SOFT PREACHING AND CHEAP GRACE

__________________

A Paper

Presented to

Dr. Tim McAlhaney

The College at Southwestern

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In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for IDE 3101-C

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by

Wes Terry

October 23, 2008

 SOFT PREACHING AND CHEAP GRACE

A growing number of preachers today could be defined as those who have been

accumulated by men with “itching ears.” Those who have disassociated themselves with

sound doctrine and have instead aligned with the proclamation that satisfies their own

passions.1 However, “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for

reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be

competent, equipped for every good work.”2 Those who preach are called to preach the

whole counsel of God’s Word. John Wesley believed similarly. Wesley wanted a wholistic

approach to preaching that would couple the precious content of the gospel with the

convicting nature of the law. A study of Wesley’s reasons will show how and why

preaching should consist of both law and gospel and the disastrous results of elevating

one above the other.

Setting the Stage

Before establishing why one should preach the gospel coupled with the law, it

is necessary to define the terms as Wesley used them. For Wesley, the gospel was

“preaching the love of God to sinners, preaching the life, death, resurrection and

intercession of Christ, with all the blessings which in consequence thereof are freely

given to true believers.” By preaching the law Wesley meant “explaining and enforcing

the commands of Christ briefly comprised in the Sermon on the Mount.” 3 It should be

1
2 Timothy 4:3-4
2
2 Timothy 3:16-17. All Scripture quotations will be taken from the English
Standard Version unless otherwise noted by the author.
2
 3
noted that although Wesley used the Sermon on the Mount as an example4, that does not

mean by necessity that Old Testament passages were to be excluded.5

Wesley was plagued with many of the same questions that the reformers before

him had been preoccupied with. What was the relationship between faith and works?

How does regeneration and justification work together for salvation? Is there a

connection between sanctification and assurance? These questions all revolve around two

words: law and gospel.6

What captured Wesley’s attention was how salvation in Christ should shape

individual people. He searched for how one should preach and live so that more people

might receive salvation in Christ. He wrestled with the following questions. What is the

role of the believer and what is the role of God in the process of salvation?7 How can one

walk wisely and make the best use of time in these evil days?8 These questions helped to

3
Albert C. Outley, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 232.
4
For Wesley, the beatitudes were a summary of the Christian religion. He
admired the balanced and interrelated presentation of "happiness" and "holiness" in the
beatitudes. Experienced religion will have outward consequences due to the likeness with
Christ. In short, the beatitudes reveal the complete way of salvation. Tore Meistad,
Martin Luther and John Wesley on the Sermon on the Mount (Lanham: The Scarecrow
Press, 1999), 94.
5
For example, when Jesus uses the phrase, "You have heard it said" he is
usually referencing an Old Testament passage (for example Mt. 5:21 cf. Ex. 20:13, Deut.
5:17; Mt. 5:27 cf. Ex. 20:14, Deut. 5:18; Mt. 5:31 cf. Deut 24:1.) It would be beneficial
when explaining these words of Jesus to use the Old Testament references in one's
preaching.
6
Jr. Cobb, John B, Grace and Responsibility: A Wesleyan Theology for Today
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 22.
7
Harald Lindstrom gives an extensive treatment of these questions by Wesley.
However, due to space, they will not be explored now. Harald Lindstrom, Wesley and
Sanctification: A study in the Doctrine of Salvation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980), 83.
8
Ephesians 5:15
 4
shape Wesley’s theology and influenced the way in which he coupled preaching the law

with the gospel.

According to Wesley, the gospel would appeal tothe contrite and humble while

the law would convict the proud and self-sufficient. The gospel saves, the law is for

discipline. It is the paradox in Christianity that fights legalism on one front and

liberalism on the other. So, if the law is such a powerful asset to the proclamation of the

gospel, how does one establish the law in their preaching? The following will be a

summary of Wesley’s methods and reasons for establishing the law.

Establishing the Law

Wesley’s methods were a reaction against those who exempted the law from

their preaching, taught that faith supersedes the need for holiness, and lived their personal

lives as if faith in Christ was a license for lawlessness. For Wesley, faith was a means of

producing the good essence of the law in one’s Christian life.9 The biblical undergirding

for his method is found at the end of Romans three. “He [God] will justify the

circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law

by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.”10 The law must be of

indispensable value to the individual Christian. The Old Covenant should never be

separated from the New Covenant. The two go hand in hand.

