Rev. Dr. Travis Stevick

In our journey through a Wesleyan Understanding of Salvation, we have considered prevenient or preventing grace, convicting grace, and justifying grace. We now turn our attention to an aspect of salvation that Wesley taught as happening at the same time as justification, or forgiveness, but was a distinct thing: the New Birth. Specifically, on the timing of Justification and the New Birth, this is what he wrote: “In order of time, neither of these is before the other; in the moment we are...

So far, in this series, we have looked at a Wesleyan understanding of both Prevenient Grace and Convicting Grace. This brings us to the aspect of Wesley’s perspective that has the most overlap with other Protestant Traditions: Justifying Grace. In most traditions, talking about someone being “justified” is one and the same with someone “getting saved.” Justification is the word that often gets used to translate the idea in the New Testament that we are “made right” with God. It is the crucial...

In my last article, the first in this series, I stated my aims in these reflections. I am hardly the first person to lay out the Wesleyan understanding of salvation and so I am not going to try to cover everything that can be said. My goal is “to put the most important issues right up front and then spend a bit of time highlighting implications that don’t always get raised for those who want to go just a bit deeper.” This month, we are looking at “convicting grace.” This is an aspect of the...