John Wesley (1703-91) was the leader of the spiritual awakening in 18th-century Britain known as the Methodist Revival. Born in Epworth, some 150 miles north of London in Lincolnshire, he went to Charterhouse School in London and later to Christ Church, Oxford University. With his brother Charles he became the leader of a spiritual movement at Oxford whose members were derisively called the “Holy Club” or “Methodists,” a jab at their methodical approach to faith. Wesley journeyed to the American colonies, but after two years of disappointing ministry in Savannah, Georgia, he returned to England.

On May 24, 1738, Wesley’s disappointment gave way to undeterred purpose. That day he experienced his evangelical “heart-warming,” and the next year he began half a century of itinerant evangelism. His converts and followers retained the name Methodists, and the movement spread from Britain to America in the 1760s. John Wesley’s theology, called Wesleyanism, contained a wide and cohesive range of doctrines, including doctrines concerning creation, the Church, the sacraments, and the end of the world. But four of his doctrines especially illuminate what Wesley believed about God, humankind, and salvation.

Of all the doctrines found in Wesley’s writings, the love of God is the most prominent. He believed passionately that the God of the Bible, the Creator of the world, is a God of love. In all his preaching, he stressed the great truth of John 3:16*: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” Certainly Wesley believed that all of us are sinful, that we all have sinned, and that we all are under condemnation. But for John Wesley that was only half the truth. We are sinners—but we are loved sinners! God does not love our sin, but He loves us. Indeed He loves us so much that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to be the Savior of the whole world.

John Wesley was particularly opposed to any doctrine that limited God’s love. He strongly preached and wrote against the teaching that God loves only some men and women—the so-called elect. For 50 years he preached God’s universal love. All men and women everywhere can be saved, he taught, because God loves them and Christ died for them. This theology was the foundation of Wesley’s great ministry. Wherever he preached, he told men and women not only that they needed to be saved but also that they could be saved. There are no barriers to the love of God. Wherever in the world we live, regardless of the color of our skin, the language we speak, or our social status, God loves us in His Son who died for us.

When John Wesley lay dying in London in March 1791, he made one last request of his friends. He asked them to print and give away copies of his sermon “The Love of God.” The request was carried out, and 10,000 copies of the sermon were given away free. In the hour of his death, as in all the years of his ministry, John Wesley still preached the love of God.

John Wesley’s theology also emphasized salvation by faith. The good news of the gospel is that we can be saved from our sins through faith in Christ. By salvation John Wesley meant the whole process by which we are changed from being sinners and become the children of God. It works like this: When we hear the gospel, usually through preaching, the Holy Spirit convicts us we are sinners. But the gospel also shows us that Christ died for us and that salvation is by faith in Him. The Spirit enables us to turn away from sin—that is, to repent—and to believe in Jesus as our Savior and Lord. Of the thousands of sermons John Wesley preached, mostly in the open air, he returned again and again to two of his favorite texts: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31) and “By grace ye are saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). Quite simply, Wesley believed that salvation by faith is the Christian gospel, and all his work for 50 years was concerned with proclaiming this fundamental truth. Theologians often use the term soteriology, meaning the doctrine of salvation. John Wesley’s theology was by priority soteriological. Once, in a letter to his brother Charles, he wrote, “You and I have nothing to do but save souls.” He meant that proclaiming the doctrine of salvation by faith was their primary task as preachers.

This doctrine of salvation by faith does not mean that God does everything and we have nothing to do with our own salvation. Only God’s grace can save us, but God does not force that grace upon us. When John Wesley preached salvation by faith, he argued and explained and encouraged men and women to respond to the gospel’s invitation. God gives sinners the grace by which they hear the gospel, by which they understand the gospel, and by which they are enabled (but not forced) to believe in Christ. The doctrine of salvation by faith treats us as responsible men and women. We can respond to God’s grace and be saved. Equally, we can ignore or refuse His grace and thus bring about our own judgment and condemnation.

The Witness of the Spirit

John Wesley’s theology included the doctrine of the witness of the Spirit, the privilege of every born-again believer to know for sure that his or her sins are forgiven. In preaching this doctrine, Wesley most often referred to Romans 8:16: “The same Spirit beareth witness with our spirits, that we are the children of God.” He identified and emphasized two parts to this witness of the Spirit. First is the inner assurance in our own hearts that God has forgiven our sin, adopted us into His family, and given us eternal life. Then there is the outer witness, the evidence of a life being transformed by God’s grace. The Christian loves God and neighbor and begins to live a life that manifests the fruit of the Spirit.

Early in the work of the revival, Wesley thought the witness of the Spirit comes to every Christian at the very moment of conversion. After some years, however, he was convinced that for some Christians the inner witness comes days, weeks, or even months after conversion. But he never ceased to preach and write that if the Spirit’s witness does not come immediately, it certainly will come, and the Christian must pray for it, believe it, and expect it every moment. John Wesley knew that this doctrine of the witness of the Spirit brings great joy and peace and assurance to the Christian’s heart. The doctrine is also affirmed in many of Charles Wesley’s hymns, including “Arise, My Soul, Arise,” where two lines assure us that

His Spirit answers to the blood
And tells me I am born of God.

Entire Sanctification

John Wesley’s theology especially emphasized the doctrine of entire sanctification. Whereas justification is the pardon and forgiveness of our sins, entire sanctification is the cleansing away of our inner sin. Wesley said that while justification is God doing something for us (restoring us to a new relationship with Him), entire sanctification is God doing something in us—taking the love of sin out of our hearts.

Wesley called this doctrine by a number of names, including Christian perfection, full salvation, perfect love, Christian holiness, and the second blessing. He believed that God had raised up the Methodist preachers to proclaim this doctrine of scriptural holiness all over the land. As the work of the revival developed, John Wesley formed “societies” where converts met together for fellowship, prayer, and instruction from the Bible. In these “class meetings” and “band meetings,” the Methodists were encouraged to seek the blessing of entire sanctification by faith.

Increasingly John Wesley preached entire sanctification in terms of what the Bible calls “perfect love” (1 John 4:18). The Holy Spirit is the sanctifying Spirit, and God’s love is “shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost” (Romans 5:5). Wesley taught that we grow in God’s grace from the moment we are saved and that this growth is what the Scriptures call sanctification. By the grace of sanctification we grow in love for God and our neighbor, and the power of sin is daily being weakened in our hearts.

But, Wesley taught, there is more. God wants all His people to experience full or entire sanctification. This is the fullness of God’s love in our hearts, and this is what Jesus meant by the “greatest commandment” and the commandment like it in Matthew 22:37-39: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart . . . all thy soul . . . all thy mind. . . . Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” In the heart filled with love for God and neighbor, said John Wesley, there is no room for pride or jealousy or self-will or resentment or love of the world or any other manifestation of sin. By faith we can experience this full sanctification now.

But Wesley also taught something else, something very important, about entire sanctification. The fully sanctified Christian must continue to grow in love and holiness. The way of holiness is not a cul-de-sac, a kind of spiritual dead end; instead it is a highway leading onward and upward to heaven itself.

Among all the doctrines John Wesley worked out, refined, and preached over half a century, it is these four—the love of God, salvation by faith, the witness of the Spirit, and entire sanctification—that form what he himself called “the grand fundamental doctrines” of real Christianity.

*Scripture quotations are from John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (London, 1755).

Herbert McGonigle is principal and senior lecturer in historical theology and Wesley studies at Nazarene Theological College in Manchester, England.