How the Bible Helps Us to Holiness
7. SCRIPTURE AND SANCTIFICATION
How the Bible Helps Us to Holiness
“Sanctify them by the truth,” prays Jesus, adding adoringly, ‘Your word is truth” (John 17:17). Truth here bears a theological sense: it is a declaration and disclosure of reality as God knows it. Since all Holy Scripture is God’s Word of truth, we are right to infer from Jesus’ words that biblical teaching is the means of the sanctification for which he prayed. Since he was praying not just for those who had already become his followers but “also for those who will believe in me through their message” (v. 20), his prayer was as much for us as it was for Peter, John, Augustine, Bunyan, Spurgeon, or whomever. Though his heavenly intercession (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25) would seem to be more a matter of active intervention on our behalf than of continual supplication before the Father, we may be sure that the sanctification of his people remains his constant concern. And the means whereby it takes place is the Word of God.
What is sanctification? The root meaning of the word is relational, or as some say positional: to sanctify, or consecrate, is to set something or someone apart for God, either in general and inclusive terms or for some specific purpose, and to have it, or him, or her, accepted by God for the end that is in view. So, in the high-priestly prayer from which we have just quoted, Jesus says: “For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified” (v. 19). Jesus’ selfsanctification was the specific setting of himself apart to be the sacrifice for his disciples’ sins; their sanctification, and ours, is the inclusive setting of ourselves apart to be God’s holy people in every aspect, department, activity, and relationship of our lives.
But whereas Jesus’ self-sanctification is his own act, he speaks of our sanctification as a work of God upon us and in us. This points us to the further truth that when God sets fallen human beings like ourselves apart for himself, to be his servants and worshipers and to live in fellowship with him, his action is transformational in its character and effects. Why so? Because those whom God sets apart for himself must be Godlike, and if they are not already so they must be made so. Accordingly, we find that while some New Testament passages speak of God’s sanctification of us in the past tense, as an event, a milestone, something already done (Acts 26:18; Heb. 10:10, 14, 29), others speak of it as something present and future (1 Thess. 4:3-4; 5:23), in other words as a process that goes on. The former texts refer to the relational aspect of sanctification, which becomes real upon our believing as do justification and adoption, and is momentary. The latter texts refer to the transformational process that is lifelong and that is spoken of elsewhere as growth in grace, growing up into Christ, and being changed from glory to glory by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 3:18; Eph. 4:15; 2 Cor. 3:18; cf. Rom. 12:2). It is to this progressive transformation that the word sanctification regularly refers in Christian theology, whether Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox.
We are talking about God’s work of character change in Christians; about the life of God in the soul of man; about the fruit of the Spirit; about the outworking in our behavior—our new, supernatural life—that is hid in Christ with God. We are talking about God working in us to make us will and act for his good pleasure. We are talking about the family likeness that God the Father wants to see in all his adopted children: the family likeness that is Christlikeness, displaying the love, humility, and righteousness that constitute the moral image of the Son who is himself the image of the holy Father. We are talking about God supernaturalizing our lives, and causing us to behave in ways in which left to our own resources we never could have behaved. We are talking about an ongoing spiritual mystery. If regeneration is a work of new creation, sanctification is a work of new formation. If regeneration is a new birth, sanctification is a new growth. If regeneration means our Adamic nature nailed to the cross and Christ’s risen life implanted, sanctification means our Adamic nature dying and Christ’s life within us flowing. “Those he justified, he also glorified,” said Paul (Rom. 8:30). If regeneration is glorification in the seed, sanctification is glorification in the bud, and glorification in heaven is the full flower. Such is the frame of reference within which what Walter Marshall, the Puritan, called “the gospel mystery of sanctification” has to be studied.
