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 justified by the grace of God, through the redemption that is in Jesus, we are also ‘born of the Spirit;’ but in order of thinking, as it is termed, justification precedes the new birth. We first conceive his wrath to be turned away, and then his Spirit to work in our hearts” (Sermon XLV: The New Birth, §1). Essentially, the idea is that both Justification and the New Birth happen in the same moment, but we should think of the New Birth as being started and enabled by our being justified by grace through faith.
Sometimes, especially in American Evangelical circles, we use terms like “justified,” “born again,” and “being saved” as if they meant the exact same thing. They are clearly related, but they were distinct ideas in Wesley’s thinking. For Wesley, justification describes a change in our state, as if it were a legal change. However, being born again refers to a change in our lives, or in our inward being. Here he is at length: “Justification implies only a relative, the new birth a real, change. God, in justifying us, does something for us; in begetting us again, he does the work in us. The former changes our outward relation to God, so that of enemies we become children; by the latter, our inmost souls are changed, so that of sinners we become saints. The one restores us to the favour, the other to the image, of God. The one is the taking away the guilt, the other the taking away the power, of sin: So that, although they are joined together in point of time, yet are they of wholly distinct natures.” (Sermon XIX: Privilege of Those That Are Born of God, §2)
For Wesley, it is not a coincidence that the language of “New Birth” compares our being made alive to God by the power of the Holy Spirit with the birth of a baby. The two are remarkably similar. He makes this parallel explicit in his sermon “The New Birth.” On the one hand, a child, before birth, is alive in the sense that they have eyes and ears and things like that, but cannot really use them. They might be alive in a real sense, but not in the full sense that those of us who have been born and are growing are. However, once they are born, everything changes, and they begin to experience the world in a way that was fundamentally impossible before birth.
In our modern world, when a child is born, it is usually recorded on a birth certificate. I am sure that I have the birth certificates for both of my children somewhere, but I haven’t laid eyes on them for years. If someone were to ask me to prove I have children, it would never occur to me to dig up those birth certificates. Rather, I would introduce them to the people themselves. If you have experienced the person, you don’t doubt that they have been born. If you never experience them, the fact that a birth certificate exists doesn’t feel like it is enough.
The point for our understanding of salvation is that we can sometimes be tempted to become so focused on the moment of justification, or even the moment of our New Birth, that we lose sight of the fact that one of these is kind of like a birth certificate, and the other is like the child that is born. The point of being born is not to have a birth certificate. The point of being born is to live. If we continually point back to some moment in the past where we gave our lives to Christ, it is like someone proving they are alive by producing their birth certificate instead of behaving as someone who is alive.
In a Wesleyan understanding of salvation, it could be said that the new birth is far more important than justification, not because justification isn’t important, but both because the new birth is a change that goes to our core, and also that it will then continue to grow and impact our lives. Someone who is merely “forgiven” at one point in their lives but then continues to live as if nothing has happened is a scandal to the gospel. Also, an unchanged life, especially over time, strongly suggests that they may have been fooling themselves about the justification they think they have received.
Again, as the point of a natural birth is not to get a birth certificate, but to have a new life, a new person who will grow and mature, so the point of being born again is not merely to get a status of “forgiven,” but to live a new life, to grow and mature as disciples. Wesley has strong words for anyone who claims the trappings of salvation but without the transformation demanded and empowered by the Holy Spirit:
“Say not then in your heart, ‘I was once baptized, therefore I am now a child of God.’ Alas, that consequence will by no means hold. How many are the baptized gluttons and drunkards, the baptized liars and common swearers, the baptized railers and evil-speakers, the baptized whoremongers, thieves, extortioners? What think you? Are these now the children of God? Verily, I say unto you, whosoever you are, unto whom any one of the preceding characters belongs, ‘Ye are of your father the devil, and the works of your father ye do.’” (Sermon XVIII: Marks of the New Birth, IV.3)
Everything that comes after the moment of justification is dependent on this new birth. It is the start of a process that is not complete until we are made perfect in love, but we will return to that theme in later articles.
