The Christian message is a gospel, a gracious summons to put one’s sole hope for life in what God has done for us, and desires to do within us.  The grace of God has been revealed in the objective, saving work of Jesus Christ. Salvation is grounded in grace but requires a personal response to the Divine initiative. John Wesley (1703-1791) strongly asserted the primacy of divine grace in the work of salvation but also found it important to emphasize the role of responsible human participation in this gracious work.  Thus, he sought to maintain a dynamic relation between divine grace and our response.

Salvation as Grace and Response

An image that captures salvation’s co-operant nature is that of a dance in which God always takes the first step, but we must participate responsively. Besides highlighting the Divine initiative in salvation, this image conveys that such responsive interaction takes place over time; thus, it is fundamentally gradual in process.  Although understanding salvation as involving an instantaneous legal act of pardon, Wesley also realized the liability of viewing justification as the end-all of salvation. He emphasized the transformation following justification, in terms of further growth in holiness. While such growth is understood to be gradual, it is not automatic but requires a continuing responsiveness to God’s empowering grace.

The Wesleyan way of salvation, although emphasizing progressive growth, maintains the important place of instantaneous transitions in the Christian life. Justification, regeneration and entire sanctification (sometimes referred to as a “second work of grace”) are recognized to be critical moments in the process of salvation. In each case, instantaneousness is seen as underscoring the unmerited nature of God’s saving work. And yet, Wesley was quick to affirm the importance of our responsive growth following these initiatory events, integrally relating these momentary transitions to gradual growth in response to God’s grace.

Salvation as Transformation

Wesleyans maintain the doctrine of “justification by faith alone” in order to accentuate our absolute dependence upon God’s grace, sharply rejecting any notion of required good works or holiness prior to justification. But what about works after justification? Wesley emphasized that one who enjoys God’s gracious justifying Presence will desire to respond with grace-enabled good works and holiness. Thus, although maintaining justification by faith alone, he recognized that such a faith is not alone but is meant to issue in faith righteousness (“faith working by love — Galatians 5:6).

Salvation involves not only the sinner’s change of legal status, from guilty to not guilty (justification), but also transformation through personal union with God (sanctification). It includes being drawn toward participation in the life of the Triune God. The Holy Spirit summons us to a transforming friendship with God that leads to sharing in the Triune life. Thus, acquittal before God is only the beginning, not the end of salvation. After being justified, we enter the process of being conformed to Christ and anticipate sharing God’s glory in the new community and new creation. Scripture expresses this by referring to Christians as being able to “participate in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Justification is a moment in salvation, but not necessarily the central motif. The key thing is that salvation involves transformation. It is not by cheap grace, based on bare assent to propositions, or merely a change of legal status. If there is no newness of life, if there is no union with Christ, if there is no liberation from the dominion of sin, there is no salvation.

Salvation as Renewal of the Imago Dei

As Scripture attests, humanity was created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).

From a Wesleyan perspective, this imago (understood as right-relatedness to God) was lost as a consequence of the Fall. Thus, the great purpose of redemption, biblically and theologically understood, is to restore humanity to the image of God. The total process of salvation from its beginning in the new birth, its “perfection in love” at entire sanctification, and its progressive development toward final glorification, has as its objective the restoring of humanity to its original destiny in relationship with God.

For Wesley, holiness entails the renewal of humankind in the image of God. Few concepts appear more frequently in his published sermons. Every aspect of God’s redemptive activity in human life is at some time referred to in this way, including regeneration, entire sanctification, and growth in grace. Thus, Wesleyan theology recognizes the lifelong quest for fuller conformity to the imago Dei as an essential component of the biblical doctrine of sanctification. This is not to deny the reality of a decisive encounter with God in which one can be perfected in love. But Wesleyan theology views sanctification as a lifelong process that moves along a continuum, with entire sanctification as a critical moment within this process.  

The essence of Wesley’s understanding of holiness is to be seen in terms of love.  While love is present in the believer’s experience from the moment of the new birth, it is present in a “mixed” form (with self-love, love of the world, etc.). But the movement of grace ideally brings one to the moment of “entire sanctification,” which he almost without exception defined as “the loving God with all the heart, soul, mind and strength, and one’s neighbor as oneself.”

Holistic Salvation

Wesley believed salvation involved three dimensions: justification (pardon), which is salvation begun; sanctification (holiness), which is salvation continued; and consummation (glory), which is salvation finished. It is thus understood as deliverance: 1) immediately from the penalty of sin; 2) progressively from the plague of sin; and 3) eschatologically from the very presence of sin and its effects. Throughout his various considerations of human salvation, Wesley focused on the middle dimension of deliverance from the plague of sin, although always in integral relation with the other two dimensions. That which is perfected in heaven begins on earth as a present reality. Present salvation, however, involves more than deliverance from the penalty of sin, but also from the plague of sin. In treating salvation in this latter sense, Wesley came to distinguish between the instantaneous restoration of our responsive participation in God (the new birth) and the resulting gradual therapeutic transformation of our lives (sanctification proper). He understood the crucial problem of sin not only as legal guilt, but also as spiritual debilitation and affliction. Hence, salvation from sin must involve more than pardon; it must also bring healing. 

Wesley insisted that salvation must involve not only inner holiness, but also the recovery of actual moral righteousness in our outward lives. He stated: “By salvation I mean, not barely deliverance from hell, or going to heaven, but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its … original purity; a recovery of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy, and truth.” Such transformation has obvious ethical implications. The sanctification of our religious affections, desires and motivations needs to manifest itself outwardly in our relationships. In fact, Wesley maintained that “there is no holiness but social holiness.” In other words, true holiness must find expression in relation to others, both in the Church and in the world.

Illustration by Matt Chinworth | This article was originally titled” Transforming Grace: Holiness and the Way of Salvation” in the October 2025 issue of The War Cry.