Study Guide
Study Guide
The purpose of this study guide is to help you take the call to holiness seriously by grasping the ideas presented in this book, thinking them through, and then applying them to your own life. The guide contains eight studies divided into three parts: (1) “Take Aim,” which zeroes in on the main point or goal to be considered; (2) “Review and Reflect,” which pose questions to help you ensure that you have grasped the main ideas of the chapter; and (3) “Take Stock,” which invites you to think about the material in terms of your own personal life.
This study guide may be adapted for either personal or group use. Here are a few suggestions that apply in either case:
1. Read through Rediscovering Holiness and then return to it as you work through the study guide, or use the guide chapter by chapter while reading through the book for the first time.
2. Don’t rush through the questions. They will lead you through each chapter’s main points, so you will benefit the most if you take the time to reflect on them one by one. Some questions can be answered briefly and objectively, while others solicit an opinion or invite further reflection. The “Take Stock” questions help you examine your life in light of the material just studied. If one session is not enough for a particular study, just return to it in the next.
3. You may want to write down your answers in a notebook or use a journal to keep track of ideas that catch your attention. Also worth noting are prayers, resolutions and Bible verses.
4. Keep your Bible handy and look up references. Read the longer version of some of the passages cited. Since Scripture is the foundation of the teaching presented in Rediscovering Holiness, reading it will clarify and reinforce what you are learning.
5. And finally, pray. Becoming holy is not something we do on our own. A book like this can expose a problem, convict us, give us the desire to change and point out the path, but without the Holy Spirit at work in us, we will never progress toward that Christlikeness that is true holiness.
So invite the Holy Spirit into your study of Rediscovering Holiness. Ask Him to open your eyes and heart, to form in you the character of Jesus. Be open to God’s action. Ask God to use your efforts to bring you ever closer to the goal set out in the first letter of Peter: “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).
CHAPTER 1
What Holiness Is, and Why It Matters
Take Aim
To consider both the meaning of personal holiness and the call to be “with Christ in the school of holiness.”
Review and Reflect
1. How do the opening comments on pages 11-14 explain the title of this book? What are the purpose and principles that can help reopen the overgrown “highway of holiness”?
2. Three basic truths are highlighted in the phrase “with Christ in the school of holiness.” Can you identify them? What is the fundamental key to making progress in this school?
3. The definition of holiness is followed up by citing a classic, challenging description of a holy person (pp. 18-21). What do you think of this profile? Do you believe that Christ can “supernaturalize” human life to this extent?
4. Why does holiness begin with the heart? How is this focus a protection?
5. “I am not to become (or remain) a victim of my temperament” (p. 24). What does this mean in relation to the pursuit of holiness?
6. “All members of our fallen race who, because they do not know Jesus Christ, still live under the power of that self-deifying, anti-God syndrome in our spiritual system which the Bible calls sin, are living lives that are qualitatively subhuman” (p. 26). Do you agree with this contention? What makes life truly human? Why is it misguided to excuse one’s sins by protesting, “But I’m only human”?
7. “I want to be holy,” a Christian friend confides to you, “but I’m just too involved with my work and my family. It’s impossible to concentrate on God when there are so many people in my life.” How would you respond?
8. What evidence is presented in this chapter to support the claim that most believers today see holiness as passé? What evidence—pro or con—can you add?
9. There are several reasons why holiness is important “for every Christian without exception” (pp. 32-35). Do you find these reasons persuasive? Do they reveal any aspects of holiness that you have not considered before?
Take Stock
• Consider how often you think about your call to holiness. How wholeheartedly do you pursue it? Have you formed the habit of “going to Jesus” about everything in your life, including this area?
• Think about the temperament you have. Can you pinpoint some of your temperamental strengths? Your weaknesses? What habits do you need to form in order to become more Christlike?
• Select a few key relationships in your life and reflect on them in light of this statement: “The way I relate to others is the essence of my holiness in the sight of God” (p. 28).
• Prayerfully reread Bishop Ryle’s 12-point profile of a holy person on pages 18-21, looking up any Bible passages that catch your attention. As an expression of faith in God’s power and of your own desire for holiness, try substituting your name wherever the text reads “a holy man.”
CHAPTER 2
Exploring Salvation: Why Holiness Is Necessary
Take Aim
To acquire a Bible-based understanding of how the call to holiness fits into the whole work of divine grace in a person.
