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Sermon 9: The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon009

248

An Introductory Comment

In this sermon Wesley returns to the theme of ‘faith alone’, now in the context of a borrowed typology about the three states of man: ‘natural’, ‘legal’, and ‘evangelical’ (a scheme that presupposes man’s original state as that of innocence). His ‘classical’ source for such a scheme is in St. Augustine’s Enchiridion, xxxi (117-19). His ‘modern’ source here would have been Thomas Boston’s Human Nature in Its Fourfold State (Edinburgh, 1720)—henceforth ‘Boston’. Wesley’s interest in such typologies may be seen in an early letter to his mother, February 14, 1735, and an interesting entry in Benjamin Ingham’s diary for March 17, 1734: ‘7:00 a.m. Breakfast with John Robson and John Wesley; religious talk of three different states of man: natural, Jewish (or fearful), and evangelical—the two last only, salvable.’

At this point in the development of his soteriology after 1738, the term ‘natural’ was understood by John Wesley (as it had been by Charles in ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’) as a condition of moral anomie. This sermon, then, is John’s positive version of Charles’s earlier sermon. Later (as in No. 85, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’, III.4), he will revise his view and assert that ‘there is no man that is in a state of mere nature, no man, unless he has quenched the Spirit, that is wholly void of the grace of God. No man living is entirely destitute of what is vulgarly called “natural conscience”. But this is not natural: it is more properly termed “preventing grace”. Every man has a greater or less measure of this….’ But notice that in I.2, 4-5, he pursues the self-excusing ‘natural man’ into the depths of his unconscious motives as if there were a conscience at their core. Sin is not defined as deliberate violations of known laws of God (as in No. 13, On Sin in Believers, intro., III.1-9 and n.): ‘it extends to every temper, desire, thought, and motion of the heart.’ This differs also from his views in No. 40, Christian Perfection.

Wesley’s main concern, however, is with the contrast between the harrowed conscience and spiritual despair of those who in their ‘legal state’ have been ‘awakened’ (but continue as guilt-ridden and unhappy, 249despite their best efforts at good works and religious observances) and the peace, joy, and good conscience of those who have heard the gospel and are assured of God’s justifying grace. Here he is echoing Thomas Boston’s moving description of ‘Peace with God and Peace of Conscience’ (op. cit., State III, Head II). Thus, this sermon is Wesley’s interpretation of the contrast delineated in Romans 7 and 8, with Romans 7 taken as a description of despair in the ‘legal state’ and Romans 8 as St. Paul’s celebration of ‘evangelical’ grace. Thus, the sermon concludes with an invitation to those living under the Law to accept God’s proffered pardon and to ‘rejoice and love like the angels of God’.

It is worth noting that of the six sermons that follow after the bloc of ‘university sermons,’ five (Nos. 5, 6, 8, 9, and 10) have their texts from Romans. This is not accidental, for these are the sermons in which Wesley has distilled the essence of his gospel of justification. He had already preached from Romans 8:15 thirteen times: three times in 1739, once in 1740, three times in 1741, four times in 1742, and twice in 1743—all in the early years of the Revival. He seems to have neglected it thereafter.

The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption

Romans 8:15

Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

11. St. Paul here speaks to those who are the children of God by faith.

Gal. 3:26.

Ye, saith he, who are indeed his children, have drunk into his Spirit.

See 1 Cor. 10:4.

‘Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear;’ but ‘because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts.’

Gal. 4:6.

‘Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.’

2 2502. The spirit of bondage and fear is widely distant from this loving Spirit of adoption. Those who are influenced only by slavish fear cannot be termed the sons of God. Yet some of them may be styled his servants,

The earliest instance in the published sermons of the distinction between the faith of ‘servants’ and of ‘sons’/’children’. It had already appeared in the Minutes (May 13, 1746). It will be further developed after this to become a Wesleyan commonplace (as in No. 106, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:6’, espec. I:10 and n.).

and ‘are not far from the kingdom of heaven’.

Cf. Mark 12:34.

33. But it is to be feared the bulk of mankind, yea, of what is called ‘the Christian world’, have not attained even this; but are still afar off, ‘neither is God in all their thoughts.’

Cf. Ps. 10:4 (BCP).

A few names may be found of those who love God; a few more there are that fear him. But the greater part have neither the fear of God before their eyes,

See Rom. 3:18.

nor the love of God in their hearts.

44. Perhaps most of you, who by the mercy of God now partake of a better spirit, may remember the time when ye were as they, when ye were under the same condemnation. But at first ye knew it not, though ye were wallowing daily in your sins and in your blood; till in due time ye ‘received the spirit of fear’

Cf. Rom. 8:15; 2 Tim. 1:7.

(ye received; for this also is the gift of God);’

Cf. Ps. 111:10, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’

and afterwards fear vanished away, and the spirit of love filled your hearts.

55. One who is in the first state of mind, without fear or love, is in Scripture termed ‘a natural man’.

1 Cor. 2:14. Cf. Boston, State II, Head II, ‘The State of Nature’. For other references to ‘natural man’, see No. 1, Salvation by Faith, I.1 and n.; and espec. No. 2, The Almost Christian. See also Nos. 17, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, §2; 19, ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God’, I.3-10; 44, Original Sin, II.1-2; 45, ‘The New Birth’, I.4; 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’, §§9-10; 130, ‘On Living without God’, §6.

One who is under the spirit of bondage and fear is sometimes said to be ‘under the law’

Rom. 6:14, 15.