In my book, Keep in Step with the Spirit, I expressed some convictions relating to sanctification that I would like to summarize at this point. I see sanctification as a neglected priority in today’s church everywhere, and a fading glory in the evangelical world in particular. In the past, Roman Catholics and Protestants alike emphasized the reality of God’s call to holiness, and spoke with deep insight about God’s provision for holiness. English-speaking preachers in the Reformation tradition (Puritans and eighteenth-century evangelicals in particular) constantly expounded what God’s holiness requires of us, what our holiness involves for us, and what the Holy Spirit does in us. They pointed out by what means and through what disciplines he works this momentous change in us, and how holiness increases our assurance, joy, and usefulness to God. Today, there are many ministers who believe that their effectiveness depends on their mastery of professional skills, but Robert Murray McCheyne, Presbyterian revivalist in Dundee, Scotland in the 1830s, declared: “My people’s greatest need is my personal holiness.” Today, the concern for holiness that was once so striking a mark of evangelical people is largely a thing of the past. We rarely handle the issue in a direct way, and when we do our touch is tentative and insecure. Our situation reminds me of some lines of a poem by Rudyard Kipling, titled “The Way through the Woods.”
They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods.
That seems to me to be exactly our story with regard to sanctification. To listen to the sermons and read the books we publish today, you would never know that once the highway of holiness was clearly marked out for Bible-believers, and that ministers and people knew it well and spoke of it with authority and confidence. “Weather and rain have undone it again”—and now we have to rebuild and reopen the road, starting from scratch.
What has caused this sad state of affairs? Several factors, I think, coming together and reinforcing each other.
There is, first, the factor of preoccupation. Controversy to defend orthodoxy in an age when orthodoxy is being attacked and eroded; enquiry into the breadth of Christian liberty aind the propriety of Christian involvement in cultural and social concerns; fixity on the quest for satisfaction, self-fulfillment, and success in one’s Christian life—these things have come to possess our minds, and have crowded out all study of the matter, manner, motivation, and means of what Scripture calls “good works.”
Then there is the factor of confusion. The doctrine of sanctification has in the past been a battle area. Though today the combatants have mostly backed off from each other, rival positions are still being affirmed within their own constituencies. Some preach the victorious life, in which handing over all moral and spiritual issues to Jesus is the secret of tranquil righteousness (this was taught by such as Handley C. G. Moule and F. B. Meyer). Some proclaim a “second blessing,” called entire sanctification, which purifies the heart and raises life to a new level of love to God and men (this was taught by such as John Wesley and Oswald Chambers). Some modify “second blessing” teaching into a doctrine of Spirit-baptism or Spirit-filling, in which deliverance from sins and inhibitions is seen as central. Spiritual intuitions as distinct from rational reflections now become the guide of life (this was taught by, for instance, Watchman Nee). Some see sanctification as an ongoing struggle with sin, in which humility, self-distrust, and adoration of God’s grace are the notes of spiritual health (this was taught by such as J. C. Ryle and C. H. Spurgeon). In a Christian world where all these views of sanctification jostle side by side, it is no wonder that people become confused and give up.
Then, finally, there is the factor of reaction. Christians today are reacting against the emphasis of an earlier era on separation from the world, which, we think, led not only to avoidance of the world’s sins but also to an impoverishing of believers’ moral awareness. Also, we are reacting against the moral maturity that was expressed by the stiffly sensitive “Victorian conscience.” We are much more interested in something called “emotional maturity,” which encourages moral tolerance with no emphasis on behavioral standards. In our passion for intimacy with God and our boldness in treating him as a pal we are reacting against the stress on his holiness and his demand that those who seek his face be holy too, which we meet in our evangelical forebears.
These are the main factors that have for a generation distracted us from taking sanctification seriously as an issue of universal importance. But it is precisely as such that I want you to see it now.
How should we think of sanctification? Following are some basic definitions that will function as reference-points and grids for the mind. Here, first, are two statements from a joint Anglican and Presbyterian source, the Westminster Assembly.
They, who are once effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart, and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them: the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified; and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. (Westminster Confession, XHI.I.)
Q. What is sanctification?
A. Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness. (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 35)
Here, next, are comparable definitions of sanctification and holiness from an almost contemporary source, the Congregational Puritan John Owen.
