Sin is Not Just Sin: John Wesley’s Deeper Doctrine of the Enemy Within

Photo by Jen Margis

The Problem with a Slogan

Wesleyans sometimes try to settle difficult questions with easy slogans. One of the most familiar is, “Sin is sin.” I have heard this line in churches, classrooms, and casual conversation. It has a certain force, and it is not entirely wrong. Every sin matters because every sin violates the love of God and neighbor. No sin is harmless simply because it seems small.

But as an account of Christian discipleship, the slogan is much too blunt. Do we really mean that adultery is the same thing as a white lie? That a deliberate betrayal is the same as a careless word? That a malicious act is the same as insincerely flattering a friend? Surely not. Sins differ in knowledge, intention, gravity, consequence, and depth. More importantly, beneath the sins we commit lies something deeper still: sin as an inward condition of the heart, a deeply rooted corruption that must be healed by grace.

This is where John Wesley can help us. Wesley’s doctrine of sin is far more careful, more pastoral, and more searching than many contemporary Wesleyans realize. He does not merely ask whether a person has committed particular sins. He also asks what kind of spiritual corruption remains within the heart, even within the heart of a true believer. That second question is often neglected, but it is essential to Wesley’s rich understanding of salvation.

Sin Properly and Improperly So Called

Part of the difficulty begins with the way Wesley’s writings are quoted. Many Wesleyans know his famous definition of sin, even if they cannot recall exactly where it comes from. In a 1772 letter to Mrs. Bennis, Wesley writes, “Nothing is sin, strictly speaking, but a voluntary transgression of a known law of God. Therefore every voluntary breach of the law of love is sin; and nothing else, if we speak properly.”

This definition is important, but it is not the whole of Wesley’s doctrine. It tells us what sin is “strictly speaking” or “properly speaking”: a willful violation of a known law of God. In other words, sin in the proper sense involves knowledge and consent. It is not merely a mistake. It is not merely ignorance. It is not every wandering thought or every involuntary defect. It is a voluntary breach of the law of love.

Yet Wesley also recognizes another way of speaking about sin. There are violations of God’s law that are not willful. There are infirmities, defects, mistakes, and forgetful intervals—even the whole matter of ignorance. These may fall short of the full glory of God’s law, and in that broader sense, they may be called sin “improperly speaking.” But Wesley refuses to confuse such involuntary defects with willful rebellion. To do so would burden tender consciences and obscure the freedom promised in the gospel. The liberty of First John is real, not contrived. 

Why the Distinction Matters

This distinction helps explain why Wesleyans and Calvinists have often talked past one another. A Calvinist hears a Wesleyan testify to being delivered from the power or dominion of sin and wonders, “Who could possibly be so free?” If sin means any violation of God’s law, whether voluntary or involuntary, then freedom from sin sounds impossible in this life. Who is free from every defect, every mistake, every infirmity?

But Wesley means something more specific when he speaks of freedom from sin in the life of the born-again believer. He means freedom from the reigning power of actual sins, from willful rebellion, from voluntary violations of the known law of God. This is why Wesley’s language resonates so strongly with the liberties of Romans Chapters 6 and 8 and with First John. God’s grace manifested in Jesus Christ does not merely pardon sinners while leaving them in the bondages of which they are ashamed. God’s grace is far more efficacious than that. The new birth brings liberty, real liberty. Indeed, those who are born of God are no longer under the power or dominion of sin. That’s good news indeed!

At the same time, the Reformed concern is not without biblical warrant. The book of Leviticus, for example, takes “unwitting sins” with great seriousness. Human beings can violate God’s holy law without full knowledge or intent. Wesley does not deny this. What he does deny is that every defect or matter of ignorance should be treated as sin in the same sense. Here his pastoral wisdom is important. A Christian doctrine of sin must be serious enough to tell the truth about ongoing human corruption, but careful enough not to ignore or deny the freedom that comes with being a child of God. 

Actual Sins and Inbred Sin

Even this distinction, however, does not exhaust Wesley’s doctrine of sin. Once Wesley’s definition of sin, strictly speaking, has been explained, many assume the topic is finished. It is not. That definition concerns actual sins: the sins we commit in thought, word, and deed; sins of omission and commission; inward and outward acts that violate the known will of God.

But Wesley also speaks of sin in the singular: inbred sin, original sin, the carnal mind, the corruption of nature, the inward bent of the soul away from God. This is not simply another act that needs forgiveness. It is a condition, a state of being, that needs cleansing. It is not merely what we do. It is who we are, even as born-again children of God. Oddly enough, all is not yet well. Indeed, there remains something disordered within the hearts of believers, a deep propensity, active not passive, to depart from the living God.

This difference is crucial, though it is often missed. Actual sins are plural because they are particular acts. They are the kinds of sins that we commit. They can be named, confessed, forgiven, and forsaken. Inbred sin, however, is singular because it refers to the remaining inward corruption from which sinful tempers and desires arise. Wesley identifies this remaining corruption in believers as pride, self-will, unbelief, and every temper contrary to Christ. These are not reigning sins, exercising power or dominion, but they are real enemies within, deeply seated within the heart, a corruption that yet remains—even in a child of God. Therefore, one work of grace is simply not enough. 

