Sermon

# found: 0

Toggle:

Notes:

Sermon 12: The Witness of Our Own Spirit

https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon012

299 An Introductory Comment

Here is a sequel to the two previous ‘Discourses’ and, like them, was apparently written expressly for publication rather than being a condensate of oral sermons already preached. For one thing, we have no records of Wesley’s ever preaching an oral sermon on 2 Cor. 1:12. For another, this is one of Wesley’s rare sermons with no ‘heads’. Later, in 1788, he will write another sermon from the same text and with much the same argument; see No. 105, ‘On Conscience’.

The main point to the discourses on ‘The Witness of the Spirit’ had been the objective ground of Christian assurance, viz., the direct ‘witness of the Spirit’ as revealing to and convincing the believer of God’s pardoning, regenerating, adopting grace. Here, in the sequel, Wesley undertakes an analysis of the subjective side of this experience of grace. His distinctive emphasis, however, is his careful correlation of assurance with a good conscience. What we have, then, is a brief essay on conscience, its marks and norms—and the resultant joy of Christian living ‘in simplicity and godly sincerity…’. Wesley recognizes the logical distinctions between adoption, justification, and regeneration but is even more concerned to show their psychological integration in the Christian experience of assurance and how the process of sanctification, begun with regeneration, is really aimed at ‘the recovery of the image of God’ (an equivalent phrase for holiness).

Note the clear anticipation here of Kant’s notion of a universal, categorical moral imperative linked to a Puritan view of distinct guidelines for ‘a good conscience’: (1) Scripture, (2) self-understanding, and (3) an observed consonance between intentions and actual behaviour. There is an important identification of God’s grace as his power: ‘the Holy Ghost working in us both to will and to do of [the Father’s] good pleasure’ (§15). The essay concludes with a description of ‘the nature of that joy whereby [a mature] Christian rejoiceth evermore’ as a consequence of ‘a conscience void of offence toward God and man’.

In 1771 Wesley added a postscript that suggests his awareness of the delicate balance between Christian conscience (as portrayed here) and Christian scrupulosity and unease: ‘It may easily be observed that the 300preceding discourse describes the experience of those that are strong in faith, but hereby those that are weak in faith may be discouraged; to prevent which the following discourse [viz., On Sin in Believers] may be of use.’ This, then, is a ‘bridge’ sermon, and should be read with both what precedes and what follows it in mind.

The Witness of Our Own Spirit

2 Corinthians 1:12

This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world.

11. Such is the voice of every true believer in Christ, so long as he abides in faith and love. ‘He that followeth me’, saith our Lord, ‘walketh not in darkness.’

Cf. John 8:12.

And while he hath the light he rejoiceth therein.

See John 5:35.

‘As he hath received the Lord Jesus Christ, so he walketh in him.’

Cf. Col. 2:6.

And while he walketh in him, the exhortation of the Apostle takes place in his soul day by day: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, rejoice.’

Phil. 4:4.

22. But that we may not build our house upon the sand (lest when the rains descend, and the winds blow, and the floods arise and beat upon it, it fall, and great be the fall thereof)

See Matt. 7:26-27.

I intend, in the following discourse, to show what is the nature and ground of a Christian’s joy. We know, in general, it is that happy peace, that calm satisfaction of spirit, which arises from such a testimony of his conscience as is here described by the Apostle. But in order to understand this the more throughly,

Cf. Johnson’s comment on the equivalence of ‘throughly’ and ‘thoroughly’ in his Dictionary. Although Wesley seems to have used both, he clearly preferred ‘throughly’. In this edn., instead of standardizing one spelling, we use whichever form appears in the preferred printing.

it will be requisite to weigh all his words; whence will easily appear both what we are to 301understand by ‘conscience’, and what by the ‘testimony’ thereof; and also how he that hath this testimony rejoiceth evermore.

33. And, first, what are we to understand by ‘conscience’? What is the meaning of this word that is in everyone’s mouth? One would imagine it was an exceeding difficult thing to discover this, when we consider how large and numerous volumes have been from time to time wrote on this subject; and how all the treasures of ancient and modern learning have been ransacked in order to explain it. And yet it is to be feared it has not received much light from all those elaborate inquiries. Rather, have not most of those writers puzzled the cause, ‘darkening counsel by words without knowledge’,

Cf. Job 38:2.

perplexing a subject plain in itself, and easy to be understood? For set aside but hard words, and every man of an honest heart will soon understand the thing.