Sanctification is an immediate work of the Spirit of God on the souls of believers, purifying and cleansing of their natures from the pollution and uncleanness of sin, renewing in them the image of God, and thereby enabling them, from a spiritual and habitual principle of grace, to yield obedience unto God, according unto the tenor and terms of the new covenant, by virtue of the life and death of Jesus Christ . . . . Hence it follows that our holiness, which is the fruit and effect of this work, the work as terminated in us, as it compriseth the renewed principle or image of God wrought in us, so it consists in a holy obedience unto God by Jesus Christ, according to the terms of the covenant of grace, from the principle of a new nature. (Works, ed. W. Goold, London: Banner of Truth, 1966, III.386)
As for Baptists, it appears that down the centuries most of them have lined up with Westminster and Owen. Here, for instance, are some thoughts from the chapter titled “Sanctification” in the Abstract of Systematic Theology, published in 1887 by James P. Boyce, founder and first theology professor of Southern Seminary, which is now located at Louisville, Kentucky.
What now, we may inquire, is the nature of the sanctification which is wrought out in the believer?
It is a personal sanctification ... a real sanctification ... of the whole nature, both body and soul.
It is not a sanctification to be completed in this life. The work goes on through the lifetime of the believer, nor is it completed before death. . . . Paul constantly speaks of himself as still struggling against the power of sin, as not counting himself to have attained, as buffeting his body and bringing it into bondage lest he should be rejected, and thus he gives us, in his descriptions of his own experience, a pattern of what has been almost universally acknowledged as that of every other Christian . . . .
(But) the partial sanctification of this life is also progressive ... it is a growth from the seed planted in regeneration, which is constantly bringing forth new leaves, and new fruit; it grows with increased intellectual knowledge of God’s truth, with a clearer perception of human sinfulness and corruption, with stronger faith and brighter hope, and more confident assurance of personal acceptance with God, with a more heartfelt conception of the sacrificing love of Christ, and with a more realizing belief in his constant presence and knowledge of what we do. It even increases from its own acquired strength and through the suffering and doing in which it is developed . . . .
Temptations and struggles enter into that progress, and not only they, but even the sins and falls which mar the Christian life. The process of sanctification is like the ascent of a mountain. One is always going forward, though not always upward, yet the final end of the progressive movement of whatever kind is the attainment of the summit. Sometimes, because of difficulties, the road itself descends, only more easily to ascend again . . . . Often it is feared that there has been no higher at tainment, often that it has been a continual descent, until, perchance, some point of view is gained from which to look down upon the plain where the journey was begun and behold the height which has already been overcome. Often, with wearied feet, and desponding heart, the traveller is ready to despair, because of his own feebleness, and the difficulties which surround. But he earnestly presses forward and the journey is completed, the ascent is made, the end is attained, (pp. 412-415)
The understanding of sanctification that these passages from the Westminster standards, from Owen, and from Boyce, set before us has been characteristic of Protestantism since Protestantism first began. It was the view of Luther and Calvin; it was rooted in the teaching of Augustine, and behind him (so I am persuaded) in the teaching of the New Testament. It was unanimous in Protestantism until Wesley brought in his idea that through faith sin may be conquered here and now, so that we come in this life into that state of perfect motivational purity and love that will mark us in glory. All forms of “second-blessing” teaching about Christian holiness, without exception, have stemmed from Wesley’s doctrine, modified more or less by this or that teacher. I believe the older teaching is better, and in Keep in Step with the Spirit I argue in detail for my view.
In that book I also affirm or imply the following points:
1. The context of sanctification is justification by faith through Christ. The sanctified are justified sinners, saved by grace and living every day only by being forgiven by God.
2. The basis of sanctification is union with Christ in his death and resurrection. The holy life is the Christ-life in us, not the fruit of any natural potential or resources that we have for godly living.
3. The agent of sanctification is the Holy Spirit, who enables us habitually and actively to will and work for God’s pleasure and for his praise. It is we who work—there is no psychological passivity here, but rather intense moral effort on our part; yet we work, not self-reliantly, but in dependence on Christ and in expectation of help from the Spirit. By leading us to form the habits of holiness the Spirit changes us into Christ’s moral likeness.
4. The form that sanctification takes is conflict with the indwelling sin that constantly assaults us. The conflict, which is lifelong, involves both resistance to sin’s assaults and the counterattack of mortification, whereby we seek to drain the life out of this troublesome enemy.
