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Introduction
Over the last thirty years one of the more heated areas of debate in John Wesley studies has been over the soteriological standing of the faith of a servant. The central point of debate is expressed in the title of this article: is the servant in a state of justification before God? The answer to this question is no small matter, for it addresses the bottom-line standard for eternal salvation in Wesley’s soteriology. In addition, the question of the servant’s standing before God possibly signifies that a more nuanced interpretation might be needed concerning justification in Wesley’s thought. In my book John Wesley’s Doctrine of Justification (Abingdon, 2023), I examine every aspect of Wesley’s perspective on the subject, including the faith of a servant. Building on this study, this article explores the question whether Wesley considered the servant to be justified before God.
In the past there have been two basic positions to this question. On one side there are those who believe Wesley taught the servant is fully justified before God. Randy Maddox reiterates that Wesley’s eventual judgment was that “God’s pardoning grace is effectual in our lives from the most nascent degree of our responsiveness, even the mere inclination to fear God and work righteousness (i.e. the faith of a servant).”[1] The other position is that Wesley did not teach the servant is justified. Kenneth Collins is an advocate of this position. In his The Theology of John Wesley, Collins supports a conjunctive approach. In a “broad” sense, referring to most references to the faith of a servant in Wesley’s writings, the servant falls short of justification. However, in a “narrow” sense, which are “exceptional cases,” Wesley did consider the servant to be both justified and born again, but lacking the Spirit’s witness of adoption.[2] Even with this concession, the general tenor of Collins argument is to rebut the opposite opinion represented by Maddox, since Collins’ believes this issue goes to the “very heart of John Wesley’s doctrine of salvation.”[3]
In this article we will first define the faith of a servant according to John Wesley and then delineate his understanding of justification. After this we can compare the two positions and assess what significance this has for modern interpreters of Wesley and his theology. A related issue involves Wesley’s interpretation of Acts 10:35 and his view on the soteriological status of Cornelius, since Wesley appealed to Acts 10:35 to justify his position on the soteriological standing of the faith of a servant.
Defining the Servant State
The first explicit mention of the servant is in the sermon The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption (1746). In the opening two paragraphs Wesley makes a sharp distinction between those who love God, who have the Spirit of adoption (i.e. the new birth), and are God’s “sons” (Wesley’s gender neutral term for the children of God), from those who lack this Spirit-inspired love and are “influenced only by a slavish fear” in their service of God (Preamble §§1-2). This latter group, Wesley writes, live under “the spirit of bondage” and are in the legal state. He then sub-divides those in the legal state further. Some are titled servants because they are not far from the Kingdom of God (i.e. the evangelical state), while others are much farther because they lack even this reverent fear of the Creator. Wesley refers to this last sub-group as the “bulk of mankind” (Preamble §3). The focus of the sermon is that there are three spiritual states: natural, legal, and evangelical (IV.1). He then adds that these “states” are often “mixed” in an individual’s spiritual life. That is, those in the evangelical state can exhibit characteristics of the legal state, and visa-versa (IV.2). These comments suggest a concept of degrees that would continue to shape Wesley’s soteriology throughout his life and pertain directly to the question of the servant’s soteriological standing.
To summarize, in this sermon Wesley defines the servant as one who serves God primarily from a motive of reverent fear. This fear is due to an inward conviction of God’s holiness and moral law. The servant lacks the gift of the Spirit of adoption, which alone inspires the born-again believer to serve God out of love. A second lesson is that the servant belongs to the category that Wesley’s labels “the spirit of bondage.” This category contains sub-groups, with the servant at the highest level and nearest to the evangelical state.
