Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties and Roots

by J.C. Ryle

Sound Protestant and Evangelical doctrine is useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life.

Sanctifying faith is a grace of which the very life is action: it “worketh by love,” and, like a main-spring, moves the whole inward man. (Galatians 5:6).

True holiness does not consist merely of believing and feeling, but of doing and bearing, and a practical exhibition of active and passive grace.

True holiness, we surely ought to remember, does not consist merely of inward sensations and impressions. It is much more than tears, and sighs, and bodily excitement, and a quickened pulse, and a passionate feeling of attachment to our own favourite preachers and our own religious party, and a readiness to quarrel with everyone who does not agree with us. It is something of “the image of Christ,” which can be seen and observed by others in our private life, and habits, and character, and doings. (Romans 8:29).

There is, no doubt, a mystical union between Christ and the believer. With Him we died, with Him we were buried, with Him we rose again, with Him we sit in heavenly places. We have five plain texts where we are distinctly taught that Christ is “in us.” (Romans 8:10; Galatians 2:20; 4:19; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 3:11).

We shall be forgetting that in the Divine economy of man’s salvation election is the special work of God the Father – atonement, mediation, and intercession, the special work of God the Son – and sanctification, the special work of God the Holy Ghost.

The Word of God always speaks of two great divisions of mankind, and two only. It speaks of the living and the dead in sin – the believer and the unbeliever – the converted and the unconverted – the travellers in the narrow way and the travellers in the broad – the wise and the foolish – the children of God and the children of the devil. Within each of these two great classes there are, doubtless, various measures of sin and of grace; but it is only the difference between the higher and lower end of an inclined plane.

Gradual growth in grace, growth in knowledge, growth in faith, growth in love, growth in holiness, growth in humility, growth in spiritual-mindedness – all this I see clearly taught and urged in Scripture, and clearly exemplified in the lives of many of God’s saints.

I frankly confess I prefer the old paths. I think it wiser and safer to press on all converted people the possibility of continual growth in grace, and the absolute necessity of going forward, increasing more and more, and every year dedicating and consecrating themselves more, in spirit, soul, and body, to Christ. By all means let us teach that there is more holiness to be attained, and more of heaven to be enjoyed upon earth than most believers now experience.

But, on the other hand, it would not be difficult to point out at least twenty-five or thirty distinct passages in the Epistles where believers are plainly taught to use active personal exertion, and are addressed as responsible for doing energetically what Christ would have them do, and are not told to “yield themselves” up as passive agents and sit still, but to arise and work.

A holy violence, a conflict, a warfare, a fight, a soldier’s life, a wrestling, are spoken of as characteristic of the true Christian.

In justification the word to be addressed to man is believe – only believe; in sanctification the word must be “watch, pray, and fight.” What God has divided let us not mingle and confuse.

in the beaten path of our forefathers.

For Christ’s sake, and in the name of truth and charity, let us endeavour to follow after peace as well as holiness. “What God has joined together let not man put asunder.”

Wrong views about holiness are generally traceable to wrong views about human corruption.

first thing, therefore, that God does when He makes anyone a new creature in Christ, is to send light into his heart, and show him that he is a guilty sinner.

If a man does not realise the dangerous nature of his soul’s disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false or imperfect remedies.

Sin, in short, is that vast moral disease which affects the whole human race, of every rank, and class, and name, and nation, and people, and tongue; a disease from which there never was but one born of woman that was free. Need I say that One was Christ Jesus the Lord?

“a sin,” to speak more particularly, consists in doing, saying, thinking, or imagining, anything that is not in perfect conformity with the mind and law of God.

Of course I need not tell anyone who reads his Bible with attention, that a man may break God’s law in heart and thought, when there is no overt and visible act of wickedness. Our Lord has settled that point beyond dispute in the Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 5:21-28). Even a poet of our own has truly said, “A man may smile and smile, and be a villain.”

Again, I need not tell a careful student of the New Testament, that there are sins of omission as well as commission, and that we sin, as our Prayer-book justly reminds us, by “leaving undone the things we ought to do,” as really as by “doing the things we ought not to do.”

“Lord, forgive me all my sins, and specially my sins of omission.”

On the contrary, in the 4th and 5th chapters of that unduly neglected book, Leviticus, and in Numbers 15, I find Israel distinctly taught that there were sins of ignorance which rendered people unclean, and needed atonement. (Leviticus 4:1-35; 5:14-19; Numbers 15:25-29). And I find our Lord expressly teaching that “the servant who knew not his master’s will and did it not,” was not excused on account of his ignorance, but was “beaten” or punished. (Luke 12:48).

Let us, then, have it fixed down in our minds that the sinfulness of man does not begin from without, but from within.

It is not the result of bad training in early years. It is not picked up from bad companions and bad examples, as some weak Christians are too fond of saying.

No! it is a family disease, which we all inherit from our first parents, Adam and Eve, and with which we are born. Created “in the image of God,” innocent and righteous at first, our parents fell from original righteousness and became sinful and corrupt. And from that day to this all men and women are born in ...

“By one man sin entered into the world.” – “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” – “We are by nature children of wrath.” – “The carnal mind is enmity against God.” – “Out of the heart (naturally as out of a fountain) proceed evil thoughts, adulteri...

