Repentance and Awakening
As taught in the Methodist / Wesleyan tradition
The response to prevenient grace that leads to a conviction of sin and a desire for God's mercy.
The question that stands at the threshold of the Methodist understanding of the Christian life is not "What must I do to be saved?" in a vacuum, but rather, "How does the soul become aware of its need for God in the first place?" In the Wesleyan tradition, the journey of salvation, or the via salutis, is often described through the architectural metaphor of a house. John Wesley, the primary architect of this tradition, famously posited that prevenient grace is the porch of the house, justification is the door, and holiness (sanctification) is the house itself. However, between the porch of prevenient grace and the door of justification lies a critical, often harrowing transitional space: the experience of awakening and the subsequent work of repentance.
By the end of this lesson
- **Identify** the distinction between prevenient grace and convincing grace within the Methodist *via salutis*.
- **Distinguish** between "legal repentance" and "evangelical repentance" as defined in the Wesleyan tradition.
- **Explain** the role of the "awakened" state as the prerequisite for entering the Methodist United Societies.
- **Articulate** how John Wesley’s "Porch" analogy situates repentance relative to justification and sanctification.
- **Trace** the biblical theme of "coming to oneself" through the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15).
- **Defend** the necessity of "godly sorrow" (2 Corinthians 7) against contemporary "easy believism" or antinomianism.
- **Apply** the theology of awakening to the practice of the Methodist Class Meeting and modern small-group discipleship.
- **Compare** the Methodist doctrine of repentance with Calvinist and Roman Catholic understandings of contrition and penance.
Scripture
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