John Wesley didn't like Gospel Sermons

This is not really a blog post. It is a "master class" I gave at the 2018 Wesley Center for Practical Theology Conference at Northwest Nazarene University. I will try to break down portions of the class in blog posts over time but, for those interested in preaching the gospel, I think the larger picture given here is helpful. It is a part of the intent of this blog to address the gospel in historical theology.

“John Wesley didn’t like ‘gospel sermons’”

Wesley Center for Practical Theology Conference 2018   Rm 204, Feb. 02, 2:45pm

Karl Ganske

   In October of 1778 John Wesley wrote a letter to Mary Bishop. He was complaining. He was irritated with preachers who preach a simple message about the forgiveness of sins as if it were core and summary of the Christian faith. That message was usually called a “gospel sermon” in his day. Wesley had a different definition of the gospel.

“I find more profit in sermons either on good temper or good works than in what are vulgarly called gospel sermons. That term is become a mere cant word. I wish none of our society would use it. It has no determinate meaning. Let but a pert, self-sufficient animal, that has neither sense nor grace, bawl out something about Christ and His blood or justification by faith, and his hearers cry out ‘What a fine gospel sermon!’ Surely the Methodists have not so learnt Christ. We know no gospel without salvation from sin.”[1]

   In 2011 a book was published by Scot McKnight called The King Jesus Gospel. He was complaining. He was irritated with preachers who preach a simple message about the forgiveness of sins as if it were the core and summary of the Christian faith. That message is usually called a “gospel sermon” today. McKnight has a different definition of the gospel.

“I want now to make a stinging accusation. In this book I will be contending firmly that we evangelicals (as a whole) are not really “evangelical” in the sense of the apostolic gospel, but instead we are soterians. Here’s why I say we are more soterian than evangelical: we evangelicals (mistakenly) equate the word gospel with the word salvation. Hence, we are really “salvationists.” When we evangelicals see the word gospel, our instinct is to think (personal) “salvation.”[2]

   Yesterday I facilitated a master class with the title “Preach Christ—He is good news when you realize you’re deranged.” In that session we were talking about John Wesley’s definition of the gospel. I said that “Wesley clearly believed that the gospel had major consequences for the individual sinner but in recognizing that we can’t miss the actual definitions of “the gospel” that Wesley gave. In summary, the definition of “the gospel” given by Wesley is Jesus—the full biblical narrative concerning him and his teachings. The gospel is the proclamation that God will bring about the promised life of blessing through the life of Jesus with all of its details and events. To preach the gospel is to preach the story of Jesus as the Christ.”

   When I summarize this as “the story of Jesus as the Christ” I am talking about Jesus as the Messiah/Jesus as the one through whom God’s covenant promises are fulfilled. Wesley makes this explicit at times.

   Wesley summarized all the promises of God in terms of a covenant relationship in which the human heart will be made to resemble the heart of God and the identity and vocation and belonging and fulfilment of the people will be determined by the fact that they are a people set apart as God’s people. The summary verse that Wesley came back to consistently is Jeremiah 31:33 (and is quoted in Hebrews 8:10).

Jeremiah 31:33 NASB “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

   Wesley’s definition of “the gospel” was not based on an abstracted Savior...one who operated as a part of a cosmic legal system. Wesley’s Savior was identified as the one who was the fulfilment of God’s covenant promises to Israel. The text for Wesley’s sermon “The Repentance of Believers” was Mark 1:15. Here is Mark 1:14b-15 in the NASB:

“Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

   As Wesley was talking about what it means to believe the gospel he differentiated between faith in what God is able to do and faith in what God has promised to do. It is not enough to believe that God is able to reign in the hearts of his people and to restore the Image of God in the heart. The difference is made when we have faith that God has promised to make us anew as this kind of people. That is what it means to believe the gospel.

   I will state this again, when Wesley was specifically addressing the definition of the gospel he didn’t take this idea of God’s promises out of the context of the scriptural story of God’s covenant history with Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, and the people of Israel. Instead, he situated the gospel in that covenant history. When he turned to quote specific claims he began with Deuteronomy 30:6.

