The Disease and the Physician

And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. GENESIS 6:5

Wesley is often remembered as the optimist of the evangelical revival, the preacher who believed that grace could do great things in human lives. That is true. But his optimism about grace was built on a thorough pessimism about human nature, and no one who skips the second will understand the first. His sermon Original Sin, preached on the text above, is one of the bleakest things he wrote. It is also one of the most hopeful, because it ends by describing religion as a cure.

Against the flattering view of man

Wesley wrote at a time when many educated people, inside the church and out, spoke warmly of human nature. The moral philosophers of the age described people as naturally benevolent, reasonable and inclined to virtue. Wesley thought this was not only false but dangerous. If we are not sick, we will not look for a physician.

So he set out to describe human nature as Scripture describes it, and he began with the generation of the flood. God saw that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually. Wesley asks whether this is true of humanity now, and answers that it is. By nature, he argues, every person is without the true knowledge of God and without the love of God. Men may speak of a God, but in practice they live as though there were none. They are, in the apostle’s phrase, without God in the world.

Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh … were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. EPHESIANS 2:11–12

The symptoms

Wesley then diagnoses the disease by its symptoms, much as a physician would. And he was interested in medicine; he wrote a popular book of remedies for the poor.

The first symptom is practical atheism: we do not know God and do not seek Him. The second is idolatry, not of carved images but of ourselves. We set up self in the place of God, and pride follows. The third is self-will, the determination to have our own way, in which, Wesley says, Satan has stamped his own image on our hearts. The fourth is the love of the world in all its forms: what John calls the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 1 JOHN 2:16

Wesley’s treatment of the pride of life is especially sharp. He points out that the desire for the praise of others is so natural to us that we call it a virtue. Even eminent Christians, he says, think it a mark of a wicked mind not to care what others think of us. And yet Jesus asked how those can believe who receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only.

The dividing line

From this dark picture Wesley draws a conclusion that is still bracing. Original sin, he says, is the first grand distinguishing point between heathenism and Christianity. The best pagan moralists described the vices of particular people, and some of them described vice very well. But none of them knew that the whole of human nature is fallen, that every faculty is disordered, that we are born turned away from God. Anyone who denies this, he says, is a heathen still in the fundamental point, whatever else he believes.

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. PSALM 51:5

Religion as healing

And now the turn. Having described the disease, Wesley describes the cure, and his definition of religion here is one of the most beautiful he gave. The religion of Jesus Christ, he says, is “God’s method of healing a soul which is thus diseased.” He uses a Greek phrase for it, therapeia psyches, the therapy or healing of the soul.

The great Physician of souls, he goes on, applies His medicines to every part of the sickness. He heals our practical atheism by the knowledge of Himself and of Jesus Christ, giving us faith, and in particular the conviction that Christ loved me and gave Himself for me. He heals our pride by repentance and lowliness of heart. He heals our self-will by resignation, a meek and thankful submission to His will. And for the love of the world in all its branches, the love of God is the sovereign remedy.

Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases. PSALM 103:3

This is the whole of Wesley’s theology in miniature. Salvation is not merely a change in our legal standing, though it is that. It is the restoration of a ruined nature, the renewal of the image of God in which we were made. Any religion that stops short of the renewal of the soul in the image of God is, he says in the same sermon, no better than a poor farce and a mockery of God.

Awake, thou that sleepest

Wesley’s diagnosis also explains why he preached so urgently. In the sermon Awake, Thou That Sleepest, which his brother Charles preached at Oxford in 1742 and which is printed among John’s sermons, the sleeper is described as a sinner satisfied in his sins, content to remain in his fallen state, ignorant both of his disease and of the only remedy for it.

Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. EPHESIANS 5:14

A sick man who does not know he is sick will not send for the doctor. That is why Wesley’s preaching so often began with conviction of sin. He did not enjoy making people miserable. He wanted them well.

Where to read with care

Wesley’s picture of fallen humanity is severe, and some readers will find it too much. It is worth remembering two things. First, he balanced it immediately with his teaching on preventing grace, the subject of the next chapter: no one, he believed, is left in a state of mere nature, because God’s grace is already at work in every human heart. Second, his purpose in describing the disease was always to commend the cure. He speaks of total corruption so that no one will settle for a partial remedy.

What he would not accept was the flattering view that there is nothing much wrong with us. On this he was surely right. The honest reader, looking into his own heart, finds more pride, self-will and love of the world than he would like to admit. The good news is that there is a Physician.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Of Wesley’s four symptoms — practical atheism, pride, self-will, love of the world — which do you recognise most clearly in yourself this week?

2. Notice one moment today when you seek the praise of others, and quietly offer that desire to God.

3. Think of religion as healing rather than as a set of duties. Which part of your soul most needs the Physician’s care?

4. Pray for one person who seems content in their sins, that God would awaken them gently.

5. Read Psalm 103 slowly, and thank God for each benefit it names.

A PRAYER

Great Physician of souls, I come to You sick. I have lived without You in Your own world. I have set myself in Your place, insisted on my own way and loved the world more than You.

Do not leave me as I am. Heal my blindness by showing me Yourself in Jesus Christ. Heal my pride by lowliness, my self-will by glad submission, and my love of the world by Your greater love.

Renew in me the image in which You made me.

And awaken those I love who are asleep, that they too may come to You and be healed. Amen.