(although that expression more frequently signifies one who is under the Jewish dispensation, who thinks himself obliged to observe all the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish law). But one who has exchanged the spirit of fear for the spirit of love is properly said to be ‘under grace’.

Ibid.

Now because it highly imports us to know what spirit we are of, I shall endeavour to point out distinctly, first, the state of a ‘natural man’; secondly, that of one who is ‘under the law’; and thirdly, of one who is ‘under grace’.

1 251I. 1. And, first, the state of a ‘natural man’. This the Scripture represents as a state of sleep. The voice of God to him is, ‘Awake, thou that sleepest.’

Eph. 5:14. See No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’, on this text.

For his soul is in a deep sleep. His spiritual senses are not awake; they discern neither spiritual good nor evil. The eyes of his understanding are closed;

See Eph. 1:18.

they are sealed together, and see not. Clouds and darkness continually rest upon them;

This echoes a line in Addison’s famous drama, Cato, V.i:

The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me;

But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it.

Wesley quotes these lines in other sermons. See below, No. 117, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, §8 and n.

for he lies in the valley of the shadow of death.

Ps. 23:4.

Hence, having no inlets for the knowledge of spiritual things,

This same phrase—reflecting the same epistemology—as above in Charles’s sermon, No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’, I.11. Cf. also No. 10, ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’, I.12 and n.

all the avenues of his soul being shut up, he is in gross, stupid ignorance of whatever he is most concerned to know. He is utterly ignorant of God, knowing nothing concerning him as he ought to know. He is totally a stranger to the law of God, as to its true, inward, spiritual meaning. He has no conception of that evangelical holiness without which no man shall see the Lord;

Heb. 12:14.

nor of the happiness which they only find whose ‘life is hid with Christ in God’.

Col. 3:3; once again, the correlation between ‘holiness’ and ‘happiness’.

22. And for this very reason, because he is fast asleep, he is in some sense at rest. Because he is blind, he is also secure: he saith, ‘Tush, …there shall no harm happen unto me.’

Ps. 10:6 (BCP).

The darkness which covers him on every side keeps him in a kind of peace—so far as peace can consist with the works of the devil, and with an earthly, devilish mind.

See Jas. 3:15.

He sees not that he stands on the edge of the pit; therefore he fears it not. He cannot tremble at the danger he does not know. He has not understanding enough to fear. Why is it that he is in no dread of God? Because he is totally ignorant of him: if not ‘saying in his heart, There is no God’,

Cf. Ps. 14:1; 53:1.

or that he ‘sitteth on the circle of the heavens’,

Cf. Isa. 40:22.

‘and humbleth’ not ‘himself 252to behold the things’

Ps. 113:6 (AV).

which are done on earth; yet satisfying himself as well, to all Epicurean intents and purposes,

The typical eighteenth-century estimate of ‘Epicurism’ is reflected in Samuel Johnson’s definition: ‘sensual enjoyment; gross pleasure’. Wesley had this in mind when he labelled Horace an ‘Epicurean poet’, in No. 2, The Almost Christian, I. (III.)9. But he also knew of Cicero’s more positive views in De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), i. 19, and also the interesting passage on Epicureanism in Chambers’s Cyclopaedia (1728), where a distinction is made between ‘rigid Epicureans’ and the ‘loose or remiss’ ones. The former ‘thought it above the majesty of the deity to concern himself with human affairs’. The latter ‘placed all their happiness in pleasures of the body….’ For some of Wesley’s other references to ‘elegant Epicurism’, cf. Nos. 50, ‘The Use of Money’, II.2; 78, ‘Spiritual Idolatry’, I.5; and 87, ‘The Danger of Riches’, I.13.

by saying, ‘God is merciful;’

Ps. 116:5. In ascribing to either the ‘natural’ or ‘legal’ man any idea of God as being merciful, etc., Wesley seems to have confounded the Epicureans with the Gnostics whom Plotinus had denounced along with the Christians—the latter, though, for rather different reasons; cf. Plotinus, ‘Against the Gnostics’ in the Ninth Tractate of Enneads II; see A. H. Armstrong, ed., The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (1967), pp. 205-6, 243-45.

confounding and swallowing up at once in that unwieldy idea of mercy all his holiness and essential hatred of sin, all his justice, wisdom, and truth. He is in no dread of the vengeance denounced against those who obey not the blessed law of God, because he understands it not. He imagines the main point is to do thus, to be outwardly blameless—and sees not that it extends to every temper, desire, thought, motion of the heart. Or he fancies that the obligation hereto is ceased, that Christ came to ‘destroy the law and the prophets’,

Matt. 5:17.

to save his people in, not from their sins, to bring them to heaven without holiness;

An oblique criticism of Christian antinomians (e.g., Agricola, the Moravians, William Cudworth, James Relly); see No. 13, On Sin in Believers, intro.

notwithstanding his own words, ‘Not one jot or tittle of the law shall pass away till all things are fulfilled,’

Cf. Matt. 5:18.

and, ‘Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doth the will of my Father which is in heaven.’

Matt. 7:21.

33. He is secure, because he is utterly ignorant of himself. Hence he talks of ‘repenting by and by’; he does not indeed exactly know when; but some time or other before he dies—taking it for granted that this is quite in his own power.

In his Oxford days, Wesley had borrowed, abridged, and preached a sermon of Benjamin Calamy’s against ‘death-bed repentance’ to the prisoners in the Castle; see Vol. 4, Appendix C.