The servant state is further explained in Wesley’s 1788 homily On Faith (Heb 11:6):
“Indeed, nearly fifty years ago, when the Preachers, commonly called Methodists, began to preach that grand scriptural doctrine, salvation by faith, they were not sufficiently apprised of the difference between a servant and a child of God. They did not clearly understand, that even one ‘who feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him.’ In consequence of this, they were apt to make sad the hearts of those whom God had not made sad. For they frequently asked those who feared God, ‘Do you know that your sins are forgiven?’ And upon their answering, ‘No,’ immediately replied, ‘Then you are a child of the devil.’ No; that does not follow. It might have been said, (and it is all that can be said with propriety,) “Hitherto you are only a servant, you are not a child of God.” (I.11)
This passage and its immediate context include several characteristics of the servant state. First, the servant is clearly distinguished from the child of God. Wesley understands the child of God to be born again and enjoying the direct witness of the Spirit to their adoption (On Faith I.12). Hence, the servant lacks this awareness of divine forgiveness and new birth in Christ. Second, the servant fears God and this motivates them to please the Father with their practice of righteous living. This qualification comes from Acts 10:35 and Peter’s positive remarks concerning the Roman centurion Cornelius, who became one of the first Gentile converts to Christianity (ENNT Notes, Acts 10:4, 35, 44-47). Third, Wesley acknowledges that in the early years of the revival there was a strong tendency to equate eternal salvation solely with a conscious assurance of salvation. That is, with the Spirit’s direct witness. He now realized this judgment was wrong. For in the preceding paragraph Wesley states that the servant has a faith that is “properly saving” and therefore is in a “state of acceptance,” no longer under “God’s wrath” (I.10). Thus, Wesley considers the servant an “infant” in the faith and awaiting “eternal salvation” (I.10). But this raises the inquiry—is the servant presently justified before God? Wesley does not say so in exact words, yet many who read the sermon On Faith conclude that this is what he meant. One way to ascertain Wesley’s meaning is to look at how he defined justification before God.
Defining Justification
Many students of Wesley do not realize that his doctrine of justification is more complex than what they suppose. Many do not know that Wesley held a sacramental view in which baptized infants receive initial justification from the guilt of original sin. Nor that he believed that our justification is not finalized until the Last Judgment, when Christ returns (on these points, see my John Wesley’s Doctrine of Justification). Most studies focus solely on Wesley’s evangelical perspective that he adopted in 1738 and thereafter. This has caused the debate over the servant’s soteriological standing to focus solely in relation to his evangelical doctrine of justification. To gain a working understanding of Wesley’s evangelical perspective, we do not need to go through his entire corpus. For in two sermons, separated by twenty years, Wesley states his views with clarity.
In 1746 Wesley published Justification by Faith. He begins by distinguishing between justification and sanctification. While sanctification has to do with making one righteous before God, justification is a “distinct gift” of a “totally different nature” (II.1). Evangelical justification means pardon and the forgiveness of sin (II.5). This “act of God” is done “for the sake of the propitiation made by the blood of the Son” (II.5). Wesley adds that in justification God does not “impute” one’s sin to their “condemnation,” so that God does not “inflict on that sinner what he deserved to suffer” (II.5). In this way Wesley concludes a justified person is no longer under God’s wrath but is “‘accepted through the beloved’” (II.5). From this sermon we learn that evangelical justification includes pardon, freedom from condemnation and divine wrath, and consequently acceptance with God.
Moving two decades later, The Scripture Way of Salvation (1765) once more defined evangelical justification as pardon and acceptance, “It is the forgiveness of our sins; and, what is necessarily implied therein, our acceptance with God” (I.3). When we are justified, the work of sanctification begins. For when we are justified, we also are born again. Justification refers to a “relative” change, while the new birth and sanctification to a “real” change (I.4). So, justification serves as the ground or foundation for God’s inward work of renewal in the human heart. So, in Wesley’s evangelical soteriology justification is linked to faith and new birth in Christ.
From these two sermons we attain a good working understanding of justification in an evangelical sense. It is distinguished from sanctification, both in purpose and relation. To sanctify means to make holy. It refers to real life transformation that begins in regeneration. To justify is a relative change; a change in standing before God based on the merits of Christ’s righteousness. In justification God pardons and forgives the sinner, reinstates them to his favor, and delivers them from future wrath and condemnation. The justified person is therefore in a state of acceptance with God. As we will now see, in many writings Wesley used the term acceptance as a synonym for justification. This will prove important to answer our question whether the servant is justified or not.