Wesley’s habit of disparaging the existing literature on a given topic is more misleading here than usual. The fact is that ‘conscience’ had been a familiar theme for moralists since St. Thomas Aquinas at least. Joseph Butler had focused the second of his famous Rolls Chapel sermons on it in 1726. Wesley had read this, and Butler’s definition of conscience is strikingly similar to his own (viz., ‘a superior principle of reflection in every man, which distinguishes between the internal principles of his heart as well as his external actions, which passes judgment upon himself and them, etc.’); cf. Fifteen Sermons, pp. 35-36. Wesley had also read Jean La Placette’s Divers traités sur des matières de conscience… (1647) or, more likely, Basil Kennett’s translation, The Christian Casuist; or, a Treatise of Conscience (1705). Besides these there were similar discussions of conscience in Henry Hammond, Robert South, and in Wesley’s grandfather Samuel Annesley’s sermon in The Morning Exercise at Cripplegate (1661). In his own later sermon (No. 105) ‘On Conscience’ (1788), Wesley will cite La Placette approvingly and will actually quote from Annesley’s sermon extensively.

In Chambers’s Cyclopaedia—one of Wesley’s favourite reference books—a similar definition appears: ‘a secret testimony or judgment of the soul where it gives its approbation to things it does that are good and reproaches itself for those that are evil’. Thus, early and late, the same basic notion appears, always with more obvious Anglican nuances than in any of the Lutheran or Reformed discussions of ‘conscience’.

44. God has made us thinking beings, capable of perceiving what is present, and of reflecting or looking back on what is past. In particular we are capable of perceiving whatsoever passes in our own hearts or lives; of knowing whatsoever we feel or do; and that either while it passes, or when it is past. This we mean when we say man is a ‘conscious’ being: he hath a ‘consciousness’ or inward perception both of things present and past relating to himself, of his own tempers and outward behaviour. But what we usually term ‘conscience’ implies somewhat more than this. It is not barely the knowledge of our present, or the remembrance of our preceding life. To remember, to bear witness either of past or 302present things is only one, and the least, office of conscience. Its main business is to excuse or accuse, to approve or disapprove, to acquit or condemn.

55. Some late writers indeed have given a new name to this, and have chose to style it a ‘moral sense’.

The earliest of these was Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (cf. DNB) The phrase occurs in his Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit (1699), I.iii.1. Another ‘late writer’ was Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), professor of philosophy at Glasgow, who had expanded and refined Shaftesbury’s ideas. He used the phrase in An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Treatise II, Sect. I.v, viii (see also Sect. IV.), and incorporated it into the title of his Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations Upon the Moral Sense (1726). Especially in his later sermons, Wesley cites Hutcheson’s as a horrible example of an autonomous ethical theory divorced from any theonomous ground. Cf. Nos. 49, ‘The Cure of Evil-speaking’, §4; 90, ‘An Israelite Indeed’, §§1-4; 92, ‘On Zeal’, §2; 105, ‘On Conscience’, I.8-10; 106, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:6’, II.2; 120, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, §18; 128, ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart’, I.2. See also Wesley’s letters to Samuel Furly, Feb. 18, 1756, and Mar. 8, 1757.

But the old word seems preferable to the new, were it only on this account, that it is more common and familiar among men, and therefore easier to be understood. And to Christians it is undeniably preferable on another account also; namely, because it is scriptural; because it is the word which the wisdom of God hath chose to use in the inspired writings.

And according to the meaning wherein it is generally used there, particularly in the epistles of St. Paul, we may understand by conscience a faculty or power, implanted by God in every soul that comes into the world,

The notion of an innate conscience goes back to Plato, and even in Wesley’s lifetime would become the linch-pin of Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy.

of perceiving what is right or wrong in his own heart or life, in his tempers, thoughts, words, and actions.

66. But what is the rule whereby men are to judge of right and wrong; whereby their conscience is to be directed? The rule of heathens (as the Apostle teaches elsewhere) is ‘the law written in their hearts’.

Rom. 2:15.

