More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Started reading
February 23, 2017
Is it possible you look at personal holiness like I look at camping?
The pursuit of holiness feels like one more thing to worry about in your already impossible life.
The hole in our holiness is that we don’t really care much about it.
Any gospel which says only what you must do and never announces what Christ has done is no gospel at all.
J. I. Packer claims that present-day believers find holiness passé.2 He cites three pieces of evidence: (1) We do not hear about holiness in preaching and books. (2) We do not insist upon holiness in our leaders. (3) We do not touch upon the need for personal holiness in our evangelism.
Is obedience what your church is known for? Is it what other Christians think of when they look at your life? Is this even what you would want to be known for? “Creativity” or “relevance” or “world-changer” might sound better than boring old obedience.
That’s why they defined theology as “the doctrine of living to God” (William Ames) or “the science of living blessedly forever” (William Perkins).
Heaven is for those who conquer, for those who overcome the temptation to abandon Jesus Christ and compromise their faith (Rev. 21:7; see also Revelation 2–3).
No matter what you profess, if you show disregard for Christ by giving yourself over to sin—impenitently and habitually—then heaven is not your home. Do you know
As J. C. Ryle reminds us, heaven is a holy place. The Lord of heaven is a holy God. The angels are holy creatures. The inhabitants are holy saints. Holiness is written on everything in heaven. And nothing unholy can enter into this heaven (Rev. 21:27; Heb. 12:14).
If worship does not capture your attention at present, what makes you think it will thrill you in some heavenly future?
You would not be happy there if you are not holy here.
“Sooner could a fish live upon a tree than the wicked in Paradise.”
The word “observe” means more than “take notice of.” It means “obey.”
Jesus. We don’t take the Great Commission seriously if we don’t help each other grow in obedience.
And yet, how many of us usually think of holiness when we think of mission work? How easy it is to be content with leading people to make decisions for Christ instead of focusing on making disciples of Christ.
For starters, it was too common in the past to equate holiness with abstaining from a few taboo practices such as drinking, smoking, and dancing.
soon as you share your concern about swearing or about avoiding certain movies or about modesty or sexual purity or self-control or just plain godliness, people look at you like you have a moralistic dab of cream cheese on your face from the 1950s.
Another reason for the hole is that our churches have many unregenerate persons in them.
One reason God’s holy people do not pursue holiness is that they have not yet been born again by the Holy Spirit.
Our culture of cool is also partly to blame.
They’ve willingly embraced Christian freedom but without an equal pursuit of Christian virtue.
We are so eager not to confuse indicatives (what God has done) and imperatives (what we should do) that we get leery of letting biblical commands lead uncomfortably to conviction of sin. We’re scared of words like diligence, effort, and duty. Pastors don’t know how to preach the good news in their sermons and still strongly
Then there’s the reality that holiness is plain hard work, and we’re often lazy.
We like our sins, and dying to them is painful. Almost everything is easier than growing in godliness. So we try and fail, try and fail, and then give up. It’s easier to sign a petition protesting man’s inhumanity to man than to love your neighbor as yourself. It’s one thing to graduate from college ready to change the world. It’s another to be resolute in praying that God would change you.
And finally, many Christians have simply given up o...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
The truly super-spiritual do not “pursue holiness”; they celebrate their failures as opportunities to magnify the grace of God.
It’s not pietism, legalism, or fundamentalism to take holiness seriously. It’s the way of all those who have been called to a holy calling by a holy God.
By faith, through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, you are a reconciled, justified, adopted child of God. What good news!
saved us because he loves us (John 3:16).
for the praise of his own name
God saved you so that you might be holy. Pay
As J. I. Packer put it, “In reality, holiness is the goal of our redemption. As Christ died in order that we may be justified, so we are justified in order that we may be sanctified and made holy.”
(Ex. 19:4–6a) Do you see again the reason for divine deliverance? God saved the Israelites unto holiness. God set them free from slavery to the Egyptians so they might be free to walk in his ways. They were to be a nation of people so set apart, so sanctified, so holy that they might as well have been priests—every last one of them. Every Christian in every church ought to live out this same priestly identity (1 Pet. 2:9). It’s the reason God has rescued us:
The Bible could not be any clearer. The reason for your entire salvation, the design behind your deliverance, the purpose for which God chose you in the first place is holiness.
It’s possible to profess the right things and still not be saved.
those whose lives are marked by habitual ungodliness will not go to heaven.
faith is the instrumental means for being right with God.
Paul is describing true and living faith; James is arguing against a false faith which consists in nothing but spiritually dead intellectual assent (vv. 17, 19, 20, 26).
necessity of personal holiness should not undermine in any way our confidence in justification by faith alone.
The best theologians and the best theological statements have always emphasized the scandalous nature of gospel grace and the indispensable need for personal holiness.
Faith and good works are both necessary. But one is the root and ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
you to Christ and makes you right with God is a faith that works itself out in love (Gal. 5:6).
Any gospel which purports to save people without also transforming them is inviting easy-believism. If you think being a Christian is nothing more than saying a prayer or joining a church, then you’ve confused real grace with cheap grace. Those who are justified will be sanctified.
At its most basic, holiness means separation.
For centuries theologians have distinguished between justification—the one-time declaration that we are righteous—and sanctification— the ongoing process of becoming righteous.
Mere rule keeping is not the answer because holiness cannot be reduced to a little ethical refurbishment.
“If only things could be like they used to be.” Well, that might help with public standards of sexual decency, but the good ol’ days weren’t so good on race relations. Every generation has both its insights and its blind spots. It takes wisdom to learn from the good and avoid the bad. So yes, I think Christians in general used to be more concerned about personal holiness in certain areas. But does God want us to recreate their world or reintroduce all their strictures about card playing and alcohol prohibition? I doubt it.
True spirituality means being transformed by the Spirit through communion with the Father and the Son.
To be saved by the Spirit’s converting grace, sealed by the Spirit’s absolute guarantee, and sanctified by the Spirit’s indwelling power—that’s what it means to be spiritual.