Acceptance & Justification
It is the term acceptance that is at the center of the debate regarding the soteriological standing of the servant. Above we saw the servant is in a “state of acceptance” with God. In the last section we found that justification also includes acceptance with God. From these two statements, it would appear the servant is fully and presently justified.[4] Yet, the connection or identification between acceptance and justification is the very point Collins disputes. His basic argument is that justification involves more than acceptance and deliverance from God’s wrath but also includes present forgiveness.[5] It is this last blessing the servant lacks since Wesley never describes the servant’s soteriological standing as pardon or forgiveness before God. Collins’ meaning is unmistakable, “Wesley specifically links the spirit of bondage with the faith of the servant, indicating that this faith has yet to receive the forgiveness of sins.”[6] Collins concludes that in the vast majority of cases the term “acceptance” takes on a pastoral concern and conveys that one is “in process” of salvation.[7] This is how Collins summarizes his position, “Put another way, they are accepted for the light and grace that they have and should be urged to go forward to be open to redemptive graces, properly speaking.”[8] Since the servant lacks the new birth, the servant cannot be justified in an evangelical sense.
But this raises a fundamental question: does “acceptance” serve as a synonym for justification in Wesley’s writings? Or does it only refer to something less than justification? We already saw above that in two foundational sermons on justification Wesley did incorporate the term “acceptance” into his definition of evangelical justification. But does this pattern persist in other writings? Is acceptance linked to present pardon and the forgiveness of sins in Wesley’s thought?
We begin with Wesley’s sermon The Righteousness of Faith. Wesley opens with a brief description of those trusting in their own righteousness for salvation. In this context he explicitly links acceptance with justification and pardon by affirming that “their own holiness, antecedent to faith in ‘him that justifieth the ungodly,’ as the ground of their pardon and acceptance” (Preamble §2). Two paragraphs later Wesley once again conjoins acceptance with pardon (Preamble §4). In section I.6 he further identifies acceptance with imputed righteousness and being an heir of eternal life (I.8; cf. II.5 and III.2 for other examples of acceptance as a synonym for justification).
Other examples can be cited. In The Witness of Our Own Spirit Wesley offers a good example of how he conjoins justification and pardon with acceptance:
“Christian joy is joy in obedience; joy in loving God and keeping his commandments: And yet not in keeping them, as if we were thereby to fulfill the terms of the covenant of works; as if by any works or righteousness of ours, we were to procure pardon and acceptance with God. Not so: We are already pardoned and accepted through the mercy of God in Christ Jesus” (§20, emphasis mine).
Several years later we see the same pattern. The Law Established Through Faith I (1750) contains several examples of acceptance used as a synonym for justification. For instance, “All his sons were and are under the covenant of grace. The manner of their acceptance is this: the free grace of God, through the merits of Christ, gives pardon to them that believe” (II.3). In total, acceptance is used six times as a synonym for justification in this sermon (II.3-4, III.2-3). A couple decades later Wesley uses the terms interchangeably again:
“‘He himself bore all our sins in his own body upon the tree.’ ‘He was delivered for our offences, and rose again for our justification.’ Here then is the sole meritorious cause of every blessing we do or can enjoy; in particular of our pardon and acceptance with God, of our full and free justification” (On the Death of George Whitefield III.3, emphasis mine).
Many more examples could be cited from the sermons.[9] Thus we find that Wesley did conjoin acceptance with pardon and justification. And contrary to Collins, we can conclude that Wesley often defined justification as acceptance, along with pardon, favor, and title.[10] Yet there are more examples to consider.