253For what should hinder his doing it if he will? If he does but once set a resolution, no fear but he will make it good.

Note the flat rejection here of any notion of moral freedom (and the power not to sin) in ‘the natural man’. The posse non peccare, then, is a divine gift of justifying and regenerating grace. For other references to liberty and will, cf. No. 60, ‘The General Deliverance’, I.4 and n.

44. But this ignorance never so strongly glares as in those who are termed ‘men of learning’. If a natural man be one of these, he can talk at large of his rational faculties, of the freedom of his will and the absolute necessity of such freedom in order to constitute man a moral agent.

Cf. No. 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’, §11.

He reads and argues, and proves to a demonstration that every man may do as he will, may dispose his own heart to evil or good as it seems best in his own eyes. Thus the god of this world spreads a double veil of blindness over his heart, lest by any means ‘the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine’

2 Cor. 4:4.

upon it.

55. From the same ignorance of himself and God there may sometimes arise in the natural man a kind of joy in congratulating himself upon his own wisdom and goodness. And what the world calls joy he may often possess. He may have pleasure in various kinds, either in gratifying the desires of the flesh, or the desire of the eye, or the pride of life

See 1 John 2:16. See also below, III.7; and cf. No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.2 and n.

—particularly if he has large possessions, if he enjoy an affluent fortune.

The first instance in the OED of this sense of ‘affluent’ is from ‘Junius’, and dated 1769. Samuel Johnson cites it from Pope and Prior. Thus, it was a ‘modern’ usage in Wesley’s time and a sample of his interest in current speech.

Then he may ‘clothe himself in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day’.

Cf. Luke 16:19.

And so long as he thus doth well unto himself, ‘men will’ doubtless ‘speak good of’

Cf. Luke 6:26.

him. They will say he is a happy man; for indeed this is the sum of worldly happiness—to dress, and visit, and talk, and eat, and drink, and rise up to play.

See Exod. 32:6.

66. It is not surprising if one in such circumstances as these, dozed

It seems almost certain here that Wesley is using the participial adjective of ‘dosed’, of which OED cites examples from 1659 to 1849.

with the opiates of flattery and sin, should imagine, among his other waking dreams, that he walks in great liberty. How easily may he persuade himself that he is at liberty from all ‘vulgar errors’ and from the ‘prejudice’ of education, judging 254exactly right, and keeping clear of all extremes. ‘I am free (may he say) from all the enthusiasm

Cf. No. 37, ‘The Nature of Enthusiasm’.

of weak and narrow souls; from superstition, the disease of fools and cowards, always righteous overmuch; and from bigotry,

Cf. No. 38, ‘A Caution against Bigotry’.

continually incident to those who have not a free and generous way of thinking.’ And too sure it is that he is altogether free from the ‘wisdom which cometh from above’,

Cf. Jas. 3:17.

from holiness, from the religion of the heart, from the whole mind which was in Christ.

See Phil. 2:5.

77. For all this time he is the servant of sin. He commits sin, more or less, day by day. Yet he is not troubled; he ‘is in no bondage’ (as some speak), he feels no condemnation. He contents himself (even though he should profess to believe that the Christian revelation is of God) with: ‘Man is frail. We are all weak. Every man has his infirmity.’ Perhaps he quotes Scripture: ‘Why, does not Solomon say, “The righteous man falls into sin seven times a day”?

An ironic metaphrase of Prov. 24:16, where the original refers to the righteous man’s falling (lit. ‘stumbling’) into adversity and being delivered. But seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Puritan exegetes had come to understand נפל as connoting a fall into sin. Thus Poole, Annotations, and Henry, Exposition, (‘The just man falls, sometimes falls seven times, perhaps into sin, …but he rises again, by repentance finds mercy with God, and regains his peace’). In A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, §12, Wesley will dispute the point again: ‘Here [Prov. 24:16] is no mention of “falling into sin” at all. What is here mentioned is “falling into temporal affliction”.’); in Predestination Calmly Considered, §§69-79, he will argue the question of ‘perseverance’ with Dr. John Gill (1697-1771), a Baptist minister at Horsleydown and author of The Doctrine of the Saints’ Final Perseverance Asserted and Vindicated (1752). Cf. also No. 40, Christian Perfection, II.9; and see the homily on ‘An Information for Them That Take Offence at Certain Places in the Holy Scripture’, Pt. II, Homilies, p. 335.

And doubtless they are all hypocrites or enthusiasts who pretend to be better than their neighbours.’ If at any time a serious thought fix upon him, he stifles it as soon as possible with, ‘Why should I fear, since God is merciful, and Christ died for sinners?’

Cf. Rom. 5:8.

Thus he remains a willing servant of sin, content with the bondage of corruption;

Rom. 8:21.

inwardly and outwardly unholy, and satisfied therewith; not only not conquering sin, but not striving to conquer, particularly that sin which doth so easily beset him.

See Heb. 12:1.

88. Such is the state of every ‘natural man’; whether he be a gross, scandalous transgressor, or a more reputable and decent 255sinner, having the form though not the power of godliness.

See 2 Tim. 3:5, from whence it would follow that ‘the almost Christian’, as Wesley had already described him, was ‘a natural man’, ‘utterly ignorant of God, …totally a stranger to the law of God’ (above, I.1).

But how can such an one be ‘convinced of sin’?

Cf. John 8:46.

How is he brought to repent? To be ‘under the law’? To receive the ‘spirit of bondage unto fear’? This is the point which is next to be considered.

