Unplugging the Ancient Wells: The Desperate Need for Holiness of Heart and Life

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I have become convinced that the best way to think of John Wesley’s significance is as the spiritual father of the Methodist/Wesleyan tradition.

Thinking of Wesley as the spiritual father of Methodism impacts the way we receive what he left behind for subsequent generations. This is why we are rightly arrested by quotes from Wesley’s pen that name his sense of what God was doing when he raised up the people called Methodists. It is not very often that we are able to hear from someone who experienced a powerful movement of God, who saw God do a new thing in his lifetime that has lasted over generations and spread across the globe. 

John Wesley is one of those people.

There are several places where we need to listen carefully to Wesley himself about what he believed God was doing when he breathed life into Methodism and what it means for those coming after him.

The Grand Depositum 

One such quote comes in a letter John Wesley wrote in the last year of his life: “I am glad brother D—has more light with regard to full sanctification. This doctrine is the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodists; and for the sake of propagating this chiefly He appeared to have raised us up” (Letter to Robert Carr Brackenbury, September 15, 1790, in The Letters of John Wesley, ed. John Telford, 1931, 8:238).

Every time I read this, I find myself sitting up and leaning in. 

Here we have Wesley speaking to another Methodist about his sense of God’s purpose for Methodism.

What does Wesley mean when he says full sanctification is “the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodists; and for the sake of propagating this chiefly He appeared to have raised us up”? 

“Grand depositum” is not a phrase we would use today. It is the least self-evident of all the phrases in this key statement. By grand depositum, Wesley means the major deposit, the thing of greatest significance that God has given to Methodism.

“Lodged” is probably easier to comprehend, it means placed in or given to for safe keeping. 

“Propagating” is another word we don’t see or use much these days. This word means to  spread, pass along, or publicize.

Let me risk putting Wesley’s statement in my own words:

The doctrine of full sanctification is the treasure God has entrusted to Methodism. The Holy Spirit breathed life into the people called Methodists in order that we would preach, teach, and experience full sanctification.

If you don’t like that version, just go back to Wesley’s own 18th century English. I love it!

John Wesley, widely recognized as the primary founder of the Methodist movement, or the theological tradition that bears his name, is telling us what he thinks is the reason for Methodism. And by his account, God raised up Methodism to spread holiness.

Legalism and License 

Holiness impacts our lives in ways that are outwardly visible. There have been times in the history of the Wesleyan theological tradition that there has been an overemphasis on external behavior that veered into legalism. The danger, at least in part, of legalism is that your salvation is contingent on rigid adherence to a particular set of external norms (don’t drink, smoke, or chew, or go with girls who do). As long as you don’t do those things, you are good. If you do them, you will be rejected by the community. At its worst, self-righteousness sets in where people feel superior to others because of their holiness.

This is a real danger that has been experienced by some in the Wesleyan tradition firsthand, but it has not been the primary mistake I have seen Methodists make. The opposite problem has been more frequent in the parts of the church I have been in: a lack of boundaries, clarity, and concern for right living. I have often seen an unwillingness to name activities that are described as sin in scripture clearly named as such by contemporary leaders in the church.

One of the cornerstone passages on entire sanctification gets at this concern:

Finally, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God (as, in fact, you are doing), you should do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication; that each one of you know how to control your own body in holiness and honor, not with lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one wrong or exploit a brother or sister in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, just as we have already told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness. Therefore whoever rejects this rejects not human authority but God, who also gives his Holy Spirit to you (1 Thessalonians 4:1-8, NRSV). 

One key takeaway from this passage is that sanctification is God’s will. God wants us to be holy. Paul then unpacks what he means by this, initially by naming concretely the opposite of holiness. The rest of the passage focuses primarily on fornication, a lack of self-control over one’s own body related to sexual desires.

In contrast to much of what is emphasized by contemporary Christian leaders, when Scripture expresses a positive vision of holiness, it also typically connects it to rejection of lust and fornication. Even the famous Jerusalem Council, which is often used as an example of how the church discerned the Spirit leading in new directions that redefined or reinterpreted previous understandings of holiness, prohibited fornication in its very brief list of essentials: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well” (Acts 15: 28-29 NRSV).

The vision for holiness is not limited to sexuality, but it certainly does not exclude it. And there is a gruesome mountain of evidence that shows that neither license nor legalism are serving the church well or improving its witness.