The identification of acceptance with justification finds beautiful expressions in some of the hymns. Hymn 159 joyfully celebrates the believers release from sin’s guilt into a rest of assurance and present acceptance through the blood of Christ:
“Come, holy, celestial Dove,
To visit a sorrowful breast,
My burden of guilt to remove,
And bring me assurance and rest!
Thou only hast power to relieve
A sinner o’erwhelmed with his load.
The sense of acceptance to give,
And sprinkle his heart with thy blood!” (Works 7:279)
In the section titled, For Believers Brought to the Birth, the Wesleys once again demonstrate that acceptance means present justification:
“Acceptance through thy holy name,
Forgiveness in his blood we have:
But more abundant life we claim,
Through him who died our souls to save,
To sanctify us by his blood,
And fill with all the life of God.” (Works 7:556)
When we turn to Wesley’s journal, we find other examples. For instance, in 1743 Wesley records visiting many who were sick. One lady shared in a “plain and distinct account” how she received a “sense of her acceptance with God” (2/26/43). In other writings the same pattern persists. In A Further Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion and A Letter to the Reverend Dr. Horn, Wesley appeals to the Anglican Articles and Homilies to defend his position that justification means “present forgiveness, pardon of sins, and consequently, acceptance with God.”[11] This same definition is found in The Principles of a Methodist[12] and An Answer to the Rev. Church’s Remarks.[13] Another example is found in Wesley’s essay on original sin:
“‘If righteousness,’ that is, justification, ‘come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.’ (Gal. ii. 21.) This particularly holds where the word logizomai, or impute, is joined with righteousness. As Rom. iv. 3 Abraham ‘believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteousness.’ ‘His faith is counted to him for righteousness.’ (Rom. iv. 5.) It is not anti or huper, ‘for’ or ‘instead of’ righteousness; but eis dikaiosunen, ‘in order to justification,’ or acceptance with God.”[14]
We could go on, but the point is clear: acceptance is repeatedly used by Wesley as a synonym for justification. Harald Lindström, in his classic study on Wesley, agrees: “In the strict sense, however, justification only implies, as we have already seen, the forgiveness of sins and the acceptance incident to it.”[15] But what perplexes many interpreters, like Collins, is that Wesley denies that the servant is born-again and affirms the servant lacks the Spirit’s witness of assurance (cf. On the Discoveries of Faith §14). This leaves the soteriological standing of the servant unclear for many scholars and students of Wesley. To clarify this point we turn to Wesley’s Covenant Theology.
Covenant Theology & the Spiritual States
Wesley learned the basics of his covenant theology from his parents and Anglican education. He later refined his views through his reading of the English Puritans. Covenant theology taught that in salvation history there are two covenants: a covenant of works and a covenant of grace. The covenant of works belonged to prelapsarian Adam and the covenant of grace to postlapsarian Adam and his posterity. The covenant of grace therefore includes a series of dispensations in salvation history: Patriarchal/Heathen, Mosaic/Jewish, and the Christian/Evangelical.[16] Furthermore, Wesley held along with his friend John Fletcher that salvation is available in all the dispensations of grace. Therefore, each dispensation included a degree of justification (examples: Abraham and OT saints). And important for our study, both men affirmed that the different dispensations pertain to people’s spiritual states today—natural, legal, or evangelical. This became the theological basis for degrees of justification in Wesley’s mature thought. As he reminded Jane Catherine March in 1768, “There are innumerable degrees, both in a justified and a sanctified state, more than is possible for us exactly to define.”[17] And in response to James Hervey’s claim that justification is complete when we first believe, Wesley replied, “Not so: There may be as many degrees in the favour as in the image of God.”[18]
By 1747 Wesley was delineating two degrees of justification. In a letter to his brother Charles on July 31st, John defines “justifying faith” as “not under the wrath and the curse of God.” This degree of faith is contrasted to “the proper Christian faith” that enjoys a “distinct, explicit assurance that my sins are forgiven.” This “explicit assurance” is the “common privilege of real Christians,” those born again in Christ and enjoy evangelical justification.[19] These two degrees would later define the faith of a servant and the faith of a son in Wesley’s mature thought. While the servant is not under divine wrath, only the son or child of God is born again and enjoys evangelical Christian experience.