Review and Reflect
1. What elements does the New Testament add to the Old Testament understanding of salvation? What are justification and sanctification, and where do they fit into the process of salvation?
2. Why is it right to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the key figure in our salvation, but wrong to view salvation as His work alone?
3. Picture yourself in a heart-to-heart encounter with a friend who has never confronted his need for salvation. How might you adapt the analysis of this need on pages 46-48 to convince that person of the reality of sin? Of his or her true condition (“without hope and without God in the world”)?
4. Continue the above exercise by reviewing the outline of God’s plan of salvation—past, present, and future (pp. 48-61). Now think about how you might most effectively communicate these truths in an informal conversation.
5. Believers must wake up to that fact that new life in Christ effects “a real and radical alteration of our personal being.” Because of it, we are “different people from what we were by nature” (pp. 50-51). What does this mean, and why is it important?
6. What is “prevenient grace”? How does it point to God’s loving purpose and direct us to “humility, homage, and hope” (p. 54)?
7. God is light and love. What implications does this have for every Christian?
8. Doctrine, experience and practice are three “legs” supporting the Christian life. How is that life affected if doctrine is deficient? If experience is deficient? If practice is deficient?
9. What can we know about the future work of God that will complete our salvation? What remains unknown? Why is “be prepared!” the right maxim for all Christians?
Take Stock
• “It is not always easy to grasp that one is ill” (p. 39). Consider whether you have an accurate view of your spiritual health. Can you see and admit your fundamental need for the Great Physician? To which delusions about Christian faith and living are you most susceptible (pp. 40-41)?
• Review the suggestions in this chapter about how to profit from the Bible (p. 41). What can you learn from them? Choose one to put into practice the next time you pick up your Bible. (Write down your resolution if you’re afraid you’ll forget.)
• Ask yourself if you ever fall into the temptation of measuring your spiritual progress against other people’s. If so, what are the results? Have the observations in this chapter about the mysteriousness of spiritual growth (pp. 59-60) convinced you to leave the judging to God?
• Take time to reflect on some of the Bible’s statements of God’s loving purpose of salvation (for example, those cited on pp. 56-57). Use them as a springboard for a prayer of thanks and praise.
CHAPTER 3
Appreciating Salvation: Where Holiness Begins
Take Aim
To learn how to gain a deeper appreciation of God’s plan of salvation through growth in awe, gratitude, zeal and naturalness of life.
Review and Reflect
1. What do you think of the assessment that we are living in “the age of the God-shrinkers”? Can you think of any writers who exemplify the God-shrinking tendencies described in this chapter? Who would you add to this list of writers who have proclaimed the truth about God?
2. One sometimes encounters the objection that God doesn’t need our praise. In what ways is this approach misguided? Why is praise required of God’s people? Who benefits from it, and how?
3. Why is the need for thanksgiving more emphasized in Christianity than in any other religion? What are the effects of cultivating a grateful heart?
4. The New Testament insists that the Father’s prime purpose in the plan of salvation is to exalt the Son. What are some of the texts that reveal this purpose? Which ones speak especially of salvation as being in and through Jesus Christ?
5. What practical aids are recommended in this chapter to help develop and maintain an attitude of zeal for the glory of Jesus Christ?
6. What does it mean to be “natural in the living of my life”? What does this have to do with being holy?
7. Does the explanation in this chapter of why it is misleading to think of Christians as having two natures make sense to you? Why or why not?
8. Do your experience and observation support the statement that Christians who sin “are behaving unnaturally, occupying themselves in activities against which their own inner nature revolts” (p. 80)? Why do Christians sin?
9. For what two reasons is backsliding always to be avoided?
10. How can you explain the connection between holiness and cheerfulness?
Take Stock
• Think about what inspires you to awe. Do you ever ponder God’s plan of salvation in a way that leaves you marveling at God’s greatness? Is praise an important part of your prayer life?
• Review the writers mentioned on page 64. Are you familiar with these writers? Might you benefit from exploring their thinking? Do you nourish my relationship with God through good spiritual reading?
• “God is pleased with the Christian whose aim every day is to express . . . gratitude by living to him, through him, and for him, and who is constantly asking, with the psalmist, ‘How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me?’ ” (p. 72). To what extent does this describe you?
• Consider keeping a notebook of Bible passages that stir you to praise, thanks, zeal and desire for God. (You might start by exploring the many Scripture references cited in this chapter.) Use your notebook as an aid to personal prayer.