‘These (saith he) not having the (outward) law, are a law unto themselves: who show the work of the law’, that which the outward law prescribes, ‘written in their heart’ by the finger of God; ‘their conscience also bearing witness’ whether they walk by this rule or not; ‘and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, or even excusing’, acquitting, defending them (ἢ καὶ ἀπολογουμένων).

Rom. 2:14-15.

But the Christian rule of right and wrong is the Word of 303God, the writings of the Old and New Testament: all which the prophets and ‘holy men of old’ wrote ‘as they were moved by the Holy Ghost’;

Cf. 2 Pet. 1:21.

‘all’ that ‘Scripture’ which was ‘given by inspiration of God’, and which is indeed ‘profitable for doctrine’, or teaching the whole will of God; ‘for reproof’ of what is contrary thereto; ‘for correction’ of error; and ‘for instruction (or training us up) in righteousness’.

2 Tim. 3:16.

This ‘is a lantern unto a’ Christian’s ‘feet, and a light in all his paths’.

Ps. 119:105 (cf. BCP).

This alone he receives as his rule of right or wrong, of whatever is really good or evil. He esteems nothing good but what is here enjoined, either directly or by plain consequence. He accounts nothing evil but what is here forbidden, either in terms or by undeniable inference. Whatever the Scripture neither forbids nor enjoins (either directly or by plain consequence) he believes to be of an indifferent nature, to be in itself neither good nor evil: this being the whole and sole outward rule whereby his conscience is to be directed in all things.

Here Wesley passes summary judgment on an ancient and vexed question of the dividing line between essentials and adiaphora (things indifferent); he favours the Melanchthonian tendency to allow a wide latitude in open questions not expressly settled by scriptural injunctions or prohibitions. Lutheran orthodoxy had tended to hold, with Flaccius Illyricus, that ‘nothing is indifferent (ἀδιάφορον) in matters of confession and [potential] abuse (in casu confessionalis et scandali)’; cf. Seeberg, History of Doctrines, II.364. Reformed theologians took a more flexible position on this point (cf. Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 688); Wesley carried this view much further.

77. And if it be directed thereby in fact, then hath he ‘the answer of a good conscience toward God’.

1 Pet. 3:21.

A ‘good conscience’ is what is elsewhere termed by the Apostle a ‘conscience void of offence’.

Acts 24:16.

So what he at one time expresses thus, ‘I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day,’

Acts 23:1.

he denotes at another by that expression, ‘Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward man.’

Acts 24:16.

Now in order to this there is absolutely required, first, a right understanding of the Word of God; of his ‘holy and acceptable and perfect will’

Cf. Rom 12:1, 2.

concerning us, as it is revealed therein. For it is impossible we should walk by a rule if we do not 304know what it means. There is, secondly, required (which how few have attained!) a true knowledge of ourselves; a knowledge both of our hearts and lives, of our inward tempers and outward conversation: seeing, if we know them not, it is not possible that we should compare them with our rule. There is required, thirdly, an agreement of our hearts and lives, of our tempers and conversation, of our thoughts and words and works with that rule, with the written Word of God. For without this, if we have any conscience at all, it can be only an evil conscience. There is, fourthly, required an inward perception of this agreement with our rule. And this habitual perception, this inward consciousness itself, is properly a ‘good conscience’; or (in the other phrase of the Apostle) ‘A conscience void of offence toward God and toward man’.

88. But whoever desires to have a conscience thus void of offence, let him see that he lay the right foundation. Let him remember, ‘Other foundation’ of this ‘can no man lay than that which is laid, even Jesus Christ.’

Cf. 1 Cor. 3:11.

And let him also be mindful that no man buildeth on him but by a living faith, that no man is a partaker of Christ until he can clearly testify, ‘The life which I now live…I live by faith in the Son of God,’ in him who is now revealed in my heart, ‘who loved me, and gave himself for me’.

Gal. 2:20; this is the direct witness of the Spirit so strongly stressed in the previous discourses.