1II. 1. By some awful providence, or by his Word applied with the demonstration of his Spirit, God touches the heart of him that lay asleep in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Ps. 107:10; Luke 1:79.

He is terribly shaken out of his sleep, and awakes into a consciousness of his danger. Perhaps in a moment, perhaps by degrees, the eyes of his understanding are opened,

See Eph. 1:18.

and now first (the veil being in part removed) discern the real state he is in. Horrid light breaks in upon his soul; such light as may be conceived to gleam from the bottomless pit, from the lowest deep, from a lake of fire burning with brimstone.

Rev. 19:20.

He at last sees the loving, the merciful God is also ‘a consuming fire’;

Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29.

that he is a just God and a terrible, rendering to every man according to his works,

Prov. 24:12; cf. Ps. 62:12.

entering into judgment with the ungodly for every idle word, yea, and for the imaginations of the heart. He now clearly perceives that the great and holy God is ‘of purer eyes than to behold iniquity’;

Cf. Hab. 1:13.

that he is an avenger of everyone who rebelleth against him, and repayeth the wicked to his face;

See Deut. 7:10.

and that ‘it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.’

Heb. 10:31; note here an abrupt shift in mood and rhetoric.

22. The inward, spiritual meaning of the law of God now begins to glare upon him. He perceives the ‘commandment is exceeding broad’,

Ps. 119:96.

and ‘there is nothing hid from the light thereof.’

Cf. Ps. 19:6.

He is convinced that every part of it relates not barely to outward sin or obedience, but to whit passes in the secret recesses of the soul, which no eye but God’s can penetrate. If he now hears, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’

Exod. 20:13, etc.

God speaks in thunder, ‘He that hateth his brother is a murderer;’

Cf. 1 John 3:15.

he that saith unto his brother, ‘Thou fool, is obnoxious to hellfire.’

Cf. Matt. 5:22, and see No. 7, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, II.4 and n.

If the law say, ‘Thou shalt not 256commit adultery,’

Exod. 20:14, etc.

the voice of the Lord sounds in his ears, ‘He that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’

Matt. 5:28.

And thus in every point he feels the Word of God ‘quick and powerful, sharper than a two-edged sword’.

Cf. Heb. 4:12.

It pierces ‘even to the dividing asunder of his soul and spirit, his joints and marrow’.

Ibid.

And so much the more because he is conscious to himself of having neglected so great salvation;

See Heb. 2:3.

of having ‘trodden under foot the Son of God’ who would have saved him from his sins, and ‘counted the blood of the covenant an unholy’, a common, unsanctifying ‘thing’.

Heb. 10:29.

33. And as he knows ‘all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do,’

Heb. 4:13.

so he sees himself naked, stripped of all the fig-leaves which he had sewed together, of all his poor pretences to religion or virtue, and his wretched excuses for sinning against God. He now sees himself like the ancient sacrifices, τετραχηλισμένον,

A lexical oddity. Sugden, Standard Sermons, I.187, has confused it with the τομώτερος in Heb. 4:12. Wesley’s term does not appear in Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, Arndt and Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon, nor Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Its meaning is clear enough—‘drawn and quartered’—but not its source.

‘cleft in sunder’, as it were, from the neck downward, so that all within him stands confessed. His heart is bare, and he sees it is all sin, ‘deceitful above all things, desperately wicked’;

Jer. 17:9.

that it is altogether corrupt and abominable, more than it is possible for tongue to express; that there dwelleth there no good thing,

See Rom. 7:18.

but unrighteousness and ungodliness only; every motion thereof, every temper and thought, being only evil continually.

See Gen. 6:5.

44. And he not only sees, but feels in himself, by an emotion of soul which he cannot describe, that for the sins of his heart, were his life without blame (which yet it is not, and cannot be; seeing ‘an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit’),

Cf. Matt. 7:18; Luke 6:43.

he deserves to be cast into ‘the fire that never shall be quenched’.

Mark 9:43.

He feels that ‘the wages’, the just reward, ‘of sin’, of his sin above all, ‘is death;’

Rom. 6:23.

even the second death,

Rev. 21:8.

the death which dieth not, the destruction of body and soul in hell.

See Matt. 10:28.

5 2575. Here ends his pleasing dream, his delusive rest, his false peace, his vain security. His joy now vanishes as a cloud; pleasures once loved delight no more. They pall upon the taste; he loathes the nauseous sweet;

Cf. Samuel Johnson’s quotation from Denham (under ‘nauseous’):

Those trifles wherein children take delight,

Grow nauseous to the young man’s appetite.

he is weary to bear them. The shadows of happiness flee away, and sink into oblivion; so that he is stripped of all, and wanders to and fro seeking rest, but finding none.

See Matt. 12:43; Luke 11:24.

66. The fumes of those opiates being now dispelled, he feels the anguish of a wounded spirit.

Cf. below, III.4.

He finds that sin let loose upon the soul (whether it be pride, anger, or evil desire; whether self-will, malice, envy, revenge, or any other) is perfect misery. He feels sorrow of heart for the blessings he has lost, and the curse which is come upon him; remorse for having thus destroyed himself, and despised his own mercies; fear, from a lively sense of the wrath of God, and of the consequences of his wrath; of the punishment which he has justly deserved, and which he sees hanging over his head; fear of death, as being to him the gate of hell, the entrance of death eternal; fear of the devil, the executioner of the wrath and righteous vengeance of God; fear of men, who if they were able to kill his body, would thereby plunge both body and soul into hell;

See Matt. 10:28.

fear, sometimes arising to such a height that the poor, sinful, guilty soul is terrified with everything, with nothing, with shades,

I.e., ghosts; cf. Johnson, Dictionary, No. 10, and his citations from Dryden and Tickell.

with a leaf shaken of the wind.

