What’s love got to do with it? A lot, if you ask Charles Wesley.
What did he have to say about love? Charles Wesley wrote about the love of God toward human beings, the love that God’s creatures should have for their Creator, and the love that Christians should have toward all. This love was not optional, but necessary. Charles wrote about love in his hymns, his sermons, his letters, and his journal. These 40 quotes will give you a flavor of Charles’s thoughts on love.
These thoughts are both powerful and profound. I hope you will both enjoy them and also be edified by them. Number 17 is my personal favorite.
1. Amazing Love!
And can it be that I should gain
An int’rest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
“And Can It Be That I Should Gain?” by Charles Wesley
Charles was astounded by the love of God. He thought it was truly amazing.
This hymn captures the essence of the awe Charles felt. How could it be possible that God would send Christ to die for sinners? To die for the ones who caused Him pain?
It is only because of God’s amazing love.
2. Emptied of All But Love
He left His Father’s throne above,
So free, so infinite His grace;
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race.
“And Can It Be That I Should Gain?” by Charles Wesley
Charles continued in the same hymn to discuss Christ’s love toward humanity. He focused on Christ’s servant nature and astounding sacrifice.
How could it be that Jesus would leave the glory of heaven? How could it be that Christ would empty Himself of all divine privilege and stoop to earth to bleed for sinners?
Charles praised the free and infinite grace of God. He also remarked that Christ emptied Himself of all but His love. Because God is love, Jesus came to earth. Because God is love, Jesus willingly laid down His life as a ransom for sinners.
How can it be that anyone could gain from this sacrifice? The answer is simply because God is love.
3. Love’s Redeeming Work
Love’s redeeming work is done,
Fought the fight, the battle won,
Death in vain forbids Him rise,
Christ hath opened paradise.
“Christ the Lord is Risen Today” by Charles Wesley
The love expressed in Jesus Christ was not simply emotional. It was not just an example. It had a redemptive purpose.
That redemptive purpose was accomplished on the cross when Jesus died according to the Scriptures as an atonement for sin. Christ fought the fight. He won the battle.
And it was all the work of love. Redemptive love.
4. Jesus, Lover of My Soul
Jesus, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high!
Hide me O my Savior hide,
Till the storm of life is past.
Safe into the haven guide.
Oh, receive my soul at last!
“Jesus, Lover of My Soul” by Charles Wesley
Charles didn’t view Jesus as a dead Savior but as a living Savior. The love of Christ wasn’t a past event. It was present.
He thought of Jesus as the current One who loved his soul enough the die and rise again for him. As the living Lord and Savior, Charles sought to find refuge in Christ during the difficulties of life. He wanted to abide in the love of his Savior until he finally came home to heaven.
5. The Delight of Angels
O glorious task, O blissful enjoyment! It is the delight of angels, a forestalling of the joys of futurity and a foretaste of the blessedness of heaven. Cast away from you therefore every thing but this love of God. Divest yourselves of every pleasure but that of serving him. Halt no longer between two opinions, but since ye own the Lord to be God, follow him and him alone. Serve him truly and faithfully with all your strength: love him with all your heart and mind. Worship him in your body and in your spirit. Be perfect in the love and fear of God, that so your happiness may be perfected in the enjoyment of his heavenly kingdom throughout all ages; world without end.
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on 1 Kings 18:21
Many think that the love of God will be expressed by giving people the pleasures of earth. Charles thought this was foolishness. He viewed the pursuit of earthly joy as a vain and futile task. One that will always and inevitably lead to disappointment.
Instead, he urged people to pursue heavenly delight. That delight is found in the Person of God Himself!
God is the one whom the angels delight themselves in. God is the one that Christians should delight themselves in, too. In doing so, we can get a foretaste of heaven while still dwelling on earth.
6. Perfect Joy, Inexpressible Sweetness
Such joy have all they that hope in God, and the stronger their hope the greater their joy. But this is not all: for hope leads to love; and in the love of God joy is perfected. Very excellent things are spoken of the happiness that flows from loving God. But whosoever has this love shed abroad in his heart, feels more than can ever be spoken, yea though he spake with the tongue of men and angels, he could not utter the joy of charity. It is the hidden manna, the inexpressible sweetness, whereof none can know, but he that tastes it.