Faith alone is that evidence, that conviction, that demonstration of things invisible, whereby the eyes of our understanding being opened, and divine light poured in upon them,

Cf. Nos. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Steepest’, I.11 and n.; and 10,‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’, I.12 and n.

we ‘see the wondrous things of’ God’s ‘law’,

Ps. 119:18 (BCP).

the excellency and purity of it; the height and depth and length and breadth thereof,

Cf. Eph. 3:18.

and of every commandment contained therein. It is by faith that beholding ‘the light of…the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’

2 Cor. 4:6.

we perceive, as in a glass, all that is in ourselves, yea, the inmost motions of our souls. And by this alone can that blessed love of God be ‘shed abroad in our hearts’,

Rom. 5:5.

which enables us so to love one another as Christ loved us. By this is that gracious promise fulfilled unto all the Israel of God, ‘I will put my laws into 305their minds, and write (or engrave) them in their hearts;’

Heb. 8:10 [citing Jer. 31:33].

hereby producing in their souls an entire agreement with his holy and perfect law, and ‘bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ’.

2 Cor. 10:5.

And as an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit, so a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit.

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

As the heart therefore of a believer, so likewise his life is throughly conformed to the rule of God’s commandments. In a consciousness whereof he can give glory to God, and say with the Apostle, ‘This is our rejoicing, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world.’

99. ‘We have had our conversation.’ The Apostle in the original expresses this by one single word (ἀνεστράφημεν).

From ἀναστρέφειν, ἀναστρεφή, colloquial terms common in the papyri and signifying ‘conduct’ or ‘lifestyle’, usually with a qualifying adjective; cf. Arndt and Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon. Cf. also Johnson’s definition of ‘conversation’ (No. 4): ‘Behaviour; manner of acting in common life.’

But the meaning thereof is exceeding broad, taking in our whole deportment, yea, every inward as well as outward circumstance, whether relating to our soul or body. It includes every motion of our heart, of our tongue, of our hands and bodily members. It extends to all our actions and words; to the employment of all our powers and faculties; to the manner of using every talent we have received, with respect either to God or man.

1010. ‘We have had our conversation in the world;’ even in the world of the ungodly: not only among the children of God—that were, comparatively, a little thing—but among the children of the devil,

1 John 3:10.

among those that ‘lie in wickedness’, ἐν τῷ πονηρῷ,

Cf. 1 John 5:19.

‘in the wicked one’.

1 John 3:12 (ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ). Cf. also ‘The Epistle of Barnabas’, II.10, XXI.3, in The Apostolic Fathers, Loeb, 24:346, 408. See also Nos. 23, ‘Sermon on the Mount, III’, I.9; 26, ‘Sermon on the Mount, VI’, III.15; and 38, ‘A Caution against Bigotry’, I.1.

What a world is this! How throughly impregnated with the spirit it continually breathes! As our God is good and doth good, so the god of this world and all his children are evil, and do evil (so far as they are suffered) to all the children of God. Like their father they are always lying in wait, or ‘walking 306about, seeking whom they may devour’;

Cf. 1 Pet. 5:8.

using fraud or force, secret wiles or open violence, to destroy those who are not of the world; continually warring against our souls, and by old or new weapons and devices of every kind, labouring to bring them back into the snare of the devil,

1 Tim. 3:7; 2 Tim. 2:26. Wesley’s view of ‘the world’ and its control is double-sided. When pointing to ‘the mystery of iniquity’, his view is satanocratic (under the dominion of Satan, or the devil—usually personified), as here and in Nos. 23, ‘Sermon on the Mount, III’, III.4; 72, ‘Of Evil Angels’, II.1; 129, ‘Heavenly Treasure in Earthen Vessels’, §2; 133, ‘Death and Deliverance’, §2; 138A, ‘On Dissimulation’, §11; see also No. 42, ‘Satan’s Devices’. But in his notions of creation, history, Providence, good angels, and eschatology, Wesley stresses the goodness of creation, the Lordship of Christ, the dominion of Providence. The result is an interesting dialectic between dualism and theomonism.

into the broad road that leadeth to destruction.

See Matt. 7:13.

1111. ‘We have had our whole conversation in such a world, in simplicity and godly sincerity.’ First, ‘in simplicity’.

