Wesley’s discovery: Salvation through Faith in Christ Alone

In 1738, John Wesley boarded a ship in the British colony of Georgia to return home to England after two years as a Christian missionary. During the long voyage home, he had plenty of time to reflect on his life. He looked back over his time at Oxford University where he had been ordained a priest in the Church of England, and he had distinguished himself for leading a group known as the Holy Club. Now that is quite a club: the Holy Club? They were earnest, zealous young men who devoted themselves to Bible study. They met nightly, also to do good works, and they applied themselves very diligently in that regard. And then that was followed by their missionary work among the Jews in the new world. With those credentials, it is a surprise to read what Wesley wrote in his journal while sailing home; it is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity. But what have I learned myself in the meantime? What I least suspected, that I who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God.

Wesley had come to realize that for all his religious attainments, for all of his degrees and his associations, his morality and all of his many good works, what he lacked was a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. Though an eminent member of the church, he was not a Christian. It was on a boat with Moravians as he watched them and heard them singing about the imputed righteousness of Christ, his atoning blood, that he did not know what they were talking about. He had no idea about that kind of Christianity. And it proved to him also when he saw the power of the gospel in their lives. He came to the conclusion, rightly I think, that he was not a Christian.

Wesley did the right thing. He began searching after true salvation and he started going to church with those people when he got back to England, and there he heard the gospel of God's grace. It was actually while reading the introduction to Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians—an explanation of justification through faith alone—that he was converted. He trusted the gospel of God’s grace and especially the precious blood of Jesus. Wesley records with joy his coming to true and saving faith. He wrote, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation, and assurance was given to me that He had taken away my sins, even mine. He’d saved me from the law of sin and death.

Wesley’s experience is an important one for us to reflect upon, because there is little doubt that there are many people in churches today in the very situation that John Wesley was in; they have read the Bible and they have given time and labour and money to the cause of religion; they have done many good things. And yet, all along they have been relying on their works, on their supposed goodness to commend themselves to a holy God. And as a result, they have never entered into the eternal life that comes only through faith in Christ alone.¹

Dr Richard D. Phillips