NOTE: This article was written from the perspective of students from the Theology of John Wesley class in the hope of combining personal testimony and Wesleyan theology to better overall campus understanding.
In Wesleyan circles, a common topic discussed is grace and its three forms: prevenient, justified and sanctified. The best way to differentiate between the three is to imagine one of us in a house.
I hesitated to leave the yard when I stood on the creaky steps. The yard gave me room to run and do what I wanted, leaving me unaware that I was dancing in a broken world with a broken image of love. I ignored the voice calling me from the house, or the front porch, for a very long time. The yard felt like a dense forest, shame and heartbreak towering over me. It took the comforting words and tender actions of my church, teammates, parents and friends for me to limp back to the porch of that house, otherwise known as prevenient grace.
Writer Kenneth L. Carder describes prevenient grace as something present in all creation, from “the relationships and heritage into which we are born” to pangs of guilt like what I experienced when I stepped onto the porch. It’s a grace that “goes before,” testifying that it is God pursuing us because John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, says it opens the will of sinners so that everyone can freely choose or not choose to trust in Jesus Christ for salvation.
Notice the lack of exclusivity.
Dr. Brian Shelton, an Asbury theology professor and the author of “Prevenient Grace: God’s Provision for Fallen Humanity,” said the Bible discusses how the light of Christ is extended to all people in John 1:9, depicting spiritual blindness in its context.
“There is neither denial of human hard-heartedness nor denial that some become children of light,” Shelton said in a 2015 interview with Fred Zaspel. “There is no doubt that Jesus’ light illumines the human heart and that believers become children of God as part of a process of revelation. There is no doubt that part of the tragedy of the passage is that Christ came to His own, but because of sin, His own failed to acknowledge Him.”
I remember being on the porch, having failed to acknowledge God. Without His gift of prevenient grace, I never would’ve been able to go deeper in my walk with Him or have a moment of surrender where I told God, “Whatever You want with this life, it’s Yours.”
God didn’t take that moment of surrender lightly. Once I was on the porch, the next step was to go through the doorway, otherwise known as justifying grace.
Carder said it is leaving behind what we were, broken and full of sin, into the house of salvation.
“Justifying grace is the assurance of forgiveness that comes from repentance, from turning toward God’s gracious gift of new life,” he said. “It is being reconciled and realigned with God and the acceptance of God’s atoning act in Jesus Christ.”
Reconciling with God was Him actively stepping into my life, and healing parts of me that I didn’t even realize were broken or damaged. For the longest time, I wrestled a call into ministry. When I finally accepted the call and the new rhythm God had planned for my life, I felt like Wesley during his Aldersgate experience with the Holy Spirit. My heart was “strangely warmed.” My eyes were suddenly open to God’s holy love, just as in his sermon “The New Birth,” when Wesley describes justifying grace with Ephesians 1:18 as “eyes of your understanding being enlightened.”
Dr. Kenneth Collins, a well-known Wesley scholar, affirmed in his book “The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace” that this grace of justification “restores the sinner to a right relationship with God,” which no longer contains alienation and fear. Therefore, justifying grace frees a believer from fear of the wrath of God, heals their soul, and revives the spiritual senses that see the God of love.
I was home, and this time for good. I will not leave that house, no matter how hard the temptation is. Exploring the inside rooms is what I would rather do and is how I try to shape my life now, even though I can simultaneously acknowledge that I have a long way to go.
The apostle Peter advises, in this case, Wesley once again quotes in “The New Birth” sermon, to never stop growing “in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).
It’s the next step. Growing deeper in my relationship with God as a continual process of being made perfect in love is the third type of grace, otherwise called sanctifying grace. Piece by piece and day by day, it removes the desire to sin and overall frees them from inbred or original sin as one commits to changes that make them more like Christ, according to Wesleyan theology.
But how do we live out a grace-filled life?
Wesley commented on many sacraments that act as means of grace to aid this goal, such as baptism being a moment for the Holy Spirit to impart prevenient grace, communion, preaching and altar calls.
At the same time, in the Methodist church, he voiced the importance of believers banding together through having regular group meetings with strict requirements. In Wesley’s mind, a band would be similar to a discipleship group or small group in our Christian circles and be made up of four to six people, while a class would be a larger gathering with a more diverse audience of 10-12 people.
Rev. Dr. S. K. Daniel, a former member of the Discipleship Ministries in the UMC, said real change occurs when people come together in small fellowships to pray, study Scripture, bear burdens and care for each other.
“This growth then leads them to speak the truth in love and to grow into the likeness of Jesus Christ,” he said. “God’s redemptive action takes place in people’s hearts.”
Once this happens in our own lives, through various means, we should feel motivated by God’s holy love to bring that grace to “the other:” the poor, oppressed and unseen.
Asbury is a small, tight-knit community, but there are still people who don’t know God. They’re wandering the yard like I did, unaware that there is someone out there who has a welcoming home that can bring them healing and protection. We could act ignorant, closing the door and focusing on ourselves. Wesley seems to challenge us against this. I think we completely misunderstand God’s true nature at that point. He is filled with holy love and means of grace; He extended His hand.
Will we do the same?