The Erasmian text here reads ἁπλότητι (‘simplicity’); Wesley could hardly have known that better manuscripts read ἁγιότητι (‘holiness’), so that now ἅγιότητι is the preferred reading in D. Eberhard Nestle, ed., Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine (Stuttgart, 1932), and other modern texts. In any case, ‘simplicity’, ‘sincerity’, ‘a single eye’, are familiar terms in Wesley’s lexicon; cf. Nos. 18, ‘The Marks of the New Birth’, II.2; 19, ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God’, II.10; 30, ‘Sermon on the Mount, X’, §9; 79, ‘On Dissipation’, §17; 90, ‘An Israelite Indeed’, II.9; 95, ‘On the Education of Children’, §10; and 125, ‘On a Single Eye’, §1. [More recent editions of the authoritative Nestle text have returned to ἁπλότητι as the preferred reading, agreeing with Wesley.]

This is what our Lord recommends under the name of a ‘single eye’. ‘The light of the body (saith he) is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.’

Matt. 6:22; cf. Luke 11:34.

The meaning whereof is this: what the eye is to the body, that the intention is to all the words and actions.

Wesley’s sources for this general notion would go back to Macarius, Homily IV, in Spiritual Homilies (1721), pp. 118-19, and would have included John Flavel, ‘Touchstone of Sincerity: or, the Signs of Grace, and the Symptoms of Hypocrisy’, ch. ii, §III (Works, II.451), and Poole’s Annotations on Luke 11:36: ‘What the eye is to the body, that the soul, the mind, and affections are to the whole man. Now look, as the eye is the organ by which light is received to guide a man’s steps, so that if that be perfect without any mixture of ill humours, etc., the body from it takes a full and right direction how to move and act. But if that be vitiated by ill humours, the man knows not how to direct his bodily steps. So if a man’s soul (which answereth the bodily eye) more especially a man’s understanding, or judgment be darkened, perverted, prejudiced, or his affections be debauched or depraved, he will not know how to move one step right in his duty; but if his understanding have a right notion of truths, he judgeth aright concerning the things and ways of God, and his affections be not depraved, then the whole man will be in a capacity to receive the light, the revelations of truth, as they shall be communicated to him, even as he who hath a perfect eye receiveth, and is able to make use of the bright shining of a candle.’ This is strikingly similar to Wesley’s general theory of illumination; cf. No. 10, ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’, I.12 and n.

If therefore this eye of thy soul be 307single, all thy actions and conversation shall be ‘full of light’, of the light of heaven, of love and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.

Rom. 14:17; cf. Gal. 5:22.

We are then simple of heart when the eye of our mind is singly fixed on God; when in all things we aim at God alone, as our God, our portion, our strength, our happiness, our exceeding great reward,

Gen. 15:1.

our all in time and eternity. This is simplicity: when a steady view, a single intention of promoting his glory, of doing and suffering his blessed will, runs through our whole soul, fills all our heart, and is the constant spring of all our thoughts, desires, and purposes.

1212. ‘We have had our conversation in the world’, secondly, ‘in godly sincerity.’

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

The difference between simplicity and sincerity seems to be chiefly this: simplicity regards the intention itself, sincerity the execution of it. And this sincerity relates not barely to our words, but to our whole conversation, as described above. It is not here to be understood in that narrow sense wherein St. Paul himself sometimes uses it, for speaking the truth, or abstaining from guile, from craft and dissimulation, but in a more extensive meaning, as actually hitting the mark which we aim at by simplicity. Accordingly it implies in this place that we do in fact speak and do all to the glory of God;

1 Cor. 10:31.

that all our words are not only pointed at this, but actually conducive thereto; that all our actions flow on in an even stream, uniformly subservient to this great end; and that in our whole lives we are moving straight toward God, and that continually—walking steadily on in the highway of holiness, in the paths of justice, mercy, and truth.

See Ps. 89:14 (AV).

1313. This sincerity is termed by the Apostle ‘godly sincerity’, or the sincerity of God (εἰλικρινείᾳ Θεοῦ)

Thus the TR; modern texts read εἰλικρινεία τοῦ Θεοῦ.

to prevent our mistaking or confounding it with the sincerity of the heathens (for they had also a kind of sincerity among them, for which they professed no small veneration); likewise to denote the object and end of this, as of every Christian virtue; seeing whatever does not ultimately tend to God sinks among ‘the beggarly elements of the world’.

Cf. Gal. 4:9.

