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

by J.C. Ryle

Let us take care that our own personal religion is real, genuine, and true. The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight in their Christianity. They eat, drink, dress, work, amuse themselves, get money, spend money, and sit through a little formal religious service once or twice every week; but the great spiritual warfare – its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests – of all this they seem to know nothing at all. Let us be careful that this is not the case with us. The worst state of soul is when an armed strong man keeps his palace, [and] his goods are in peace (Luke 11:21) – when he leads men and women captive at his will (2 Timothy 2:26), and they make no resistance. The worst chains are those that are neither felt nor seen by the prisoner.