In the mid-1770s Wesley reissued his first and second journal extracts that tell the story of his evangelical conversion in May 1738. This time, however, he includes corrective comments that identified his pre-Aldersgate faith with the faith of a servant.[20] Whereas Wesley initially believed following his evangelical conversion that he had been in a state of damnation and sentenced to hell, in the 1770s Wesley denies this.[21] He concludes that before his Aldersgate conversion he had faith, even the faith of a servant, but not yet evangelical Christian faith, the faith of a son.[22] So, Wesley deduces in the 1770s that even though he was not in a state of damnation prior to Aldersgate, he had not yet attained “the full, Christian salvation” of a born-again child of God.[23] This was what he experienced when his heart was “strangely warmed” on May 24thand he received an assurance of evangelical justification (“taken away my sins”) and the new birth (“saved me from the law of sin and death”).[24] What Wesley concludes about his own spiritual journey in the 1770s is that before 1738 he had the faith of a servant and was justified in the sense or to the degree that he was saved from eternal damnation, but at Aldersgate he became a born-again believer and received a felt assurance of God’s pardon—the chief mark of evangelical justification.
The faith of a servant and the faith of a son now represent two degrees of Christian experience in Wesley’s mature thought. We can safely conclude this for several reasons. For starters, Wesley was already a “Christian” before his Aldersgate conversion: he was baptized, an ordained minister in the Church of England, and a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. In his Journal he distinguishes between the two degrees of Christian experience in his spiritual journey by labelling the evangelical degree as “the full, Christian salvation.” The term “full” suggests there is a lower degree of Christian experience. Second, we see the two degrees of Christian experience in Wesley’s 1788 sermon On Faith. As we saw above, in this sermon Wesley recounts how at the beginning of the Evangelical Revival he and other Methodist preachers would tell seekers of evangelical salvation in Christ, who could not give a clear testimony of assurance, that their faith was not yet saving (I.11). The point here is that Wesley and the Methodist preachers were addressing people who already had a degree of Christian faith.[25] They were not adherents of another religion, nor were they merely nominal professors of the faith. Third, the same point is seen in Wesley’s letters. When he told Ann Bolton and Alexander Knox that they had the faith of a servant, Wesley understood they were already sincere believers in Christ and therefore Christians, as the term was commonly employed back then (and today). What they lacked was the Spirit of adoption associated with evangelical conversion and new birth.[26] Thus, we see from Wesley’s journals, letters, and sermons that the servant has a “measure of acceptance” that represents a degree of justification—that is, salvation from future divine wrath and condemnation. But it falls short of the evangelical experience—a conscious assurance of pardon associated with evangelical justification and new birth.
Conclusion
So, what can we conclude about the soteriological standing of the servant? Is the servant justified before God? The answer is found in Wesley’s degrees of justification. The servant is justified in the sense they are not under God’s wrath and condemnation to hell. This is their “measure of acceptance” with God and degree of “justifying faith.”[27] At the same time, the servant is not yet born again and is not justified in an evangelical sense. For a real Christian enjoys the Spirit’s direct witness to their forgiveness and pardon, which the servant lacks. Therefore, the two positions outlined at the beginning of this article are equally incorrect because both assume Wesley had only one degree or definition of justification. But when we factor in Wesley’s concept of degrees, the confusion is removed and the servant’s “measure of acceptance” becomes clear.