Sanctified Leadership

The most interesting things I have seen over the past decade in the Wesleyan world in the United States (thank God for what the Spirit is doing outside of the United States and the ways it is being brought to the U.S.!) are connected to a renewed emphasis on the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. As I have learned about charismatic renewal and experienced it in parts of my own tribe, I have been encouraged and strengthened in my own relationship with Jesus.

In the beginnings of the Methodist revival, John Wesley and others were often surprised by the presence and power of God. There were times they did not quite know how to account for the manifestations of the Spirit that occurred in their midst. Wesley’s typical response was to test the fruit. If someone grew in holiness of heart and life after a surprising manifestation of the Spirit, Wesley would express greater openness.

One piece of the gift I believe the Methodist doctrine of full sanctification offers to the body of Christ is that it brings not only freedom from committing outward sin (Wesley actually believed this occurred at justification and the new birth, see 1 John 3:9), but it brings an inner healing so that we have holy tempers and holy affections. We not only abstain from outward sin, we are empowered to genuinely to love what God does. As the Spirit changes us from the inside out, we are able to walk in greater faithfulness and operate in greater giftings. We need leaders whose gifting does not exceed or outpace their character.

We urgently need Spirit-filled leaders for such a time as this. The challenges Christianity faces, particularly in the West, are such that we need a fresh outpouring of the very presence of God. We need intimacy and connection with the Lord, through the Holy Spirit, more than anything else.

Tragically, the church’s witness has been damaged by the litany of scandals and moral failures of its leaders. We also need leaders who have been tried, tested, and refined in the fire, who have developed maturity of character through the Spirit’s work within them, such that they stand firm when they experience temptation and are harassed by the enemy. Put differently, we need leaders whom the Holy Spirit has gifted (1 Corinthians 12:4-11) and in whom the Spirit has produced his fruit (Galatians 5:22-25).

Unplugging the Wells

This, I believe, is the plugged well we are called to unplug. Wesley stated it beautifully in his sermon, “The Scripture Way of Salvation.” He asked, “What is that faith whereby we are sanctified, saved from sin and perfected in love?” This is an important reminder. Sanctification, every step of the way, is by faith in Jesus and not a work that we do for God. Here is Wesley’s answer: “It is a divine evidence and conviction… that God hath promised it in the Holy Scripture…. That what God hath promised he is able to perform…. that he is able and willing to do it now…. To this confidence, that God is both able and willing to sanctify us now, there needs to be added one thing more, a divine evidence and conviction that he doeth it” (III.14-17).

So, should we expect to be perfected in love gradually, or instantaneously? Wesley’s answer to this question will revolutionize your faith if you embrace this as God’s promise for your life:

Perhaps it may be gradually wrought in some… But it is infinitely desirable… that it should be done instantaneously; that the Lord should destroy sin ‘by the breath of his mouth’ in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. And so he generally does, a plain fact of which there is evidence enough to satisfy any unprejudiced person. Thou therefore look for it every moment…. And by this token may you surely know whether you seek it by faith or by works. If by works, you want something to be done first, before you are sanctified. You think, ‘I must first be or do thus or thus.’ Then you are seeking it by works unto this day. If you seek it by faith, you may expect it as you are: and if as you are, then expect it now. It is of importance to observe that there is an inseparable connection between these three points – expect it by faith, expect it as you are, and expect it now!... Christ is ready. And he is all you want. He is waiting for you. He is at the door! (“The Scripture Way of Salvation,” III. 18).

This is a great summary of what the Spirit entrusted to the people called Methodists from their beginning. And this teaching has born fruit not only for those most immediately connected to the Methodist tradition. The Spirit has produced fruit in every part of the body of Christ that has looked for a second work of grace that brings not only forgiveness of sin, but empowerment to live a victorious and Spirit-empowered life through faith in Jesus Christ. 

I am convinced the Lord is raising up a people who will once again press into this simple but bold conviction: “Christ is ready. And he is all you want. He is waiting for you. He is at the door!”

May we experience this as more than an idea, but as the deepest reality in our own lives.

Come Lord Jesus!

Dr. Kevin M. Watson is the Acting Director of the Wesley House of Studies at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, and the Pastor of Discipleship at First Methodist Church, Waco TX. He is a member of Firebrand Magazine’s editorial board.