Volume 3 of Owen’s Pneumatologia, containing Book IV of the work: the nature of sanctification and gospel holiness. Owen defines sanctification as the Spirit’s renewing of the whole nature, traces the purifying of the soul from the defilement of sin, and closes with the duties of holiness and the mortification of sin.
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Pneumatologia, or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit
Volume
Volume 3 · Book IV of the work’s five books
Subject
The nature of sanctification and gospel holiness
Length
About 96,000 words · a 7-hour read
A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, Volume 3 contains Book IV of John Owen’s Pneumatologia: the nature of sanctification and gospel holiness. Owen defines sanctification as the Holy Spirit’s work of renewing the whole nature into the image of God, argues that believers alone are its subjects, traces the purifying of the soul from the defilement of sin, and ends with the duties of holiness and the mortification of sin.
How the argument unfolds
01
God himself the author. The volume is built on 1 Thessalonians 5:23. Sanctification comes from God as the God of peace, and Owen presses the apostle’s emphasis, autos de ho Theos, “Even God himself.” To suppose we can make ourselves holy is “proudly to renounce our fundamental dependence on him.”
02
Two kinds of holiness. Scripture speaks of a dedication of persons and things to God’s service, as with the priests, the ark, and the temple, and of a second, real and internal work by the communication of a principle of holiness to our natures. Only the second is Owen’s subject.
03
What sanctification is. “Sanctification is an immediate work of the Spirit of God on the souls of believers, purifying and cleansing their natures from the pollution and uncleanness of sin, renewing in them the image of God.” More briefly: “it is the universal renovation of our natures, by the Holy Spirit, into the image of God, through Jesus Christ.”
04
Progressive, not instantaneous. “Regeneration is instantaneous, consisting in one single creative act,” and admits no degrees. “But this work of sanctification is progressive and admits of degrees.” One believer may be more holy than another while both are truly holy.
05
How grace grows. The Spirit increases holiness by exciting faith and love to frequent exercise, by directly strengthening the graces already given, and by supplying experience: “Experience is the food that all grace grows and thrives on.”
06
Believers only. “Everyone who genuinely believes in God through Jesus Christ is sanctified, and no one else.” Owen answers the objection this raises by distinguishing the Spirit received by believers from the Spirit received in order to make them believers.
07
Four causes of cleansing. “The Holy Spirit does it as the principal efficient cause. The blood of Christ does it as the meritorious procuring cause. Faith and affliction do it as instrumental causes, one direct and internal, the other external and occasional.”
08
Holiness is a real habit. Owen’s assertion is that “in the sanctification of believers, the Holy Spirit works in their whole souls, minds, wills, and affections a gracious, supernatural habit, principle, and disposition of living to God, and in this the substance and essence, the life and being, of holiness consists.” It is a new nature, not a readiness acquired by repeated acts, and Owen defends it at length against those who “simply claim that morality is grace, and grace is morality, and nothing more.”
09
No duty without actual grace. The habit is not a power we may draw on at will: “we are not given such a principle or power to exercise at our own pleasure, whenever we see fit.” Every act of holiness, internal or external, requires a fresh working of the Spirit.
10
Mortification of sin. The closing chapter turns to “the weakening, impairing, and destroying of the contrary principle of sin in its root and fruits, its principle and workings,” taking up the words Scripture uses for the duty, its nature, and the means by which the Spirit carries it on.
Key themes
A real work, not persuasion. “God does not make us holy merely by persuading us to be holy.” Owen grants that God sets motives before us through the word and its ministry, but insists the work itself is a real, internal, powerful operation of the Spirit.
Grace and duty together. “But our duty and God’s grace are nowhere opposed in the matter of sanctification. In fact, one absolutely presupposes the other.” Owen answers at length the objection that if God works all of it, no room is left for our diligence.
Holiness and moral virtue. Owen grants that moral virtue is the best thing among humanity that is truly its own, and that heathen examples of it may rebuke professing Christians. But it is not the holiness of truth, because it is not produced by the special grace of God according to the promise of the covenant.
Growth you cannot watch. Holiness grows the way plants grow: “though we can tell that they have grown, we cannot watch them growing.” Owen gives reasons why sincere believers may be thriving without perceiving it, and separates that case sharply from real decay caused by indulged sin and neglected duty.
The pollution of sin. Before the positive work comes purification. Owen holds that the unlikeness of our faculties to God’s holiness is what first fills us with shame and self-abhorrence, and that anyone who has never known that shame is a stranger to the whole work of sanctification.
Regeneration and the Work of Sanctification
In the regeneration or conversion of God’s elect, whose nature and manner we have already described, lies the second part of the Holy Spirit’s work in completing and perfecting the new creation. Just as in the former work he prepared a natural body for the Son of God, in which the Son was to obey and suffer according to the Father’s will, so in this latter work he prepares Christ a mystical body, members spiritually alive, by uniting them to him who is their head and their life (Col 3:4). “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ” (1 Cor 12:12). The Spirit does not abandon this work at the point of beginning it, which we have already treated. It belongs to him also to continue it, preserve it, and carry it on to perfection.
He does this in our sanctification, whose nature and effects we must now examine.
Our apostle, in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians, chapter 5, closely compiled a great number of weighty, particular, evangelical duties, attaching various motives and enforcements to them. He then closes all his holy instructions with a fervent prayer for the Thessalonians, in verse 23: “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and let your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved blameless to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess 5:23). Or, as I would rather read the words, “And God himself, even the God of peace, sanctify you throughout, that your whole spirit, and soul, and body, may be preserved blameless.”
The reason for this prayer is that all the graces and duties he had commanded them belonged to their sanctification, which, though it was their own duty, was not entirely within their own power. It was a work of God in them and upon them. So that they might be able to obey and actually comply with his commands, he prays that God would sanctify them throughout. He assures them this will be accomplished in them and for them, grounding that assurance in the faithfulness of the one who undertook to effect it (and consequently in the power and unchangeableness that faithfulness includes); verse 24: “Faithful is he that calleth you, who will also do it” (1 Thess 5:24).
This assurance did not arise from anything peculiar to the Thessalonians themselves, but simply from the faithfulness of God. So it applies equally to all who are effectually called. They will all infallibly be sanctified throughout, and preserved blameless until the coming of Jesus Christ. This, then, being the great privilege of believers, with their eternal safety depending entirely on it, demands our utmost diligence in searching into its nature and necessity. We can pursue that search from this and similar passages of Scripture.
In this passage, first, the author of our sanctification, who alone is its author, is declared to be God. He is the eternal spring and only fountain of all holiness; there is nothing of it in any creature except what comes directly and immediately from him. There was none of it in us at our first creation but what was directly from him; he made us in his own image. To suppose that we can now sanctify or make ourselves holy is proudly to renounce our fundamental dependence on him. We might as reasonably claim that we do not owe our being and lives to God as claim that we do not owe our holiness, whatever holiness we have, to him.
This is where the proud notion of drawing holiness out of the principles of nature belongs. I know all men will claim that holiness comes from God; even Pelagius never denied that. But many, along with him, would have it come from God in a way of nature, not in a way of special grace. It is this latter way we argue for. Whatever comes from ourselves, or is drawn out by any means from our natural abilities, is not from God in that sense. God as the author of grace, and the best that corrupted nature can produce, stand opposed, as we shall see further later.
And so, second, the author of our sanctification is here expressed with special emphasis: autos de ho Theos, “Even God himself.” If he does not do it, no one else can; there is no other way it can be brought about, and it falls under no power or means whatever except that it must be worked by God himself. He does it of himself, from his own grace; by himself, through his own power; for himself, for his own glory. And, third, this happens under this particular consideration: that he is the “God of peace.”
This title is given to God only by our apostle, and by him repeatedly (Rom 15:33; Rom 16:20; 2 Cor 13:11; Phil 4:9; Heb 13:20). Were it relevant to our present purpose to discuss the general nature of peace, I might show how it comprehends all order, rest, and blessedness, and everything contained in them. On this basis, the enclosing of this title to God as its sole possessor and author belongs to the glory of his sovereign crown. Everything contrary to peace is evil, and belongs to the evil one; indeed, all that is evil is evil precisely because it is contrary to peace. God may well, then, be called the God of peace.
I cannot pause here to explain these things further, though the words are so comprehensive and expressive of the whole work of sanctification, and of the holiness that results from it, that I will build my whole discussion of this subject on them. What offers itself to our present purpose from this expression is the particular connection between the work of our sanctification and this special property of God. So he is said to sanctify us as the God of peace.
1.) Because it is a fruit and effect of that peace with himself which he has made and prepared for us through Jesus Christ. He was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, destroying the enmity that entered through sin, and laying the foundation of eternal peace. It is from this that he will sanctify us, or make us holy; apart from this peace he would no more do so than he will sanctify the angels who sinned, for whom no peace or atonement has been made.
2.) God, by the sanctification of our natures and persons, preserves in exercise that peace with himself which he made and secured through the mediation of Christ. Without sanctification that peace could not be kept or continued, for in its duties and fruits consist all the actions toward God that a state of reconciliation, peace, and friendship require. It is holiness that keeps up a sense of peace with God and prevents the spiritual breaches that the remainders of our enmity would otherwise cause. So God, as the author of our peace, is the author of our holiness. God, even God himself, the God of peace, sanctifies us. How this is done immediately by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and peace, and what the nature of this work consists in, must be more fully explained later.
He is here said to sanctify us holoteleis, that is, “universally and completely,” carrying the work on until it reaches perfection. Two things are intended in that expression. First, our whole nature is the subject of this work, not merely some one faculty or part of it. Second, just as the work itself is sincere and universal, communicating every part of real holiness to our whole nature, so it is carried on to completeness and perfection. The apostle expresses both of these, in the words that follow, as the end and design of his prayer for the Thessalonians, and as the effect of the grace he prayed for: (1.) he identifies the subject of this sanctification as our whole nature, distributed across spirit, soul, and body; and (2.) he identifies the end of the whole work as our preservation, blameless, in the peace of God until the coming of Christ. Both points will be addressed more fully immediately below.
Sanctification, as here described, is the immediate work of God by his Spirit upon our whole natures. It proceeds from the peace made for us by Jesus Christ, and through it we are changed into his likeness, kept entirely at peace with God, and preserved unblamable, or in a state of gracious acceptance with him, according to the terms of the covenant, to the end.
We must search diligently into the nature of this work and its effect, which is our holiness, and into the necessity of both. Both the importance of the truth itself and the opposition made against it make this necessary.
