Wesley’s “The Scripture Way of Salvation”

A message I gave at New Beginnings Community Church on June 24th, 2026:

For a long time now, I have been a fan and a student of John Wesley. He was probably the most faithful interpreter of Scripture you could ask for. He said we should not be required to follow any requirement of religion, but what was exactly in the Bible or could be deduced from what was written in it. In one of his most famous sermons, “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” he pretty much summarizes it all. This is what I am going to talk about tonight, with a little update on his language, and a twist and a shortcut here and there. There’s lots of Scripture, so don’t try to write it all down. If you want it all, I can email it or message it to you.

Wesley thought that nothing was so complicated and hard to understand than religion in general, whether it was the way we practiced Christianity, or what other people believed or followed in some other religions. But reduce it down and you get simplicity itself:

“Yet how easy to be understood, how plain and simple a thing, is the genuine religion of Jesus Christ; provided only that we take it in its native form, just as it is described in the oracles of God,” that is, the Bible.

It boils down to “…(T)wo little words, I mean faith and salvation, (which) include the (whole) substance of all the Bible, the marrow, as it were, of the whole Scripture.”

So, all of scripture can be boiled down to these two little words: Faith and Salvation

His theme verse for this sermon is from Ephesians 2:8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” No boasting is allowed!

In Wesley’s version, he said: “Ye ARE saved.” It already happened. It is a present thing, a blessing through the free mercy of God. It is something you and I already have, as long as we believe! So, this salvation can be extended to the entire work of God, he said, from the first dawning of grace in the soul, until it is completed – consummated in Wesley’s language – in glory.

This echoes Pastor Shirley’s repeated theme that she likes to tell us. Yes, in John 3:16, we know that God so loved the world that he gave us his only son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. But in John 3:18 we are warned:

“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Basically, we have a so-called natural life without God in the world, and then death and judgment. If we want more than this, then believing in and trusting in and following Jesus is the way.

Wesley then divides up his sermon into three topics or sections:

1. What is salvation?
2. What is this faith by which we are saved?
3. How are we saved by it?

We will only get to the first two sections tonight.

Section I  What is salvation

Salvation is not going to heaven, eternal happiness, Abraham’s bosom. It is not on the other side of death, what some people call the other world. It is right here, right now, in those words we saw above from Ephesians 2:8.

All the drawings of the Father – that is, all the feelings and nudges and pullings from God that we receive – these are all desires for God in some way which we may not understand at first, but learn to trust more and more. Once we begin to yield to them, they increase. Jesus brought the true light into the world, and gives it to us when we come to belief, to faith in him (John 1:19).

This is that same light within that Micah talks about  where he says:

This Spirit of God, this pulling, drawing and desiring for God is what we call Prevenient Grace. He is calling to us through our hearts, our lives and our circumstances. But then this grace also convicts us:

And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment (John 16:8).

In other words, we are drawn to God, but we know we don’t measure up. Sin pulls us down and away from God and his light. We need to be set right. That is what righteousness means, being right in the eyes and ways of God. To be set right means we badly need to be realigned. We are all “out of alignment.” Imagine you are a car driving down the highway. The road of life may be very straight and smooth – although it often isn’t – but you, the car or truck which is you, is badly out of alignment. We are continually pulled off in one direction of another. Sooner or later, we will go off the road or just end up in a horrible crash. We badly need that realignment! This is because of sin. While we were all created in the image of God, while we were created in original goodness, something went wrong, and our entire race fell. We all became sinners. We aren’t sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. So, we can blame it on God, the world, government, the economy, our families, whatever. But we are all doomed without Jesus.

…(F)or all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins (Romans 3:23-25).

Propitiation is a fancy word for a payment or substitution for our sins.

In other words, we need Jesus:

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13).

Salvation consists of two general parts, justification and sanctification. Justification is when we come to faith, when we are saved, converted.

Justification is another word for pardon, for forgiveness for all our sins and our acceptance with God. There is a price that is needed for this, and Jesus paid that price through his blood and his righteousness (see Romans 3:23-25).  

The immediate effects of justification are the peace of God, a “peace that passes all understanding.” As it says in Romans 5:1:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Also:

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7).

And:

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God (Romans 5:2).

As Wesley put it, we rejoice “with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” And: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope (Romans 15:12 ).

A distinction we find in Wesley that is very biblical is that in the same moment that we are justified and saved, we are also sanctified, made holy. In that instant we are born again, born from above, born of the Spirit: there is a real as well as a relative change. 

We see this in 1 Corinthians 6:11 and Hebrews 10:12-14:

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

This is legal declaration of justification and the actual beginning of holy transformation. Both originate in the same source, the blood of Jesus. Believers have “been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,” (Heb 10:10), indicating that sanctification’s foundation—like justification’s—rests on Christ’s singular sacrifice rather than on an ongoing process that begins later.

So, while we are saved one time for all time, one is either justified or he is not, we are also sanctified – made holy – at the same time. It occurs one time when we are saved, but this holiness process has to be worked out over time. It is usually gradual – way too gradual in my own case – but can happen immediately. We can and are to become more and more like Jesus over the course of our earthly life. We are renewed by the power of God. As Wesley put it, we feel: “the love of God shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” and “…hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).

This produces “love to all mankind, and more especially to the children of God. It expels the love of the world, the love of pleasure, of ease, of honour, of money, together with pride, anger, self-will, and every other evil temper; in a word, changing the earthly, sensual, devilish mind, into ‘the mind which was in Christ Jesus’” (Philippians 2:5).

Consider these passages:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).

“…(A)nd may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you” (1 Thessalonians 3:12).

“So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10).

“(T)hose who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24).