See Lev. 26:36.

Yea, sometimes it may even border upon distraction, making a man ‘drunken, though not with wine’,

Cf. Isa. 29:9; 51:21.

suspending the exercise of the memory, of the understanding, of all the natural faculties. Sometimes it may approach to the very brink of despair; so that he who trembles at the name of death may yet be ready to plunge into it every moment, to ‘choose strangling rather than life’.

Cf. Job 7:15.

Well may such a man ‘roar’, like him of old, ‘for the very disquietness of his heart’.

Cf. Ps. 38:8 (BCP).

Well may he cry out, ‘The spirit of a man may sustain his infirmities; but a wounded spirit who can bear?’

Cf. Prov. 18:14.

7 2587. 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. He would fain escape; but he is so fast in prison that he cannot get forth. He resolves against sin, but yet sins on; he sees the snare, and abhors—and runs into it. So much does his boasted reason avail—only to enhance his guilt, and increase his misery! Such is the freedom of his will—free only to evil; free to ‘drink in iniquity like water’;

Cf. Job 15:16.

to wander farther and farther from the living God, and do more ‘despite to the Spirit of grace’!

Heb. 10:29.

88. The more he strives, wishes, labours to be free, the more does he feel his chains, the grievous chains of sin, wherewith Satan binds and ‘leads him captive at his will’.

Cf. 2 Tim. 2:26.

His servant he is, though he repine ever so much; though he rebel, he cannot prevail. He is still in bondage and fear by reason of sin: generally of some outward sin, to which he is peculiarly disposed either by nature, custom, or outward circumstances; but always of some inward sin, some evil temper or unholy affection. And the more he frets against it, the more it prevails; he may bite, but cannot break his chain. Thus he toils without end, repenting and sinning, and repenting and sinning again, till at length the poor sinful, helpless wretch is even at his wit’s end, and can barely groan, ‘O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’

Rom. 6:14, 15.

99. This whole struggle of one who is ‘under the law’,

Rom. 7:24.

under the ‘spirit of fear and bondage’,

Rom. 8:15.

is beautifully described by the Apostle in the foregoing chapter, speaking in the person of an awakened man. ‘I (saith he) was alive without the law once.’ I had much life, wisdom, strength, and virtue—so I thought. ‘But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.’

[Rom. 7,] ver. 9.

When the commandment, in its spiritual meaning, came to my heart with the power of God my inbred sin was stirred up, fretted, inflamed, and all my virtue died away. ‘And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.’

Ver. 10-11.

It came 259upon me unawares, slew all my hopes, and plainly showed, in the midst of life I was in death.

See BCP, Burial (477).

‘Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good:’

Ver. 12.

I no longer lay the blame on this, but on the corruption of my own heart. I acknowledge that ‘the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.’

Ver. 14. [Cf. Wesley’s Notes here on ‘the whole process of a man reasoning, groaning, striving, and escaping from the legal to the evangelical state’.]

I now see both the spiritual nature of the law, and my own carnal devilish heart, ‘sold under sin’, totally enslaved (like slaves bought with money, who were absolutely at their master’s disposal). ‘For that which I do, I allow not; for what I would, I do not; but what I hate, that I do.’

Ver. 15.

Such is the bondage under which I groan; such the tyranny of my hard master. ‘To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.’

Ver. 18-19.

‘I find a law’, an inward constraining power, ‘that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in’ (or consent to) ‘the law of God, after the inward man.’

Ver. 21-22.

(In my mind: so the Apostle explains himself in the words that immediately follow; and so ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος, ‘the inward man’, is understood in all other Greek writers.

I.e., in ver. 23, where St. Paul speaks of τῷ νόμῳ τοῦ νοός μου. As for ‘other Greek writers’, Wesley would have known of this same usage, in Plato, Republic IX. 589a, and IV. 439d, as well as Plotinus, Enneads I.i.10.

) ‘But I see another law in my members’, another constraining power, ‘warring against the law of my mind’, or inward man, ‘and bringing me into captivity to the law’, or power, ‘of sin,’

Ver. 23.

dragging me as it were at my conqueror’s chariot-wheels into the very thing which my soul abhors. ‘O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!’

Ver. 24.

Who shall deliver me from this helpless, dying life; from this bondage of sin and misery! Till this is done, ‘I myself’ (or rather, ‘that I’, αὐτὸς ἐγώ, that man I am now personating

Wesley had inherited the still controverted question of whether St. Paul, in Rom. 7, is speaking of his continuing moral struggles as believer (eased and ‘covered’ by grace) or of his earlier state of ineffectual moral earnestness before his conversion. The Lutherans and Calvinists by and large took it as confirmation of the simul justus et peccator. Wesley understands that St. Paul is here ‘personating’ a hypothetical man in ‘the legal state’; he holds to this later in his Notes on Rom. 7:7-8. On the other side, cf. Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 270: ‘What Paul is here asserting [that 7:21-25 is his own experience] was well understood by the Reformers; it is misunderstood by those modern theologians who read him through the spectacles of their own piety.’ But see W. Sanday and A. C. Headlam, The Epistle to the Romans, in The International Critical Commentary (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895), XXXIII.186; also John Knox in The Interpreter’s Bible, IX.498-500. Obviously, one’s exegesis here follows from one’s soteriology and not from any decisive evidence within the Greek text.