We are here describing the especial operations of the Holy Spirit. He is not called “holy” merely because he is the author of holiness in all who receive it (we have already disproved that notion of his name), but there is at least a general verbal agreement among all called Christians that sanctification is his immediate and proper work, that he alone sanctifies all who believe. I will take this as granted for now, though some among us who loudly claim to preach holiness (whatever their practice may be), and who reproach others for supposedly weakening its necessity, talk as though the Spirit had no particular role in the holiness they advocate for. It is nothing new to meet with polished, elegant discourses on holiness mixed with scoffing remarks about the Holy Spirit’s work in producing it.
We must therefore attend especially to this work of his, unless we want to be counted among those who claim, and teach their children, that “the Holy Spirit sanctifies all the elect of God,” while despising the work of holiness in themselves and mocking those who claim any share in it as an effect of the Spirit’s sanctifying work. The world is full of such fruits of secret atheism. But our chief duty in this world is to know rightly what it means to be holy, and then actually to be holy.
We must clarify one thing at the outset to keep our discussion free of ambiguity. Scripture speaks of a twofold sanctification, and so of a twofold holiness. The first is common to both persons and things. It consists in their peculiar dedication, consecration, or separation to God’s service by his own appointment, by which they become holy. In this way the priests and Levites of old, the ark, the altar, the tabernacle, and the temple were sanctified and made holy. Indeed, every kind of holiness involves a peculiar dedication and separation to God. But in the sense just described, that separation stood alone; nothing more belonged to it, and it produced no further effect.
There is, however, a second kind of sanctification and holiness, in which this separation to God is not the first thing done or intended, but rather a consequence and effect of it. This second kind is real and internal. It comes by the communication of a principle of holiness to our natures, accompanied by its exercise in acts and duties of holy obedience to God. This is what we will inquire into first; how far believers are, by means of it, peculiarly separated and dedicated to God will be explained afterward. We will approach what we have to say about it through the following observations.
1. This whole matter of sanctification and holiness is peculiarly joined with, and limited to, the doctrine, truth, and grace of the gospel. Holiness is nothing but the gospel implanted, written, and made real in our souls. It is therefore called “the holiness of truth” (Eph 4:24), which the truth of the gospel generates and which consists in conformity to it. The gospel itself is “the truth which is according to godliness” (Titus 1:1), declaring the godliness and holiness God requires. Our Savior’s prayer for our sanctification matches this: “Sanctify them in [or by] thy truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17). He sanctified himself for us, to be a sacrifice, so that we might be sanctified in the truth. This alone is the truth that “makes us free” (John 8:32), free from sin and the law, into righteousness in holiness.
Holiness belongs neither to nature nor to the law, so as to proceed from them or be produced by them. Nature is wholly corrupt and opposed to it. The law was indeed given by Moses for certain purposes, but all “grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” There never has been, is not now, and never will be in the world the smallest measure of holiness except what flows from Jesus Christ and is communicated by the Spirit, according to the truth and promise of the gospel. Something may resemble it in outward acts and effects, at least in some of them, something that wears its livery in the world but is really only the fruit of people’s own efforts in response to their convictions. That is not holiness, nor of the same kind or nature as it, though people are very apt to deceive themselves on this point.
Corrupted reason aims to debase all the glorious mysteries of the gospel and everything connected with them. There is nothing in the whole mystery of godliness, from its highest crown, the person of Christ, “God manifested in the flesh,” down to the least and nearest effect of his grace, that corrupted reason does not labor to deprave, dishonor, and diminish. It would reduce the Lord Christ in his whole person to a mere man, his obedience and suffering to a mere example, his doctrine to what carnal reason can grasp and contain, and the holiness he communicates by the sanctification of his Spirit to nothing more than the moral virtue common among people as a result of their own efforts.
Some will grant that people are guided and helped greatly by the doctrine of the gospel, and even stirred by movements of the Holy Spirit himself at work in the proclamation of that truth, but they will allow nothing more excellent or mysterious than this. Yet these low, carnal notions are utterly unworthy of the grace of Christ, the glory of the gospel, the mystery of our nature’s recovery and the healing of the wound sin inflicted on it, and the whole design of God to restore us to communion with himself.
Moral virtue is indeed the best thing among humanity that is truly its own. It far exceeds in worth, use, and satisfaction all that the honors, powers, riches, and pleasures of the world can offer. It is remarkable to consider the instructions given about it, the praises of its excellence, and the tributes paid to its use and beauty by learned, thoughtful people among the heathen, the wisest of whom acknowledged that there was something in it they could only admire, not fully understand. Some among them gave truly striking examples of it in their lives and conduct. As the examples of their righteousness, moderation, temperance, and steadiness in every condition now stand as a rebuke and reproach to many who call themselves Christians, so they will be recounted at the last day as an aggravation of their condemnation.
But to suppose that this moral virtue, whatever it truly is in itself or however highly people imagine it, is the same as the holiness of truth that believers receive by the Spirit of Christ, is to debase and overthrow it, and to drive people’s souls away from seeking a true share in it. This is why some who profess great friendship and respect for virtue nonetheless hate, despise, and reproach the real thing, content instead with the empty name or the withered husk of virtue, which in their own practice falls short even of the righteousness of the heathen. This should above all spur our diligence in inquiring after the true and real nature of holiness, so that we do not deceive ourselves with a false appearance of it, to our own ruin.
2. It is our duty to inquire into the nature of evangelical holiness as a fruit or effect in us of the Spirit of sanctification, because it is deep and mysterious, and, whether some like it or not, undiscernible to the eye of carnal reason. We may say of it, in some sense, what Job said of wisdom: “Whence cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of heaven. Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof... And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding” (Job 28:20–23, 28).
This is the wisdom whose ways, dwelling, and paths are so hidden from the natural reason and understanding of people. No one, by mere natural sight and judgment, can rightly know and understand the true nature of evangelical holiness. It is no wonder, then, that its doctrine is despised by many as a fanciful enthusiasm.
It belongs to the things of the Spirit of God, indeed it is the chief effect of all his operations in us and toward us. “These things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God” (1 Cor 2:11). It is by him alone that we come to “know the things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Cor 2:12), as holiness is, if we are ever to receive anything of it in this world or through eternity. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things that God hath prepared for them that love him.” Grasping these things is not the work of any of our natural faculties, but “God reveals them unto us by his Spirit” (1 Cor 2:9–10).
So it often happens, as it did among the Jews and Pharisees of old, that those most zealous and diligent for a legal righteousness, walking in strict attention to duties suited to their own light and convictions, who claim to have true holiness and bear some resemblance to it, are in fact the fiercest and most implacable enemies of true evangelical holiness. They do not know it, and so they hate it. They have embraced something else in its place, and so they despise and persecute it, as always happens to those who embrace error in place of truth.
3. Believers themselves are often unacquainted with holiness, either in understanding its true nature, causes, and effects, or at least in seeing their own interest in it. We do not know by ourselves the things the Spirit of God works in us, and we seldom attend as we should to his instruction about them. It may seem strange that all believers are sanctified and made holy, yet fail to understand or grasp what is worked in them, for them, and what remains with them.
But how little do we actually know of ourselves, of what we are, or where our powers and faculties come from, even in natural things? Do we know how the members of the body are formed in the womb? We are quick to seek reasons for everything and to describe the whole process by which our natures come to be, as if to satisfy ourselves, or at least to please and impress others. Vain man wants to be wise, though he is born like a wild donkey’s colt.
The best conclusion we can reach on this is the psalmist’s: “Thou, O God, hast possessed my reins, thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them” (Ps 139:13–16).
By carefully considering these things, we can find a firm foundation for standing in holy wonder at the infinite wisdom and goodness of the sovereign architect who raised this structure for his own glory. To attempt more is vanity and idle curiosity.
How little we know of our own souls. All we know of them, we know through their powers and operations, which follow from their being. These things are naturally our own; they dwell and remain with us; they are us, and we are them, and nothing else. Yet it is no easy thing for us to gain a close, reflective acquaintance with them. Should it surprise us, then, if we remain largely in the dark about this new nature, this new creature, which comes from above, from God in heaven, with which our natural reason has no acquaintance? It is new, it is wonderful, it is a supernatural work, and can be known only by supernatural revelation.
Besides this, there are other things that pretend to be gospel holiness and are not, by which countless multitudes are deceived. Some suppose that any reformation of life, abstinence from gross sins, along with the performance of religion’s common duties, is all that this part of their duty requires. Others press hard to substitute moral virtues in its place, without even knowing themselves what they mean by that. And there is a work of the law, in its fruits, both internal and external, in works of righteousness and duties, that can hardly be distinguished from true holiness except by spiritual light and measure. This too adds to the difficulty of understanding holiness rightly, and should spur our diligent inquiry into it.
4. We must also consider that holiness is not confined to this life but passes over into eternity and glory. Death has no power to destroy it or strip it from us.
1.) Its acts are indeed passing, but its fruits abide forever in their reward. Those who die in the Lord rest from their labors, “and their works follow them” (Rev 14:13). “God is not unrighteous to forget their labour of love” (Heb 6:10). There is no effect or fruit of holiness, not the least of them, not even the giving of a cup of cold water to a disciple of Christ in the name of a disciple, that will not be held in everlasting remembrance and abide forever in its eternal reward. Nothing will be lost. Every fragment of it will be gathered up and kept safe forever.
Everything else, however impressive it appears in this world, will be burned up and consumed like hay and stubble, while the smallest, humblest, most secret fruit of holiness will be gathered like gold and silver, lasting treasure, into God’s storehouse, becoming part of the riches of the saints’ inheritance in glory. Let no soul fear the loss of any labor in the duties of holiness, in the most secret struggle against sin, for inward purity, for outward fruitfulness, in the mortification of sin, resistance of temptation, growth in grace, in patience, moderation, self-denial, and contentment. All that you know of your own efforts, and all that you do not know, will be recalled, reviewed, and abide eternally in your reward. Our Father, who now “sees in secret,” will one day reward openly. And the more we abound in these things, the more God will be glorified in the reward he gives.
But this is not all, nor is it my main point here.
2.) Holiness also abides forever, passing over into glory in its very principle or nature. The love with which we now cling to God, and by which we carry out the obedience of faith toward the saints, does not fail. It does not end when glory comes but becomes part of it (1 Cor 13:8). It is true that some gifts will cease as useless in a state of perfection and glory, as the apostle discusses there, and some graces will end as to particular acts and exercises, such as faith and hope, so far as these concern things unseen and future. But all the graces that make up holiness, that constitute its very substance, insofar as they carry the image of God and by them we are united and cling to God in Christ, will abide forever, their present nature brought to perfection. Our knowledge of these graces, then, gives us our deepest insight into our eternal condition in glory, and this is both a firm foundation of comfort and part of our greatest joy in this world.
