John Wesley: The Man Who Asked for a Clean Heart

When Professor Gary Maxey lists his holiness heroes, John Wesley is among the first. Wesley is the source of the tradition Professor Maxey teaches in.

A restless young priest

Wesley was born in 1703 in Epworth, Lincolnshire, and died in London in 1791. At Oxford, he led a small group of serious students that critics mocked as the Holy Club. In 1735, he sailed to the colony of Georgia as a missionary. His time there is usually judged a failure, and he sailed home in December 1737.

The warmed heart

On 24 May 1738, at a meeting on Aldersgate Street in London, Wesley heard someone read Luther's preface to the book of Romans. He wrote in his journal that he felt his heart strangely warmed. Historians treat this as his evangelical conversion.

The next year, he preached his first open-air sermon near Bristol, and for about fifty years he kept preaching in the fields.

Christian perfection

Wesley taught that after justification by faith, a believer could be entirely sanctified before death. He described it as being cleansed from sin and made perfect in love. He avoided the phrase sinless perfection. His book A Plain Account of Christian Perfection appeared in 1766. In 1790, near the end of his life, he called entire sanctification the grand depositum God had lodged with the Methodists.

What Professor Maxey draws from him

In his book on the Highway of Holiness, Professor Maxey quotes Wesley on the two principles in every believer, nature and grace. Wesley wrote that even babes in Christ are sanctified in part, yet in part they are still carnal, and the body of sin must be destroyed. He also quotes Wesley's famous wish for one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God.

A question to take with you

Wesley's heart was warmed. Was it also cleansed? He did not stop at the first. Ask yourself whether you have.

Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey and public biographical sources. Sources: Wikipedia, "John Wesley."