We are warned, though, that some who experience this may then feel that they are without sin. They may say to themselves, “ I feel no sin; therefore, I have none.” They cannot feel it, so they believe it does not exist. However, remember:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

But they still feel power to believe in Jesus, to love God, and to have His Spirit still witness with their spirits that they are children of God (Romans 8:16). Nevertheless, they sometimes feel pride, self-will, anger, doubt, unbelief. They find all kinds of sins stirring in their heart, but not conquering them. Despite all this, they know that the Lord is their help:

 “…(For) the Lord is able to make him stand” (Romans 14:4).

Like St. Paul, they may be “persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (John 15:20).

Even among some of Wesley’s close associates, there were those who experienced such grace that they were sure they had no sin in them, but “the corruption that lurked within was stirred up anew, and they were well nigh burned up” with it! Wesley could speak pretty directly, couldn’t he? Do you ever feel like you have corruption within? Paul speaks about the classical struggle between good and evil in Romans 7:18-25:

“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”

From the moment we are born again, sanctification takes place and keeps working on us and in us. The Spirit “mortifies” the flesh, in Wesley’s old language. In other words, the Holy Spirit disciplines our flesh, that is, our evil nature, so that we become more and more dead to sin and more and more alive to God (Romans 6:11).

This process is normally gradual but can be instantaneous. As we go on from grace to grace, we are told  to “abstain from all appearance of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22), to be eager and zealous  to perform good works for everyone (Titus 2:14), as we have opportunity, but especially for fellow believers (Galatians 6:10), while walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statues of the Lord (Luke 1:6).

We must remember that this sanctification is something God does for us. It is not something we can do, but we simply anticipate, doing what he calls us to do. The result is sometimes called entire sanctification, or complete perfection, a full salvation from all our sins – from pride, self-will, anger, unbelief, and all the rest, so that we can “go on onto perfection.” What is perfection? In this case it means perfect love, perfect, complete, unconditional love for others. It is love excluding sin, love filling the heart, taking up the whole capacity of our souls (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). We will still sin, make mistakes, and must come before God in repentance every day… or several times a day. This going on to perfection, to completion, to a filling up of divine, unselfish, unconditional love for others, is the work of God, a work we should always be looking for. And why should we do this?

Very simply, because Matt 5:48 tells us to: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Section II What is this faith by which we are saved?

Faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1 as assurance, a divine evidence and conviction (the Greek word means both) of things not seen; not visible, not perceivable either by sight, or by any other of the external senses. It implies both a supernatural evidence of God, and of the things of God; a kind of spiritual light exhibited to the soul, and a supernatural sight or perception thereof. Accordingly, the Scripture speaks of Gods’ giving sometimes light, sometimes a power to discern it. Wesley believed that in our being saved and made holy, we recover eyes and ears to see and hear spiritual realities we don’t normally see in our physical bodies.

God commanded light to shine out of darkness. He has shined it in our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). Elsewhere (in Ephesians 1:8), the Bible speaks of the eyes of our understanding being opened. By this two-fold operation of the Holy Spirit, having the eyes of our soul both opened and enlightened, we see the things which the natural “eye hath not seen, neither the ear heard.” We have a prospect of the invisible things of God; we see the spiritual world, which is all round about us, and yet no more discerned by our natural faculties than if it had no being. And we see the eternal world; piercing through the veil which hangs between time and eternity.

“But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

We see in Christ that God was reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor 5:19). From this, Wesley took our faith decision and its result that “faith is a divine evidence and conviction, not only that ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,’ but also that Christ loved me, and gave himself for me. It is by this faith … that we receive Christ; that we receive Him in all His offices, as our Prophet, Priest, and King.”

“God has made him for us  wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).

Wesley then asks us, is this the faith of assurance, or the faith of adherence? The “faith of assurance,” which is the belief that true faith includes an inner confidence and witness from the Holy Spirit within us that one is justified and loved by God. This contrasts with the “faith of adherence,” which suggests a mere mental or intellectual agreement without the accompanying assurance of God’s love and forgiveness.

We are told that the Scripture mentions no such distinction. The Apostle says, “There is one faith, and one hope of our calling”; one Christian, saving faith; “as there is one Lord,” in whom we believe, and “one God and Father of us all” (Ephesians 4:4-6). And it is certain, this faith necessarily implies an assurance (which is here only another word for evidence…) that Christ loved me, and gave Himself for me. He who believes with true living faith “hath the witness in himself”: “the Spirit witnesseth with his spirit that he is a child of God.” “Because he is a son, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into his heart, crying, Abba, Father”; giving him an assurance that he is so, and a childlike confidence in Him. In the very nature of the thing, the assurance goes before the confidence. For a man cannot have a childlike confidence in God till he knows he is a child of God. Therefore, confidence, trust, reliance, adherence, or whatever else it be called, is not the first, as some have supposed, but the second, branch or act of faith. Even though they both come from the same source and the same time in Jesus Christ. 

It is by this faith that we are saved, justified, and sanctified; taking that word in its highest sense. But how are we justified and sanctified by faith? This is the point of the third part of this sermon, and more than we can get into tonight. In that section, Wesley discusses how faith is the only condition for both justification and sanctification, that we still have sin clinging to us and need to repent when we see it and do it in our lives, and that we should practice good works of worship, prayer, and helping others. We must remember that we cannot do one good thing without God’s free and almighty grace.

Our life and discipleship should echo with these themes of scripture: faith and salvation. It is all done for us. We of course should cooperate and look forward to that full unconditional love that only God can grant in us. We can think more and more of such things and remember our faith decisions (I sometimes have to do this several times a day!), and the call God places on our lives for not only continuing faith, but repentance when we sin, and holiness as belonging to him and not to the world. Think too about when you knew you were saved, when you knew that you knew that you knew that Christ died for you and loves you with all his heart. Blessings to all of you this day!