Foreword
FOREWORD
Jerry Bridges has given the world one of the most incisive, appealing, and conscience-stirring treatises on scriptural holiness ever written. Without doubt, the Lord has enabled His servant to prepare a volume that will have a far-reaching impact upon the lives of countless numbers who read it.
The dominant theme of this heart-moving study is the need for increasing pursuit by believers for the holiness of life which God, whose holiness is ever gratefully remembered, can alone make possible. Pursuit is the key word which the author, whose personal pursuit has been long and strong, constantly repeats.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson declared that one of the inherent and unalienable rights of men is “the pursuit of happiness.” Professing Christians must be brought to realize that the preeminent desire and demand of God for us is that of the continual pursuit of holiness of life, and the reflection of His own holiness. “Be ye holy, for I am holy.”
Well over one hundred years ago, William Blake urged his readers to “put off holiness, and put on intellect.” But divorced from divine holiness, intellect is like a ship without a captain, and doomed to disaster. In our quest for holiness the prayer must ever rise from the heart,
Take my intellect and use
Every power as Thou shalt choose.
This is why we must warmly commend this compelling coverage of practical holiness, in which the author fully shows that the whole of life must be permeated with the holiness a thrice-holy God can impart.
Dr. Herbert Lockyer, Sr.