The New Birth and Entire Sanctification

This twofold understanding of sin, as act and being, runs through Wesley’s whole account of salvation. Justification and the new birth deal with the guilt and power of actual sins, not inbred sin. For example, in justification God pardons the sinner. In the new birth, God gives new life and breaks sin’s ruling dominion. The believer is no longer a slave to sin. The love of God is shed abroad in the heart, and the Christian is empowered to love God and neighbor in a new way.

Yet Wesley does not conclude that the new birth removes every trace of inward corruption. Sin remains, though it does not reign. The believer is freed from the power of sin, to be sure, but not yet from the being of sin, that is, inbred sin. Wesley’s sermon “On Sin in Believers” is especially important here. In it he insists that real Christians may still experience inward sin: pride, self-will, unbelief, and other tempers contrary to the mind of Christ. This inward corruption does not prove that the believer has never been born of God. It proves that the believer still needs the deeper cleansing of entire sanctification. Redemption is not, after all, accomplished in one grand stroke. 

For Wesley, entire sanctification is the grace by which God cleanses the heart from inbred sin, the carnal nature, and perfects the believer in holy love. It is not merely a stronger form of moral effort. It is not simply a renewed commitment to amend one’s ways. It is the healing of the inward disease, the deliverance from the root of sin, the purification of the heart, that is so clearly needed before one sees Christ face-to-face in glory. Wesley sometimes called this work a “second blessing,” not because it is detached from the rest of salvation, but because it is a further work of grace beyond the new birth.

More Than Behavior Management

This is why Wesley’s doctrine of sin matters so much for ordinary Christian discipleship. If sin is reduced to isolated acts of disobedience, then discipleship becomes little more than behavior management: stop doing bad things, start doing good things, and all will be well. Such counsel may produce outward respectability, but it cannot reach the deeper disease of the heart.

Wesley’s account of sin goes much deeper. It teaches us to distinguish rebellion from depravity, faithlessness from corruption, the reign of sin from the being of sin. It teaches pastors and spiritual guides to counsel wisely. Actual sins, though they are many, can all be forgiven. Inbred sin, however, cannot be forgiven. It must die. The enemy within must be cast out or cleansed away: it has no future in the coming glory. Here Wesley’s doctrine of sin is both serious, precisely on target, and yet hopeful. It is serious because it refuses to flatter the regenerate heart with the bromides that “all is well.” On the contrary, all is not well, not even for a child of God—odd as that may seem. There is, after all, a further call to transformation Wesley calls this “evangelical” repentance, not in terms of actual sins, which have already been forgiven, but in terms of inbred sin that yet remains even in a child of God. Moreover, Wesley’s doctrine of sin is hopeful because it proclaims that Christ saves not only from the guilt of sin, in justification, and the power of sin, in the new birth, but also from the very being of sin in entire sanctification. 

The Gospel According to Wesley’s Doctrine of Sin

Wesley’s careful distinctions are not theological hair-splitting. They protect the shape and liberties of the gospel. If we collapse all sin into one undifferentiated category, we will either make Christian liberty impossible or heart purity unnecessary. Wesley avoids both errors. He insists that the new birth truly frees believers from the dominion of actual sins. He also insists, however, that believers still need the further cleansing grace of entire sanctification for the corruption of the heart that remains even in a child of God.

So the familiar slogan needs correction. Sin is not “just sin” in the sense that all sins are identical, that every shortcoming is willful rebellion, or that actual sins and inbred sin are exactly the same thing. Wesley’s doctrine is far more discriminating than that. It recognizes sins plural and sin singular; voluntary transgressions and ongoing corruption; the guilt of sin, the power of sin, and the being of sin, even a corrupted nature that in the Christian journey can become not only the occasion of temptation but also a serious and ongoing threat to remaining holy. 

This richer account of sin is not merely a matter for specialists. It belongs to the church’s ordinary teaching and preaching. Educated laypeople need it. Pastors need it. Small groups, Sunday school classes, and discipleship ministries need it. Without it, Christians may settle down into a sea of pessimism (“Why am I sorely tempted from within my own heart?”), or into a shallow discipleship that never confronts the reality of inbred sin. 

To be sure, salvation has begun in its freedom and power, especially in terms of the love of God and neighbor, and that is truly glorious. However, redemption is by no means over. And that’s precisely the point. That’s why the quip “sin is sin” will never do. It is too thin for Scripture, too blunt for pastoral care, and too small for Wesley’s (and Scripture’s) larger vision of salvation. Redemption is far greater than some have imagined. And until the church recovers that deeper account, that larger vision, it will settle too easily for forgiven sinners who have not yet learned to hunger for holy love in its fullness and purity, and who have therefore settled down with, and have even accommodated themselves to the lurking enemy within. Such a state of affairs is by no means the will of God for any Christian believer, and John Wesley’s multi-faceted doctrine of sin clearly displays just why this is so.

Kenneth J. Collins is Professor of Historical Theology and Wesley Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, KY, and a member of Firebrand’s editorial board.