15. In false justification: the "fruit of the Spirit" withers away
WESLEY:
Well might our blessed Lord say, “...if you give them (childlike) a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t. …Hard times are inevitable, but you don’t have to make it worse”.
Yea, abundance of them will of necessity arise when an argument of this sort is made in any religious community; while those that lead the charge endeavor to justify themselves, by censuring and separating those of differing conscience; and then the censured retort the charge, and strive to lay the blame on them.
But how mightily does all this altercation grieve the Holy Spirit of God! How does it hinder his mild and gentle operations in the souls both of one and the other! Heresies and schisms (in the scriptural sense of those words) will, sooner or later, be the consequence; parties will be formed, on one and the other side, whereby the love of many will wax cold. The hunger and thirst after righteousness, after either the favor or the full image of God, together with the longing desires wherewith so many were filled with promoting the work of God in the souls of their brethren, will grow languid, and as offenses increase will gradually die away.
And as the "fruit of the Spirit" withers away, "the works of the flesh" will again prevail, to the utter destruction, first of the power, and then of the very form, of religion. These consequences are not imaginary, are not built on mere conjectures, but on plain matter of fact. This has been the case again and again within these last thirty or forty years: These have been the fruits which we have seen, over and over, to be consequent on such a separation.
PRAYER:
Ecclesiastes 7:11 - Take a good look at God’s work. Who could simplify and reduce Creation’s curves and angles to a plain straight line?
REFLECTION:
Oh, the point <-> counter point approach will not work. As if God cares what humans decide about his Word. Wesley speaks from experience - 30 years of Catholic/Church of England/Protestants back and forth. Oh! The dangers that lie ahead for those who seek justification for their views/authority over matters of God. The effect? The withering of the communal fruits of the Spirit. The Spirit which is the core of our local church devotion to God, our Father.
And Wisdom (Cols 7) asks that we be clear - “who could simplify and reduce” God’s instruction into a plain straight line. Wesley is right, the power of the Spirit is to be found in holding the tension of our diverse consciousness in our hearts instead of shaping it into a plain straight line of disaffiliation. Seek clarity on holding our diverse consciousness in vibrant harmonies.
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