) ‘with the mind’, or inward man, ‘serve the law of 260God’; my mind, my conscience, is on God’s side: ‘but with the flesh’, with my body, ‘the law of sin,’

Ver. 25.

being hurried away by a force I cannot resist.

1010. How lively a portraiture is this of one ‘under the law’! One who feels the burden he cannot shake off; who pants after liberty, power, and love, but is in fear and bondage still! Until the time that God answers the wretched man crying out, ‘Who shall deliver me’ from this bondage of sin, from this body of death?—‘The grace of God, through Jesus Christ thy Lord.’

Cf. 1 Cor. 1:4.

1III. 1. Then it is that this miserable bondage ends, and he is no more ‘under the law, but under grace’.

100

Rom. 6:14. See also Boston, State III, ‘The State of Grace’, and note the similarities between that text and this.

This state we are thirdly to consider; the state of one who has found ‘grace’, or favour in the sight of God, even the Father, and who has the ‘grace’, or power of the Holy Ghost, reigning in his heart; who has received, in the language of the Apostle, ‘the Spirit of adoption, whereby he now cries, Abba, Father’.

101

Cf. Rom. 8:15.

22. ‘He cried unto the Lord in his trouble, and God delivers him out of his distress.’

102

Cf. Ps. 107:6.

His eyes are opened in quite another manner than before, even to see a loving, gracious God. While he is calling, ‘I beseech thee show me thy glory,’

103

Exod. 33:18.

he hears a voice in his inmost soul, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord; I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy.’

104

Cf. Exod. 33:19.

And it is not long before ‘the Lord descends in the cloud, and proclaims the name of the Lord.’

105

Cf. Exod. 34:5.

Then he sees (but not with eyes of flesh and blood) ‘The Lord, the Lord God; 261merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, and forgiving iniquities and transgression and sin.’

106

Cf. Exod. 34:6-7. Note this rare instance of Wesley’s ‘spiritualizing’ of what stands as a historical record in Exod. 33-34.

33. Heavenly, healing light now breaks in upon his soul. He ‘looks on him whom he had pierced’,

107

Cf. Zech. 12:10.

and ‘God, who out of darkness commanded light to shine, shineth in his heart.’ He sees ‘the light of the glorious love of God, in the face of Jesus Christ’.

108

Cf. 2 Cor. 4:6.

He hath a divine ‘evidence of things not seen’

109

Heb. 11:1.

by sense, even of ‘the deep things of God’;

110

1 Cor. 2:10.

more particularly of the love of God, of his pardoning love to him that believes in Jesus. Overpowered with the sight, his whole soul cries out, ‘My Lord, and my God!’

111

John 20:28.

For he sees all his iniquities laid on him who ‘bare them in his own body on the tree’;

112

Cf. 1 Pet. 2:24.

he beholds the Lamb of God taking away his sins. How clearly now does he discern ‘that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself; …making him sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God through him!’

113

Cf. 2 Cor. 5:19, 21.

And that he himself is reconciled to God by that blood of the covenant!

44. Here end both the guilt and power of sin.

114

A hyperbole here, since Wesley will continue to recognize (as in No. 8, ‘The First-fruits of the Spirit’, II.4-13) that even in regeneration (as here) ‘sin remains but no longer reigns’ (cf. No. 13, On Sin in Believers, I.6 and n.). What is taken away is guilt and ‘condemnation’.

He can now say, ‘I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh’, even in this mortal body, ‘I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’

115

Cf. Gal. 2:20.

Here end remorse and sorrow of heart, and the anguish of a wounded spirit.

116

Cf. above, II.6.

‘God turneth his heaviness into joy.’

117

Cf. Jas. 4:9.

He ‘made sore’, and now ‘his hands bind up’.

118

Cf. Job 5:18.

Here ends also that bondage unto fear; for ‘his heart standeth fast, believing in the Lord.’

119

Cf. Ps. 112:7 (BCP).

He cannot fear any longer the wrath of God; for he knows it is now turned away from him, and looks upon him no more as an angry judge, but as a loving Father. He cannot fear the devil, knowing he has ‘no 262power, except it be given him from above’.

120

Cf. John 19:11.

He fears not hell, being an heir of the kingdom of heaven. Consequently, he has no fear of death, by reason whereof he was in time past for so many years ‘subject to bondage’.

121

Heb. 2:15.

Rather, knowing that ‘if the earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved, he hath a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, he groaneth earnestly, desiring to be clothed upon with that house which is from heaven.’

122

Cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-2.

He groans to shake off this house of earth, that ‘mortality may be swallowed up of life’; knowing that ‘God hath wrought him for the selfsame thing; who hath also given him the earnest of his Spirit.’

123

Cf. 2 Cor. 5:4-5.

55. And ‘where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty;’

124

2 Cor. 3:17.

liberty not only from guilt and fear, but from sin, from that heaviest of all yokes, that basest of all bondage. His labour is not now in vain.

125

See 1 Cor. 15:58.

The snare is broken, and he is delivered.

126

See Ps. 124:7.

He not only strives, but likewise prevails; he not only fights, but conquers also. ‘Henceforth he doth not serve sin…. He is dead unto sin and alive unto God…. Sin doth not now reign, even in his mortal body’, nor doth he ‘obey it in the desires thereof’. He does not ‘yield his members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but as instruments of righteousness unto God’. For ‘being now made free from sin, he is become the servant of righteousness.’

