Faith Does Not Supersede Holiness

Reflecting on the First Sunday in Lent, One Day after Sunday (Year C)

Scripture

Psalter: Psalm 17

Old Testament: 1 Chronicles 21:1-17

Epistle: 1 John 2:1-6

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Prayer

God of wilderness and water, your Son was baptized and tempted as we are. Guide us through this season, that we may not avoid struggle, but open ourselves to blessing, through the cleansing depths of repentance and the heaven-rending words of the Spirit. Amen.

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Reflection

If you try my heart, if you visit me by night, if you test me, you will find no wickedness in me; my mouth does not transgress (Psalm 17:3).

David said to God, “I have sinned greatly in that I have done this thing. But now, I pray you, take away the guilt of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.” (1 Chronicles 21:8).

Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments (1 John 2:3)

“A... way of making void the law through faith is the teaching that faith supersedes the necessity of holiness. This divides itself into a thousand smaller paths, and there are many who walk there. Indeed there are few people who wholly escape it—few who are convinced we are saved by faith, but who are sooner or later, more or less, drawn aside into this byway.”

“All those are drawn into this byway who, even if it is not their settled judgment that faith in Christ entirely sets aside the necessity of keeping His law, yet suppose either: (1.) That holiness is less necessary now than it was before Christ came; or: (2.) That a less degree of it is necessary; or (3.) That it is less necessary to believers than to others. Yes, and so are all those who, though their judgment is right in the general, yet think they may take more liberty in particular cases than they could have done before they believed. Indeed, the using the term liberty in such a manner-- for liberty from obedience or holiness—shows at once that their judgment is perverted, and that they are guilty of what they imagined to be far from them: namely, of making void the law through faith by supposing faith to supersede holiness.”

“We are doubtless justified by faith. This is the cornerstone of the whole Christian building. We are justified without the works of the law as any previous condition of justification. But they are an immediate fruit of that faith by which we are justified. So that if good works do not follow our faith, even all inward and outward holiness, it is plain our faith is worth nothing; we are yet in our sins. That we are justified by faith, even by our faith without works, is therefore no ground for making void the law through faith, or for imagining that faith is a dispensation from any kind or degree of holiness.” (John Wesley, "The Law Established Through Faith," Discourse 1," II.1, 2, 6.)

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