Is it not a matter of unspeakable joy and refreshment that these poor bodies we carry about, after being preyed upon by death, dust, worms, and decay, will be raised and restored to life and immortality, freed from pain, sickness, weakness, and weariness, and clothed with qualities that conform them to Christ’s glorious body, qualities we do not yet understand? So too these souls that now animate and govern us will be delivered from all their darkness, ignorance, vanity, instability, and estrangement from spiritual and heavenly things.
But this is not all. These poor, weak graces that now live and work in us will be continued, preserved, purified, and perfected, yet remain the same in nature as they are now, just as our souls and bodies will. That love with which we now cling to God as our highest good, that faith by which we are united to Christ our everlasting head, that delight in the ways and ordinances of God, in which he is enjoyed as he has promised his presence there, that love and goodwill we have for all in whom the Spirit dwells and on whom is the image of Christ, along with the whole principle of spiritual life and holiness now begun in us, will all be purified, heightened, perfected, and carried over into glory.
That very holiness we attain here, those inclinations and dispositions, those frames of mind, those powers and abilities in obedience and adherence to God, which here contend with the weight of their own weakness and imperfection and the constant opposition of the body of death (which will be utterly abolished), will be gloriously perfected into unchangeable habits, forever moving our souls in the enjoyment of God.
This shows how important it is for us to be acquainted with the doctrine of holiness, and how much more important to be genuinely invested in it ourselves.
5. There is also spiritual and heavenly glory in holiness even in this world. This is why the church, the “king’s daughter,” is said to be “all glorious within” (Ps 45:13). Her inward adorning with the graces of the Spirit, which makes her beautiful in holiness, is called glory, because it is glory. Likewise, the progress and growth of believers in holiness is called by the apostle their being “changed from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18), moving from one degree of glorious grace to another.
Next to the beauty of Christ’s righteousness placed on us by God’s free grace, this is our only beauty in his sight, and it is a beauty that carries a real spiritual glory. It is the first fruits of heaven. As the apostle argues concerning the Jews, that if the first fruits are holy, then the whole lump is holy, so we may argue the reverse: if the whole weight and fullness of our future enjoyment is glory, then the first fruits, in their measure, are glory too. In this holiness, as we will see further on, there is a ray of eternal light, a principle of eternal life, and the very nature of the love with which we will eternally cling to God.
The divine nature, the new immortal creature, the life of God, the life of Christ, are all contained in it. It presents to God the glory of his own image renewed in us, and to the Lord Christ the fruits of his Spirit and the effect of his mediation, in which he sees the fruit of his soul’s travail and is satisfied. There is, therefore, nothing more to be abhorred than the carnal, low, and unworthy thoughts some people express about this glorious work of the Holy Spirit, wanting it to consist entirely in a legal righteousness or moral virtue.
6. This is what God requires of us without exception. I will fully take up this point later, when we come to the arguments for the necessity of holiness. For now, I want to show that God not only requires holiness indispensably in all believers, but that this is all he requires of them, since holiness comprises the whole duty of man. This surely makes it needful for us both to understand what holiness is and to diligently pursue an assured share in it. What servant, aware of his relation and duty, would fail to learn and perform the one thing his master requires of him?
Some say that their holiness (such as it is) is the chief or only design of the gospel. If they mean that it is God’s first and principal design in the gospel, not only in its precepts but in its doctrine and promises too, from which the gospel takes its very name and emphasis, then this is a foolish notion. God’s great and first design in the gospel is to eternally glorify himself, his wisdom, goodness, love, grace, righteousness, and holiness, through Jesus Christ (Eph 1:5–6). Toward this great and supreme end, God has designed the gospel, and the gospel is designed:
1.) To reveal his love and grace toward lost sinners, along with the way that love is communicated through the mediation of his incarnate Son, as the only means by which he will be glorified and they may be saved (Acts 26:18).
2.) To persuade people, through the declaration of its truth and the encouragement of its promises, to renounce their sins and all other hopes of relief or satisfaction, and to turn by faith to the way of life and salvation it declares to them (2 Cor 5:18–21; Col 1:25–28).
3.) To be the means and instrument of conveying to them, and giving them title and right to, the grace and mercy, the life and righteousness, that is revealed and offered to them in it (Mark 16:16).
4.) To be the way and means of communicating the Spirit of Christ with grace and strength to the elect, enabling them to believe and receive the atonement (Gal 3:2).
5.) To give them union with Christ as their spiritual and mystical head, and to fix their hearts and souls, in their finest exercises of faith, trust, confidence, and love, directly on the Son of God as incarnate and their mediator (John 14:1).
So the first and principal aim of the gospel toward us is to invite and encourage lost sinners to believe and embrace the way of grace, life, and salvation through Jesus Christ. Without that response, the gospel has nothing further to do with sinners, but leaves them to justice, the law, and themselves. But once we have embraced these things, and given glory to God by faith in them, the whole of what God requires from us in the gospel, by way of duty, is that we be holy and continue using the means by which holiness may be attained and increased in us. If God required anything else of us, it would have to be for one of four reasons: (1.) to make atonement for our sins; or, (2.) to be our righteousness before him; or, (3.) to merit life and salvation; or, (4.) to perform works of supererogation on behalf of others.
No purpose other than the true ends of holiness itself can be imagined for which God might require anything of us. And all the false religion in the world rests on the assumption that God requires something of us for one of these ends.
1.) But God requires nothing of us, though we might well have expected otherwise, to make atonement or satisfaction for our sins that would compensate for the wrongs we did him through our rebellion and fall. Since we had multiplied sins against him, lived in enmity and opposition to him, and run up an unpayable, immeasurable debt against our own souls, who would not assume, once terms of peace were proposed, that the first thing required of us would be some satisfaction to divine justice for all our monstrous provocations? Who does not naturally think this way at first?
So thought the man who was working out in his own mind how he might come to terms with God: “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Mic 6:6–7).
This, or something like it, seems a very reasonable question for a guilty, self-condemned sinner to ask when he first considers making peace with the holy, sin-avenging God. This was the foundation of all the cruel and costly superstition the world lay in bondage to for so many ages. Humanity generally believed that the main thing required of them in religion was to appease and pacify divine wrath, and to compensate for what had been done against God. This is why they offered sacrifices of vast numbers of animals, of human beings, of their own children, and even of themselves, as I have explained elsewhere. The same instinct is still deeply rooted in the minds of convicted sinners, and it has funded many an abbey, monastery, college, and almshouse, for the priests who promoted this superstition always profited handsomely from it.
But the gospel is entirely different. It declares and offers to sinners a free and complete pardon of all their sins, without any satisfaction or compensation made, or to be made, on their part, that is, made by themselves. It is made instead on the basis of the atonement made for them by Jesus Christ. Any attempt to make works or acts of obedience satisfactory to God for sin, or meritorious of pardon, subverts and overthrows the whole gospel (see 2 Corinthians 5:18–21). So in answer to the question raised above, the prophet’s reply is that God looks for none of these things, and that all such schemes were entirely useless: “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (verse 8). This last phrase sums up the whole of our covenant obedience (Gen 17:1), while the two before it are prominent particular examples of it.
2.) God requires nothing of us by way of righteousness for our future justification, though we might have expected this too. We must have a righteousness, or we cannot be accepted by him. Here too many go astray, judging it foolish and unworkable to think of peace with God apart from some righteousness of their own on which to be justified before him. Rather than give up that assumption, they will abandon every other hope of peace and acceptance. “Being ignorant of the righteousness of God, they go about to establish their own righteousness, and do not submit themselves unto the righteousness of God,” nor will they rest in the truth “that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom 10:3–4).
But God does not require this of us in the gospel, for we are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:24). And we therefore “conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the works of the law” (verse 28); likewise (Rom 8:3–4). Nowhere in the whole gospel does God require a righteousness in us as the basis of our justification before him or in his sight. The justification by works mentioned in James consists in works evidencing and declaring our faith.
3.) God does not require anything of us by which we might purchase or merit life and salvation for ourselves. For we “are saved by grace through faith, not of works lest any man should boast” (Eph 2:8–9). God saves us not “by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his own mercy” (Titus 3:5). So although on the one hand “the wages of sin is death,” there being a proportion in justice between sin and punishment, there is no such proportion between our obedience and our salvation. Therefore “eternal life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 6:23).
God requires nothing of us on the basis of merit, nor could anything of that kind be required of us in our condition, for whatever we can do is already owed on other grounds, and so cannot serve to merit what is still to come. Who can merit anything by simply doing his duty? Our Savior proves the opposite so plainly that none can doubt it any more than they doubt his truth and authority (Luke 17:10). Nor can we do anything acceptable to God except what his grace works in us. This overturns the whole notion of merit, which requires that what we offer be entirely our own, so that we might deserve something else from another party, not something already more his than ours.
Nor is there any proportion between our duties and the reward of eternally enjoying God. Besides being weak, imperfect, and tainted with sin, so that not one of them can stand on its own before the strictness of divine justice, our duties altogether fall infinitely short of deserving an eternal reward by any standard of divine justice.
Someone might object that this merit of our works depends not on strict justice but entirely on God’s gracious condescension, since he has appointed and promised to reward them this way. I answer, first, that this destroys the whole nature of merit, for the very essence of merit is that “to him that worketh the reward is reckoned of debt, and not of grace” (Rom 4:4). These two are opposite and incompatible: “for what is by grace is no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace; and what is of works is no more of grace, otherwise work is no more work” (Rom 11:6). Those who try to found a merit of ours on the grace of God are trying to unite what God has eternally separated and opposed.
Second, although God does freely, graciously, and generously reward our acts of obedience, and is said to be, and is, righteous in doing so on account of his covenant and promise, he everywhere declares that this reward is an act of pure grace on his part, having regard to nothing but the mediation of Jesus Christ. In this sense, God requires nothing at all of us in the gospel.
4.) Much less does God require of anyone that they perform works not required for their own personal obedience to him, so that by their supererogation these works might benefit others. This monstrous fiction, which outdoes all the Pharisaism of the Jews, we owe to the Church of Rome, which offers it as a cover for piety, or rather for the impiety, of its devotees. On one hand, those who claim these works are themselves nothing but flesh, and so cannot on their own account be “justified in the sight of God.” It is therefore extreme pride and cursed self-confidence for them to claim they can help others by the merit of works whose worth they do not themselves need. Of such people it will one day be said, “Who has required these things at your hands?”
Yet since God requires none of these things of us, none for any of these purposes, our minds are so perverse by nature that many think God requires nothing else of us, or nothing at all, except with a view to one or another of these ends. They cannot in their hearts conceive why they should perform any duty toward God unless it carries some regard to these things. If they can do something to make recompense for past sins, at least in their own minds and consciences, or something to procure acceptance with God and approval of their standing, they feel they have something to quicken and animate their efforts. Without such considerations, holy obedience seems to them lifeless and useless.
