Wesley’s Four Spiritual Laws
John Wesley by Nathaniel Hone
“Have you heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?” Millions of Christians are familiar with the simple presentation of the gospel found in the little tract developed by Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright in the late 1950s. Many of those same Christians came to Christ themselves after hearing the good news of God’s “wonderful plan” for their lives couched in four simple statements:
God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for his life.
Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through Him you can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life.
We must place our faith in Jesus Christ as Savior in order to receive the gift of salvation and know God’s wonderful plan for our lives.
I learned to use the “Four Spiritual Laws” as a tool for evangelizing fellow college students in the 1980s when I was in Campus Crusade (now called “Cru”). From knocking on dorm room doors to witnessing to hung-over frat boys and tipsy coeds lounging on Daytona Beach during Spring Break, I must have presented the gospel dozens of times that met with varying degrees of success—success scored by getting the person to pray the sinner’s prayer in the back of the tract.
A few years after graduation, I took a part-time job as youth director at a United Methodist Church where the senior pastor assigned me the task of teaching the confirmation class. I grew up in the seriously Reformed tradition of the Presbyterian Church in America, so I knew little about Methodism and protested my ignorance. The pastor only smiled and said, “You’re a smart guy. You’ll figure it out.”
Smart or not, I began to read Wesleyan theology and discovered there was much more to the gospel and the Christian life than God’s “wonderful plan” for my personal eternal destiny. It’s not that the presentation of the “Four Spiritual Laws” was wrong, but that it didn’t seem to go far enough in expressing the breadth and depth of the gospel as the transforming power of God’s grace not only for me but for the whole world, and not only for the joy of eternity at death but also the joy of salvation in the present. It seemed to me that while the evangelistic strategy of the Four Laws and their Reformed roots was all about getting people into heaven, John Wesley and the Methodists seemed more concerned about getting heaven into people.
Ask your average Methodist to articulate the gospel with that Wesleyan accent, however, and you’re likely to get into some vague discussions about prevenient grace, the “order of salvation,” or even the so-called quadrilateral, or maybe even something about Christian perfection. While the “Four Spiritual Laws” may not be the most comprehensive explanation of the gospel, it’s at least a simple tool that anyone can memorize and write out on a napkin with a faith-curious friend over coffee. Given the disturbing lack of new converts to the faith in many corners of Methodism, we have little room to quibble over the intentional methods used by others to reach people for Christ. As evangelist D.L. Moody once said to those who criticized his strategy: “Frankly, I sometimes do not like my way of doing evangelism. But I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.”
All of this raised a question in my emerging and “strangely warmed” Methodist mind: Is there a shorthand, simple, presentation of the gospel that we Wesleyans could adopt that would be true to our comprehensive understanding of salvation while making it easy enough to memorize or write up on a used coffee sleeve? Might we have our own version of “The Four Spiritual Laws” that we could teach to people and invite them to use in conversations with friends, talking about Jesus and our response to him with a Wesleyan accent?
For a couple of years now I’ve been doing a deep dive into Wesley’s sermons and works, even hosting a podcast (Wednesdays with Wesley) as a way of promoting that treasure trove of theological and practical wisdom among those pastors and laity who are leading the way for the new Methodism. In doing research for an episode on the Wesleyan understanding of the gospel, I discovered a letter that John Wesley wrote to London banker and Methodist benefactor Ebenezer Blackwell on December 20, 1751—a letter important enough to Wesley himself that he published it in The Arminian Magazine in 1779 under the title, “A Letter on Preaching Christ.” Wesley scholars point to this letter as a concise and yet comprehensive treatise on the content of early Methodist evangelistic preaching. What I found most compelling within the letter, however, is Wesley’s own version of the “Four Spiritual Laws” articulated in four simple statements that express the fullness of the good news about Jesus Christ and the need for human beings to respond not only with acceptance but joyful obedience. It’s a message with an eye on this life as well as on eternity.
Responding to Blackwell about the content of Methodist evangelistic preaching, Wesley wrote that he and his preachers offered a mix of gospel and law:
I mean by preaching the Gospel, preaching the love of God to sinners, preaching the life, death, resurrection, and intercession of Christ, with all the blessings which, in consequence thereof, are freely given to true believers.
By preaching the law, I mean, explaining and enforcing the commands of Christ, briefly comprised in the Sermon on the Mount.