5. The rule of our holiness is God’s law. The heart of our holiness is the love of our heart in gratitude and goodwill toward God, and toward others for his sake. The expression of our holiness is our Jesus-likeness, that is, our manifesting the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-24), which is the moral and spiritual profile of Jesus in his disciples.
I take these five positions to be basic and noncontrover-sial among evangelicals, and therefore take no time here expounding them in detail; rather, I shall build on them.
How, then, does the authority of Scripture operate in relation to sanctification?
First, Holy Scripture shows us the nature of sanctification as a work of God, a “gospel mystery.” This we have already reviewed. Sanctification is not natural morality, but supernatural conformity to the moral and spiritual likeness of Jesus Christ. Sanctification is not mystical passivity, as our use of the slogan “let go and let God” has too often implied, but it is active moral effort energized by prayerful and expectant faith. We look for help in practicing righteousness, and we receive it. Nor is sanctification a solitary achievement. Rather, it is to be worked out and expressed in the close and demanding relationships of the Christian church, primarily the local congregation, and also of the family, and of the wider worlds of work and citizenship and social concern (see Rom. 12:1—15:13; Col. 3:1-4:6; Eph. 4:1-6:20; 1 Pet. 1:22-4:6). Scripture is emphatic that sanctification is a matter of not serving sin (Rom. 6) and that holiness means (to use the old words) being upright and virtuous, “bearing fruit in every good work” (Col. 1:10) and being “kept blameless” in the eyes of God and men (1 Thess. 5:23; Phil. 2:14; 2 Pet. 3:14).
“When people talk,” wrote Bishop J. C. Ryle in 1879, “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 behavior, immense harm is done to the cause of Christ”1 (Holiness, 1879 ed., p. xv). That, you must agree, is a scriptural point of view.
1. J. C. Ryle, Holiness (Welwyn: Evangelical Press, 1979).
Second, Holy Scripture displays to us the standard of sanctification, namely the moral law of God set forth in the decalogue and summed up in Christ’s two great commandments and incarnated (surely we may say this) in the love and humility and self-giving service that we see in our Lord Jesus Christ himself. This is the “third use of the law” that Calvin stressed, after Luther had laid it down that God’s law serves, first, as a standard of civil righteousness in the Christian state and, second, as a source of conviction of sin. There is also a third way, urged Calvin, in which God means his law to function, namely as a spur to Christians, to stimulate and encourage them in the practice of righteousness. The thought here is that the law is the family code for God’s royal children. In this world, royal children live under the public eye, with much expected of them, and if they lapse morally it is noticed. The same is true of God’s children. The world watches them and notices if they fall from grace. Then God is dishonored, and the credibility of the Christian claim that God renews us in righteousness is diminished. This makes it vital that we live by God’s standard, obeying his law and imitating our master, Christ. Though we are not under the law as a system of salvation, we are divinely directed to keep it, according to Christ’s exposition of it, as the rule for our life (1 Cor. 9:21; Gal. 6:2).
Third, Holy Scripture teaches us the necessity of sanctification. This has been denied by various sorts of Antino-mians, who have made the claim that God sees no sin in true believers (the precise claim, be it noted, that John is evidently, indeed explicitly, refuting in 1 John 1:6-10, and Peter in 2 Peter 2). In reality, the witness of Scripture is: “without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). There is no heaven without holiness.
This is a conclusion that follows first from the revealed nature of God, and from his basic command to his people, in which his nature is invoked as being itself the reason why the command must be issued and observed. “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2). “I am the Lord ... your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy” (Lev. 11:45). “Just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written, ‘Be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Pet. 1:15-16).
The same conclusion follows from the revealed plan of grace. The New Testament tells us that we were chosen, redeemed, and called to be holy. The Father “chose us in him [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Eph. 1:4). “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy ... to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:25-27). “It is God’s will that you should be holy.... God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life” (1 Thess. 4:3, 7). Sanctification is not an option, but an integral part of the salvation package, just as the repentance and consecration that lead into the pursuit of holiness are integral to the response for which the gospel calls. God’s plan is to save us from sin, not in sin; therefore the need for holiness must be acknowledged and accepted.