• Ask yourself, If I really viewed sin as something alien and repugnant to my true nature, would I find it easier to reject it? Then ask the Holy Spirit to help you know yourself as a new creation and to strengthen in you the desire for good.
CHAPTER 4
Holiness: The Panoramic View
Take Aim
To review some basic truths about holiness and to examine six different but complementary traditions of holiness teaching.
Review and Reflect
1. Review the “basic, stage-setting truths” about holiness on pages 00-00. These truths have been presented in previous chapters and will provide the frame of reference for the rest of the book. Are all of these familiar to you? Do they make sense? (If not, review the appropriate sections of chapters 1 to 3.)
2. What two extremes must be avoided as you seek to work out a practical response to God’s summons to holiness? How does the human tendency to be exclusive affect this attempt?
3. What are the two journeys of the Christian life?
4. In your own words, describe the main elements of the traditional approach to holiness that calls for a redirecting of desire. What are the strengths of this approach?
5. How would you explain the following terms to someone: “desert of solitude”; “apatheia”; “spiritual marriage”; “dark night of the soul” (or “spiritual desertion”); “perfect love”; “second blessing”?
6. What line of holiness teaching stems in particular from post-Reformation Anglicans and from medieval scholastics like Thomas Aquinas? On what does this teaching focus, and why?
7. Holiness has been viewed as a matter of paying attention to the indwelling Holy Spirit and following His promptings. What truths must be kept in mind if this path of holiness is to be fruitful? How is Luther’s teaching a corrective to some possible abuses of this approach?
8. What is the Puritan view of sin? Why do twentieth-century Christians have much to learn from the Puritans?
9. Imagine your Christian cousin is troubled by a TV preacher’s contention that a life of holiness is impossible without a post-conversion Spirit baptism. Basing your answer on the critique of the “second blessing” approach to holiness, how would you allay her fears? What key element of the Christian life does this approach rightly stress?
10. “God’s children . . . should have before their minds the goal of discipline in daily living, and work . . . to make it a reality” (p. 106). Why is a planned, orderly and thoughtful approach to holiness so critical for our time? Where might you find a contemporary restating of this historic emphasis?
Take Stock
• “Every Christian must ultimately find his or her own way” in the life of fellowship with God, “with such help as can be gained from friends, pastors, and . . . ‘spiritual directors,’ [or] ‘soul friends’ ” (p. 90). Consider how you are doing in your relationship with God. Am you finding your way? Has this chapter suggested any avenues for you to pursue? Writings to explore? Habits to cultivate?
• Review the description given in the excerpt from John Geree’s The Character of an Old English Puritane or Nonconformist on pages 107-108. Do you agree that the model of holiness proposed here needs only a little adjustment to bring it right up to date? What adjustments might make this a useful model for you?
CHAPTER 5
Growing Downward to Grow Up:
The Life of Repentance
Take Aim
To grasp the centrality of humility and repentance in the Christian life, and to explore some helps to habitual repentance.
Review and Reflect
1. “The life of holiness is one of downward growth” (p. 111). What does this mean? How does personal smallness make room for Christ’s greatness? Where does repentance fit in?
2. What is repentance? Is it an exaggeration to call repentance a “spiritual revolution” that only Christians can experience fully? What five steps constitute the process of repentance?
3. The English Reformer John Bradford was a model of ongoing, lifelong repentance. What daily practices and exercises did he develop to keep this focus in view? How did his actions express it? What were the two foundations of Bradford’s insight into habitual repentance? What characterized his prayer?
4. Why is it imperative to develop a “characteristically Christian sense of the mercy and the terror (fear) of the Lord” (p. 121)? How did the theologian Rudolph Otto analyze this dual aspect of God in The Idea of the Holy?
5. The Christian life must be “an exercise of continual repentance before it is anything else” (p. 123). Why is this so? Why do the greatest Christians tend to view themselves as the worst of sinners?
6. Read the letters to the five churches in Revelation 2–3 mentioned on pages 128-130. Can you see these letters as a model for Christian repentance today?
7. What aspects of our culture make it difficult for us to practice the discipline of constant repentance? What makes it difficult for us to cultivate an educated, sensitive conscience?
