Free!

“When Wesley sought to give greater precision to his understanding of the new birth, he employed three marks or traits of this distinct measure of grace, namely, faith, hope, and love. Concerning faith, the first mark, Wesley reiterated the themes that faith is not only an assent to divine truth, but also a confidence in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ. A new emphasis, however, emerges in his comments that a fruit of this faith through which one is born again, and which cannot be separated from it, is freedom from the power of sin: ‘power over outward sin of every kind; over every evil word and work. . . And over inward sin.’ This is the second great liberty of the gospel and one both taught and preached by Wesley for much of his career.”— The Theology of John Wesley, p.217