Hello ex-icarusians. My name is Ben, and I am a part of Lexington Christian Fellowship along with Mr. Icarus himself. First off, I would like to thank Dan for graciously allowing me to enter the ex-icarus conversation.

Having said that, I will direct your attention to the first of hopefully many weekly reviews (playfully labeled “Tuesdays with Wesley”) of selected John Wesley sermons. Today’s Wesley tidbit comes from Sermon II, entitled “The Almost Christian.” In this sermon, Wesley lays out what is implied in being an almost Christian and contrasts this with what he sees as an altogether Christian.

Wesley puts forth three defining characteristics of the almost Christian. First, he sees in him a “heathen honesty.” By this he means that he does what common men expect of each other. He expects and administers true justice, abstains from slander, and “holds him in abomination…who called God to be the witness of a lie.”  Second, an almost Christian follows a form of godliness, “having the outside of a real Christian.”  So in addition to heathen honesty, the almost Christian actually professes the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. He abstains from all worldly vice, and follows the golden rule: “Whatsoever thou wouldest not he should do unto thee, that do not thou to another.”  He goes to church, receives the sacraments, and worships the Lord, all in humility and fervor; he even goes so far as to lead his family in devotions and spiritual direction. Thirdly, he does all of this from a sincere heart and good intentions. Wesley points out that the almost Christian even surpasses both the heathen and religious standards in a non-hypocritical way. He is genuine, he keeps it real. Wesley then states that he himself had achieved almost Christianity, “Yet my own conscience beareth me witness in the Holy Ghost, that all this time I was but almost a Christian.”

Wesley then turns to defining an altogether Christian. An altogether Christian, first of all, loves God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.  “Such a love is this,” he adds, “as engrosses the whole heart, as takes up all the affections, as fills the entire capacity of the soul, and employs the utmost extent of all its faculties.”  Second, the altogether Christian loves his neighbor as himself.  “Who is my neighbor?” you ask? Wesley replies, “Every man in the world; every child of His who is the Father of the spirits of all flesh.”  He then points to I Corinthians 13 for a detailed description. Finally, the altogether Christian possesses “the ground of it all, even faith.”  Wesley reminds us from I John 5:4, that “this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.”  And not only faith that God exists and belief in the information available about God through the Bible. Even the demons, Wesley says, believe every word of both the Old and New Testaments, “And yet for all this faith, they be but devils.”  He adds, “It is diligently to be noted, the faith which bringeth not forth repentance, and love, and all good works, is not that right living faith, but a dead a devilish one.”

To sum up, I point out Wesley’s concluding challenge to his audience (I can only imagine being in earshot of Wesley when he originally delivered this sermon). He asks, “Are not many of you conscious that you never came thus far; that you have not been even almost a Christian; that you have not come up to the form of Christian godliness? Much less hath God seen sincerity in you, a real design of pleasing him in all things. You never so much as intended to devote all your words and works, your business, studies, diversions, to his glory. You never even designed or desired that whatsoever you did should be done ‘in the name of the Lord Jesus,’ and as such should be ‘a spiritual sacrifice, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.’” How many of you (and I ask myself as well) are not even almost Christians? How many of you are almost Christians?

May we all together cry out, “My God and my All,” and thus be transformed by the grace of God into altogether Christians.