Jesus: Liberator of the Heart

Charles Wesley

John Wesley

Sermon by John Turner

based on Romans 5:1-11

Our Transformation in Christ

The apostle Paul, in his great Letter to the Romans, says that:
1. since we have been justified by faith in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
2. since we are even now receiving into our hearts the outpouring love of God through the Holy Spirit, and
3. since we are involved in a process of gradual transformation into Christlikeness so that even our sufferings are turned toward good ends,
we may rest assured that we will indeed share the glory of God in a perfected new creation.

Note the process:
1. faith in the saving good news of Jesus Christ, bringing the forgiveness of our sins,
2. receptivity to the Holy Spirit, who enables us to experience our faith in our hearts, and
3. perseverance in the ongoing transformation of our lives, restoring us by degrees to the image of God.

The Moravians: In the Forefront of Evangelical Pietism

This is the precise process rediscovered by the 18th century Moravians under the leadership of Nicholas von Zinzendorf and transferred by them to the Methodists under the leadership of John and Charles Wesley.

First a little bit about the Moravians: The Moravians descend from the religious reform movement of the 14th and 15th century, well before the 16th century Reformation led by Martin Luther. The leader of what became the Moravian movement was a martyr named John Hus in what is now the Czech Republic. Nicholas von Zinzendorf was an 18th century German count who offered sanctuary on his land to Moravian refugees and soon became their spiritual leader The Moravians combined their commitments to (1) their own personal transformation into Christlike people, (2) spiritual renewal in existing churches of all denominations, (3) evangelization of unchurched peoples, and (4) deeds of compassion for the poor. The Moravians emphasized close fellowship among their members and tended to settle in tightly knit communities such as they established in this country at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Although they never became a large church, they made a tremendous impact on the world. They were the catalysts for the Great Awakening, the world evangelization movement, and the stirring of social concern that began in the 18th century. There is hardly an aspect of life that they did not change for the better.

The Wesley Brothers: Unlikely Leaders of a Great Revivial

Now, on to the Wesley brothers: In England in the 1730's, while attending Oxford University, the brothers Charles and John Wesley were deadly earnest about their religion, but their religion was legalistic, demanding, argumentative, and they set off negative reactions in people around them. Although they had some followers during their student days at Oxford, they had more critics by far. They failed miserably on their missionary efforts to the colony of Georgia across the Atlantic. They returned home in deep depression and apparent disgrace. You could hardly have picked anyone less likely to make a positive impact on the world.

But on their crossings of the Atlantic in both directions, while in Georgia, and finally in their return to England, they had encountered Moravian missionaries whose heart-felt religious practices attracted their admiration. They found some Moravians in London with whom they could continue the contact. They soon discovered that the key to the Moravian religious experience was a deep impression of the grace of God offered through Jesus Christ on the cross, an impression enlivened by the work of the Holy Spirit on the heart of the believer. In all their religiosity, the Wesley brothers had not discovered the most basic realities of Christian experience. A person who had undergone such an experience could be transformed, born anew, given a new heart of love, set on a path of gradual perfecting of the heart.

On Pentecost Sunday of 1738 Charles Wesley had such an experience. A few days later, under his influence with the help of the Moravians, John Wesley also had such an experience. Almost overnight, the impact of their ministries changed. Under their leadership, one of the greatest revivals in history began, a revival leading to the renewal and growth of the church in England and America, and to the eventual emergence of the Methodist, holiness, and ultimately Pentecostal churches. Their influence extended beyond those who shared their doctrines. George Whitefield, the greatest preacher of the day on either side of the Atlantic, although he differed in important regards, was deeply dependent on their experiential religion. A couple of generations later, so was Barton Stone, founder of the Christian Churches on the American frontier. Today, more than 270 years after their awakening, the influence of the Wesley brothers remains strong even here in Berryville in churches as divergent as the United Methodist, the Nazarene, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

The heart of the Moravian/Wesleyan revival is as follows:
1. salvation is through Christ's gracious saving work alone,
2. we receive the saving grace by faith alone and not through our own efforts, good deeds, or accomplishments,
3. the evidence and assurance of our salvation comes through the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts,
4. the Holy Spirit enables us to live in community with other believers undertaking missions of love to the whole world.

John Wesley did just that. The churches in England in Wesley’s day were entrapped in elitist formality and dead spirituality. Wesley took his awakened heart out of the church buildings and into the streets, reaching out to the common people that the church had forgotten, the miners, the factory workers, the farm laborers, the domestic servants, the unemployed. The elite detested him for taking the church to the riff-raff, for not making the riff-raff like the church as it existed, and for, to the degree that he did bring the riff-raff to the existing church, for bringing in “people who aren’t like us.” But I have heard the claim that his ministry may have saved England from a violent revolution. His critics should have been thanking him that they did not have to face the guillotine as they might have in neighboring France.