[Rom.]6:6[,11-13, 18].

66. Thus ‘having peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ’, ‘rejoicing in hope of the glory of God’,

127

Cf. Rom. 5:1-2.

and having power over all sin, over every evil desire and temper, and word and work, he is a living witness of the ‘glorious liberty of the sons of God’:

128

Cf. Rom. 8:21.

all of whom, being partakers of ‘like precious faith’,

129

2 Pet. 1:1.

bear record with one voice, ‘We have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!’

130

Rom. 8:15.

77. It is this Spirit which continually ‘worketh in them, both to will and to do of his good pleasure’.

131

Cf. Phil. 2:13.

It is he that sheds the love of God abroad in their hearts,

132

See Rom. 5:5.

and the love of all mankind; thereby purifying their hearts from the love of the world, from the lust of 263the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.

133

1 John 2:16.

It is by him they are delivered from anger and pride, from all vile and inordinate affections.

134

See Col. 3:5.

In consequence, they are delivered from evil words and works, from all unholiness of conversation; doing no evil to any child of man, and being zealous of all good works.

135

See Titus 2:14.

88. To sum up all. The ‘natural man’ neither fears nor loves God; one ‘under the law’ fears, one ‘under grace’ loves him. The first has no light in the things of God, but walks in utter darkness. The second sees the painful light of hell; the third, the joyous light of heaven. He that sleeps in death has a false peace. He that is awakened has no peace at all. He that believes has true peace, the peace of God, filling and ruling his heart. The heathen, baptized or unbaptized,

136

‘Baptized or unbaptized’: a strange usage, since elsewhere Wesley uses the term ‘heathen’ in its generally accepted sense of those never having made any sort of Christian profession (or Jewish or Moslem, for that matter); cf. his argument with John Taylor over the cultural status of ‘the heathens’ in Doctrine of Original Sin, Pt. I, II.2-5; see also Nos. 63, ‘The General Spread of the Gospel’, §1; 21, ‘Sermon on the Mount, I’, I.9; and No. 2, The Almost Christian, I.1. But for the salvability of ‘heathens’, cf. Large Minutes, in Minutes, London, 1862, I.669-73; and No. 91, ‘On Charity’, I.3 and n.

hath a fancied liberty, which is indeed licentiousness; the Jew (or one under the Jewish dispensation) is in heavy, grievous bondage; the Christian enjoys the true glorious liberty of the sons of God.

137

See Rom. 8:21.

An unawakened child of the devil

138

Acts 13:10.

sins willingly; one that is awakened sins unwillingly; a child of God ‘sinneth not, but keepeth himself, and the wicked one toucheth him not’.

139

Cf. 1 John 5:18.

To conclude: the natural man neither conquers nor fights; the man under the law fights with sin, but cannot conquer; the man under grace fights and conquers, yea is ‘more than conqueror, through him that loveth him’.

140

Cf. Rom. 8:37.

1IV. 1. From this plain account of the threefold state of man—the ‘natural’, the ‘legal’, and the ‘evangelical’—it appears that it is not sufficient to divide mankind into sincere and insincere.

141

Cf. No. 2, The Almost Christian, I.9 and n.

A man may be sincere in any of these states; not only when he has the ‘Spirit of adoption’, but while he has the ‘spirit of bondage unto fear’. Yea, while he has neither this fear, nor love. For undoubtedly there may be sincere heathens as well as sincere 264Jews or Christians. This circumstance, then, does by no means prove that a man is in a state of acceptance with God.

‘Examine yourselves’, therefore, not only whether ye are sincere, but ‘whether ye be in the faith.’

142

2 Cor. 13:5.

Examine narrowly, for it imports you much. What is the ruling principle in your soul? Is it the love of God? Is it the fear of God? Or is it neither one nor the other? Is it not rather the love of the world? The love of pleasure? Or gain? Of ease; or reputation? If so, you are not come so far as a Jew. You are but a heathen still. Have you heaven in your heart? Have you the Spirit of adoption, ever crying, ‘Abba, Father’? Or do you cry unto God as ‘out of the belly of hell’,

143

Jonah 2:2.

overwhelmed with sorrow and fear? Or are you a stranger to this whole affair, and cannot imagine what I mean? Heathen, pull off the mask. Thou hast never put on Christ.

144

Gal. 3:27.

Stand barefaced. Look up to heaven; and own before him that liveth for ever and ever, thou hast no part either among the sons or servants of God.

Whosoever thou art, dost thou commit sin, or dost thou not? If thou dost, is it willingly, or unwillingly? In either case God hath told thee whose thou art—‘He that committeth sin is of the devil.’

145

1 John 3:8.

If thou committest it willingly thou art his faithful servant. He will not fail to reward thy labour. If unwillingly, still thou art his servant

146

An apparent exception to Wesley’s normal distinction between wilful and unwilled sins; it fits the mood of this particular exhortation and need not signify a basic shift.

God deliver thee out of his hands!

Art thou daily fighting against all sin; and daily more than conqueror? I acknowledge thee for a child of God. O stand fast in thy glorious liberty. Art thou fighting, but not conquering; striving for the mastery, but not able to attain? Then thou art not yet a believer in Christ.

147

Note Wesley’s reversion, in this ‘application’, to his earlier emphasis on a complete deliverance from sin and the state of full assurance, or none at all.

