Don’t claim Christ has set you free if you are still a servant of sin

Wed 16 Feb 1743: I reached Epworth. I was to preach at six. But the house not being able to contain half the congregation I went out and declared, ‘We love him, because he first loved us.’ In the morning, Thursday 17, I largely explained ‘the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father’. And it was high time, for I soon found the spirit of delusion was gone abroad here also, and some began to boast that Christ had ‘made them free’ who were still the ‘servants of sin’. In the evening I preached on that bold assertion of St. John (indeed of all who have the true Spirit of adoption), ‘We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.’