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on Psalm 126:7, bold added
Perfect joy. Inexpressible sweetness. The hidden manna that can’t be known or even told. It can only be experienced.
This is how Charles described the love of God.
In this love, joy was made perfect. True happiness is found. Happiness and joy that could never be robbed by the world because it was not dependent upon circumstances. It was dependent on God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
7. A Powerful Feeling
Some emphasize that love is a choice and deny that it is a feeling. Not Charles.
Tell him religion is situated in the heart and must therefore be felt wheresoever it is, and it will all appear delusion to him. Saint Paul in his epistle to the Philippians, 1.9, prays for all those ‘that are partakers of his grace, that their love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment,’ in all sense or feeling, as it is in the original and in our margin. But of this the natural man has no cause for apprehension; nay, he presumes to give God himself the lie in blasphemously saying all feeling in religion is enthusiasm! Him we must own to be past feeling either God or sin, and leave him to that mercy which he denies.
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on 1 John 3:14, bold added
Charles did not want to deny either the intellectual or the emotional aspects of true, inward religion. To make religion all heart and no mind was just as much of an error as making religion all intellect and no feeling.
Charles sought to help people understand that true religion was both. It was profoundly intellectual. It was also passionate. The natural man couldn’t understand this truth. It could only be spiritually discerned.
8. The Dangers of Self-love
Indeed while ye live to please yourselves, it matters not much in what particular way; be it in the grossest issues of self-love, the playhouse or the brothel. ‘Hear ye this, and tremble, ye that are at ease! Be troubled, ye careless ones, for to you am I sent to cry aloud and spare not, to lift up my voice like a trumpet, and show you your transgressions and your sins.’ Mean you to continue in this spirit of slumber till the everlasting flames awake you?
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on 1 John 3:14
As Charles sought to urge people to love God with all their heart, he likewise tried to wake them up to the dangers of living to please themselves by serving their own lusts and passions. To follow their hearts in comfort and ease was to be asleep on the broad path to destruction.
Charles urged them to wake up before it was too late. To realize that whatever form of self-love they followed it was worthy of being repented of.
He sought to ground everyone in a love for God that resulted in living to please Him, not themselves. In this was life and joy and peace.
9. A Living or Dead Faith?
The faith which worketh not by love, is an idle, barren, dead faith; that is, no faith at all.
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on 1 John 3:14
The emphasis that Charles put on sanctification and good works is well documented. Charles agreed with Scripture, especially clear in the book of James, on the importance of true saving faith bringing about good works as evidence of salvation.
Works don’t justify, but they testify of justification. A living faith works by love. A dead faith does not.
10. Faith & Love Inseparable
A fourth effect of true saving faith is love. These two are inseparable. Faith works by love, and he that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love: but whosoever truly believes, has the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto him (Rom 5:5). Having not seen the Lord Jesus, he loves him; in whom, though now he sees him not, yet believing, he rejoices with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on Titus 3:8
Saving faith and love go together. They cannot be separated.
To be a partaker in the Holy Spirit necessarily requires that God’s love has been put into your heart. This love rejoices in Jesus.
11. Love For Fellow Humans
This love to God he expresses and evidences by his love to man; seeing everyone that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him, (1 John 5:1); and hereby we know that we are passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. We love them as Christ loved us, and are ready to lay down our lives for them.
Ibid.
Another evidence of true, saving faith is love for the brethren. Charles preached that the love of God would include love for people. If it didn’t, it wasn’t true love.
12. Fruit of Faith
My brethren, have you this genuine fruit of faith? Do you love the Lord Jesus in sincerity? Does the love of Christ constrain you so that you desire only to spend and to be spent for him and for your brethren? Unless you find your hearts drawn out after Christ by an affection infinitely stronger … you have not that faith which works by love, you do not yet believe in Christ.
Ibid.
Without the evidence of an undeniable desire to live for God and to spend your life for the glory of God and the good of others, Charles said you lacked faith in Christ.
Convicting stuff.
13. Love & Obedience
For the right and true Christian faith is not only to believe the holy Scripture to be true, but also to have a sure trust and confidence in God’s merciful promises to be saved from everlasting damnation by Christ: whereof doth follow a loving heart to obey his commandments.
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on Romans 3:23-24
Charles taught that the right and true faith of a Christian would result in obedience to the commandments of God. This flowed from gratitude for the mercy they had received.
