John Wesley on friendship with the world
The Revd Dr John Wesley (1703-1791)
MINGLING our Christian life with the ways of other religions or the secular world may seem harmless enough, but it risks losing everything.
Writing on 2 Cor 6:17-18 – last night’s reading from 1 Cor 5:9-13 would have done just as well – John Wesley (1703-1791) warned us:
IT is probable, it will not immediately have any apparent, visible ill consequences. It is hardly to be expected, that it will immediately lead us into any outward sin. Perhaps it may not presently occasion our neglect of any outward duty. It will first sap the foundations of religion: it will, by little and little, damp our zeal for God; it will gently cool that fervency of spirit, which attended our first love. If they do not openly oppose any thing we say or do, yet their very spirit will, by insensible degrees, affect our spirit, and transfuse into it the same lukewarmness and indifference towards God and the things of God. It will weaken all the springs of our soul; destroy the vigour of our spirit; and cause us more and more to slacken our pace, in running the race that is set before us.
Nonetheless, we do not have recourse to such drastic measures as Phineas in our reading this morning (Num 25), who ran an Israelite and his Midianite wife through with a single thrust of his spear! Therein lies the difference between law and gospel – something Christians seem to forget at times.
Wesley pleaded with us not to withdraw from society and trade, or treat non-Christians with anything less than perfect courtesy and respect, regardless of their chosen way of life. But then he urged us to choose our intimate companions much more carefully.
WHAT is it then which the apostle forbids? First, the conversing with ungodly men, when there is no necessity, no providential call, no business, that requires it: secondly, the conversing with them more frequently than business necessarily requires: thirdly, the spending more time in their company than is necessary to finish our business: above all, fourthly, the choosing ungodly persons, however ingenious or agreeable, to be our ordinary companions; or to be our familiar friends.
Sermons, Vol II. Sermon LXXXVI: On Leaving The World.
More by John Wesley here.
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"[Politicians] are employed in framing laws and statutes for preventing crimes, and keeping the disorderly multitude within bounds; and at the same time, by personally discountenancing public worship, they are weakening, they are even abolishing, among the multitude, that moral restraint which is of more general influence upon manners than all the laws they frame."
I FIND, by experience, that by often seeing her Portrait, & that of her Dearest Son, I many times recall Him & His Merits, her & her Perfections, to my mind, which before was void of such Heavenly Guests.
I BELIEVE in one God the Father Almighty,