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

by J.C. Ryle

All other wars have a bad, lowering, and demoralizing tendency. They bring out the worst passions of the human mind. They harden the conscience and sap the foundations of religion and morality. The Christian warfare alone tends to bring out the best things that are left in man. It promotes humility and charity, it lessens selfishness and worldliness, and it convinces people to set their affections on things above. The old, the sick, and the dying are never known to repent of fighting Christ’s battles against sin, the world, and the devil. Their only regret is that they did not begin to serve Christ much earlier. The experience of that eminent saint Philip Henry does not stand alone. In his last days he said to his family, “I take you all to record that a life spent in the service of Christ is the happiest life that a man can spend upon earth.”[4] Surely this is good!