Wesley argued that this Methodist model of evangelism not only “begets faith” but also “sustains and increases spiritual life in true believers.” Mixing gospel and law convicts people of their sin and their need for salvation but also gives them the pathway to follow in being shaped to live in the image of Christ in this life.
Wesley also understood that the gospel is primarily the good news about Jesus Christ, and not only the good news about his death on our behalf but also the good news of his resurrection and ascension. In some evangelical theological constructs, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus receive less emphasis, acting as helpful add-ons that supplement and support the centrality of the cross. Wesley, on the other hand, saw each of these key aspects of Christ’s work as essentials in his evangelistic preaching, believing that they model the pattern for the new life in Christ that God meant for us to live.
At the end of the letter, Wesley summarizes this evangelistic plan upon which “all Methodists first set out” in these four short statements that sound much like his own four spiritual laws:
God loves you; therefore, love and obey him. Christ died for you; therefore, die to sin. Christ is risen; therefore, rise in the image of God. Christ liveth evermore; therefore live to God until you live with him in glory.
A look at each of these statements in turn reveals the sweep of the Wesleyan message in a relatable form.
“God loves you; therefore, love and obey him.”
Wesley’s evangelistic message begins with God’s love, as does the “Four Spiritual Laws.” Our response to that love, however, isn’t mere acceptance but rather love of God demonstrated in obedience and adherence to God’s own design for our lives. Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15, NIV). Love of God and neighbor is the greatest commandment, meaning that the love with which we respond to God is, in Wesley’s words, “love ruling the whole life, animating all our tempers and passions, directing all our thoughts, words, and actions” (Sermon 84: “The Important Question”). We might say that God’s love language is obedience!
“Christ died for you; therefore, die to sin.”
Many models of evangelism rightly stress a theology of atonement, revealing that Christ died to remove the guilt and penalty of sin that prevents us from experiencing abundant, eternal life. But the Wesleyan theology of the cross also stresses that justification releases us from the power of sin as well as the guilt. “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11, NIV). The good news is that we are not only free from sin and death for the next life, but that we can be free of slavery to sin right now!
“Christ is risen; therefore, rise in the image of God.”
While some evangelistic models focus on believers rising at death for a trip to heaven, the Wesleyan view is that we can be raised to new life in the present. The goal of life, or the “one thing needful” in Wesley’s own phrase in the sermon by that name, is to be renewed in the image of God for which God created us. This is the aim of sanctification and Christian perfection, to be raised with Christ so that we may become more and more like him each day.
“Christ liveth evermore; therefore, live to God until you live with Him in glory.”
Our lives have meaning and purpose in Christ. In a narcissistic culture of expressive individualism, Wesley’s fourth spiritual law reminds us that Christ didn’t merely come to save us individually from sin and death but also for the abundant life of the Kingdom of God that is breaking into the present world and that is lived out in the community of faith. Our identity isn’t something we manufacture or curate for others or for our social media accounts; it’s found in living fully in God’s will for us and for his creation. Our “chief end,” as the Westminster catechism says, is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Wesley’s evangelistic message encompasses both glorifying God with our lives in the present and enjoying God forever when we “live with Him in glory.”
This four-fold expression of Wesley’s evangelistic message, in his own words, provides the kind of simple tool that can be effective in sharing both the gospel and the law with others. In fact, we might want to start by sharing it with those within our churches as a way of teaching them the basics of the Wesleyan message in a form that can be easily memorized. It could even be a more accurate form of quadrilateral for the new Methodist movement, focusing as it does on Wesley’s theological content rather than on a theological method. Methodists argued for too long about the method and now it’s essential to get back to the message!
Of course, any shorthand version of the gospel is bound to be incomplete in some way and leave us wanting more. It’s worth noting, though, that Wesley was satisfied enough with this four-fold description of the Methodist evangelistic message that he told Blackwell, “This is the Scriptural way, the Methodist way, the true way. God grant that we may never turn therefrom, to the right hand or to the left!”
If Methodism is to thrive or even survive in an increasingly secular age it will need to re-engage evangelism. People need to hear the gospel message in ways that are both fresh and faithful. John Wesley’s evangelistic message had great cultural impact because it not only told people the good news but also what they could do with it. Whatever tool or method we use, let us not fail to offer them Christ!
Bob Kaylor is Pastor of Tri-Lakes United Methodist Church in Monument, Colorado, and a member of the Global Council of the Wesleyan Covenant Association.