As one commentator put it, one is God’s promise to man, the other is the

fulfillment of His promise. “The fulfillment of the promise makes the promise more

sacred; and the promise will never be forgotten as long as we remember its fulfillment.”11
9
Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 222.
10
Romans 3:30-31
11
J.P McBeth, Commentary on Romans (Dallas: Crescendo Book Publications,
1937), 128.
 5
Willem VanGemeren writes, “Under both covenants, the Lord has one standard for ethics,

namely holiness or wholeness of life…under both administrations God wants his people

to love him, keep his law, and to depend on him wholly for life.”12 With this theology

serving as his foundation, Wesley showed how one should go about establishing the law

in one’s theology, preaching, and personal walk with Christ.

Declare Every Part of It

The first step in establishing the law has already been discussed to some

extent. The preacher must preach the whole counsel of God’s Word. “We do not

cauponize, mix, adulterate, or soften it to make it suit the taste of the hearers.”13 Soft

preaching produces hard hearts and hard preaching produces soft hearts. There are

passages in Scripture that are extremely confrontational in nature and complicated in

substance. However, these passages should be preached with the same amount of passion

and conviction as any other passage. “All that is written in the book of God we are to

declare, not as pleasing men, but the Lord. We are to declare, not only the promises, but

all the threatenings, too, which we find therein.”14

Likewise, the law should be preached for the transformation of the inner spirit

of a person and not just one’s outward appearance. The law was not given as a means of

behavior modification but as tutor to the condition of one’s heart. It shows deficiencies

both in behavior and in attitudes. Declaring every part of the law also means proclaiming

it in such a way that it changes the inner man and not just the outer man. Wesley believed
12
Willem A. VanGemeren, The Law Is the Perfection of Righteousness in Jesus
Christ: A Reformed Perspective, ed. Stanley N. Gundry, Five Views on Law and Gospel
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), 36.
13
Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 223.
14
Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 225.
 6
that the powerful proclamation of the word would lead to changed lives. Thus, his second

method of establishing the law is to preach faith in Christ as a means to holiness.

Faith Produces Holiness without Superseding It

“We establish the law, secondly, when we so preach faith in Christ as not to

supersede but produce holiness: to produce all manner of holiness, negative and positive,

of the heart and of the life.”15 This is the arena in which Wesley develops his argument

that faith is a means, not an end. The end of all of God’s commandments is love. When

all else fails, love remains. “Love is the end, the sole end, of every dispensation of God,

from the beginning of the world to the consummation of all things.”16

Wesley believed that love was lost because of sin and thus faith was added into

the equation. Faith was the means by which God restored man back to the love from

which he had fallen: to re-establish the law of love. Since love is the both the image and

nature of God, an infusion of God’s love is able to transform the human soul into its

pristine stage. Wesley called this state “perfection.” His efforts to keep the law on the lips

of his lay-preachers were because he believed that such preaching would spur one on into

a state of perfection.

Wesley held that the Bible promised the Christian life could be free from sin.

He had written and preached on the doctrine of perfection and fought for it at length.17

There were some who claimed that believers who were outside of this state of perfection

15
Ibid., Pg. 226.
16
Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 227.
17
At the end of the 1750's, some Methodists started to claim that they had
actually achieved this state of perfection and by 1760 the perfectionist revival was
sweepting across the nation. Stephen Tomkins, John Wesley: A Biography (Oxford: Lion
Publishing, 2003), 156.
 7
were under the curse of God and in a state of damnation. Wesley rejected such radical

views but still held that the gift of perfection could come gradually or instantaneously.18

The doctrine of perfection has some problematic implications. For one, it

asserts that perfection is achieved after justification. While it is understood that

sanctification is a process, this author believes that the completion of that process will not

be brought about until the day of Christ’s returning.19 Secondly, if perfection could be

obtained in this life outside of justification, it would also necessarily mean that perfection

could be lost in this life outside of justification. This cannot be reconciled scripturally.20

The potential result is a low view of justification by faith, a high view of man’s moral

abilities, and the denial of eternal security. While these conclusions may not have been

held by Wesley, these are the extremities of such premises.

That being established, it is important for believers to constantly strive for

perfection. Any time that is spent contemplating the gospel should produce a desire for

service to God and others. For the apostle Paul, these two worlds were combined with the

word “therefore.”21 Paul spent the eleventh chapter of Romans pondering the mystery of

gospel. He then began Romans twelve with, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the

mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,

which is your spiritual worship.”22 Paul finishes that chapter with imperatives that that
18
Ibid., Pg. 157.
19
Philippians 1:6
20
Romans 8:38-39 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor
rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor
anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ
Jesus our Lord.
21
Robert E. Chiles, Scriptural Christianity: A Call to John Wesley's Disciples
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 122.
22
Emphasis added.
 8
stress the practical implications of good theology. So, faith should produce holiness.