Only watch it carefully, as it grows in stature and its mind develops, and you will soon detect in it an incessant tendency to that which is bad, and a backwardness to that which is good. You will see in it the buds and germs of deceit, evil temper, selfishness, self-will, obstinacy, greediness, envy, jealousy, passion – which, if indulged and let alone, will shoot up with painful rapidity. Who taught the child these things? Where did he learn them? The Bible alone can answer these questions! – Of all the foolish things that parents say about their children there is none worse than the common saying, “My son has a good heart at the bottom. He is not what he ought to be; but he has fallen into bad hands. Public schools are bad places. The tutors neglect the boys. Yet he has a good heart at the bottom.” – The truth, unhappily, is diametrically the other way. The first cause of all sin lies in the natural corruption of the boy’s own heart, and not in the school.

“Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart” is by nature “evil, and that continually.” – “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” (Genesis 6:5; Jeremiah 17:9).

The disease may be veiled under a thin covering of courtesy, politeness, good manners, and outward decorum; but it lies deep down in the constitution.

We can acknowledge that man has all the marks of a majestic temple about him – a temple in which God once dwelt, but a temple which is now in utter ruins – a temple in which a shattered window here, and a doorway there, and a column there, still give some faint idea of the magnificence of the original design, but a temple which from end to end has lost its glory and fallen from its high estate.

Let us remember, besides this, that every part of the world bears testimony to the fact that sin is the universal disease of all mankind.

Search the globe from east to west and from pole to pole – search every nation of every clime in the four quarters of the earth – search every rank and class in our own country from the highest to the lowest – and under every circumstance and condition, the report will be always the same. The remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, completely separate from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, beyond the reach alike of Oriental luxury and Western arts and literature – islands inhabited by people ignorant of books, money, steam, and gunpowder – uncontaminated by the vices of modern civilisation – these very islands have always been found, when first discovered, the abode of the vilest forms of lust, cruelty, deceit, and superstition.

If the inhabitants have known nothing else, they have alway...

Everywhere the human heart is naturally “deceitful above all things, and desperately ...

Sin, no doubt, in the believer’s heart, has no longer dominion. It is checked, controlled, mortified, and crucified by the expulsive power of the new principle of grace. The life of a believer is a life of victory, and not of failure. But the very struggles which go on within his bosom, the fight that he finds it needful to fight daily, the watchful jealousy which he is obliged to exercise over his inner man, the contest between the flesh and the spirit, the inward “groanings” which no one knows but he who has experienced them – all, all testify to the same great truth, all show the enormous power and vitality of sin.

Mighty indeed must that foe be who even when crucified is still alive!

Happy is that believer who understands it, and while he rejoices in Christ Jesus has no confidence in the flesh; and while he says, “Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory,” never for...

On the one hand, God is that eternal Being who “chargeth His angels with folly,” and in whose sight the very “heavens are not clean.” He is One who reads thoughts and motives as well as actions, and requires “truth in the inward parts.” (Job 4:18; 15:15; Psalm 51:6).

We, on the other hand – poor blind creatures, here today and gone tomorrow, born in sin, surrounded by sinners, living in a constant atmosphere of weakness, infirmity, and imperfection – can form none but the most inadequate conceptions of the hideousness of evil.

And man, fallen man, I believe, can have no just idea what a vile thing sin is in the sight of that God whose handiwork is absolutely perfect – perfect whether we look through telescope or microscope – perfect in the formation of a mighty planet like Jupiter, with his satellites, keeping time to a second as he rolls round the sun – perfect in the formation of the smallest insect that crawls over a foot of ground.

(Jeremiah 44:4; Habakkuk 1:13; James 2:10; Ezekiel 18:4; Romans 6:23; Romans 2:16; Mark 9:44; Psalm 9:17; Matthew 25:46; Revelation 21:27).

Terribly black must that guilt be for which nothing but the blood of the Son of God could make satisfaction.

Nothing, I am convinced, will astonish us so much, when we awake in the resurrection day, as the view we shall have of sin, and the retrospect we shall take of our own countless shortcomings and defects. Never till the hour when Christ comes the second time shall we fully realise the “sinfulness of sin.”

DECEITFULNESS.

You may see this deceitfulness in the wonderful proneness of men to regard sin as less sinful and dangerous than it is in the sight of God; and in their readiness to extenuate it, make excuses for it, and minimise its guilt.

“It is but a little one! God is merciful! God is not extreme to mark what is done amiss! We mean well! One cannot be so particular! Where is the mighty harm? We only do as others!”

You may see it in the tendency even of believers to indulge their children in questionable practices, and to blind their own eyes to the inevitable result of the love of money, of tampering with temptation, and sanctioning a low standard of family religion. – I fear we do not sufficiently realise the extreme subtlety of our soul’s disease.

We are too apt to forget that temptation to sin will rarely present itself to us in its true colours, saying, “I am your deadly enemy, and I want to ruin you for ever in hell.” Oh, no! sin comes to us, like Judas, with a kiss; and like Joab, with an outstretched hand and flattering words. The forbidden fruit seemed good and desirable to Eve; yet it cast her out of Eden. The walking idly on his palace roof seemed harmless enough to David; yet it ended in adultery and murder.

“Exhort one another daily, lest any be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.”