Thoughts on Holiness

 The following is taken from J.C. Ryle's book on holiness:

"That a life of daily self-consecration and daily communion with God should be aimed at by everyone who professes to be a believer - that we should strive to attain the habit of going to the Lord Jesus Christ with everything we find a burden, whether great or small, and casting it upon Him - all this, I repeat, no welltaught child of God will dream of disputing. But surely the New Testament teaches us that we want something more than generalities about holy living, which often prick no conscience and give no offence. The details and particular ingredients of which holiness is composed in daily life, ought to be fully set forth and pressed on believers by all who profess to handle the subject. 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 fully treated by inspired writers. They are not content with a general statement of what we should believe and feel, and how we are to have the roots of holiness planted in our hearts. They dig down lower. They go into particulars. They specify minutely what a holy man ought to do and be in his own family, and by his own fireside, if he abides in Christ. I doubt whether this sort of teaching is sufficiently attended to in the movement of the present day. 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, and a passionate feeling of attachment to our own 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 our private life, and habits, and character, and doings. (Rom. viii. 29.)"

Holiness comes from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, but unlike salvation, it is not all of God. We must cooperate with the Holy Spirit and apply effort as He develops us into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. We will never obtain absolute perfection in this life. John Wesley spoke of Christian Perfection. This he defined as loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and our neighbor as ourselves. This is an appropriate goal for all true believers.