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Opening Ourselves to Grace:
The Basics of Christian Discipleship

THE MEANS OF GRACE

Salvation by grace through faith is a relationship with the living God who is revealed and known in Jesus Christ. Our relationship with God is much like the relationship we have with a spouse or a friend in that it must be nurtured. Our relationships are a lot like plants. If we neglect them by failing to water, feed, and weed them, they dry up and, eventually, die and are discarded. To grow and thrive, they require regular attention and care. Our relationships require attention and participation. We need to give attention to the people we love; to their identity and character. We need to know those we love: their likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, gifts and graces. We also need to spend time with them, participating in their lives.

We need to attend to our relationship with God in much the same way. We know from the witness of Scripture and in the Baptismal Covenant that God is faithful and patient. God knows us better than we know ourselves. Because God is Spirit, God is always available. We, however, are not always faithful, patient, or available to God.

This is why God has provided for us a set of basic practices where God promises always to meet us. These basic practices, the means of grace, are gifts from God. Their purpose is to help us make time and space for God in our lives. They are where we can regularly make ourselves available to God and to the power of grace.

The means of grace are practices through which we learn the mind of Christ by attending to all his teachings, summarized in the Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all of your strength … You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). John Wesley describes these basic Christian practices in his sermon “The Means of Grace:”

“By means of grace I understand outward signs, words, or actions ordained by God, and appointed for this end--to be the ordinary channels whereby [God] might convey to men [and women] preventing [prevenient], justifying, or sanctifying grace.”

He believed practicing the means of grace was essential to the life of Christian discipleship because they lead us to Christ and keep us with him. These basic practices are how Christians open themselves to grace and allow the Holy Spirit to “form the Savior in the soul.” This is beautifully summarized by Charles Wesley in a hymn written for the Love Feast:

Plead we thus for faith alone,
Faith which by our works is shown;
God it is who justifies,
Only faith the grace applies,
Active faith that lives within,
Conquers earth, and hell, and sin,
Sanctifies, and makes us whole,
Forms the Saviour in the soul.

In other words, the means of grace are how disciples of Jesus Christ live out “active faith that lives within.” When Christians practice their faith, they make themselves available to God and the power of grace to “conquer … sin, sanctify, and make them whole.” As these practices and grace become integrated into life, Christians are then free to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love their neighbors as themselves.

Attending to our relationship with God through the means of grace does not, however, come naturally. We need to learn how to do these basic practices of discipleship in the same way that a newly married couple must learn how to live together and love each other. In other words, loving is a discipline that must be learned. It is learned over time through discipline and practice with experienced practitioners.

John Wesley describes this process of “becoming” or Christian character formation in his sermon “On Zeal.” Here he succinctly describes the work of love that forms “holy tempers” in the heart through the means of grace:

In a Christian believer love sits upon the throne, which is erected in the inmost soul; namely, love of God and man, which fills the whole heart, and reigns without a rival. In a circle near the throne are all holy tempers: long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, goodness, fidelity, temperance (see Galatians 5:22-23)—and if any other is comprised in 'the mind which was in Christ Jesus' (Philippians 2:5). In an exterior circle are all the works of mercy, whether to the souls or bodies of men. By these we exercise all holy tempers; by these we continually improve them, so that all these are real means of grace, although this is not commonly adverted to.

Next to these are those that are usually termed works of piety: reading and hearing the Word, public, family, private prayer, receiving the Lord's Supper, fasting or abstinence. Lastly, that his followers may the more effectually provoke one another to love, holy tempers, and good works, our blessed Lord has united them together in one—the church, dispersed all over the earth; a little emblem of which, of the church universal, we have in every particular Christian congregation
(Sermon 92: On Zeal, § II.5).

These basic Christian practices and watching over one another in love are how congregations live out the promise to “do all in your power to increase their faith, confirm their hope, and perfect them in love.”

NEXT: What Are The Means of Grace?