But follow on; and thou shalt know the Lord. Art thou not fighting at all, but leading an easy, indolent, fashionable life? O how hast thou dared to name the name of Christ! Only to make it a reproach among the heathen? Awake, thou sleeper! Call upon thy God, before the deep swallow thee up.

148

See Ps. 69:15 (AV).

22. Perhaps one reason why so many think of themselves more highly than they ought to think,

149

See Rom. 12:3.

why they do not discern what state they are in, is because these several states of soul are often 265mingled together, and in some measure meet in one and the same person. Thus experience shows that the legal state, or state of fear, is frequently mixed with the natural; for few men are so fast asleep in sin but they are sometimes more or less awakened. As the Spirit of God does not ‘wait for the call of man’,

150

Cf. Micah 5:7.

so at some times he will be heard. He puts them in fear, so that for a season at least the heathen ‘know themselves to be but men’.

151

Ps. 9:20.

They feel the burden of sin, and earnestly desire to flee from the wrath to come.

152

Matt. 3:7; Luke 3:7.

But not long. They seldom suffer the arrows of conviction to go deep into their souls;

153

Cf. Matthew Henry’s exegesis (Exposition) of Ps. 38:2 (‘the arrows of the Almighty [are] the terrors of the Lord [which cause] a very melancholy frightful apprehension of the wrath of God…’) and also of Ps. 45:5 (‘convictions are like the arrows of a bow…’).

but quickly stifle the grace of God, and return to their wallowing in the mire.

154

2 Pet. 2:22.

In like manner the evangelical state, or state of love, is frequently mixed with the legal. For few of those who have the spirit of bondage and fear remain always without hope.

155

Wesley is more positive than this in the Minutes, May 13, 1746:

Q. But can it be conceived that God has any regard to the sincerity of an unbeliever?

A. Yes, so much that if he persevere therein, God will infallibly give him faith.

The wise and gracious God rarely suffers this; for he remembereth that we are but dust.

156

Ps. 103:14.

And he willeth not that ‘the flesh should fail before him, or the spirit which he hath made’.

157

Cf. Isa. 57:16.

Therefore, at such times as he seeth good he gives a dawning of light unto them that sit in darkness.

158

See Luke 1:79.

He causes a part of his goodness to pass before them,

159

See Exod. 33:19.

and shows he is a ‘God that heareth the prayer’.

160

Cf. Prov. 15:29.

They see the promise which is by faith in Christ Jesus, though it be yet afar off; and hereby they are encouraged to ‘run with patience the race which is set before them’.

161

Heb. 12:1.

33. Another reason why many deceive themselves is because they do not consider how far a man may go and yet be in a natural, or at best a legal state.

162

This and the following two paragraphs are a sort of reprise of No. 2, The Almost Christian.

A man may be of a compassionate and a benevolent temper; he may be affable, courteous, generous, friendly; he may have some degree of meekness, patience, temperance, and of many other moral virtues; he may feel many desires of shaking off all vice, and attaining higher degrees of virtue; he may abstain from much evil—perhaps from all that is 266grossly contrary to justice, mercy, or truth; he may do much good, may feed the hungry, clothe the naked,

163

See Matt. 25:35-36.

relieve the widow and fatherless;

164

See Ps. 146:9.

he may attend public worship, use prayer in private, read many books of devotion—and yet for all this he may be a mere natural man, knowing neither himself nor God; equally a stranger to the spirit of fear and to that of love; having neither repented nor believed the gospel.

165

See Mark 1:15.

But suppose there were added to all this a deep conviction of sin, with much fear of the wrath of God; vehement desires to cast off every sin, and to fulfil all righteousness;

166

Matt. 3:15.

frequent rejoicing in hope, and touches of love often glancing upon the soul: yet neither do these prove a man to be ‘under grace’,

167

Rom. 6:14.

to have true, living, Christian faith, unless the Spirit of adoption abide in his heart, unless he can continually cry, ‘Abba, Father!’

44. Beware, then, thou who art called by the name of Christ, that thou come not short of the mark of thy high calling.

168

See Phil. 3:14.

Beware thou rest not, either in a natural state, with too many that are accounted ‘good Christians’, or in a legal state, wherein those who are ‘highly esteemed of men’

169

Cf. Luke 16:15.

are generally content to live and die. Nay, but God hath prepared better things for thee, if thou follow on till thou attain. Thou art not called to fear and tremble, like devils,

170

See Jas. 2:19.

but to rejoice and love, like the angels of God. ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.’

171

Mark 12:30, etc.

Thou shalt ‘rejoice evermore.’

172

1 Thess. 5:16.

Thou shalt ‘pray without ceasing.’

173

1 Thess. 5:17.

Thou shalt ‘in everything give thanks.’

174

1 Thess. 5:18.

Thou shalt do the will of God ‘on earth, as it is done in heaven’.

175

Cf. Matt. 6:10; Luke 11:2.

O ‘prove’ thou ‘what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.’

176

Rom. 12:2.

Now ‘present’ thyself ‘a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.’

177

Rom. 12:1.

‘Whereunto thou hast already attained’,

178

Cf. Phil. 3:16; 1 Tim. 4:6.

‘hold fast’,

179

1 Thess. 5:21; Heb. 4:14.

by ‘reaching forth unto those things which are before’;

180

Phil. 3:13.

until ‘the God of peace…make thee perfect in every good work, working in thee that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever! Amen!’

181

Cf. Heb. 13:20-21. For Wesley’s use of ascriptions, cf. No. 1, Salvation by Faith, III.9 and n.

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Entry Title: Sermon 9: The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption

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