The Reformed Traveler's Research

J.C. Ryle 1816-1900

“Finally, I must deprecate, and I do it in love, the use of uncouth and new-fangled terms and phrases in teaching sanctification. I plead that a movement in favour of holiness cannot be advanced by new-coined phraseology, or by disproportioned and one-sided statements—or by overstraining and isolating particular texts—or by exalting one truth at the expense of another—or by allegorizing and accommodating texts, and squeezing out of them meanings which the Holy Ghost never put in them…”

“Sanctification  is a thing for which every believer is responsible. In saying this I would not be mistaken. I hold as strongly as anyone that every man on earth is accountable to God, and that all the lost will be speechless and without excuse at the last day. Every man has power to “lose his own soul.” (Matt. xvi. 26.) But while I hold this, I maintain that believers are eminently and peculiarly responsible, and under a special obligation to live holy lives. They are not as others, dead and blind and unrenewed: they are alive unto God, and have light and knowledge, and a new principle within them. Whose fault is it if they are not holy, but their own? On whom can they throw the blame if they are not sanctified, but themselves? God, who has given them grace and a new heart, and a new nature, has deprived them of all excuse if they do not live for His praise. This is a point which is far too much forgotten. A man who professes to be a true Christian, while he sits still, content with a very low degree of sanctification (if indeed he has any at all), and coolly tells you he “can do nothing,” is a very pitiable sight, and a very ignorant man. Against this delusion let us watch and be on our guard. The Word of God always addresses its precepts to believers as accountable and responsible beings. If the Saviour of sinners gives us renewing grace, and calls us by His Spirit, we may be sure that He expects us to use our grace, and not to go to sleep. It is forgetfulness of this which causes many believers to “grieve the Holy Spirit,” and makes them very useless and uncomfortable Christians.”

“But the plain truth is, that men will persist in confounding two things that differ—that is, justification and sanctification. In justification the word to be addressed to man is believe—only believe; in sanctification the word must be “watch, pray, and fight.” What God has divided let us not mingle and confuse.”

“I leave the subject of my introduction here, and hasten to a conclusion. I confess that I lay down my pen with feelings of sorrow and anxiety. There is much in the attitude of professing Christians in this day which fills me with concern, and makes me full of fear for the future.”

J.C. Ryle ~ Excerpts from~ Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots

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Filed under: Doctrine, J.C. Ryle Tagged: | confusing justification sanctification, holiness, new calvinism, the grace boys