However, it will never supersede one’s holiness in justification. This leads to Wesley’s

third principle of establishing the law, and that is to establish it in one’s own life.

The Law Should Be Established in One’s Own Life

This is the most pastoral approach to Wesley’s reasons for the establishment of

the law. Without it, “all our preaching would be so far from profiting ourselves that it

would only increase our damnation.” 23 The preacher’s power does not lie in great talents

or rhetorical splendor but in his likeness to Jesus.

As Charles Spurgeon put it, “True and genuine piety is necessary as the first

indispensable requisite; whatever ‘call’ a man may pretend to have, if he has not been

called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the ministry.”24 Preachers should

imitate what they persuade others to be. Excellent content can be void of power when a

preacher refuses to practice what he preaches. Orthodoxy must always lead to orthopraxy.

“We do not trust those persons who have two faces, nor will men believe in those whose

verbal and practical testimonies are contradictory. As actions speak louder than words, so

an ill life will effectually drown the voice of the most eloquent ministry.”25 This principle

is what fueled Wesley’s desire for a pious life.

According to Wesley, if the preacher has established the law in his own life,

seeing faith as a means to produce holiness, and he has dedicated himself to preaching the

whole counsel of God’s Word, he is equipped to couple the preaching of the law and the

23
Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 227.
24
Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to my Students (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1954),
9.
25
Ibid., Pg. 17.
 9
gospel. It is now appropriate to explore the reasons why, methods on how, and what will

result when a preacher chooses not to.

Why One Should Preach the Law with the Gospel

Wesley gives several reasons why the coupling of the law and the gospel

should be incorporated into every sermon. Two will be mentioned here. The first reason is

that the law begets faith in penitent sinners and the second is that it stimulates spiritual

vitality. These two reasons incorporate the two pillars on which Wesley rested his

theology of piety: justification and sanctification.

Begets Faith in Penitent Sinners

Paul asks these questions in Romans 10:14. “How then will they call on him in

whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have

never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” The proclamation

of the gospel is essential in order for people to come to faith in Jesus Christ. While

Wesley believed in public proclamation, he condemned “gospel preaching” that taught

the good news of salvation but gave sinners an inaccurate view of their depravity and the

necessity of a pious life.

For Wesley, preaching the law shows men the standard. It testifies to the

separation between God and man and the need reconciliation. We are helpless in our

natural condition and the law confirms our depravity. In the words of Wesley,

“Only corrupt fruit grows on a corrupt tree. And his heart is altogether corrupt and
abominable, being ‘come short of the glory of God,’ the glorious righteousness at
first impressed on his soul… If then sinful man finds favor with God, it is grace
upon grace. If God vouches still to pour fresh blessings upon us – yea, the greatest
of all blessings, salvation – what can we say to these things but ‘Thanks be unto
God for His unspeakable gift!’”26

26
John Wesley, "Salvation by Faith," in Whitefield and Wesley on the New
Birth, ed. Timothy L. Smith (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press, 1986), 81.
 10
Stimulates Spiritual Vitality

Wesley also believed that preaching the law and gospel together would

stimulate spiritual vitality. “The law not only convicts the unbeliever and enlightens the

believing soul, but also conveys food to a believer, sustains and increases his spiritual life

and strength.” 27 When one contemplates on the message of the gospel it has the potential

to create in that person such a love for Jesus Christ that they walk in obedience to his

commandments. The insights gained from the preaching of the law spurs one on to good

works out of thankfulness to his Savior.

So, the law is not incompatible with grace. Faith lives harmoniously with

works in the paradox of love and duty. Freedom in Christ should always serve as a

catalyst for righteousness and not as a license for immorality. Samuel Bolton writes,

“In those who are justified it [the law] acts first of all as a doctrine to drive them to duty,

next as a glass to reveal their defects so that they may be kept humble and may fly to

Christ, next as a restrainer and corrector of sin, and then again as a reprove of sin.”28

Wesley thought that in preaching the law, one should preach for fresh life. He

believed in preaching that would instill vigor and strength to run the way of Christ’s

commandments. Both law and gospel should be preached: both at once or both in one. 29

Soft preaching does not produce spiritual vitality. Rather, it redefines it. However, the

27
Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 234.
28
Samuel Bolton, The True Bounds of Christian Freedom (Great Britain: The
Banner of Truth Trust, 1978), 78.
29
Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 232-234.
 11
unadulterated preaching of the whole counsel of God will produce hearts that burn30 for

Jesus Christ and a church body that exercises its faith with good works.