8. What is the connection between God’s purity and our repentance? How does Psalm 51 reflect the connection?
9. Are you clear on the link between spiritual health and humility and self-knowledge and repentance? How does God’s law spur us to both self-knowledge and humility? Reflect on Romans 7:7-25 as the classic presentation of this dynamic.
10. What is the first need of modern disciples of Christ? What two lines of action are put forward in this chapter?
Take Stock
• Think about whether you hate sin as an offense against God’s purity. Have you resolved to search out and fight the evil you find in yourself? Are you conscious of your need for the continuous conversion that comes through repentance?
• Consider what practical aids to repentance and self-knowledge might be useful to you right now. Would this include a personal spiritual journal (pp. 116-118)? Prayers to use as models in forming and expressing your own desire to reject sin (pp. 118-119, 125, 134-136)? A more focused approach to meditating on Scripture (pp. 141-142)? Some “accountability relationships” (p. 130)?
• Think about whether you take time every day to soak your soul in Scripture, listening for God’s personal word for your life. What can you do to grow in this area?
CHAPTER 6
Growing into Christlikeness:
Healthy Christian Experience
Take Aim
To understand holiness as an ongoing process of growth in grace, and to gain practical wisdom about cooperating with the process.
Review and Reflect
1. This chapter emphasizes that Christians who are healthy must constantly grow in the moral and spiritual dimensions of Christlikeness. How can you know that this growth in grace is necessary? Possible?
2. Why are partial views of holiness both so appealing and so harmful? Have you encountered the two distortions described on pages 150-151?
3. What happens to the Christian who fails to maintain a balanced concern for truth, experience and action?
4. Skim through the seven propositions concerning the grace necessary for growth in holiness (pp. 157-164). Are any of these points new to you? What has this presentation added to your understanding of how grace works?
5. Why is growth in grace so hard to detect and gauge? How do the lives of “Mrs. Manoah,” Abraham and Peter give evidence of spiritual stature or growth? Can you spot the same dynamic in any other biblical figures?
6. Which truth about spiritual growth should bring comfort to Christians who struggle with badly flawed characters or temperaments? Which one should put Christian professionals on their guard?
7. How can personal growth in grace generate an increase of both inner peace and distress?
8. What five signs are proposed in this chapter as being reliable indicators that spiritual growth is taking place?
9. Many Christians are content to mark time spiritually, or even to slip backward (p. 176). Why is this so? What might activate them to pursue spiritual growth? What practical guides might they employ (see the “maxims” and “disciplines” on pages 177-181)?
10. Say that you realize one day that your spiritual life is stagnant and sadly neglected. Why would 2 Peter 3 be appropriate reading as you try to make a change? How could the disciplines suggested there stimulate healthy growth in grace?
11. “The greatest social problem of the modern world is extreme emotional immaturity masquerading as an adult lifestyle” (p. 182). Do you agree? Why is the Peter Pan ideal incompatible with healthy spiritual growth?
Take Stock
• Consider whether you really believe that health of soul is “ultimately more important than the well-being of the body” (p. 146). Is this reflected in how you live?
• Take some time to reflect on whether your own spiritual life is grounded in the truths represented in Packer’s statements about grace (pp. 158-164). Possible questions to consider:
• Have you consecrated yourself to God?
• Are you clear about the difference between God’s role and your role in the process of salvation and sanctification?
• Have you been united to Christ in His death and resurrection? Is this an everyday reality for you?
• Have you set yourself deliberately to reject sin and do the Christlike thing in each situation? Do you consciously call on the Holy Spirit to help you do it?
• What is your approach to God’s law? Does “law-keeping love” describe the spirit in which you serve God and others?
• The last section of this chapter (pp. 174-183) is an extended exercise in applying the principles on holy growth. Reread it with your own life in mind, and ask the Holy Spirit to help you.
CHAPTER 7
Growing Strong: The Empowered Christian Life
Take Aim
To examine one aspect of the power of God: how it regenerates, sanctifies and operates through human beings.
Review and Reflect
1. “Power is a theme that Christians must ever hold on to” (p. 193). Why is this the case? What is deficient about a Christianity that ignores this concern? What cautions are in order?
2. How does the Bible’s understanding of power differ from, say, TIME magazine’s? In the New Testament, how do we see this power manifested? What is the supreme “sign and wonder” testifying to God’s power?
3. Does every Christian have a ministry? What relation do ministry and holiness have to one another?
4. What historical developments led many Christians to believe that God rarely, if ever, breaks into the world in supernatural demonstrations of power? Is this the prevailing error today?