Others will labor and take pains in outward mortification and lavish generosity, in any form of superstitious charity, so long as they are persuaded, or can persuade themselves, that they will merit eternal life and salvation by it, without being much beholden to the grace of God in Christ Jesus.
Indeed, everything that has the face or pretense of religion in the papacy rests on the supposition that whatever God requires of us, he requires with a view to these ends: atonement, justification, merit, and supererogation. To this they apply all that remains of God’s ordinances among them, and all their own inventions serve the same design. But by these things the gospel and the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ are made void.
Here, I say, lies the plain opposition between the wisdom of God in the mystery of the gospel and the wisdom of the flesh, our carnal reason. In dealing with us through the gospel, God takes upon his own grace and wisdom the providing of atonement for our sins, a righteousness by which we may be justified before him, and the grant of eternal life, all in and through him who is made by God “unto us wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption.” But alongside this, he indispensably requires of us holiness and universal obedience, for reasons to be explained later. To carnal reason, the wisdom of the flesh, this way seems mere foolishness, as the apostle testifies: “the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness” (1 Cor 1:18, 23). Yet it is a foolishness “wiser than men” (1 Cor 1:25), a way so full of divine wisdom that men cannot grasp it.
So carnal reason concludes that either what God requires must serve one or more of the ends already mentioned, or else it hardly matters whether it is done at all. It cannot see what use our holiness or obedience to God could serve, if not one of these purposes. It has no regard for the necessity of conformity to God, for the renewal of his image in us before we come to enjoy him in glory, for the authority of his commands, or for the wisdom that appoints holiness and obedience as the means of expressing our thankfulness, glorifying him in the world, and coming to eternal life.
But the first true saving light shining from Christ through the gospel into our souls begins to undeceive us on this point. There is no clearer evidence that we have received evangelical baptism, or been baptized into the spirit of the gospel, than when our minds fully comply with the wisdom of God in this matter. When we feel motives to holiness so compelling that they allow no withdrawing of our souls from wholehearted attention to it, purely for the ends of the gospel and without regard to those now set aside, this is evidence that the wisdom of God has prevailed over the wisdom of the flesh in our minds.
So holiness, with its fruits, directed to their proper ends (to be explained later), is all that God requires of us. He declares this in the terms of his covenant with Abraham: “I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect” (Gen 17:1). This, he says, is all I require of you: your holy obedience. For everything else that concerns you, I take upon my own almighty power and all-sufficiency, just as he says elsewhere that “the whole of man is to fear God and keep his commandments.” Considering this alone should be enough to convince anyone who has any regard for God, or for their own eternal welfare, of how important these things are to them.
7. But we are not left in this matter merely under the authority of God’s command, expected to comply by our own ability and power. God has also promised to sanctify us, to work this holiness in us. Considering this gives us a still clearer view of its nature.
He who requires it of us knows we do not have it of ourselves. Even in our best condition by nature, in the state of original holiness, clothed with the image of God, we did not preserve it. Is it likely, then, that now, in our fallen and depraved state, we could restore ourselves, could re-introduce the image of God into our souls, and do so more excellently than it was first created by God? What need would there have been for all that infinite contrivance of wisdom and grace to repair our nature through Jesus Christ, if the holiness it consists in lay within our own power, drawn out of the natural faculties of our souls? No more foolish notion could enter the minds of men than that defiled nature can cleanse itself, that depraved nature can rectify itself, or that we, having lost the image of God he created in and with us, could recreate it in ourselves by our own efforts.
So when God commands and requires us to be holy, he commands us to be what by nature and of ourselves we are not, and more than that, what we have no power of ourselves to attain.
Whatever lies entirely within our own power, then, is not part of the holiness God requires of us. What we can do ourselves, there is no need or reason for God to promise to work in us by his grace. And to say that what God promises to work he will not actually work, but only persuade and prevail with us to do ourselves, is, through the pride of unbelief, to deny the truth and grace of God, dressing up our own righteousness and power with what belongs to him.
God has multiplied his promises to this effect, so we need only recall a few by way of example. “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer 31:33). “And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever... and I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me” (Jer 32:39–40). “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them” (Ezek 36:26–27). “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness” (Ezek 36:25). “I will also save you from all your uncleannesses” (Ezek 36:29).
The whole of our sanctification and holiness is contained in these promises: to be cleansed from every defilement of sin, to have a heart inclined, disposed, and enabled always to fear the Lord and walk in all his ways and statutes, with an internal, habitual conformity of the whole soul to the law of God. That is to be sanctified, to be holy. And all of this God promises directly to work and accomplish in us himself. Trusting these promises, and for their fulfillment, the apostle prays for the Thessalonians, as we noted earlier, “that the very God of peace” would “sanctify” them “wholly,” so that their “whole spirit and soul and body” might “be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This confirms what we observed before: whatever lies entirely within our own power is not, and cannot properly belong to, holiness, whatever form it takes. The best intellectual or moral habits of our minds, being merely the natural exercise and improvement of our faculties, are not and cannot be our holiness. Nor do our best moral duties, taken merely as such, belong to it either.
By these moral habits and duties we mean the powers, faculties, and abilities of our souls exercised in obedience to God’s commands, as stirred, persuaded, and guided by outward motives, rules, arguments, and considerations. In short, all the power we have of ourselves to obey God’s law, and all we do in exercising that power from any reasons, motives, or considerations whatsoever (all of which reduce to fear of punishment, hope of reward, and some present satisfaction of mind, whether from inward ease of conscience or outward reputation, whether in abstaining from sin or performing duties), none of this is the holiness we are inquiring after.
The reason is plain: these things are not worked in us by the power of God’s special grace, in fulfillment of the special promise of the covenant, as all true holiness is. If anyone claims these things are worked in us that way, they have in effect changed their nature altogether. For then these powers would no longer be merely natural but supernatural, and these duties would no longer be merely moral but evangelical and spiritual, which is to grant everything we are arguing for. So what men call moral virtue, far from being the whole of internal grace or holiness, does not belong to it at all if it is no more than moral virtue, since it is not produced in us by the special grace of God according to the covenant’s promise.
We might pause here to consider what our mindset should be as we pursue holiness, given these things. What regard should we have for the command on one hand and the promise on the other, for our own duty and for the grace of God? Some would treat these as inconsistent. A command, they suppose, leaves no room for a promise, at least not the kind of promise by which God undertakes to work in us what the command requires. And a promise, they think, cancels the influencing authority of the command. If holiness is our duty, there is no room for grace in the matter; if it is an effect of grace, there is no place for duty.
But all such reasoning is a product of the wisdom of the flesh mentioned earlier, and we have already disproved it. The wisdom that is from above teaches us otherwise. It is true that our works and grace are opposed as utterly inconsistent in the matter of justification: “if it be of works it is not of grace, and if it be of grace it is not of works,” as Paul argues (Rom 11:6).
But our duty and God’s grace are nowhere opposed in the matter of sanctification. In fact, one absolutely presupposes the other. We cannot perform our duty here without the grace of God, and God gives us this grace for no other purpose than that we may rightly perform our duty. Anyone who denies either that God commands us to be holy as a duty, or that he promises to work holiness in us as a matter of grace, might just as well reject the whole Bible. So we must give due regard to both, if we intend to be holy.
1.) Our regard for the command consists in three things.
a) That we keep our consciences continually affected by its authority as the command of God. This point will be enlarged on later. Where this is missing, there is no holiness. Our holiness is our obedience, and the essential nature of obedience arises from its respect for the authority behind the command.
b) That we see and understand the reasonableness, the fairness, and the benefit of the command. Our service is reasonable service; the ways of God are just; and in keeping his commands there is great reward. If we do not recognize this, if we do not rest in it, and are not stirred to indignation against anything within us or around us that opposes or rises against it, then whatever we do in outward compliance with the command is not holiness.
c) That, on this basis, we love and delight in the command because it is holy, just, and good, because what it requires is upright, fair, easy, and pleasant to the new nature, without any regard to the false ends discussed earlier.
2.) We also give due regard to the promise, toward this same end.
a) We walk in a constant awareness of our own inability to fulfill the command in any single instance by any power of our own. We have no sufficiency in ourselves; our sufficiency is from God. Anyone who thinks otherwise is puffed up.
b) We adore the grace that has provided help and relief for us. Since without the promised grace we could never have attained the least degree of holiness, and since we could never deserve the smallest measure of that grace, how much we ought to adore and continually praise the infinite generosity that has freely supplied it.
c) We exercise faith in prayer, looking to the promise in expectation of the supplies of grace that enable holy obedience.
d) We give it special regard with respect to particular temptations and specific duties. When on such occasions we do not content ourselves with a general reliance on the promise, but exercise faith on it in particular for aid and assistance, then we regard it as we ought.
8. To come nearer to my main purpose: it is the Holy Spirit who is the immediate, particular Sanctifier of all believers, and the author of all holiness in them. I do not think I need to spend much effort confirming this claim in general. I have already proved that he is the immediate dispenser of all divine grace, the immediate agent of all divine gracious effects in us, of which this is the chief. Besides, it is such a widely acknowledged principle among all who are called Christians, namely that the Holy Spirit is the sanctifier of all God’s elect, that it is not disputed and so needs no further general proof. Readers less familiar with these matters may consult (Ps 51:10–12, Ezek 11:19, Ezek 36:25–27, Rom 8:9–13, 1 Cor 6:11, 1 Pet 1:2, Isa 4:4, Isa 44:3–4, and Titus 3:4–5).
But it is the nature and manner of his work here, along with the effect it produces, that we must now examine. This belongs to our overall purpose of describing the nature, power, and effectiveness of all the gracious divine operations of the Holy Spirit, and it will also give us a particular acquaintance with this work and its fruits, in which we are so deeply concerned.
Sanctification’s Progressive Nature
Having considered the general concerns of the work of sanctification, I will now describe it, then explain it more particularly in its principal parts. I do this with one caution: I do not hope or intend to capture its full life, glory, and beauty at once, or to include everything that belongs to it eminently. I mean only to set up some way-marks that can guide us in our progress and our future inquiry into its nature and glory.
Sanctification is an immediate work of the Spirit of God on the souls of believers, purifying and cleansing 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 to God according to the tenor and terms of the new covenant, by virtue of the life and death of Jesus Christ. Put more briefly: it is the universal renovation of our natures, by the Holy Spirit, into the image of God, through Jesus Christ.
It follows that our holiness, the fruit and effect of this work as it terminates in us, both comprises the renewed principle or image of God worked in us and consists in holy obedience to God, through Jesus Christ, according to the terms of the covenant of grace, from the principle of a renewed nature.
