John Wesley's understandings of grace and Christian maturity ("perfection") provide the foundation of the Covenant Discipleship movement in The United Methodist Church.

Wesley understood God's grace to be actively working in all of human existence and experience. He understood it to be available for anyone, but the extent to which it can be experienced and provide sustenance for the disciple on the Christian journey is largely dependent on the way that disciple chooses to respond to the grace God offers. Wesley believed that God has given human beings the free will to choose how to live. We are free to embrace or reject God's love. A disciple can decide at any time to accept or deny the grace of God freely offered in Christ Jesus. But the extent to which the disciple seeks to live in Christ will impact his/her knowledge and experience of the fullness of God's grace.

Wesley understood grace to be prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying.

Prevenient grace is that wondrous grace of God that is there before the human/sinner is even aware of God's love and call. It is this grace in Christ Jesus that invites persons to be reconciled with God. It is this prevenient, or preparing, grace that works in our lives to awaken us to our own sinful nature and to our need for divine forgiveness. It is also the form of grace that gives us the very freedom to resist God's grace. For this reason, it is so important for us to focus on finding ways to be accountable in our discipleship, therefore seeking ways to be open to grace.

Justifying grace establishes a new relationship with God in such a way that the human will learns to submit to God's will, so that God's Spirit might dwell there. It is a free gift from God — a gift of forgiveness, repentance, and new creation.

And sanctifying grace acts to transform a person from "someone whose instinct is to resist God to someone whose instinct is to seek God."* The work of sanctifying grace unfolds throughout the journey of the Christian disciple. Wesley's understanding of Christian maturity is that the more a disciple seeks to follow Christ through the practice of living in the way of our Lord, the more Christ-like one becomes. This growth toward Christ moves the disciple to a new level of Christian maturity. In Wesley's understanding then, Christian maturity is built "grace upon grace" (John 1:16).

According to Wesley, then, responsibility for sanctification is with the disciple. We come to Christian maturity by integrating faith with the "good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life" (Ephesians 2:10, NRSV). "You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works... You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone, for just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead" (James 2:22, 24, 26, NRSV).

Wesley contended that there are means of grace given by God to help us grow in Christian maturity. These are disciplines of the Christian life that have been proven time and again to provide a path for persons to experience God. The means of grace are the public worship of God, prayer (private, family, and public), searching the scriptures (reading, meditating, and hearing), receiving the Lord's Supper at every opportunity, fasting or abstinence, and Christian conference (meeting with other Christians to discern the will of God for one's life.)

Through mutual support and accountability, Covenant Discipleship groups help today's disciples practice the means of grace in their daily lives and grow in Christian maturity.

*From Covenant Discipleship by David Lowes Watson, p.33.

Vicki Brendler, a member of the Council for Accountable Discipleship, is District Superintendent, Raritan District, North Plainfield, NJ.