Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots

by J.C. Ryle

I have had a deep conviction for many years that practical holiness and entire self-consecration to God are not sufficiently attended to by modern Christians in this country.

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

It is worse than useless: it does positive harm.

shall request my readers to take them as "Cautions for the Times on the subject of holiness."

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

Our tongues, our tempers, our natural passions and inclinations--our conduct as parents and children, masters and servants, husbands and wives, rulers and subjects--our dress, our employment of time, our

behaviour in business, our demeanour in sickness and health, in riches and in poverty--all, all these are matters which are...

When

people talk of having received "such a blessing," and of having found "the higher life," after hearing some earnest advocate of "holiness by faith and self-consecration," while their families and friends see no improvement and no increased sanctity in their daily tempers and behaviour, immense harm is done to the cause of Christ.

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...

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 o...

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

"The old is better."

Do they think that a higher standard of Christian living is needed in the present day? So do I.--Do they think that clearer, stronger, fuller teaching about holiness is needed? So do I.--Do they think that Christ ought to be more exalted as the root and author of sanctification as well as justification? So do I.--Do they think that believers should be urged more and

more to live by faith? So do I.--Do they think that a very close walk with God should be more pressed on believers as the secret of happiness and usefulness? So do I.--In

"Sin is the transgression of the law."--1 John iii. 4.

Transgression of the Torah.

The material creation in Genesis began with "light," and so also does the spiritual creation.

6.)--Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors, heresies, and false doctrines of the present day.

I believe that one of the chief wants of the Church in the nineteenth century has been, and is, clearer, fuller teaching about sin.

"the fault and corruption of the nature of every

man that is naturally engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone

from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth alway against the spirit; and, therefore, in every person born into the ...

Sin,

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 n...

"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. "Sin," in short, as the ...

The slightest outward or inward departure from absolute mathematical parallelism with God's revealed will and character constitutes a sin, and...

a man may break God's law in heart and thought, when there is no overt and vi...

"A man may smile and smile, and be a villain."

"leaving undone the things we ought to do,"

"doing the things we ought not to do."

a man may commit sin and yet be ignorant of it, and fancy himself innocent when he is guilty.

the sinfulness of man does not begin from without, but from within.

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.

The fairest babe that has entered life this year, and become the sunbeam of a family, is not, as its mother perhaps fondly calls it, a

little "angel," or a little

"innocent," but a little "sinner." Alas! as it lies smiling and crowing in its cradle, that little creature carries in its heart the seeds of every kind of wickedness! Only watch it carefully, as it grows in stature and its mind developes, and you will soon detect in it an incessa...

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...

Public schools are bad places.

The first cause of all sin lies in the natural corruption of the boy's own heart, and not in the school.

But it is a knot that we can

untie with the Bible in our hands.

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 ...

sin is the universal disease of all mankind.

Deny it, as many do, and you are at once involved in inexplicable difficulties.

pertinacity

Resiliency, holding fast, stubborness.

So deeply planted are the roots of human corruption, that even after we are born again, renewed, "washed, sanctified, justified," and made living members of Christ, these roots remain alive in the bottom of our hearts, and, like the leprosy in the walls of the house, we never get

rid of them until the earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved.

expulsive

Evictive (ion)

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.