Grace That Goes Before

That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. JOHN 1:9

If the last chapter left the reader in the dark, Wesley would not have left him there long. His sermon Original Sin describes humanity as it would be in a state of mere nature, entirely without God. But he did not believe that anyone actually lives in that state. Between our ruin and our salvation he placed a teaching that is one of the most distinctive and most pastorally important things he gave the church. He called it preventing grace, using the old sense of the word prevent, to come before. We would call it prevenient grace: the grace that goes before.

No one is left in mere nature

The fullest statement comes in a late sermon, On Working Out Our Own Salvation. Wesley grants everything he said about the fall. All human souls are dead in sin by nature. We cannot quicken ourselves, any more than a dead body can raise itself. And yet, he says, this excuses no one, because there is no one who is in a state of mere nature. Unless he has quenched the Spirit, no one is wholly void of the grace of God.

What people commonly call natural conscience, he goes on, is not natural at all. “It is more properly termed preventing grace.” Everyone has some measure of it. Everyone has, sooner or later, good desires, though most stifle them before they take root. Everyone has some faint glimmering of that light which enlightens every man that cometh into the world. And everyone, unless his conscience is seared, feels uneasy when he acts against it.

Then comes a sentence that Wesley’s hearers would not easily forget: “no man sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use the grace which he hath.”

For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. TITUS 2:11

The first dawn of salvation

In the same sermon Wesley sets out the whole course of salvation, and preventing grace stands at its beginning. Salvation, he says, begins with “the first wish to please God, the first dawn of light concerning his will, and the first slight transient conviction of having sinned against him.” These are small things, but they are not nothing. They imply some tendency toward life, the beginning of a deliverance from a blind and unfeeling heart.

Salvation goes on by convincing grace, which Scripture calls repentance, bringing deeper self-knowledge. Then comes what Wesley calls the proper Christian salvation, with its two branches of justification and sanctification. By justification we are saved from the guilt of sin and restored to God’s favour; by sanctification we are saved from the power and root of sin and restored to God’s image.

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. JOHN 6:44

In The Scripture Way of Salvation he describes the same beginning in almost the same words. If salvation is taken in its widest sense, he says, it includes all the drawings of the Father, all the desires after God which increase if we yield to them, all the light with which the Son enlightens every person, and all the convictions His Spirit works in every child of man, though most people try to forget them.

God works, therefore you can work

The text of On Working Out Our Own Salvation is from Philippians, and Wesley’s handling of it is a model of how he held grace and responsibility together.

Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. PHILIPPIANS 2:12–13

Christians have often set these two verses against each other, as though the second meant we have nothing to do and the first that everything depends on us. Wesley insists that there is no opposition between them. God works, therefore you can work; if He did not, it would be impossible. And God works, therefore you must work: we are to be workers together with Him, otherwise, he warns, He will cease working. He quotes Augustine, the great teacher of grace: “He that made us without ourselves, will not save us without ourselves.”

This is the balance that runs through all Wesley’s teaching. Everything good in us is God’s gift, from the first flicker of conscience to the last perfection of love. But the gift is not forced on us. God works in us, and we are to work it out.

Why it matters

Preventing grace was Wesley’s answer to two errors at once.

Against those who flattered human nature, he held that we can do nothing good of ourselves. Every good desire, every stirring of conscience, is God’s gift. In this he stood with Augustine, Luther and Calvin. He never taught that people could save themselves or even begin to turn to God unaided.

Against those who taught that God gives saving grace to some and withholds it from others, he held that grace is given to all. This is where he parted company with his Calvinist friends, as the next chapter explains. For Wesley, the reason some are lost is not that God passed them by but that they resisted the grace He gave them.

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. REVELATION 3:20

It also shaped his evangelism. Wesley preached to colliers, prisoners, drunkards and condemned men on the assumption that God was already at work in them. He was looking for the good desires that had not yet been stifled, the conscience not yet seared. His confidence that every person he met had some glimmer of divine light made him hopeful about people others had written off.

Where to read with care

The doctrine can be misused. A person may take comfort in having a conscience and good desires, as though these were enough. Wesley would have been horrified. Preventing grace is the beginning of salvation, not its substance; it is the dawn, not the day. Its whole purpose is to lead to repentance and faith in Christ. The one who has felt God’s drawing and resisted it is not safer for having felt it.

Readers in the Reformed tradition will also want to ask whether Wesley’s account is the best reading of passages such as John 6:44. They are entitled to. What should be granted on all sides is that Wesley, like his opponents, gave God all the glory for every good thing in the human heart.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Recall the first stirrings of desire for God in your own life. Thank Him that He was at work before you were seeking Him.

2. Is there a present conviction of conscience that you have been stifling? Stop resisting it today.

3. Think of someone you have written off as beyond reach. Ask God to show you where His light may already be glimmering in them.

4. Take the words God works, therefore you can work; God works, therefore you must work, and apply them to one duty you have been neglecting.

5. Read On Working Out Our Own Salvation in Wesley’s Sermons on Several Occasions in the Ochorus library.

A PRAYER

Father, You loved me before I loved You, and You drew me before I came.

Thank You for every good desire, every stirring of conscience and every glimmer of light that You have given me. Forgive me for the times I have stifled them.

Work in me both to will and to do of Your good pleasure, and give me grace to work out what You are working in.

And let me look on every person as one to whom You have already come, and in whom Your light is shining. Amen.