Our apostle expresses the whole even more briefly: “he that is in Christ Jesus is a new creature” (2 Cor 5:17). Here he expresses both the renovation of our natures and the endowment of them with a new spiritual principle of life and operation, with actions toward God suited to it. I will take up this first general description of it, give some account of the nature of the work and its effects as I consider its parts, and then distinctly prove and confirm its true nature wherever it is opposed or called into question.
1. As was proved before, and is confessed by all, sanctification is the work of the Spirit of God in us. It is the renovation of the Holy Spirit by which we are saved, and it is a real, internal, powerful, physical work, as we have already proved abundantly and will confirm more fully afterward. God does not make us holy merely by persuading us to be holy. He does not merely require us to be holy, set motives for holiness before us, convict us of its necessity, and thereby stir us to pursue and attain it, though he does do this too, through the word and its ministry.
It would be far too bold for anyone to claim to hold the gospel while denying a work of the Holy Spirit in our sanctification. So both the old and new Pelagians did, and do, acknowledge some work of his in it. But what do they really ascribe to him? Merely the stirring of our own abilities, aiding and assisting us in exercising our own native power, which, when all is said and done, leaves the work as ours, not his, so that the glory and praise for it belong to us. But we have already proved sufficiently that what God has promised and thereby effected is really worked by the exceeding greatness of the power of the Spirit of God, and this will be shown more particularly still.
2. This work of sanctification differs from that of regeneration in several respects, but especially in the manner of its working. Regeneration is instantaneous, consisting in one single creative act. It therefore admits no degrees in any subject: no one is more or less regenerate than another. Everyone in the world either is regenerate or is not, absolutely and equally, though people’s states differ in degree for other reasons. But this work of sanctification is progressive and admits of degrees. One person may be more sanctified and more holy than another, while both are truly sanctified and truly holy. It begins at once and is carried on gradually. This observation matters greatly, and if rightly weighed it will shed much light on the whole nature of sanctification and holiness. So I will turn in this chapter to explaining and confirming it in a way that will further our understanding.
1.) An increase and growth in sanctification, or holiness, is frequently commanded in Scripture, and frequently promised to us. So the apostle Peter speaks by way of command: do not “fall from your own steadfastness,” but “grow,” or increase, “in grace” (2 Pet 3:18). It is not enough that we avoid decaying in our spiritual condition, or that we not be diverted and carried off from a steady course of obedience by the power of temptation. We are also required to strive for improvement, increase, and thriving in grace, that is, in holiness. Our apostle commends the Thessalonians for exactly this compliance: the exceeding growth of their faith and the abounding of their love (2 Thess 1:3), that is, the thriving and increase of those graces in them. This is what is called “increasing with the increase of God” (Col 2:19), the increase in holiness that God requires, accepts, and approves, supplied with spiritual strength from Jesus Christ our head, as is expressed there.
The work of holiness at its beginning is like seed cast into the earth, namely the seed of God by which we are born again. Seed cast into the earth grows and increases: cherished and nourished in various ways, it naturally takes root and springs up, bearing fruit. So it is with the principle of grace and holiness. It is small at first, but received into good and honest hearts, made so by the Spirit of God, and nourished and cherished there, it takes root and bears fruit. Both the first planting and the increase come equally from God through his Spirit. He who begins this good work also carries it on to the day of Jesus Christ (Phil 1:6). And he does this in two ways.
First, by increasing and strengthening those graces of holiness that we have already received and been exercising. Some graces do not depend for their exercise on any outward occasion, but are, in their actual exercise, absolutely necessary to even the least degree of the life of God. Faith and love are such graces. No one lives, or can live, to God except in the exercise of these graces. Whatever duties toward God people may perform, if those duties are not enlivened by faith and love, they do not belong to the spiritual life by which we live to God.
These graces admit of degrees, and so of increase. Scripture speaks expressly of little faith and great faith, weak faith and strong faith, both true and the same in substance but differing in degree. So too there is fervent love, and love that by comparison is cold. In carrying on the work of sanctification, then, these graces are gradually increased.
The disciples prayed that our Savior would increase their faith (Luke 17:5), that is, add to its light, confirm it in its assent, multiply its acts, and make it strong against its assaults, so that it might work more effectively in the difficult duties of obedience they had especially in view, as the context shows. They prayed for this increase of faith on the occasion of our Savior’s command to forgive offending brothers repeatedly, a duty by no means easy or pleasing to flesh and blood. And the apostle prays for the Ephesians “that they may be rooted and grounded in love” (Eph 3:17), that is, that through the increase and strengthening of their love, they might be more firmly established in all its duties. See 1 Thessalonians 3:12–13.
These graces are the springs and animating force of our holiness, so as they increase in us, the work of sanctification advances and holiness grows throughout the whole person. The Holy Spirit accomplishes this increase in several ways.
1. By exciting the graces to frequent activity. Frequent exercise naturally strengthens the habits it flows from, and this is true of the spiritual habits of faith and love not only by nature but by God’s own design. They grow and thrive through exercise (Hos 6:3), and the lack of exercise is the main cause of their decay. The Holy Spirit excites faith and love to frequent action in two ways.
1.) He does this morally, by presenting their proper objects to us suitably and at the right time. He does this through the ordinances of worship, especially the preaching of the word. God in Christ, the promises of the covenant, and the other proper objects of our faith and love are set before us, and by this our graces are drawn out into exercise. This is one chief benefit of faithfully attending on the ministry of the word: by presenting to our minds the spiritual truths that are the object of faith, and to our affections the spiritual good things that are the object of love, both graces are drawn into frequent actual exercise.
We are greatly mistaken if we think our only benefit from the word is what we retain in memory, though we should labor for that too. Our chief advantage lies in the excitement it gives to our faith and love, stirring them to their proper exercise. This is how these graces are kept alive, which would otherwise decay and wither.
In this the Holy Spirit takes the things of Christ and shows them to us (John 16:14–15). He presents Christ to us in the preaching of the word as the proper object of our faith and love, and so “brings to remembrance” the things Christ spoke (John 14:26), reminding us of Christ’s gracious words and truths and setting them before our faith and love. Here lies the hidden growth and thriving of believers under gospel preaching, which they themselves may not always notice. By this means thousands of acts of faith and love are drawn forth, by which these graces are exercised and strengthened, and holiness accordingly increased. And the word increases faith by being mingled with it through faith’s own exercise, as in Hebrews 4:2.
2.) The Spirit also does this really and internally. He dwells in believers, preserving in them by his own immediate power the root and principle of all their grace. This is why all the graces in their exercise are called the “fruits of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22–23); he brings them forth from the root he has planted in the heart. We cannot exercise any grace at all without his effectual working in us. “God worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). That is, no part of our will acts in obedience separately from him; so far as any act is spiritual and holy, it is the Spirit of God working in us. He is the immediate author of every good and gracious act we perform. “For in us, that is, in our flesh (and of ourselves we are but flesh), there dwelleth no good.”
So the Spirit of God, dwelling in believers, effectually stirs up their graces to frequent exercise, by which they are increased and strengthened. Nothing in our whole walk before God deserves more careful attention than this: that we not grieve or provoke this good and Holy Spirit, lest he withhold his gracious aid and assistance from us. This, then, is the first way sanctification is gradually carried forward: the Holy Spirit exciting our graces to frequent activity, by which they are increased and strengthened.
2. He does this by supplying believers with experiences of the truth, reality, and excellence of the things believed. Experience is the food that all grace grows and thrives on. Every taste faith gets of divine love and grace, every sense of how gracious the Lord is, adds to its measure and stature. Two things need briefly to be shown here: first, that experiencing the reality, excellence, power, and effect of the things believed is an effective means of increasing faith and love; second, that it is the Holy Spirit who gives us this experience.
On the first point: God himself challenges the church over how its faith came to be so weak when it had such great experience of him, his power, and his faithfulness (Isa 40:27–28): “Hast thou not heard, hast thou not known? How then sayest thou that God hath forsaken thee?” Paul affirms that the comfort he had experienced from God himself enabled him to comfort others in trouble (2 Cor 7:4). Through this we truly test and approve, being satisfied in, “the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom 12:2). This is what Paul prays for on behalf of the Colossians (Col 2:2). I would say that anyone who does not know how faith is encouraged and strengthened by particular experiences of the reality, power, and spiritual effect of the things believed has never truly received any of them. David repeatedly encourages his own faith and that of others by recalling his past experiences, which our Lord Jesus Christ also pleaded to the same purpose in his own great distress (Ps 22:9–10).
Second, that it is the Holy Spirit who gives us all our spiritual experiences needs no proof beyond this: all our comfort consists in them. It is his work and office to administer comfort to believers, as the church’s only Comforter. He gives comfort in no other way than by giving the minds and souls of believers a spiritual, felt experience of the reality and power of what we believe. He does not comfort us with mere words, but with realities. I know of no other means of true spiritual comfort, and I am certain this one never fails. Give a soul an experience, a taste, of the love and grace of God in Christ Jesus, and whatever its condition, it cannot help being comforted. This is how he “sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts” (Rom 5:5), by which all graces are nourished and increased.
3. He does this by working directly an actual increase of these graces in us. I have already shown that they are capable of growth, of receiving greater degrees. They are originally the immediate work and product of the Spirit of God in us, as has been amply shown, and just as he first creates them, so he increases them. By this, those who are “feeble become as David” (Zech 12:8). That is, those whose graces were weak, whose faith was frail, and whose love was faint, become strong and vigorous through the Spirit’s supplies and the increase he gives. The Scriptures multiply promises to this effect, which we especially have in view in our constant prayers. This is what the medieval theologians, following Augustine, called gratia corroborans, the strengthening grace, that is, the working of the Holy Spirit in increasing and strengthening the grace already received (see Ephesians 3:16–17, Colossians 1:10–11, Isaiah 40:29). This is the main cause and means of the gradual increase of holiness in us, the carrying forward of the work of sanctification (Ps 138:8).
Second, there are graces whose exercise is more occasional, not always required for the life of God to go on, meaning they need not always be actively exercised the way faith and love must be. With these, holiness increases by adding one grace to another, until on various occasions we are brought to practice and exercise them all. Adding the exercise of any grace belongs to the gradual advance of sanctification. All the events of this world, all our circumstances, are arranged by God’s wisdom to serve this end. All our relationships, afflictions, temptations, mercies, and experiences, every occurrence, are suited to a continual adding of one grace’s exercise to another, by which holiness increases. If we fail to use them for this purpose, we lose all the benefit and advantage we might have gained from them, and we frustrate, so far as it depends on us, the design of divine love and wisdom in sending them.
