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

by J.C. Ryle

First, a scriptural view of sin is one of the best antidotes to that vague, dim, misty, hazy kind of theology that is so painfully current in the present age. It is vain to shut your eyes to the fact that there is a vast quantity of so-called Christianity today that you cannot declare positively unsound, but which, nevertheless, is not quite accurate or biblical. It is a Christianity in which there is undeniably something about Christ, something about grace, something about faith, something about repentance, and something about holiness, but it is not the real thing as it is in the Bible. Things are out of place and out of proportion. As Hugh Latimer would have said, it is a kind of “mingle-mangle,” and it does no good.[6] It does not influence one’s daily conduct, does not provide comfort in life, and does not give peace in death. Those who hold these beliefs often awake too late to see that they have got nothing solid under their feet.