No Longer My Own: Wesleyan Theology and the Methodist Mission
“I am no longer my own, but thine.” When I first encountered the Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition (The United Methodist Hymnal, no. 607) in my early twenties, its opening line stopped me in my tracks.
The prayer does not ease us into discipleship. It is unlike the prayers I had grown accustomed to—those that begin with graceful preambles thanking God for birds and butterflies, beaches and mountains, sunshine and rain. This prayer gets down to business immediately: “I am no longer my own, but thine.”
At first, the intensity of the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer made it seem like a prayer for “hardcore” Christians. Over time, however, I have come to see it not as a prayer for the spiritually advanced, but as a necessary confession for anyone seeking to follow Christ.
Professing Jesus
When I teach confirmation for teenagers or membership classes for adults, I often say: “Professing Jesus as Lord means that, when you and Jesus disagree, Jesus gets his way.” At the very least, to say “Jesus is Lord” means that when Jesus offends our sensibilities—and he will—we choose to wait upon the Lord. We search the Scriptures and seek the inward witness of the Holy Spirit, trusting God to grant the peace that passes understanding as we discern whether our opinions need to change or our understanding of Jesus needs to grow.
Plainly put, to have a lord is to submit to an authority. To confess that Jesus is Lord is to acknowledge his authority over all of life—both in this world and in the world to come.
We may first come to Jesus seeking psychological help, a moral framework for discerning right and wrong, or wisdom for healing our relationships. Yet the more we entrust parts of our lives to Christ, the more he calls us to surrender all of ourselves: heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit.
And as we do, what initially appears to be over-the-top religiosity becomes a glorious spiritual reality.
- Our bodies are not our own. They have been bought at the highest price through the battered body of our Lord.
- Our talents are not our own. They have been given to us for the work of ministry.
- Our minds are not our own. They were made to contemplate divine wonders and behold the beauty of the Only Begotten One.
- Our souls are not our own. They belong to the One who creates, redeems, and sustains.
Even our faith is not our own. Christian faith is personal, but it is never private. It is not a faith any of us discovered primarily through intellectual brilliance or extraordinary spiritual devotion. It is a faith handed down to us—from Jesus to the apostles, from the apostles to the saints throughout the ages, and finally, amazingly and miraculously, to us.
John and Charles Wesley knew that neither their lives nor their faith belonged to them alone. Both understood faith as a gift to be shared, whatever the cost. If God could be found through intellectual rigor and moral discipline alone, John would have experienced Christ’s companionship much earlier in life. If God’s presence could be summoned by artistic brilliance, Charles’s hymns would have ushered him into the throne room of God every time he sat down to compose.
Thankfully, what could not be earned through effort or skill could be received by grace. John received it when his heart was “strangely warmed” as he listened to the reading of Luther’s preface to Romans on Aldersgate Street. Charles received it when, while ill in bed, the Holy Spirit “chased away the darkness of unbelief.”
The Christian faith came to John and Charles Wesley not as an award to be earned, but as a gift to be received. If we desire that faith to come alive in us, it will come as an undeserved gift—or it will not come at all.
Thank you for joining me for this first installment of No Longer My Own. I hope you will return each week as we explore the beliefs and practices handed down to us through the historic Christian faith and the Wesleyan tradition. My prayer is that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we may experience afresh the joy of knowing that we are no longer our own, because we belong to the “glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
No Longer My Own: Wesleyan Theology and the Methodist Mission
The United Methodist Hymnal, no. 607) in my early twenties, its opening line stopped me in my tracks.
________________________________________________
Wil Cantrell serves as senior pastor of Concord United Methodist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
He is author of:
ATONE: The Difference the Cross Makes
From Heaven to Earth: Christmas for New Believers, Old Believers, and Nonbelievers