Holiness: For the Will of God Is Your Sanctification – 1 Thessalonians 4:3 [Annotated, Updated]

by J.C. Ryle

“Good” is a strange word to apply to any warfare. All worldly war is more or less evil. No doubt it is an absolute necessity in many cases – to procure the liberty of nations and to prevent the weak from being trampled down by the strong – but still it is an evil. It involves an awful amount of bloodshed and suffering. It hurries large numbers of people into eternity who are completely unprepared for their change. It calls forth the worst passions of man. It causes enormous waste and destruction of property. It fills peaceful homes with mourning widows and orphans. It spreads poverty, taxation, and national distress far and wide. It disarranges the entire order of society. It interrupts the work of the gospel and the growth of Christian missions. In short, war is an immense and incalculable evil, and every praying person should cry night and day, “Give us peace in our time.” Yet there is one warfare that is emphatically “good,” and there is one fight in which there is no evil. That warfare is the Christian warfare. That fight is the fight of the soul.