‘So we read in the law, in the most ancient part of the oracles of God, “The Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul”.’[3]

   He concluded his list of specific citations with Luke 1:68-69’s claim that, in Christ, God’s oath to David was being fulfilled.[4]

Luke 1:68-69 NASB “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant…”

   In a letter to an evangelical layman, Wesley gave instructions for preaching the gospel.[5] One of the purposes of preaching the gospel was to show what God’s intention is. Preaching the law will show the hearers where God does not reign in their hearts and where their hearts are deranged. The gospel will instil a real hope that God will complete his work—even to those who have seen into the desperate state of their own hearts.

   I don’t want to claim that John Wesley and Scot McKnight have exactly the same idea of the gospel but there are similarities.[6] Here are two more excerpts from McKnight.

“Because the ‘gospel’ is the Story of Jesus that fulfils, completes, and resolves Israel’s Story, we dare not permit the gospel to collapse into the abstract, de-storified points in the Plan of Salvation.”[7]

[The basic popular misconception of] “the ‘gospel’ is that it is a solution to an individual, existential, private sin-problem but not (at the same time) the resolution of a story-problem, namely, Israel’s Story in search of a Messiah-solution. The Story of Jesus, though, is first and foremost a resolution of Israel’s Story and because the Jesus Story completes Israel’s Story, it saves.”[8]

   Scot McKnight, who is himself an evangelical, is specifically targeting the popular definition of “the gospel” that he perceives in evangelical circles. Part of my motivation in doing the research I have done is to ask when this popular idea of the gospel came to dominate the evangelical identity and whether there are alternative definitions of the gospel in the tradition.

   I have never really taken much notice of the larger evangelical identity. I have always been pretty content to think within my Wesleyan sub-culture. But, exploring the definition of the gospel has perked my interest a little in the question of what an evangelical actually is. I know that there is a media category that most “evangelicals” that I know don’t want to be lumped into but do we ourselves remember what it means? Do we know the motivations and parameters that cause us to be identified with the world evangelical, euaggelion …gospel?

  Wesley’s letter to Mary Bishop is not his only complaint about some of the evangelical definitions of the gospel that were popular in his day. In his Arminian Magazine Wesley published his “Thoughts Concerning ‘Gospel Ministers’.”[9] We could say that he was complaining but he also wanted to shape the movement that bore a name derived from the gospel. He wanted us to believe a better gospel.

   The evangelical revival was centered on the Methodists. There were reformed Methodists like George Whitefield and there were Wesleyan Methodists like John and Charles Wesley. There were evangelicals that were priests of the Church of England and there were dissenting evangelicals. The evangelical movement has developed significantly through the years but the evangelical revival remains a significant part of the evangelical identity. In the days of the revival the evangelical movement was tied together by a sense that its preachers (Reformed, Wesleyan, and Anglican) were co-laborers in something that they shared. That shared something was associated with an idea of “the gospel” and that is why they identified with the name “evangelical.” Just what “the gospel” meant was not always clear. The word was used in fairly wide ways as it is today (I would have to do more research to see if there was a “gospel” music industry in those days.)

   As the revival progressed and the doctrinal controversies deepened differences in the definition of the term “the gospel” became clearer. Some reformed voices in the evangelical movement tried to claim the term as their own with the publication of “the Gospel Magazine.”[10] Wesley countered with “the Arminian Magazine.” We can take these titles and Wesley’s frustration with the term’s use as an indication that Wesley was an alternative voice in the battle for the popular meaning of the term. In fact, I think it is important to point this out because of critiques like those from Scot McKnight and N.T. Wright of the “evangelical” movement’s definition of the gospel. I will argue that Wesley consciously was offering an alternative definition of “the gospel” even in the days of the revival. In his critiques he was, in a sense, competing for the evangelical identity and, in the popular sense, he lost. Now when we “evangelicals” think of “the gospel” for the most part we think of the gospel definition that Wesley was critical of.

