giving generously to the needs of others. Communal practices
include regularly sharing in the sacraments, Christian conferencing
(accountability to one another), and Bible study. seeking justice, ending
oppression and discrimination, and addressing the needs of the poor.
Jesus says that he was sent not to condemn the world but to redeem the world, to save the world through him. That love for the world is an action of God’s prevenient grace, and once we understand our need for that grace, for that forgiveness, to participate in the healing that God offers, then we move into justifying grace, a choice we make to accept Christ’s savings actions on our behalf, to recognize that we were once dead through our trespasses and sins, as Paul says, and instead to seek to become new creations in Christ. To know of God’s great love and then to seek to live in that love, growing in faith and in grace, seeking to move onto sanctification, Christian perfection, so that our hearts are so full of the love of God that we love God with all that we are, and we love our neighbors as ourselves. We believe that Christ died for everyone, that God’s grace is available to everyone, but it is a choice that we have to make, or even better that we get to make, so that we too might seek to live in the light and be co-creators with God in seeking to bring about the Kingdom of God, and the good news is that we don’t do this work alone, God does the work in us so that we might not brag about it, we do it together and we get to make the decision every day and every moment to seek to be more like Christ in all that we do. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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