5. How can the sin of pride sabotage our rightful aspirations to develop our gifts and use them for the good of others? What truths, kept in mind, will protect us?
6. Do you agree with the assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the “power encounter” emphasis in evangelism presented in this chapter?
7. In what sense can it be said that “frustrating longing” is part of the experience of every serious disciple of Christ?
8. What is the surest indicator of God’s power at work in a person?
9. The power of God that brought the universe into existence is the same power at work in our lives and the life of the Church. What are some implications of this truth?
10. What practical difference should it make to us that this power is not an impersonal force but a living person: the Holy Spirit?
11. What is God’s overarching purpose—the end to which He directs His power and His promises? How should our petitionary prayer help us to enter into God’s mind and purpose?
12. Being divinely empowered to grow stronger in Christ has everything to do with “knowing and feeling that one is weak” (p. 217). How does Paul’s experience with the Corinthians exemplify this vitally important truth?
Take Stock
• Think about whether you need to rethink your approach to power in light of what you have read in this chapter. Do you have a healthy, expectant openness to the supernatural?
• “Christians prove in experience that the power of God changes lives” (pp. 201-202). Consider whether you prove this in your life. Is your desire to be divinely empowered for holy living coupled with diligence in using the means of grace?
• Describe your relationship with the Holy Spirit. Is it alive and well? How can you tell? Read Romans 8:4-16 as a reminder of the range of gifts available to you through the Spirit’s ministry. How is the Spirit equipping you for ministry?
• “My grace is sufficient for you,” the Lord told Paul, “for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). It is easier to pay lip service to this truth than to demonstrate it in one’s life. Are you ready to pray, “May God in His great mercy weaken us”? “May God in His great mercy weaken me”?
CHAPTER 8
Hard Gaining: The Discipline of Endurance
Take Aim
To understand why endurance is vital to the process of sanctification.
Review and Reflect
1. What is Christian endurance? Under what circumstances is it most apparent? Why is there no maturity without it?
2. Why is a long-distance race an apt image for the Christian life? Is this an image you can relate to? Do you have personal experience of other hard-gaining disciplines requiring sustained, concentrated effort?
3. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus,” the writer of Hebrews urges (12:2). Why is this crucial? On what two aspects of Jesus should we focus our gaze?
4. What sustains the stoic through hard times? The Christian? What view of self underlies each approach?
5. “While there’s hope, there’s life” (p. 225). How does this statement highlight a deeper truth? What is the Christian’s “living hope”? What difference does it make?
6. How is suffering defined? Which causes of suffering fall on Christians precisely because they are Christians? Which ones are simply of humanity’s common lot?
7. This chapter offers three reasons why Christians are to value suffering. If you had to present the first reason to an adult Bible study class, how would you go about it?
8. Romans 5:3-4 speaks of a progression from suffering to endurance to character to hope. Have you thought this through? How does character produce hope?
9. The second reason for valuing suffering is that it glorifies God. In what two senses is this the case? How was God glorified by the suffering of Paul? Of the psalmists? Of the English Puritan Richard Baxter?
10. The “law of harvest” is the third reason why Christians should value suffering. What is this law? Where in the Bible can it be found? How is it demonstrated in Jesus’ life? What practical answer does it suggest to the Christian sufferer who wonders, Why is this happening to me?
11. What is fortitude? In what two ways is it fostered by faith?
Take Stock
• Think about your level of participation in the spiritual race. Are you a serious contender? A half-hearted entrant? A spectator? Do you want to “run so as to win”? What will you do to fix your eyes on Jesus today?
• Consider how often you think about Jesus’ return. Do you draw encouragement from considering the eternal reward God promises to those who persevere, or do you look down on this as an unworthy motive? Are you growing in hope?
• Review the explanation of the value of suffering on pages 254-266. What do you think when you read this explanation? Might it help you to take your suffering more in stride? To welcome its Christ-forming effect on your character? To help you respond with praise? To increase your willingness to suffer pain for the Father’s glory and others’ good?
• Read and pray through the letter to the Hebrews (especially the sections mentioned in this chapter) as a way to gain understanding and appreciation of the discipline of endurance.
• Spend some time reflecting on what you have learned during your study of Rediscovering Holiness. Make some practical resolutions. Let your reflection lead you into prayer.