Other insights follow. The servant remains in the category of “the spirit of bondage.” For the servant lacks the indwelling Spirit that frees them from the power or reign of sin. Instead, the servant serves God out of reverential fear, not filial love (which is received from the Spirit of adoption). Consequently, Wesley considered the servant to lack “the proper Christian faith” and to be in the legal state. Even so, Wesley’s covenant theology held that eternal salvation is available in all the dispensations of grace. He therefore believed the servant to be justified in the sense of deliverance from God’s future wrath (i.e. final justification). He even went so far to say that the servant is not a “child of the devil,” nor an “heir of hell.” The servant is in a state of salvation, eternally speaking, and consequently an “infant” in the faith.[28] However, Wesley is clear that the servant is not yet in the evangelical state that began at Pentecost and defines Christian salvation in its proper sense. Therefore, Wesley exhorted those who are servants to press forward until they receive the Spirit of adoption and enter the joy of knowing “the full, Christian salvation.”
[1] Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Kingswood Books, 1994), 173.
[2] Kenneth Collins, The Theology of John Wesley (Abingdon Press, 2007), 134-35. Collins appeals to only one reference in Wesley’s writings to support his narrow view—a letter written to Thomas Rutherford in 1768. However, Wesley does not mention the servant in this letter. This weakens Collins’ argument for the narrow view.
[3] Kenneth Collins, The Scripture Way of Salvation (Abingdon Press, 1997) 141.
[4] This is the position of Maddox and Laura Bartels Felleman, John Wesley and the “Servant of God.” WTJ 41-2 (Fall 2006), 82.
[5] Collins, The Theology of John Wesley, 172, 183.
[6] Collins, The Theology of John Wesley, 134.
[7] Collins, The Theology of John Wesley, 183.
[8] Collins, The Theology of John Wesley, 184.
[9] Scriptural Christianity I.2; The First-Fruits of the Spirit III.1; The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption (1746) IV.1; The Witness of the Spirit II (1767) III.6, 7; V.4; The Witness of Our Own Spirit (1746) §20; Repentance of Believers (1767) III.3; The Marks of the New Birth (1746) I.3; The Lord Our Righteousness (1765) II.5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Many others could be cited.
[10] See my book John Wesley’s Doctrine of Justification for a full discussion of the four definitions.
[11] Works, Jackson, 8:46; 9:110.
[12] Works, Jackson, 8:427.
[13] Works, Jackson, 8:387.
[14] Works, Jackson, 9:396.
[15] Harald Lindström, Wesley & Sanctification (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980), 84, 88.
[16] Wesley also held that John the Baptist represented a dispensation, but he did not develop its specific features.
[17] Works, 28:136.
[18] Works, 13:326.
[19] Letter, July 31, 1747 (Works, 26:254-5).
[20] For a full study of the journal errata and footnotes, see Olson, Wesley and Aldersgate, 99-103.
[21] Journal, February 1, 1738 (Works, 18:215 notes i, j). See also his confession in The Almost Christian.
[22] Journal, February 1, 1738 (Works, 18:215 note k)
[23] Journal, March 5, 1738 (Works, 18:228).
[24] Journal, May 24, 1738 (Works, 18:250, emphasis his). That these two phrases referred to present justification and new birth, see Olson, Wesley and Aldersgate, 48-50.
[25] This point is also made in On Friendship with the World §§7, 12, which places the servant and son in the same category when it comes to belonging to the world or to God (Works, 3:130, 132).
[26] To repeat, while Wesley consistently referred to regenerate believers as “real Christians,” the use of the adjective (“real”) suggests that the term “Christian” has a broader application than evangelical faith. Likewise, Wesley told Ann Bolton that the faith of a servant can include one who “trusts not in his own righteousness but in the atoning blood” (August 12, 1770; Telford, 5:197). He expressed to Ellen Gretton that those who fear God and wait for salvation are not an “unbeliever” (December 31, 1782, Telford, 7:157). In the same way,Wesley’s comments to Knox on August 29, 1777, make it clear Alexander was already a Christian according to common usage of the term (Telford 6:272-3).
[27] ENNT Acts 10;35; John’s Letter to Charles, July 31, 1747.
[28] Journal, February 1, 1738; On Faith I.10.
[This article was taken with permission from Mark K. Olson’s website where the original version can be found.]