Since they had received pardon for their sins and been set free from the wrath of God, they now lived to obey Him whom they previously rebelled against.
14. Praising the Triune God of Love
Now to God the Father, who first loved us and made us accepted in the Beloved; to God the Son who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, to God the Holy Ghost who sheddeth abroad the love of God in our hearts, be all praise and all glory in time and in eternity!
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on Romans 3:23-25
Charles praised God because God is love. He also praised God for the amazing fact that He first loved us.
He praised each divine Person for their love. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
15. Counterfeit Vs. True Religion
And even among those who have kept themselves pure from the grosser abominations, how much anger and pride, how much sloth and idleness, how much softness and effeminacy, how much luxury and self-indulgence, how much covetousness and ambition, how much thirst of praise, how much love of the world, how much fear of man is to be found! Meanwhile, how little of true religion? For where is he that loveth either God or his neighbor, as he hath given us commandment?
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on Ephesians 5:14
Charles was harsh on fellow church-goers who held to external forms of religion but lacked the inward love of both God and neighbor.
He didn’t praise people for keeping themselves clean from notorious and obvious sin. He attempted to expose the wickedness that still dwelt even among the most externally holy of the self-righteous.
16. Sadducees or Pharisees
On the one hand are those who have not so much as the form of godliness; on the other, those who have the form only: there stands the open, there the painted sepulcher. … ‘that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees’: the one having almost as little concern about religion as if there were ‘no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit’; and the other making it a mere lifeless form, a dull round of external performances without either true faith, or the love of God, or joy in the Holy Ghost.
Ibid., emphasis original.
On the one side, Sadducees. On the other, Pharisees. Both take different forms and approaches to religion. But both are dead inside.
Whatever the form, they lack the true substance: true faith, love of God, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
17. Dying Love
Cast thy poor desperate soul on his dying love.
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on Psalm 46:8
Usually, people speak of undying love. Here Charles speaks of dying love.
Was Charles confused? By no means!
When people say undying love, they are speaking of duration. A love that won’t die. It will endure.
When Charles speaks of the dying love of Jesus he is speaking of quality, not duration. It is a love that died. In fact, it is a love that caused Christ to come and die for you and for all who believe.
Charles isn’t saying that this love will end. This dying love of Christ contains the same undying duration. This dying love of Christ is unmatched in its quality.
18. Inviting the Chief of Sinners
Believe this, Oh thou chief of sinners; he loved thee and gave himself for thee.
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on John 8:1-11
Charles held to the doctrine of Unlimited Atonement. He believed that God’s grace was freely available to all, and able to save all who believed.
Accordingly, he freely offered Christ to all. He urged even the most vile, filthy, rank, foul, and notorious sinners to repent and trust in Jesus for their salvation.
19. God is Love
The Lord is full of mercy and compassion, slow to anger, long-suffering, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of evil. God is love; love in himself, love towards a world of sinners. He wept over the bloody city, he lamented and mourned for Scribes and Pharisees, he prayed for his very murderers. … And can you call yourselves followers of the meek and lowly Jesus? You that allow no mercy, no place for repentance to known sinners, but deliver them over to Satan in the fullness of your own self righteousness?
Ibid.
Here Charles is strongly contrasting the character of God with the character of those who are delusional in calling themselves Christians. With those who do not weep over the lost and rejoice at their repentance, but who murmur at sinners coming to Christ.
20. Loving to Serve
The king of souls obtains an amicable conquest over the hearts of his elect, and so overpowers them that they love to be his servants and to obey him.
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on John 4:41
The born-again Christian does not serve God begrudgingly. They have received a new heart. They have become a new creature.
A sure mark of genuine conversion is the change of heart and affection toward serving and obeying God’s commandments.
According to Charles, true Christians not only serve and obey. They love to serve and obey. This love comes from God, the king of souls.
21. Freely & Cheerfully
On the other hand, if he employ himself in any external acts of moral or instituted duty, he does it freely, not of necessity. In acts of charity, he gives from a principle of love to God, and man for God’s sake, and so cheerfully, not grudgingly. … he prays, because he wants and loves and believes; he wants the fuller presence of that God whom he loves, he loves that presence which he wants, he believes that he that loves him will not suffer him to want any good thing he prays for.
Ibid.