The necessity of holiness follows also from the revealed nature of man. There is no happiness without holiness. Human nature is so made that its fulfillment, contentment, and freedom become realities only as we learn to love, worship, and serve our Maker. Psalm 16 shows that the man who finds fullness of joy in God’s presence, here and hereafter, is the one who has chosen the Lord as his portion, who loves righteousness (“the path of life”) and delights in the saints, and not anyone else. This is a fact about ourselves that needs highlighting in these hedonistic days: only holiness brings full joy.
Finally, the necessity of holiness follows from the revealed conditions of assurance. No one has a right to believe that they are partakers of God’s salvation unless they walk the path of conscious, purposeful obedience and service to God. In 2 Peter 1:3-11 we learn that progress in sanctification is the only way to make one’s calling and election sure (that is, to make certain of it), and passages such as 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Galatians 6:7-8; and Ephesians 5:5-6 tell us bluntly that any unholy persons who lay claim to assurance are self-deceived, for the path they are on leads only to wrath and exclusion from God’s kingdom. If we value assurance (and Romans 8, which is an ecstatic exposition of the content of Christian assurance, must surely convince us that a valid assurance is of infinite worth), we must seek it by obeying the teaching to which we have been entrusted, and so reaping the fruit that consists of holiness, as Paul puts it in Romans 6:17 and 22. Feelings of confidence about our salvation need to be tested before they are trusted, and 1 John gives the tests: those who are born of God practice righteousness, do not habitually sin, honor the Christ who was truly incarnate and truly died for their sins, and love their fellow-believers (1 John 2:29; 3:6, 9; 5:1 with 4:1-6 and 5:4-12, 18). True faith in Christ and perceptible sanctification are the conditions of sound and trustworthy assurance among those who have been Christians for any length of time. (The gracious way in which God may fulfill Romans 5:5 and 8:15-16 at the time of a person’s conversion is not what I am discussing here, any more than Paul was when he dictated those verses. In both passages, the Spirit’s witness in our consciousness to God’s love to us and our sonship to him is presented in connection with our actual living of the life of righteousness and patient endurance, and that is always the proper context in which to consider it.)
From all these different standpoints, then, Scripture shows us the necessity of holiness, and the means by which God’s work of sanctifying us is carried out. I must say something about these matters.
On the means of sanctification, John 17:17, with which we began, is the basic text. Citing it, Boyce writes: “The primary means which the Spirit uses for our sanctification, is the truth of God . . . . ‘Growth in the grace’ is inseparably connected with growth ‘in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’ (1 Pet. 3:18).” Boyce shows that this is further taught in Scripture by passages that:
1. connect spiritual life with truth (see John 6:63; 8:32)
2. ascribe quickening power to the Word of God (see Ps. 119:50, 93)
3. teach that truth promotes obedience (see Ps. 119:34, 43-44)
4. declare its usefulness in preventing sin (see Ps. 119:11)
5. associate it with cleansing from sin (see Ps. 119:9; 1 Pet. 1:22)
6. state that it produces hatred of sin (see Ps. 119:104)
7. assert its power to lead to salvation (see 2 Tim. 3:15-17)
8. say that “all things that pertain unto life and godliness” have been given through the knowledge of God, and Christ (see 2 Pet. 1:2-3)
9. imply that growth in grace is due to greater knowledge (see Heb. 5:12-13)
10. announce that all the ministerial gifts bestowed by Christ are “for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ; till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-16).2
2. Boyce, Abstract, pp. 418ff.
As Boyce goes on to explain, providences, prayer, Christian fellowship, and church worship are means of sanctification only “as they convey truth, or as they suggest truth, or as they are employed in recognition [we would say, celebration] of some truth.” This seems to me to be illuminating, and right.
On the way of holiness, that is, the way in which what Scripture calls “good works” are performed, what needs to be said is the following.
“Good works” must be good not only in their content, but also in the manner in which they are done and the motive with which we do them. The legalistic formalism of the Pharisees concentrated on matter but ignored manner and motive. True holiness requires that the motive be twofold: the glory of God through the expressing of gratitude for grace, and the good of our fellowmen through the service of their needs. Holiness requires also that the manner should be appropriate to the matter: in other words, that we should do each thing, as we say, “properly.”