This duty is laid on us in 2 Peter 1:5–7: “Besides all this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly-kindness, and to brotherly-kindness charity.” The reason this command is given is that we may “escape the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Pet 1:4), that is, have all our corruptions thoroughly subdued and our souls thoroughly sanctified. The promises are given us, and a divine spiritual nature is bestowed on us, for this end.
But is that enough? Is nothing more required of us to reach it? No, says the apostle. This great work will not be accomplished unless we use our utmost diligence and strive to add the exercise of all the graces of the Spirit to one another as occasion requires. There is a method in this chain of graces from first to last, and a particular reason why the apostle calls for each grace to be added to the one before it in the order he gives, which I will not examine here. In general, he means that every grace is to be exercised according to its proper season and occasion. In this way too the work of sanctification is gradually carried forward, and holiness increased.
This adding of one grace to another, and the progress of holiness it brings, likewise comes from the Holy Spirit, who accomplishes it in three ways.
1. By so arranging our circumstances, and bringing us into conditions, that the exercise of these graces becomes required and necessary. All the afflictions and trials he brings the church into serve no other end or purpose. So the apostle James puts it (Jas 1:2–4): “My brethren, count it all joy, when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” These temptations include trials through affliction, trouble, and persecution, but understood any other way the point remains the same for our purpose. All these are directed toward us by Christ and his Spirit, for it is he who rebukes and disciplines us. But what is his purpose in this? It is that faith may be exercised and patience employed, and that grace may be added to grace, carrying us on toward perfection. So he brings us into conditions in which we will surely fail unless we add the exercise of one grace to another.
2. In this state of things, he effectively directs us to our duty and shows us what graces we ought to exercise. We might wonder whether it is better to act in faith or to despond, to add patience under our continuing trials or to trust in ourselves and seek deliverance by irregular means, turning aside to other satisfactions. Then he causes us to hear “a word behind us, saying, This is the way, walk in it, when we turn to the right hand, and when we turn to the left” (Isa 30:21). When we are at a loss and don’t know what to do, and are ready, perhaps, to consult with flesh and blood and turn to irregular courses, he speaks effectually to us: No, that is not your way, but this is: to act in faith, patience, and submission to God, adding one grace to another, and so binding our hearts to our duty.
3. He actually stirs up and sets to work all the graces we need, in the way already described. This much must be fixed firmly in mind: all this increase in holiness is directly the work of the Holy Spirit, who through it gradually carries out his design of sanctifying us wholly, in spirit, soul, and body. In regeneration we receive habitual grace, a nature given to us capable of growth and increase, but that is all. Left to itself, it will not thrive; it will decay and die.
The actual supplies of the Spirit are the waterings that directly cause its increase. It depends entirely on continual influences from God. He nurtures and advances the work he has begun with new and fresh supplies of grace every moment. As Scripture says, “I the Lord water it every moment” (Isa 27:3). It is the Spirit who is this water, as Scripture declares everywhere.
God the Father takes on himself the care of this matter; “he watches over his vineyard to keep it.” The Lord Christ is the head, fountain, and treasury of all actual supplies, and the Spirit is the efficient cause who communicates them to us from him. This is why any grace in us stays alive even one moment, why it is ever exercised in a single duty, why it ever receives the least measure of increase or strengthening. With respect to all this, our apostle says, “Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal 2:20). Spiritual life, and all the acts of living by it, come directly from Christ.
I am not much concerned with how mere moral virtue, nothing more, is preserved and sustained in the minds and lives of men, though I am well aware of the precepts, directions, and instructions given to that end by writers both old and new. But for grace and holiness, we have infallible assurance that their being, life, continuance, and every act of them in any of the sons of men, depend entirely and only on our relation to that spring and fountain of all grace which is in Christ, and on the continual supplies of it by the Holy Spirit, whose work it is to communicate them (Col 3:3; John 15:5; Col 2:19).
There is no one who has any grace that is true and saving, any seed or beginning of sanctification or holiness, whom the Holy Spirit is not able, through his watchful care and supplies, to preserve, to free from difficulties and opposition, and to increase to its full measure and perfection. So “let the hands that hang down be lifted up, and the feeble knees be strengthened”; we deal with one who will not “quench the smoking flax nor break the bruised reed.”
And on the other hand, no one has received grace in such measure, or so confirmed it by constant, uninterrupted exercise, that he can preserve it for even a moment, or exercise it in any single instance or duty, without the continual supplies of new, actual grace and help from him who works in us to will and to do. For our Lord Christ says to his apostles, and in them to all believers, even the best and strongest of them, “Without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). Those who can do nothing of themselves, that is, in living toward God, cannot of themselves preserve grace, exercise it, or increase it, which are the greatest things we do, or that are worked in us, in this world.
So God, in infinite wisdom, has so ordered the dispensation of his love and grace toward believers that all of them, living on the continual supplies of his Spirit, have no cause to faint or despond on the one hand, nor any occasion for self-confidence or pride on the other, so that “no flesh may glory in itself, but he that glorieth may glory in the Lord.”
So just as he greatly encourages the weak, the fearful, the faint, the disconsolate, and the dejected, engaging all the holy properties of his nature for their assistance (Isa 35:3–6; Isa 40:27–31), he also warns those who suppose themselves strong, steadfast, and unmovable “not to be high-minded but fear” (Rom 11:20), because the whole outcome of things depends on his sovereign supplies of grace. And since he has promised in the covenant to continue these supplies faithfully to us, ground for faith is given to all, and occasion for presumption is given to none.
But someone will object: if not only the beginning of grace, sanctification, and holiness comes from God, but also the carrying of it on and its increase, and if this holds not only in general but so that every acting of grace, every single act of it, is a direct effect of the Holy Spirit, then what need is there for us to take any pains ourselves, or to use our own efforts to grow in grace and holiness as we are commanded? If God works all of it himself in us, and without his effectual operation we can do nothing, then there seems no place left for our diligence, duty, or obedience.
Answer 1: We must expect to meet this objection at every turn. People will not believe there is consistency between God’s effectual grace and our diligent obedience. That is, they will not believe what is plainly, clearly, and distinctly revealed in Scripture, and confirmed by the experience of all true believers, because they cannot fit it within the compass of carnal reason.
Answer 2: Let the apostle answer this objection, once for all: “His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and to godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue; whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Pet 1:3–4). If all things pertaining to life and godliness, among which is surely the preservation and increase of grace, are given to us by the power of God, and if we receive from him that divine nature by which our corruptions are subdued, then what need, I ask, is there for any effort of our own?
It would seem that the whole work of sanctification is worked in us by the power of God, and so we may leave it to him whose work it is, while we remain negligent, secure, and at ease. But no, says the apostle, this is not the use to which the grace of God is to be put. The proper consideration of it is, or ought to be, the chief motive and encouragement to all diligence in increasing holiness in us.
So he immediately adds, in effect, “but also for this cause,” meaning because of the gracious operations of the divine power in us, “giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue,” as before (2 Pet 1:5). These objectors and this apostle think very differently about these matters: what they treat as an insuperable discouragement to diligence in obedience, he treats as the greatest motive and encouragement to it.
Answer 3: From this teaching, it will unavoidably follow that we ought continually to wait on and depend on God for supplies of his Spirit and grace, without which we can do nothing; that God is, by his grace, more the author of the good we do than we are ourselves (“not I, but the grace of God that was with me”); and that we ought to be careful that our negligence and sin do not provoke the Holy Spirit to withhold his aid and assistance, leaving us to ourselves, a condition in which we can do nothing spiritually good. These things follow unavoidably from the doctrine already declared, and if anyone is offended by them, it is not in our power to give them relief.
I will close this discourse with some reflections on the similitude Scripture so often uses to represent the gradual growth of grace and holiness: the growth of trees and plants.
“I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon” (Hos 14:5–6). “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring: and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses” (Isa 44:3–4). This same image appears in many other places. Since Scripture uses it so often for this purpose, we can be sure it teaches something valuable. I will briefly consider a few instances that shed light on the matter.
1. Trees and plants have the principle of their growth within themselves. They do not grow chiefly from outside aid, but from their own seminal virtue and inward moisture. It is no different in the progress of sanctification and holiness. It has a root, a seed, a principle of growth within the soul of the one who is sanctified. All grace is immortal seed, and carries within it a living, growing power. Whatever lacks a life and power of growth in itself is not grace. So whatever duties people perform, whether guided by natural light or urged on by the word’s convictions, are not fruits of holiness at all unless they spring from a principle of spiritual life in the heart. The water of grace that comes from Christ is “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” in those on whom it is bestowed (John 4:14). It is the very nature of holiness to thrive and grow, as it is of trees or plants carrying their own seminal power within their kind.
2. A tree or plant must be watered from above, or it will not thrive and grow by its own seminal power alone. If drought comes, it will wither and decay. So when God speaks of this growth, he credits it to his own watering: “I will be as the dew,” “I will pour water,” he says, naming himself as its specific cause. It is the same in carrying forward holiness. We receive a nature capable of increase and growth, but if left to itself it will not thrive; it will decay and die. So God acts toward it as the dew, pouring water on it through the actual supplies of the Spirit, as we have shown before.
3. The growth of trees and plants is hidden and imperceptible, discernible only in its effects and results. Even the most watchful eye can hardly detect its motion. As the old saying goes, growth happens “in secret, like the aging of a tree.” It is no different in the progress of holiness. It is not immediately obvious, either to the person in whom it occurs or to others observing it. It lies open only to the eye of the one who works it, made known only by its fruits and effects.
Some people, especially in certain seasons, plainly and evidently thrive and grow, springing up like willows by the water courses. Though their growth in itself remains invisible, it is plain that they have grown. We ought all to be such people. Some grow so visibly that their progress is plain to everyone on every occasion. Some say that plants do not grow by a constant, imperceptible advance but by sudden bursts, sometimes visible in the opening of buds and flowers. In the same way, believers’ growth consists chiefly in intense, vigorous acts of grace on great occasions, whether of faith, love, humility, self-denial, or generosity. Whoever has no experience of such acts of grace in particular instances can have little evidence of growth.
Yet there are also trees and plants that have the principle of life and growth in them but remain so stunted and sickly that you can barely tell they are alive. So it is with too many believers. All are “trees planted in the garden of God”; some thrive, some decay for a season, but even the growth of the best is hidden.
From what has been shown, it is clear that sanctification is a progressive work, that holiness is carried forward gradually toward perfection. It is not accomplished all at once, as regeneration is, nor does it stop under any circumstance or condition of life; it keeps thriving and advancing. A river fed continually by a living spring could sooner run dry before reaching the ocean than the course of grace could be halted before it issues in glory. “But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Prov 4:18). Such is the path along which believers are led and guided by the Holy Spirit: like the morning light, which once it appears may sometimes be clouded but never fails until it reaches full brightness.