Love for God. Love for man. A love that seeks and desires more of the presence of God.
This is true love springing from true salvation.
22. An Ordinance of Love
As to thanksgiving, he does not give thanks by laws and ordinances but having in himself a law of thankfulness and an ordinance of love engraven upon his soul, he delights to live unto God, which is the most divine way of thank-offering, the hallelujah which the angels sing continually.
Ibid.
The ordinance of love has been engraved upon the soul of true believers. They delight to sing the praise of God continually in offering Him thanks from the heart.
23. Infinitely Lovely
Love to God is one principal act of the gracious soul whereby it is carried out freely, and with an ardent desire toward an object infinitely lovely.
Ibid.
God is infinitely lovely. When a person’s eyes are opened to this truth, they will freely and zealously act in love toward God. It is their urgent desire to do so because of who God is.
24. Love Can’t Be Extorted
Love is an affection that can’t be extorted, like fear … It is not begotten by the influences of even the divine law, as a law, but as holy, just and good. The spirit of love and of power more influences that godly man in his pursuit of God than any law without him. … The same may be said of holy delight in God or love grown up to its full age and stature … the genuine offspring of religion and in their nature utterly incapable of force.
Ibid.
Love cannot be forced. It is not the result of extortion or coercion. It cannot be mandated externally.
It must flow from the inside. It must naturally arise from within.
As such, it influences a man more than even the most powerful of external forces.
25. Love is the Highest Privilege
To love the Lord our God with all our heart, and mind, and soul and strength, is not only a duty, but likewise the highest privilege, honour, and happiness of the soul.
Ibid.
Loving our God is a great privilege. It is an honor. In this we find true internal happiness.
26. One End and Aim
Why, give him your hearts; love him with all your souls; serve him with all your strength. Forget the things that are behind: riches, honour, power; in a word, whatever does not lead to God. Behold, all things about you are become new! Be ye likewise new creatures! From this hour at least let your eye be single: whatever ye speak, or think, or do, let God be your aim, and God only! Let your one end be to please and love God! In all your business, all your refreshments, all your diversions, all your conversations, as well as in all those which are commonly called religious duties, let your eye look straight forward to God.
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on Matthew 6:22-23
Here the encouragement is to live as new creatures. That is, don’t live the same as before when you sought to please yourselves.
Now the sole purpose of life is to please and love God, who first loved us and sent forth His Son for our salvation.
No other pursuit is worthy. All other aims are worthless.
27. Love is Enough
Have one design, one desire, one hope! Even that the God whom ye serve may be your God and your all, in time and in eternity! O be not of a double heart! Think of nothing else! Seek nothing else! To love God, and to be beloved by him, is enough.
Ibid.
Is it enough for you to love God and to be loved by Him? What else do you need?
28. Love is the End
Love is the end of every commandment of Christ, all of which, from the least even to the greatest, are given to man, not for their own sakes, but purely in order to this. The negative commands, what are they but so many cautions against what estranges us from the love of God?
From Charles Wesley’s sermon on Mark 12:30
Every commandment, whether positive or negative, was to end in love. Either to teach us to grow in love or to avoid that which would hinder our participation in the love of God.
29. Why Should We?
Thou shalt love him–Why? Because he is ‘the Lord thy God’, and as such has a just claim to thy love; because love is the worship due to thy God; because it is the proper homage of a rational creature to his Creator.
Ibid.
The proper response of a thinking and sentient being is to give love to his Creator. Love is an act of worship which is the proper due of man toward God.
30. Don’t Settle For Lower Love
For all love which does not either directly or remotely tend to the love of God obstructs it. If it does not lessen what we have already attained, it prevents our attaining what we otherwise might attain. For the force of a divided can never be equal to that of an united heart; nor is it possible that a part of our strength should carry us as far as the whole.
Ibid.
To put our strength into loving the creature rather than the Creator is to settle for lower love. This divided heart and strength will hinder our pursuit of that which is truly worthy.
When we put all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength toward loving God – the highest love – then the overflow will result in greater love for both God and our fellow creatures.
31. King of Love
With angels, therefore, and archangels, and all the company of heaven, having unclasped our arms from the embraces of the creation, let us love the Lord our God, and him alone. Let not God any longer divide with the creature (an unfit companion for so divine a guest) but let him reign an absolute monarch in our hearts, and engross our whole love.