Our awareness that this is so should make us realize that we can never hope to do anything right, never expect to perform a work that is truly good, unless God works within us to make us will and act for his good pleasure. Realizing this will make us depend constantly on our indwelling Lord—which is the heart of what is meant by abiding in Christ.
Our living should accordingly be made up of sequences having the following shape. We begin by considering what we have to do, or need to do. Recognizing that without divine help we can do nothing as we should (see John 15:5), we confess to the Lord our inability, and ask that help be given. Then, confident that prayer has been heard and help will be given, we go to work. And, having done what we could, we thank God for the ability to do as much as we did and take the discredit for whatever was still imperfect and inadequate, asking forgiveness for our shortcomings and begging for power to do better next time. In this sequence there is room neither for passivity nor for self-reliance. On the contrary, we first trust God, and then on that basis work as hard as we can, and repeatedly find ourselves enabled to do what we know we could not have done by ourselves. That happens through the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, which is the wellspring and taproot of all holy and Christ-like action. Such is the inside story of all the Christian’s authentically good works.
There is a reciprocal relation between good works and the ongoing moral character change that the Holy Spirit is working in us. The desire to work in a way that will please God springs from the renewed disposition of our regenerate hearts, and each good work helps to form habits of single-minded, joyful, trustful obedience which then become firm elements in our character.
Disciplined self-examination before God, in order to learn what one’s weaknesses, blind spots, and deepest needs are, is an ongoing necessity. In this we need divine help. We need to pray with the psalmist: “Search me, O God ... test me ... see if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23-24). Self-examination brings the self-knowledge that spiritual realism requires.
In Romans 7:21-23, Paul, wishing to show the connection between the law and sin, gives us a cross-section of his own inner experience as his self-examination showed it to him. He does not say “I feel” but “I find” and “I see.” “I find” this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner,” he writes. “Find” and “see” show that he is talking, not about his feelings, past or present, but about what he had achieved in those moments of action when he set himself to do the best he could. Self-examination reveals to him that his reach had exceeded his grasp, that his desire to serve God had not resulted in perfect service. Once again the hidden hand of sin had held him back, knocked him off course, and dragged him down.
Jonathan Edwards, some twenty years after his conversion, wrote: “I have affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness, very frequently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping ... so that I have been often obliged to shut myself up. I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and the badness of my heart than ever I had before my conversion . . . . It is affecting to think how ignorant I was, when a young Christian, of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy and deceit left in my heart.”3 Such is the fruit of self-examination: the closer we are to God, the more we see the sin that remains in us (for the light of God shows it up), and the lower we go in our estimate of ourselves. It is not too much to say that sanctification and realistic humility go hand-in-hand.
3. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. J. M. Houston, (Portland, Oreg.: Multnomah Press, 1984), p. xxxii.
We see, therefore, why what the Puritan, Robert Bolton, called “The Saint’s Self-Enriching Examination” is so important in our Christian lives.
“They shut the road through the wood seventy years ago.” It is ironic that in this twentieth century, in which the human sciences have studied human nature so assiduously from their own points of view, and piled up such a mountain of knowledge about the human individual, the knowledge of God’s way in human sanctification has been so largely and comprehensively lost in the churches; but so it has been. To recover it, one has to go back to men like Boyce and Spurgeon, and the Anglican J. C. Ryle, in his great book Holiness, and behind them to Edwards and the Puritans, especially the English Puritans. To be sure, the majestic printed sermons of the late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Romans and Ephesians (Banner of Truth) contain this teaching, although in a rather diffuse form, and two superb small books by Jerry Bridges dealing with it, The Pursuit of Holiness and The Practice of Godliness (both NavPress) shine like good deeds in a naughty world. But unless you are fortunate enough to come across material of this kind, “now you would never know/There was once a road through the woods.”
We evangelicals today do not impress the world with the quality of our humility, humanity, conscientiousness, or compassion. We desperately need a reopening of that closed road, first and foremost in our own lives. May we be given grace to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches about sanctification, that is, about the way in which our Lord’s prayer for us in John 17:17 might be answered. The above chapter is nothing like the last word on this subject, but could it function as the first word? I echo Paul: “I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say” (1 Cor. 10:15 ).