The wisdom, patience, faithfulness, and power the Holy Spirit exercises in this work are beyond words, and all who share in them constantly marvel at them, as the psalmist did (Ps 66:8–9; Ps 31:17). Who has carefully examined their own heart and ways, and considered the workings of God’s grace in and toward them that brought them to their present stature, without admiring the watchful care and powerful working of the Spirit of God within? The principle of our holiness, being in us, is weak and frail, and in some so faint that it is often imperceptible even to themselves. Yet the Spirit preserves and nurtures it so that it is not overpowered by corruption and temptation.
Among all God’s glorious works, next to redemption through Jesus Christ, my soul most admires this work of the Spirit: preserving the seed and principle of holiness within us, like a spark of living fire in the midst of the ocean, against every corruption and temptation that assails it. Many breaches are made in our course of obedience by the incursions of actual sins; these he heals and repairs, mending our backslidings and restoring our losses. And he keeps the grace we have received active through constant fresh supplies. Whoever fails to observe carefully the ways and means by which spiritual life is preserved and promoted misses much of its comfort and joy. It is no small part of our sin and folly to be negligent here.
All believers are, no doubt, convinced of this to some degree, both by Scripture’s testimony and by their own experience. And there is nothing in themselves from which they may learn it more clearly than the nature and course of their prayers, along with the workings of their hearts, minds, and affections within them. Let irreverent people mock as they please: it is the Spirit of God, as the Spirit of grace, who enables believers to pray and intercede according to the mind of God. As the Spirit of supplications, he reproduces and expresses in prayer what he works in us as the Spirit of sanctification. In teaching us to pray, he teaches us what he works in us and how. If we consider wisely how he works in our hearts through prayer, we may understand much about how he works upon our hearts through grace. Scripture says that he who “searcheth the hearts,” that is, God himself, “knoweth the mind of the Spirit” in the intercessions he works within us (Rom 8:27).
There are secret, powerful operations of the Spirit in prayer discernible only to the great searcher of hearts. But we too should inquire and observe, so far as we are able, what he leads us toward and guides us to do, which plainly is his own work in us.
I do not think the Spirit produces our supplications by an immediate, supernatural, divine inspiration, the way he inspired the prophets of old, who often did not understand the very things they uttered but had to search into them afterward. But I do say, whatever the proud, worldly-minded may think of it and however they scorn it at their own peril, that the Spirit of God graciously carries out and shapes the desires and requests of believers in prayer, moving their souls and minds far beyond what their natural powers could contrive or invent. Whoever lacks experience of this is a greater stranger to these things than will ultimately serve them well.
By carefully observing this, we may learn what kind of work the Holy Spirit does in us, and how it proceeds. In general, how does the Holy Spirit teach and enable us to pray? Through three things. (1.) By giving us spiritual insight into the promises of God and the grace of the covenant, so that we know what to ask by a spiritual view of the mercy and grace God has prepared for us. (2.) By acquainting us with our needs and giving us a deep sense of them, one we cannot bear without relief. (3.) By creating and stirring up desires in the new creature for its own preservation, growth, and improvement.
His whole work of sanctification in us corresponds to these three things. For it is by effectually communicating to us the grace and mercy prepared in the promises of the covenant through Jesus Christ that he supplies our spiritual needs and sets the new creature in life and vigor. So our prayers are an extract and copy of the Holy Spirit’s work in us, given to us by himself. Whoever despises him as the Spirit of supplication despises him equally as the Spirit of sanctification. Now consider: what is it you labor for most in your prayers? Is it not that the body, the power, the whole dominion of sin in you may be weakened, subdued, and at last destroyed? Is it not that all the graces of the Spirit may be renewed daily, increased and strengthened, so that you may be more ready and prepared for every duty of obedience? And what is all this but that holiness may grow gradually in your souls, carried forward by new supplies and additions of grace, until it reaches perfection?
It might be said, by some, that they find neither in themselves nor in others, by their best observation, that the work of sanctification is constantly progressing, or that holiness grows and thrives wherever it exists in sincerity. As for themselves, they have found grace more vigorous, active, and flourishing in former days than of late. The streams of it were fresher and stronger at the spring of conversion than they find them to be now, further along in their course. Hence come those common complaints of leanness, weakness, deadness, and barrenness. Many of the saints in Scripture voiced such complaints too, and many today might cry, “Oh, that it were with us as in our former days, in the days of our youth!” Complaints of this kind abound everywhere, and some are ready to conclude from this that either sincere holiness is not as growing and progressive as claimed, or that they themselves have no real share in it.
The same might be said from a careful look at others, at churches and individual believers: what evidence do they give that the work of holiness is thriving in them? Does it not rather appear to be going backward, under constant decay?
I will consider and answer this objection just far enough that the truth we have asserted neither suffers from it, becoming an empty notion, nor leaves discouraged those who fall short of full conformity to it. I will do this through the following observations.
1. There is a difference between what grace or holiness is suited to by its own nature, meaning the ordinary and regular way the Spirit proceeds in the work of sanctification according to the covenant of grace, and what may occasionally happen through indisposition, irregularity, or some other obstruction in the person in whom the work is being done. Considered in the first way, the work is thriving and progressive; considered in the second, the rule allows for various exceptions.
A child with a principle of life, a good natural constitution, and suitable food will grow and thrive. But a child with obstructions from within, or with distempers, diseases, falls, or bruises, may remain weak and stunted. When we are regenerated, we are like newborn infants, and ordinarily, if we feed on the sincere milk of the word, we will grow by it. But if we ourselves give way to temptations, corruptions, negligence, and conformity to the world, is it any wonder we become lifeless and unproductive?
It is enough to confirm the truth of what we have asserted that everyone with a principle of spiritual life, everyone born of God in whom the work of sanctification has begun, who fails to be carried gradually forward, who does not thrive in grace and holiness, who does not go from strength to strength, generally owes this to his own sinful negligence and indulgence of carnal desires, or love of this present world.
Considering the time we have had and the means we have enjoyed, many of us who are now weak, withering, fruitless, and sapless, scarcely distinguishable from the thorns and briars of the world, might instead have been grown, flourishing plants in faith, love, purity, self-denial, and full conformity to Christ. It is time for us to cast off every weight and the sin that so easily entangles us, to stir ourselves up by every means toward a vigorous recovery of our first faith and love, with abundant growth in them, rather than to keep complaining that the work of holiness is not progressing, before our wounds become incurable.
2. There is a difference between holiness truly thriving in a soul and that soul knowing it and being satisfied of it; these two things can be separated, for several reasons. But before naming them, I must state one necessary point first. This rule is offered for the relief of those who are at a loss about their condition, who do not know whether holiness is thriving in them. It has nothing to do with those who could, at any time they chose, give themselves an honest account of how matters stand and on what grounds.
If someone indulges any dominant sinful desire, neglects some known duty, practices some form of deceit, lets the world devour the best increase of his soul, or lets formality eat out the spirit, vigor, and life of holy duties, in any notable way, then I have nothing to offer that would show holiness might be thriving in him even though he cannot perceive it. Undoubtedly it is not thriving in him, and he should entertain no hope but that, as long as he remains in such a condition, it will decay more and more. Such a person needs to be shaken awake with force, like someone falling into a deadly stupor, snatched like a burning stick out of the fire, warned to recover his first faith and love, to repent and return to his first works, lest his end be darkness and everlasting sorrow.
But for those who walk with God humbly and sincerely, several reasons can be given why holiness might be thriving in them even though they do not perceive it. Holiness works within a person and only there, yet there may be times when sincere, humble believers are bound to believe in its increase and growth even when they cannot sense or perceive it themselves.
For, (1.) holiness being the subject of so many gospel promises, it is a proper object of faith, something to be believed rather than merely felt. The promises are God’s own explanation of the grace of the covenant, both as to its nature and the manner of its working. And in nothing do they abound more than in this: that those who share in this grace will thrive and grow by it. What limits bound these promises, and what is required of us for them to be fulfilled toward us, will be explained later. But their fulfillment depends on God’s faithfulness, not on our sense of it. So where we have not openly obstructed it, as in the case just mentioned, we may, and ought to, believe that the promises are being fulfilled in us, even when we are not continually aware of it.
And, (2.) it is our duty to grow and thrive in holiness. Whatever God requires of us, we should believe he will help us to do, and does so, whatever our present feelings or perceptions may be.
Someone who, on these grounds, can believe that holiness is growing in him, even without any felt experience of it, is, in my judgment, in as good a condition as, and perhaps a safer condition than, someone who feels this growth vividly through the strong working of spiritual affections. It is certain that the first person is not obstructing the growth of holiness through willful neglect or indulgence in sin, for anyone who does that cannot truly believe holiness is thriving or advancing in him, whatever he may presume. The life of faith, of which this is a part, is in every way a safe life. Besides, such a person is not as exposed to the danger of vain pride and the carelessness that can follow it as others might be. Where we live by faith and not at all by feeling, we will remain humble and continually watchful. Someone who does not find in himself the evidence he most desires will be continually careful not to drive it further away.
The reasons for this difficulty are as follows.
1.) The work itself, as has already been explained at length, is secret and mysterious. Just as some, I hope many, possess the reality and essence of holiness yet can find no trace of it in themselves, nor perhaps can anyone else, except Jesus Christ, who alone has full understanding in the fear of the Lord, so too holiness may grow secretly in its degree, in people who do not perceive it happening.
There is nothing in our whole course of life that we ought to watch more carefully than the progress and decline of grace. Knowing these things matters as much to us as knowing our duties and our comforts, yet they are very hard to discern, and will not truly serve our good without our utmost diligence and spiritual wisdom in observing them. As we noted before, Scripture frequently compares this to the growth of “plants and trees” (Hos 14:5–6; Isa 44:3–4). We know that even in the most thriving and flourishing of plants, though we can tell that they have grown, we cannot watch them growing.
The apostle tells us that as “the outward man perishes, so the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Cor 4:16). The outward man perishes through natural decay, which continually moves it toward death and dissolution. Many of us know how hard it is to detect these unnoticed declines. Unless some great and violent illness strikes us, we know we have been weakened by age and infirmity without perceiving exactly when or how. So it is with the inward man renewed in grace: its growth and decline happen through such secret means that they are hard to detect.
Yet whoever neglects this inquiry walks with God at random, not knowing where he stands on the way, whether he is nearer or farther from his journey’s end than before. Call that man a fruitless and unprofitable Christian who never holds himself to account for his growth or decline in grace. David knew this work to be of such great importance that he would not trust himself or ordinary means to carry it out. He earnestly called on God to undertake it for him and to make it known to him (Ps 139:23–24).