By styling it ‘the sincerity of God’ he also points out the 308author of it, the ‘Father of lights, from whom every good and perfect gift descendeth’;

Cf. Jas. 1:17.

which is still more clearly declared in the following words, ‘not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God’.

2 Cor. 1:12.

1414. ‘Not with fleshly wisdom’: as if he had said, ‘We cannot thus converse in the world by any natural strength of understanding, neither by any naturally acquired knowledge or wisdom. We cannot gain this simplicity or practise this sincerity by the force either of good sense, good nature, or good breeding. It overshoots all our native courage and resolution, as well as all our precepts of philosophy. The power of custom is not able to train us up to this, nor the most exquisite rules of human education. Neither could I, Paul, ever attain hereto, notwithstanding all the advantages I enjoyed, so long as I was “in the flesh”

Rom. 7:5, etc.

(in my natural state) and pursued it only by “fleshly”, natural, “wisdom”.’

And yet surely, if any man could, Paul himself might have attained thereto by that wisdom. For we can hardly conceive any who was more highly favoured with all the gifts both of nature and education. Besides his natural abilities, probably not inferior to those of any person then upon the earth, he had all the benefits of learning, studying at the university of Tarsus,

An urbs libera (‘free city’) in the Syrian province of Cilicia. Jews living and educated there were in contact with a vigorous Hellenistic culture, but that there was a ‘university of Tarsus’ was, of course, Wesley’s own ‘modernization’. Cf. below, No. 25, ‘Sermon on the Mount, V’, IV.2.

afterwards ‘brought up at the feet of Gamaliel’,

Cf. Acts 22:3. This was Gamaliel I, ha-Zaken (‘the elder’), a grandson of Hillel and presiding officer of the Sanhedrin. He is credited, in the tradition of Hillel, with many takkanot (normative moral regulations) more tolerant than the rigorist rulings of Shammai. This would accord with his tolerant judgment upon the early Christian movement as reported in Acts 5:34-40. It conflicts with Paul’s claim, emphasized here by Wesley, that he had been ‘brought up at Gamaliel’s feet’, as if that amounted to his belonging ‘to the very straitest sect’ of the Pharisees. Cf. Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971), art. ‘Gamaliel’.

the person of the greatest account both for knowledge and integrity that was then in the whole Jewish nation. And he had all the possible advantages of religious education, being a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, trained up in the very straitest sect or profession, distinguished from all others by a more eminent strictness. And herein he had ‘profited above many others who were his equals in years, being more abundantly zealous’

Cf. Gal. 1:14 (cf. Notes).

of whatever he thought would please 309God, and ‘as touching the righteousness of the law, blameless’.

Cf. Phil. 3:6.

But it could not be that he should hereby attain this simplicity and godly sincerity. It was all but lost labour; in a deep, piercing sense of which he was at length constrained to cry out: ‘The things which were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ…. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.’

Phil. 3:7-8.

1515. It could not be that ever he should attain to this but by the ‘excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord’;

Cf. main text and Phil. 3:8.

or ‘by the grace of God’—another expression of nearly the same import. By ‘the grace of God’ is sometimes to be understood that free love, that unmerited mercy, by which I, a sinner, through the merits of Christ am now reconciled to God. But in this place it rather means that power of God the Holy Ghost which ‘worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure’.

Phil. 2:13. Cf. No. 85, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’.

As soon as ever the grace of God (in the former sense, his pardoning love) is manifested to our soul, the grace of God (in the latter sense, the power of his Spirit) takes place therein. And now we can perform, through God, what to man was impossible. Now we can order our conversation aright. We can do all things in the light and power of that love, through Christ which strengtheneth us.

See Phil. 4:13.

We now have ‘the testimony of our conscience’, which we could never have by fleshly wisdom, ‘that in simplicity and godly sincerity…we have our conversation in the world’.

1616. This is properly the ground of a Christian’s joy. We may now therefore readily conceive how he that hath this testimony in himself ‘rejoiceth evermore’.

Cf. 1 Thess. 5:16.

‘“My soul” (may he say) “doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoiceth in God my Saviour.”

Cf. Luke 1:46-47.

I rejoice in him who, of his own unmerited love, of his own free and tender mercy, “hath called me into this state of salvation”

Cf. BCP, Catechism.

wherein through his power I now stand. I rejoice because his Spirit beareth witness to my spirit

See Rom. 8:16.

that I am bought with the blood of the Lamb,

Rev. 7:14; 12:11.

and that believing in him, “I am a member of 310Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.”