Wesley’s Thoughts Concerning “Gospel Ministers”

   I started to talk about Wesley’s “Thoughts Concerning Gospel Ministers.” The first concern that Wesley addressed is that there is a popular conception that a gospel sermon is one that speaks of either the doctrine of election or how our “salvation” is found in the imputation of the righteousness of Christ on our behalf. (Without going too far into it we can notice that this is a specifically legal definition of salvation that Wesley seems to be concerned about.) The popular conception of a gospel sermon also includes the method of delivery. A gospel sermon is given passionately. Let me give you Wesley’s words and then we will pick out a couple more of his concerns. He is asking the question “who is a gospel minister?”

“Not every one that talks largely and earnestly on (those precious subjects) the righteousness and blood of Christ. Let a man descant upon these in ever so lively a manner. Let him describe his sufferings ever so pathetically. If he stops there; if he does not show man’s duty, as well as Christ’s sufferings; if he does not apply all to the consciences of the hearers; he will never lead them to life, either here or hereafter, and therefore is no ‘gospel minister’.

Not every one (very nearly allied to the former) who bends all his strength to coax sinners to Christ. Such soft, tender expressions as ‘My dear hearers,’ My dear lambs,’ though repeated a thousand times, do not make a ‘gospel minister.’

Lastly. Not every one that preaches justification by faith. He that goes no further than this, that does not insist upon sanctification also, upon all the fruits of faith, upon universal holiness, does not declare the whole counsel of God, and consequently is not a ‘gospel minister.’”[11]

   I find it interesting that Wesley gives so much attention to the presentation style as something that convinces the duped audience that they are hearing “the gospel” preached when they are not. Emotional address, the manipulation of feelings, and the sense that God will save without the co-operation of the individual are still the hallmarks of a “gospel sermon” for many today.

   Just to simplify the discussion here, I don’t think Wesley is making an argument against the theological correctness of the doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ. He is certainly not criticizing justification by faith as an unbiblical doctrine. What Wesley is saying is that these doctrines are not the same as the gospel. “The gospel” according to Wesley, as we have said, is Jesus—the full biblical narrative concerning Jesus and his teachings. To preach the gospel is to preach the story of Jesus as…the one through whom God’s covenant promises are fulfilled.

   Wesley preached and taught justification by faith but he was very clear that “the gospel” is not the same thing as justification by faith.

   In his “Thoughts Concerning Gospel Ministers,” Wesley does explain what preaching the gospel entails. He says that the “gospel preacher” preaches both justification and sanctification—Christ dying for us and Christ living in us.[12] The “gospel minster” apparently doesn’t just give the message with his words. Wesley insists that the gospel minister has to live out the message. “being willing to spend and be spent for [the hearers]; having himself the mind which was in Christ, and steadily walking as Christ also walked.”[13]

   At the end of his thoughts, Wesley got to the two items that he believed were missing from the popular “gospel sermons.”

“Let it be particularly observed: If the gospel be ‘glad tidings of great salvation which shall be unto all people,’ then those only are, in the full sense, ‘gospel ministers’ who proclaim the great salvation—that is salvation from all (both inward and outward) sin, into ‘all the mind that was in Christ Jesus—and likewise proclaim offers of this salvation to every child of man. This honorable title is therefore vilely prostituted when it is given to any but those who testify ‘that God willeth all men to be saved,’ and ‘to be perfect as their Father which is in heaven is perfect’.”[14]

   I would like to point out that the two essentials of the gospel that Wesley identified in this last quotation are both aspects of the covenant promises that God gave to Abraham and the people of Israel:

   First, the gospel is for all people (God promised Abraham that all the nations would be blessed through him.

Genesis 18:17-19 NASB 17 The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, 18 since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed? 19 For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.”[15]

   This covenant promise is, I think, spoken of in psalms that speak about people of all nations gathering to worship the God of Israel.

   Psalm 72 speaks of the Davidic King, 17 (perhaps McKnight’s own translation) “Then all nations will be blessed through him, and they will call him blessed.”

   Acts 10 contains Peter’s gospel sermon following the conversion of gentiles. “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.”[16]

Revelation 5:9-10 NASB  And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. 10 “You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.”