2.) Sometimes perplexing temptations fall upon the mind of a believer, or some corruption breaks loose for a season (perhaps a long season), stirring up suggestions that trouble and unsettle the soul. In such a state, the soul cannot rightly judge its own grace and progress in holiness. A ship may be so tossed in a storm at sea that even the most skilled sailors cannot tell whether they are making progress on their voyage, even while they are actually being carried forward with speed. In such cases grace, in its exercise, is chiefly engaged in fighting off its enemy, so its growth in other respects goes unnoticed.
Someone might ask how we can tell when grace is at work and thriving even while it struggles against corruption and temptation. Just as great winds and storms sometimes help trees and plants bear fruit, so do corruptions and temptations help grace and holiness bear fruit. The wind strikes the tree violently, ruffling its boughs, perhaps breaking some, beating off its buds, loosening and shaking its roots, and threatening to bring the whole tree down. But through this very violence the ground around it is loosened, and the tree drives its roots deeper into the earth, drawing fresh nourishment that makes it more fruitful, even though the fruit may not appear for a long while.
In the same way, when temptations and corruptions assault the soul, it is badly shaken and disordered; the leaves of its profession are blasted, and the first signs of its fruit-bearing are broken and delayed. But meanwhile it is secretly sending out roots of humility, self-abasement, and mourning, laboring hidden and continual in faith and love after grace. Through this holiness truly increases, and the way is prepared for fruit that will become visible later.
3.) God governs the new creature, the whole life of grace, by his Spirit in infinite wisdom. He redirects its streams and changes the particular forms of its working in ways we cannot easily trace, so we are often left uncertain about what he is doing with us. For instance, the work of grace and holiness may show itself strongly in the affections that grace has renewed. A believer may then have great readiness, delight, and cheerfulness in holy duties, especially those of direct communion with God. Affections tend to run high and vigorous in the early stages of a profession of faith, and since their workings are felt so keenly and their fruits so visible, they make a person seem always fresh and flourishing in the ways of holiness.
But after a while, the sovereign disposer of this work may see fit to turn the streams of grace and holiness, as it were, into another channel. He may see that humility, godly sorrow, fear, and diligent struggle against temptations (which strike at the very root of faith and love) are now more needful for that person. So he arranges his providence, through afflictions, temptations, and the circumstances of life, so that they face new work, and all their grace is turned to a new kind of exercise. As a result, they may no longer feel the same vigor in their affections or the same delight in spiritual duties that they once had. This can make them ready to conclude that grace is decaying in them, that the springs of holiness are drying up, and that they no longer know where they stand. But it may well be that the real work of sanctification is still thriving and being effectually carried on within them.
3. It must be acknowledged that there can be, and in many there are, great decays in grace and holiness. The work of sanctification can go backward in a person, sometimes throughout their whole spiritual life and for a long season. Many acts of grace are lost in such people, and what remains is close to dying. Scripture abundantly testifies to this and gives us many examples of it. How often does God charge his people with backsliding, barrenness, and decays in faith and love? And the experience of our own times sufficiently confirms this truth. Are there not open, visible decays in many, touching the whole range of spiritual duties and fruits of holiness? Can even the best among us not find some evidence of this in our own experience?
What, then, should we conclude? That there is no true holiness where such decays appear? God forbid. Instead we must ask why this happens, since it seems to contradict the gradual progress of holiness we have claimed belongs to those who are sanctified. I answer with two points.
1. These decays are occasional and unnatural to the true nature and constitution of the new creature. They are disturbances of the ordinary work of grace, diseases in our spiritual condition, and our spiritual state should not be measured by them. Are you cold and lifeless in your duties, slow to do good, careless of your heart and thoughts, drawn to the world? These things do not belong to the state of sanctification. They are its enemies, sicknesses and diseases within the spiritual constitution of those who suffer them.
2. Although our sanctification and growth in holiness are the work of the Holy Spirit as their efficient cause, they are also our own work, carried out as a matter of duty. God has prescribed what our part is to be, what he expects and requires of us, so that the work may proceed in an orderly way toward completion, as was said before. There are two kinds of things which, if we fail to attend to them properly, will obstruct and delay this orderly progress.
1.) The growth and strength of any lust or corruption, and the readiness to give in to temptation that always accompanies the dominance of sin, work directly against this progress. If we allow or approve of such things in ourselves, if we indulge sinful acts, especially once they have become known and habitual in some particular form, and if we neglect the best means for the constant mortification of sin (which every enlightened soul knows to be necessary), the result is a general decay in holiness, not merely a decline in that one indulged corruption. A disease in one vital organ weakens not only that part but the whole body, corrupting the entire constitution through the sympathy between its parts. In the same way, any particular lust that is indulged corrupts the whole spiritual health and weakens the soul in every duty of obedience.
2.) Certain things are required of us so that holiness may thrive and go forward in us: the constant use of all the ordinances and means appointed for this purpose, the faithful observance of commanded duties at their proper time, and readiness to exercise each particular grace as circumstances call for it. If we neglect these things, walking carelessly with God, attending to neither means nor duties nor the exercise of grace as we ought, we should not be surprised to find ourselves decaying, even close to death. No one is surprised to see a person once strong and healthy grow weak and sickly if he openly neglects every means of health and brings on all sorts of disease through his own excess. Nor is it strange that a nation should grow faint and sick at heart, show signs of decline, and become poor and decaying, while consuming vices spread unchecked for lack of any strengthening remedy. It is no different when a people who profess faith decay in holy obedience while persisting in the neglects just described.
Having defended this claim, I will add a further application of it.
1. If the work of holiness is by its very nature a progressive, thriving work, and if the Holy Spirit’s design in using the means of grace is to carry it forward and increase it more and more toward its full measure, then our diligence must continue toward that same end. Our growth and thriving depend on it. We are required to give all diligence to increasing in grace (2 Pet 1), to abound in it, “abounding in all diligence” (2 Cor 8:7), and not only that, but to “show the same diligence” to the end (Heb 6:11). Whatever diligence you have used in attaining or advancing in holiness, continue in it to the end, or you place yourself under decay and endanger your soul. If we grow slack or give up on our duty, the work of sanctification will not go forward by grace. God requires and expects that our whole lives be spent diligently cooperating with the progressive work of grace within us.
There are three grounds on which people neglect this duty, though the whole life of their obedience and all their comfort depend on it.
1.) The first is a presumption, a groundless conviction that they are already perfect. Some claim this out of a proud and foolish delusion, which destroys the entire nature and duty of evangelical holiness and obedience. Our part in that obedience consists precisely in our willing cooperation with the work of grace as it is carried forward, by degrees, to the measure appointed for us. If someone supposes this has already been fully attained, then evangelical obedience comes to an end, and such people fall back under the law, to their own ruin. See Philippians 3:12–14, where the apostle gives an excellent description of the nature of our obedience. All absolute perfection in this life is ruled out as unattainable. The goal set before us is blessedness, glory, and the eternal enjoyment of God, and the path toward it, which makes up the whole of our obedience, consists in continually and without interruption pressing on, reaching forward, and making constant progress through our utmost diligence.
2.) The second is a foolish supposition: that once we are assured of a state of grace, we no longer need to be as concerned about exact holiness and obedience in every point as we were before, while our minds hung in doubt about our condition. But whoever finds this notion taking hold and shaping their conduct has good reason to question deeply whether they possess any true grace or holiness at all, for “this persuasion is not of him who called us.” There is no more effective tool in Satan’s hand, whether to keep people from holiness or to smother it once it has been attained, and no thought could rise in the human heart more opposed to the nature of grace. For this reason the apostle rejects it with abhorrence (Rom 6:1–2).
3.) The third is weariness and discouragement arising from opposition. Some find so much difficulty in the work of holiness, and so much resistance to its progress from the power of corruption, temptation, and the circumstances of life in this world, that they are tempted to grow faint and give up their diligence in duties and in the fight against sin. But Scripture is so full of encouragement to such people that there is no need to dwell on it here.
Questions
What does A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit, Volume 3 cover?+
Volume 3 contains Book IV of Owen’s Pneumatologia, on the nature of sanctification and gospel holiness. It runs from the description of sanctification and its progressive nature, through the subjects of the work and the purifying of the soul from the defilement of sin, to holiness as a spiritual habit, the necessity of actual grace in every duty, and the mortification of sin.
How does Owen define sanctification?+
“Sanctification is an immediate work of the Spirit of God on the souls of believers, purifying and cleansing 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 to God according to the tenor and terms of the new covenant, by virtue of the life and death of Jesus Christ.” His shorter form is “the universal renovation of our natures, by the Holy Spirit, into the image of God, through Jesus Christ.”
How is sanctification different from regeneration?+
Chiefly in the manner of working. Regeneration is instantaneous, a single creative act that admits no degrees, so no one is more or less regenerate than another. Sanctification is progressive and admits of degrees: it begins at once and is carried on gradually, so one person may be more sanctified than another while both are truly holy.
Who is sanctified, according to Owen?+
Believers, and no one else. Owen answers the objection that this would make faith our own work by distinguishing the Spirit as promised to and received by believers from the Spirit given in order to make them believers, in which second case we are wholly passive and receive him purely as an act of grace.
What does Owen mean by mortification of sin?+
The weakening, impairing, and destroying of the principle of sin in its root and its fruits. He takes it from the Greek verbs rendered “to mortify,” explains the “body of sin” and the particular desires Paul calls its members, and treats mortification as the Spirit’s work in us and our commanded duty at the same time.
Does Owen think moral virtue counts as holiness?+
No. He praises moral virtue as the best thing among humanity that is truly its own, and says heathen examples of righteousness, moderation, and temperance stand as a rebuke to many who call themselves Christians. But he denies it is gospel holiness, because whatever lies entirely within our own power is not worked in us by the special grace promised in the covenant.
Do I need to read Volumes 1 and 2 first?+
Volume 3 can be read on its own, since it takes up a distinct book of the work with its own subject. Reading in order supplies Owen’s earlier treatment of the Spirit’s person and of regeneration, which he refers back to here rather than repeating.
John Owen was an English Nonconformist church leader, theologian, and academic administrator who served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Often called the "Prince of the Puritans," Owen is considered one of the greatest theological minds in English Protestant history. He served as chaplain to Oliver Cromwell and advised Parliament on religious matters. His theological works, including "The Mortification of Sin," "Communion with God," and "The Death of Death in the Death of Christ," demonstrate remarkable depth, precision, and spiritual insight. Though his writings can be challenging, they reward careful study with profound understanding of Scripture and the Christian life.
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