Ebenezer Erskine once said, “The ministers of the gospel, when dispensing the truths of God, must preach home to their own souls as well as to others; and truly it can never be expected that we should apply the truth with any warmth or liveliness to others unless we make a warm application thereof to our own souls. And if we do not feed upon these doctrines, and practices the duties which we deliver to you, though we preach to others, we ourselves are but castaways.”

Our sermons will not be dry or insipid if they are infused with the freshness of our own growing relationship with God. Let us never forget that we preach most when we live best. “Our ministry is as our heart is,” wrote Thomas Wilson. “No man rises much above the level of his own habitual godliness.” John Owen put it negatively: “If a man teach uprightly and walk crookedly, more will fall down in the night of his life than be built in the day of his doctrine.”

Perhaps Robert Murray M’Cheyne said it best: “A minister’s life is the life of his ministry . . . . . In great measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument will be the success. It is not great talents that God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.

Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2004), 254f.

Lev. 19:15 “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.”

1. True sanctification then does not consist in talk about religion.
2. True sanctification does not consist in temporary religious feelings.
3. True sanctification does not consist in outward formalism.
4. Sanctification does not consist in retirement from our place in life, and the renunciation of our social duties.
5. Sanctification does not consist in the occasional performance of right actions.
6. Genuine sanctification will show itself in habitual respect to God’s law, and habitual effort to live in obedience to it as the rule of life.
7. Genuine sanctification will show itself in an habitual endeavour to do Christ’s will, and to live by His practical precepts.
8. Genuine sanctification will show itself in an habitual desire to live up to the standard which St. Paul sets before the Churches in his writings.
9. Genuine sanctification will show itself in habitual attention to the active graces which our Lord so beautifully exemplified, and especially to the grace of charity.
10. Genuine sanctification, in the last place, will show itself in habitual attention to the passive graces of Christianity. When I speak of passive graces, I mean those graces which are especially shown in submission to the will of God, and in bearing and forbearing towards one another.

. . . . . . . . . .

Such are the visible marks of a sanctified man. I do not say that they are all to be seen equally in all God’s people. I freely admit that in the best they are not fully and perfectly exhibited. But I do say confidently, that the things of which I have been speaking are the Scriptural marks of sanctification, and that they who know nothing of them may well doubt whether they have any grace at all.

Extracts from Ryle, Holiness, 24-29.

You shall not revile God, nor curse a ruler of your people.

I recently read Exodus 21-23. The emphasis on loving your neighbor is very clear. That statement really does aptly summarize most of the laws in these chapters. Further, the capsule form of “love your neighbor as yourself” is memorable and thus can be recalled throughout the day as a guide.

But the specificity of the laws in these chapters reminds us that loving our neighbor needs to be worked out in specific ways. A person can’t say he loves his neighbor and then refuse to make restitution when the animal he borrowed from his neighbor dies while in his care.

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 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 abodes 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, 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. 8:29.)

J. C. Ryle, Holiness (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, n.d.), x.

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. Politics, or controversy, or party-spirit, or worldliness, have eat out the heart of lively piety in too many of us. The subject of personal godliness has fallen sadly into the background. The standard of living has become painfully low in many quarters. The immense importance of ‘adorning the doctrine of god our Saviour’ (Titus 2:10), and making it lovely and beautiful by our daily habits and tempers, has been far too much overlooked . . . .

It is, however, of great importance that the whole subject should be placed on right foundations, and that the movement about it should not be damaged by crude, disproportioned, and one-sided statements. if such statements abound, we must not be surprised. Satan knows well the power of true holiness, and the immense injury which increased attention to it will do to his kingdom. It is his interest, therefore, to promote strife and controversy about this part of God’s truth. Just as in time past he has succeeded in mystifying and confusing men’s minds about justification, so he is labouring in the present day to make men ‘darken counsel by words without knowledge’ about sanctification. May the Lord rebuke him!

J. C. Ryle, Holiness (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, n.d.), vii-viii.