Ibid.
Charles urged Christians to let God reign alone in their hearts as the absolute and unrivaled King of love.
32. A Love that Guards and Feeds
And will He now forsake His own,
Or lose the purchase of His blood?
No! for He looks with pity down,
He watches over thee for good;
Gracious He eyes thee from above,
And guards and feeds thee with His Love.
“Congratulations to a Friend, Upon Believing in Christ,” Hymns and Sacred Poems.
There is a strong possibility that this was written by Charles about his brother John’s conversion. Regardless of the “friend” who believes, the poem expresses Charles’s belief that God’s love will both guard and nourish this new believer in Christ.
33. Love is Heaven
With me, your chief, you then shall know,
Shall feel your sins forgiven;
Anticipate you heaven below,
And own that love is heaven.
“O For a Thousand Tongues To Sing”
This is part of a famous hymn. However, most versions of this hymn have been shortened and do not include this final stanza.
In this last section, Charles calls to sinners to join him in believing upon the grace of God so freely available in Christ. If they will believe, they too will feel their sins forgiven. They too will begin to anticipate eternal life in God’s presence and understand that love is heaven.
34. Boundless Love
2. How gladly then should I resign
My soul into the hands Divine,
To meet my Lord again,
To see the God of boundless love
And worship at thy throne above,
And triumph in thy train.
“Short Hymn on Luke 9:27,” in Tyson, Charles Wesley: A Reader, 468.
I love this description of God as the God of boundless love.
35. Everlasting Love
1. Father, whose everlasting love
Thy only Son for sinners gave,
Whose grace to all did freely move,
And sent Him down a world to save:
“Hymns on God’s Everlasting Love, First Series,” in Tyson, A Reader, 296, emphasis original.
This hymn was written to combat the teaching of absolute predestination and the horrible decree of reprobation. These hymns irritated friend and fellow Methodist George Whitefield.
For Charles, Scripture revealed that God’s love was everlasting and universal. It was not limited or restricted. It was freely available to all in Christ.
36. From Hatred and Loathing to Love
confessed he had loathed the sight of me, and hated me from his heart; but now loved me entirely, and all mankind.
Charles Wesley, MS Journal entry Tuesday, October 24, 1738
A man’s conversion was accompanied by a miraculous change of heart toward Charles in particular. The hatred and loathing he once felt was replaced by a love for Charles and all man-kind.
The old was gone. The new had come!
37. Genuine Mark of Disciples
All night she continued singing in her heart, and discovers more and more of that genuine mark of his disciples’ love.
Charles Wesley, MS Journal entry Tuesday, August 21, 1739.
Christians are marked by love. They must also grow more and more in the genuine love of Christ.
38. Filled With Unknown Love
Two women came to me who had received the atonement last night, while the man was speaking, and were filled with the unknown love to all mankind.
Charles Wesley, MS Journal entry Saturday, September 8, 1739.
Charles was not surprised to find that a previously unknown love for humanity accompanied genuine conversion. As individuals received the love of God in Christ, that love overflowed into an unknown love for others.
While natural man may have some knowledge and feeling of love toward some, this unknown love greatly exceeds the love of natural man in that it extends to all.
39. Love Particularly the Scoffers
“I know my sins are forgiven. I hate them worse than death. Love every man, and particularly those who make scoff at me.”
Charles Wesley, MS Journal entry Friday, September 21, 1739.
Charles is recording the testimony of a gross sinner that came to repentance. This man testified not only of salvation, but also of abounding love.
This love was not aimed particularly at those who loved him back. It included all men, but it was particularly manifest toward those who scoffed at him.
40. The Best Proof of Faith
“I love all mankind,” she said, (the best proof of faith) “and could die for my worst enemy.”
Charles Wesley, MS Journal entry Monday, October 1, 1739, bold added.
Charles is recording another testimony of conversion. In the midst of it, he records his own parenthetical thought. Love for enemies and a willingness even to die for them was the best proof of true saving faith.
Bonus Quote
Then she cried unto the Lord to show her the truth, and he answered her by his own mouth. The true light broke in upon her, and in his light she saw that God is love. She is now humbled in the dust before him for having robbed him of his most darling attribute.
Charles Wesley, MS Journal entry Friday, August 14, 1741.
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