A composite paraphrase of 1 Cor. 6:15; Rom. 8:16, 17; and Jas. 2:5.

I rejoice because the sense of God’s love to me hath by the same Spirit wrought in me to love him, and to love for his sake every child of man, every soul that he hath made. I rejoice because he gives me to feel in myself “the mind that was in Christ”:

Cf. Phil. 2:5.

simplicity, a single eye to him in every motion of my heart; power always to fix the loving eye of my soul on him who “loved me, and gave himself for me”,

Gal. 2:20.

to aim at him alone, at his glorious will, in all I think or speak or do; purity, desiring nothing more but God, “crucifying the flesh with its affections and lusts”,

Cf. Gal. 5:24.

“setting my affections on things above, not on things of the earth”;

Cf. Col. 3:2.

holiness, a recovery of the image of God,

Gen. 1:27; 9:6. Cf. No. 44, Original Sin, III.5 and n.

a renewal of soul after his likeness; and godly sincerity, directing all my words and works so as to conduce to his glory. In this I likewise rejoice, yea and will rejoice, because my conscience beareth me witness in the Holy Ghost, by the light he continually pours in upon it, that “I walk worthy of the vocation wherewith” I am “called”;

Cf. Eph. 4:1.

that I “abstain from all appearance of evil”,

1 Thess. 5:22.

“fleeing from sin as from the face of a serpent”;

Cf. Ecclus. 21:2.

that as I have opportunity I do all possible good, in every kind, to all men;

See General Rules, §5.

that I follow my Lord in all my steps, and do what is acceptable in his sight. I rejoice because I both see and feel, through the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, that all my works are wrought in him, yea, and that it is he who worketh all my works in me. I rejoice in seeing, through the light of God which shines in my heart, that I have power to walk in his ways, and that through his grace I turn not therefrom, to the right hand or to the left.’

Cf. Josh. 23:6.

1717. Such is the ground and the nature of that joy whereby a Christian rejoiceth evermore. And from all this we may easily infer, first, that this is not a natural joy. It does not arise from any natural cause: not from any sudden flow of spirits. This may give a transient start of joy. But the Christian ‘rejoiceth always’.

Cf. 2 Cor. 6:10.

It cannot be owing to bodily health or ease, to strength and soundness of constitution. For it is equally strong in sickness and pain; yea, perhaps far stronger than before. Many Christians have 311never experienced any joy to be compared with that which then filled their soul, when the body was wellnigh worn out with pain, or consumed away with pining sickness. Least of all can it be ascribed to outward prosperity, to the favour of men, or plenty of worldly goods. For then chiefly when their faith has been tried as with fire, by all manner of outward afflictions, have the children of God rejoiced in him ‘whom unseen they loved’, even ‘with joy unspeakable’.

Cf. 1 Pet. 1:8.

And never surely did men rejoice like those who were used as ‘the filth and offscouring of the world’;

Cf. 1 Cor. 4:13.

who wandered to and fro, being in want of all things, in hunger, in cold, in nakedness; who ‘had trials’, not only ‘of cruel mockings’, but ‘moreover of bonds and imprisonments’;

Cf. Heb. 11:36.

yea, who at last ‘counted not their lives dear unto themselves, so they might finish their course with joy’.

Cf. Acts 20:24.

1818. From the preceding considerations we may, secondly, infer that the joy of a Christian does not arise from any blindness of conscience, from his not being able to discern good from evil. So far from it that he was an utter stranger to this joy till the eyes of his understanding were opened,

See Eph. 1:18.

that he knew it not until he had spiritual senses, fitted to discern spiritual good and evil.

See Heb. 5:14; cf. No. 10, ‘The Witness of the Spirit, I’, I.12 and n.

And now the eye of his soul waxeth not dim. He was never so sharpsighted before. He has so quick a perception of the smallest things as is quite amazing to the natural man. As a mote is visible in the sunbeam, so to him who is walking in the light, in the beams of the uncreated sun, every mote of sin is visible.

Direct divine illumination; cf. §8 above.