Charles Wesley's Hymns

Although John Wesley was the better known preacher, administrator, theologian, and editor,

Charles Wesley, recorded the main emphases of the Wesleyan movement in the songs he wrote. Whereas Isaac Watts, the father of English hymnody, wrote around 700 hymns, Charles Wesley wrote around 7,000. Even non-Christians recognize “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” and “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” He also wrote all the hymns that we sing today. Many hymnals have more songs by Charles Wesley than by any other writer. Even Baptist hymnal editors, who tend to resist Wesleyan theology, have him right up there with Isaac Watts and Fanny Crosby as the big three of hymnwriters.

What is important today is to see what these hymns say about the new heart that changed Charles and John Wesley. From “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” verse 2, the basic Wesleyan aspiration:

“Breathe, O breathe Thy loving Spirit, into every troubled breast!
Let us all in Thee inherit; let us find that second rest.
Take away our bent to sinning; Alpha and Omega be;
End of faith, as its Beginning, set our hearts at liberty.”

In more detail from “ O for a Heart to Praise My God”:

“O for a heart to praise my God, a heart from sin set free,
A heart that always feels Thy blood so freely shed for me.

A heart resigned, submissive, meek, my great Redeemer’s throne,
Where only Christ is heard to speak, where Jesus reigns alone.

A humble, lowly, contrite, heart, believing, true and clean,
Which neither life nor death can part from Christ who dwells within.

A heart in every thought renewed and full of love divine,
Perfect and right and pure and good, a copy, Lord, of Thine.

My heart, Thou know’st, can never rest till Thou create my peace;
Till of mine Eden repossessed, from self and sin I cease.

Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart; come quickly from above;
Write Thy new name upon my heart, Thy new, best name of Love.”

Charles Wesley wrote his great hymn, “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing," to celebrate the first anniversary of the Pentecost awakening of his heart. The 1989 Methodist hymnal prints 17 verses of it. Permit me to quote three verses that are seldom published today:

“Then with my heart I first believed, believed with faith divine,
Power with the Holy Ghost received to call the Savior mine.

I felt my Lord’s atoning blood close to my soul applied;
Me, me He loved, the Son of God, for me, for me He died!

I found and owned His promise true, ascertained of my part,
My pardon passed in heaven I knew when written on my heart.”

And from “And Can It Be” the results of the process:

“Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray--I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”

Assurance and Empowerment in Spite of...

What both the Apostle Paul and the Wesley brothers would tell us is that we can have assurance of our salvation through the spiritual renewal of our hearts, and that this experience can bring deep peace and satisfaction to our lives and make us effective in joyful service to the Lord.

When we hear of the Wesleys, we usually hear something about their teaching of the possibility of our going on to perfection in this life. Now, I would not fool you. The Wesley brothers alike sought to have their hearts perfected in love, and alike they experienced tremendous transformations. But these changes did not mean that they became easy to get along with.

Take a look at their pictures at the top of this blog. One need only glance at these pictures to know that they would have faced some challenges in getting along with each other: here is elegant Charles and plain John. Even after their parallel transformations, like many brothers before and after, they fought with each other throughout their lives. Their heartwarming experiences made them effective servants of God, but did not remove them from human foibles. Their heartwarming experiences broke the chains of both legalism and sin that had encased their hearts; they were no longer controlled by sin, but this does not mean that they never again sinned.

From the outside looking in, I would say that perfection of the heart was for them a useful aspiration, but never an accomplishment. What was an accomplishment for them was assurance of the heart. Their faith was well-placed because it rested on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and on the inspired word of God; the saving truth they received in their hearts was not different from what was recorded in scripture; it was merely enlivened and pressed home. It became real for them. That spiritual and emotional awakening to the gospel and to the God behind the gospel is what they would share with us.

How About Us?

I want to place the question before you today: has the truth of the gospel and the reality of the God behind the gospel been pressed home to your heart? Have you given the Holy Spirit permission to accomplish this work in your life? Have you asked, sought, knocked for this good gift that the Father wants to give you through the Son and the Spirit? Can you point to the time or time period in your life when the chains fell off, when your heart was free, so that you could simply follow Jesus, with peace and confidence, on the both hard-and-easy road to glory? If you have not, I suggest that you make it a priority now to ask, seek, and knock.

Real Freedom

In this country, we speak of ourselves as free. That may be true, to some extent, politically, economically, and culturally. We celebrate that freedom this week. But, we are not truly free so long as we are slaves either to sin or to self-righteousness. We are truly free only when we have opened our lives to Jesus, our Savior and Lord, and to the Holy Spirit, our Purifier and Counselor. Our other freedoms will neither satisfy nor endure until we have been set free in our hearts, free to live out the love of Jesus Christ for all humanity. Have you been set truly free? If you have not, or to the degree that you have not, I suggest that you make it a priority now to ask, seek, and knock. The greatest revival in history began when two cantankerous brothers did just that. Surely something good will happen if we follow their example.