   The second covenant promise is the one that we noted in Deuteronomy 30:6 and Jeremiah 31:33 NASB “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

   It is a summary for Wesley of all the covenant promises.

Summary

   Wesley’s definition of the gospel was the account of Jesus’ whole life and he saw that as a fulfillment of the covenant promises of God. Those covenant promises were related to God’s intention for humanity to bear his image for the sake of the world. Wesley did not see any concept of the gospel that was not centered on the renewal of that image as worthy of the term “the gospel.” That is why he did not consider justification by faith as a summary of the gospel. Nothing could be the gospel that did not include the image of God written on the hearts of the people of God. The gospel is not a presentation style. The aim or perfection of the gospel-shaped life is to be like God in Christ. Wesley also stressed that the gospel message has to include the inclusion of all peoples in God’s plan and promises. Gospel ministers are only those who testify ‘that God willeth all men to be saved,’ and ‘to be perfect as their Father which is in heaven is perfect’.”

   Wesley taught that the salvation that the gospel promised was salvation from the power of sin and not simply from the guilt of sin. The gospel would create a people, made up of all nations, who bore the image of God.

   He thought that the phrase “gospel sermon” had lost its meaning and many of those sermons actually pointed people away from true Christianity (they were anti-evangelical).

Movement into Dialogue

(1) “Repent and believe the gospel.” This does not mean, at least not principally, confess your past failures and decide that you will make better choices in the future. This does not mean see your guilt before God the Judge and ask for forgiveness so that you can be admitted to heaven. And…it does not simply mean receive justification by faith.

   How easy is it to fall into preaching this as the good news?

   Where does the church go from that message?

   Where does the church go from the gospel?

(2) I am part of what has been called “the drop out generation.” I don’t think that this phenomenon can simply be attributed to the preaching of an incomplete gospel but I do think that people need a purpose. I am not sure that my generation really got the message about the real purpose of Christianity.

   I want to say something that I find a little challenging myself: we should not be too concerned that people don’t find then forgiveness of their sins to be a fulfilling purpose. We should not be too concerned about it because it is not God’s purpose for us. It is something that has to happen so that God’s purposes for us can be realized. It is something that has to happen so that we can be a part of the people who represent God in the world and reveal God to the world.

   Our preaching of justification by faith as if it were the gospel can, as Wesley argued, limit peoples aspirations to be the people of God—the image of God in the world.

   Thoughts?

(3) Is the inclusion of all peoples in God’s plan to form a people as his image in our preaching?

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[1] John Wesley, Letters (Telford) 6:326-7.

[2] McKnight, Scot. The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Kindle Locations 303-306). Zondervan.

[3] Works [BE] 1:347.

[4] Works [BE] 1:348.

[5] Works [BE] 26:482-489

[6] For one, they were writing in different contexts. Wesley was in dialogue with others in the evangelical revival and was trying to shape the meaning of the term against those who, in many respects, did not think that the law had anything positive to do with salvation in Christ (antinomianism). Wesley’s definition is broader. He is looking for a practical definition of the gospel that is faithful to the biblical idea. McKnight is also writing in dialogue with others in the evangelical movement but he is writing specifically as a biblical scholar and is looking for a biblical definition of the term.

[7] McKnight, (Kindle Locations 671-673).

[8] McKnight, (Kindle Locations 433-435).

[9] Works [BE] 13:568-570.

[10] You can read this publication today on a website with the drop title “publishing the truth since 1766.” http://gospelmagazine.org.uk/

[11] Works [BE] 13:569.

[12] Works [BE] 13:569.

[13] Works [BE] 13:569.

[14] Works [BE] 13:569-70.

[15] Genesis 22:13-18 NASB 15 Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, 16 and said, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. 18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”

[16] Peter’s (gospel) sermon in Acts 10 following the conversion of Gentiles. “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, 35 but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him. 36 The word which He sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)— 37 you yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed. 38 You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. 39 We are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They also put Him to death by hanging Him on a cross. 40 God raised Him up on the third day and granted that He become visible, 41 not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God, that is, to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead. 42 And He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead. 43 Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.”