Wedding the Law with the Gospel

In addition to giving a theoretical philosophy of why one should preach the law

with the gospel, Wesley also gave very practical methods on how to do it from the pulpit.

Unlike his methods on “establishing the law” these principles applied to the nuts and

bolts of one’s rhetoric. Again, two methods will be established here. The first principle is

that the preacher should condition his content according to the environment of his

congregation. Secondly, one should preach the law not as the cause but as the fruit of

salvation.

Conditioned by Environment

Wesley summarizes this point saying,

“… preach the law in the strongest, the closest, the most searching manner possible,
only intermixing the gospel here and there and showing it, as it were, afar off. After
more and more persons are convinced of sin, we may mix more and more of the
gospel in order to beget faith…therefore it is not expedient wholly to omit the law;
not only because we may well suppose that many of our hearers are still
unconvinced, but because otherwise there is danger that many who are convinced
will heal their own wounds slightly.”31

Any good public speaker will know his audience. He will know their values

and needs, what they like and dislike, and, most importantly, what they can be persuaded

by. Though preaching is unlike any other communication forum, there are points of

similarity between it and other mediums.

Wesley believed that the function of the law was to show the true condition of

one’s heart and create within that person complete disparity over sin. The weight one
30
Luke 24:32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while
he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
31
Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 232-233.
 12
feels in regard to their depravity is proportional to how powerfully the law is preached.32

In essence, the preacher must understand the spiritual chemistry in a room in order to

decide how much of either element is to be elevated above the other. For the hard of heart

there should be a powerful proclamation of the law. For the penitent and broken, the

preacher should offer the hope and peace that is found in the gospel.

Not the Cause but the Fruit

The second method is to preach obedience to the law as the fruit of salvation

and not the cause of it. Obedience should result because of love to Christ and its stimuli

should be rooted in his first loving us. One should preach the law in such a way that it is

tempered by and animated with the spirit of the gospel.33 It is only in Christ that we can

find life. All strength is found in him alone. If Christ is lifted up above the law then the

preaching of the law will enlighten and strengthen the soul. It will nourish and teach

those who find their identity in Christ.34

The law should never be dangled over men as a means of obtaining salvation

in Christ. Good works are the fruit of faith in Christ. When one preaches obedience to the

law as the cause of salvation, they preach damnation on their congregation. The law is a

tutor and a mirror. It teaches us how to live righteously and shows us our short comings.

However, redemption is only found in Jesus Christ and any obedience to the law should

spring from a personal relationship with him.

32
Gene E. Bartlett, The Audacity of Preaching (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1962), 30.
33
Albert C. Outler, ed., John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), 234.
34
Ibid., Pg. 235.
 13
Conclusion

The coupling of the law and gospel while preaching is something that might be

seen as irreconcilable. However, in reality, it is the only way in which salvation can be

rightly understood. If one clings only to the law there will be problems. It could result in

legalism, man-centered theologies, and spiritual hopelessness. If one clings only to the

gospel there will be problems. It could result in spiritual laxity regarding obedience, a

low view of God’s standard and man’s sinfulness, and a false sense of perfection.

The answer is found in middle. Good preaching will establish the law in the

hearts of men and counter hopelessness with the power of the gospel. The law of love

should be the driving force of all preaching: love to God and love to people. Good

preaching will hold man as the chief of creation yet the chief of sinners. It will show

humanity as honored but undeserving; as responsible but dependant; as estranged from

God but reconciled in Christ.

Preaching that fails to wed these two will result in shrinking congregations.

Men and women under such proclamation will suffer from spiritual anemia. Without the

blood of Christ, the hope of glory is lost. Salvation is unattainable. Man is enslaved to sin

forever. However, failure to recognize the price and worth of the blood that frees man

from the chains of death will result in soft preaching and cheap grace.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Truth Trust, 1978.

Chiles, Robert E. Scriptural Christianity: A Call to John Wesley's Disciples. Grand

Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984.

Cobb, Jr., John B. Grace and Responsibility: A Wesleyan Theology for Today. Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1995.

Lindstrom, Harald. Wesley and Sanctification: A study in the Doctrine of Salvation.

Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980.

McBeth, J.P. Commentary on Romans. Dallas: Crescendo Book Publications, 1937.

Meistad, Tore. Martin Luther and John Wesley on the Sermon on the Mount. Lanham:
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Outler, Albert C. ed. John Wesley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Spurgeon, Charles. Lectures to my Students. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1954.

Tomkins, Stephen. John Wesley: A Biography. Oxford: Lion Publishing, 2003.

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