Nor does he close the eyes of his conscience any more. That sleep is departed from him. His soul is always broad awake: no more slumber or folding of the hands in rest!

See Prov. 6:10; 24:33. See also No. 113, The Late Work of God in North America, II.12.

He is always standing on the tower, and hearkening what his Lord will say concerning him;

See Isa. 21:8; 37:22. See also 2 Kgs. 19:21; 1 Chr. 17:23.

and always rejoicing in this very thing, in ‘seeing him that is invisible’.

Heb. 11:27.

1919. Neither does the joy of a Christian arise, thirdly, from any dullness or callousness of conscience. A kind of joy, it is true, may arise from this in those whose ‘foolish hearts are darkened’;

Cf. Rom. 1:21.

whose 312heart is callous, unfeeling, dull of sense, and consequently without spiritual understanding. Because of their senseless, unfeeling hearts, they may rejoice even in committing sin; and this they may probably call ‘liberty’! Which is indeed mere drunkenness of soul; a fatal numbness of spirit, the stupid insensibility of a seared conscience.

See 1 Tim. 4:2; cf. Nos. 49, ‘The Cure of Evil-speaking’, I.6; 85, ‘On Working Out Our Own Salvation’, III.4; and 149, ‘On Love’, III.5.

On the contrary, a Christian has the most exquisite sensibility, such as he would not have conceived before. He never had such a tenderness of conscience as he has had since the love of God has reigned in his heart. And this also is his glory and joy, that God hath heard his daily prayer:

O that my tender soul might fly

The first abhorred approach of ill:

Quick as the apple of an eye

The slightest touch of sin to feel.

‘Watch in All Things’, st. 10, in Hymns and Sacred Poems (1742), p. 218 (Poet. Wks., II.273). Cf. also No. 105, ‘On Conscience’, I.15. For other quotations from this same hymn, cf. Nos. 95, ‘On the Education of Children’, §18; 106, ‘On Faith, Heb. 11:6’, II.4; and 126, ‘On Worldly Folly’, II.2.

2020. To conclude. Christian joy is joy in obedience—joy in loving God and keeping his commandments. And yet not in keeping them as if we were thereby to fulfil the terms of the covenant of works;

Cf. No. 6, ‘The Righteousness of Faith’, §1 and n.

as if by any works or righteousness of ours we were to procure pardon and acceptance with God. Not so: we are already pardoned and accepted through the mercy of God in Christ Jesus—not as if we were by our own obedience to procure life, life from the death of sin. This also we have already through the grace of God. ‘Us hath he quickened, who were dead in sin.’

Cf. Eph. 2:1.

And now we are ‘alive to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord’.

Rom. 6:11.

But we rejoice in walking according to the covenant of grace, in holy love and happy obedience. We rejoice in knowing that ‘being justified through his grace’,

Cf. Rom. 3:24; Titus 3:7.

we have ‘not received that grace of God in vain’;

Cf. 2 Cor. 6:1.

that God having freely (not for the sake of our willing or running, but through the blood of the Lamb) reconciled us to himself, we run in the strength which he hath given us the way of his commandments.

See Ps. 119:32.

He hath ‘girded us with strength 313unto the war’,

Cf. Ps. 18:39; 2 Sam. 22:40.

and we gladly ‘fight the good fight of faith’.

1 Tim. 6:12.

We rejoice, through him who liveth in our hearts by faith, to ‘lay hold of eternal life’.

Ibid.

This is our rejoicing; that as our ‘Father worketh hitherto’,

John 5:17.

so (not by our own might or wisdom, but through the power of his Spirit freely given in Christ Jesus) we also work the works of God.

John 6:28.

And may he work in us whatsoever is well-pleasing in his sight,

Heb. 13:21.

to whom be the praise for ever and ever!

See 1 Pet 4:11. For Wesley’s use of ascriptions, cf. No. 1, Salvation by Faith, III.9 and n.

How to Cite This Entry

, “” in , last modified February 24, 2024, https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon012.

Bibliography:

, “.” In , edited by . , 2024. Entry published February 24, 2024. https://wesleyworks.ecdsdev.org/sermons/Sermon012.

About this Entry

Entry Title: Sermon 12: The Witness of Our Own Spirit

Copyright and License for Reuse

Show full citation information...