Do you ever wonder if you’ve gotten so lost that you can’t find your way home?
If you’ve messed up so badly that things can’t be made right?
If you’ve gone too far to ever really be forgiven?
Maybe you fear that you’ve offended God so deeply that you can’t be loved anymore. Maybe you worry that your relationship with God is broken beyond repair.
John Wesley understood that fear. In his sermon “A Call to Backsliders,” Wesley speaks to people who once felt close to God but have since wandered away. They remember the faith they once had, but they also know what has happened since then. They know the choices they’ve made, the promises they’ve broken, and the distance that has grown between them and God.
Even if part of them wants to return, they wonder whether God would still receive them.
Wesley says there are two ways we can misunderstand God’s mercy. One is presumption. We assume our choices don’t really matter because God will forgive us anyway. The other is despair. We believe we’ve sinned so badly, or so many times, that forgiveness is no longer possible.
Wesley warns against both, but his sermon is especially concerned with despair. He recognizes that someone may stop trying to return to God because they’ve lost all hope of being received. What looks like indifference may actually be defeat. When people believe there’s no way back, they stop looking for one.
Wesley’s message is that the way back is still open.
One thing I find comforting is Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness. Peter once asked Jesus how often he should forgive someone who sinned against him. Was seven times enough? Jesus answered, “Seventy times seven.”
That doesn’t mean, “Forgive someone exactly 490 times, and then you’re off the hook.” It means we aren’t supposed to keep score. We don’t carry a tally sheet and wait for the moment when someone has finally used up their last chance.
If that’s how God asks us to forgive one another, how much more willing is God to forgive us?
Would God ask us to practice a kind of mercy that he himself is unwilling to give?
Wesley’s answer is no. God is not simply a slightly more patient version of us. His compassion doesn’t run out when ours would. Our failure may be serious, but it isn’t greater than God’s mercy.
I’m also reminded of the woman accused of adultery in John 8.
She’s brought before Jesus and forced to stand in front of a hostile crowd. The story doesn’t record a confession from her. She doesn’t give Jesus a speech about how sorry she is. She doesn’t promise to do better or try to explain herself. She barely speaks. Yet Jesus meets her with mercy. After her accusers leave, he asks, “Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she answers. “Neither do I condemn you,” Jesus says. “Go, and sin no more.”
Both parts of his response matter.
Jesus doesn’t pretend that her choices don’t matter. He calls her to leave her old way of living behind. He expects her direction to change. But he also doesn’t say, “Change your life first, prove yourself to me, and then perhaps I’ll show you mercy.”
Mercy comes first.
Jesus refuses to reduce her to the worst thing she has done. He gives her back her life, and then he calls her to live that life differently. “Neither do I condemn you.” “Go, and sin no more.”
This is neither condemnation nor permission. It’s mercy with a future.
That’s the hope Wesley offers to anyone who fears they’ve gone too far. God’s mercy doesn’t mean that our choices are unimportant or that nothing needs to change. It means that our failures don’t have to be the end of our story.
Grace meets us where we are, but it doesn’t leave us where we are.
Maybe you’ve wandered farther than you ever thought you would. Maybe you’ve made the same mistake so many times that your apologies feel empty, even to you. Maybe you remember a time when faith felt alive, but now you feel distant or ashamed.
You don’t have to find perfect words. You don’t have to make a convincing case for yourself. You don’t have to persuade God to become merciful.
Mercy is already part of who God is.
The call to live differently is real. But it doesn’t begin with God saying, “Prove yourself.”
It begins with mercy.
The way home is still open.
