The Necessity of Holiness Grounded in the Nature of God
That which I will close this discourse with is the necessity of the holiness we have described so far, for all who profess the gospel, along with the reasons for that necessity and the chief motives to it. We may take encouragement here, because this necessity is one that Christians of every sort already grant, plead for, and claim to pursue. The gospel is aletheia, truth, and didaskalia he kat’ eusebeian, “the doctrine which is according to godliness” (1 Tim 6:3; Titus 1:1). It is designed and suited in every way to produce and advance godly practice, so no one can in good conscience refuse to have their doctrine tested by whether it tends that way.
But what actually promotes holiness, and what hinders it, is a matter many still disagree about. The Socinians argue that the doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction overthrows the necessity of a holy life. The Papists say the same of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness in our justification. Others bring the same charge against God’s gracious election, the almighty efficacy of his grace in converting sinners, and his faithfulness in preserving true believers in grace to the end. Yet Scripture grounds all true holiness so firmly in these very things that without faith in them, and their influence on our minds, it will not call anything holiness at all.
It is not my present task to examine others’ claims about how well their doctrines promote holiness. It is enough to note that a conviction of holiness’s necessity has always persisted across every different persuasion within Christianity. In this one thing, almost, all Christians agree. And yet the lack of holiness is, if not the only, at least the chief thing by which most who bear the Christian name are ruined. It is common enough for people to agree that holiness is necessary and then live in neglect of it once they have agreed. Conviction comes cheaply, almost whether we want it or not, but practice costs pain, effort, and trouble. So before handling this matter properly, a few things need to be said first.
First, it damages the interest of the gospel when people plead for holiness with weak, unconvincing arguments, arguments not drawn from the true stores of gospel truth, which therefore fail to touch anyone’s conscience. And it harms holiness itself when something is defended and promoted under its name and title that is not truly holiness at all, but an impostor wearing its crown. We will look into that later.
Second, it is unseemly and unworthy to hear people argue for holiness as though it were the whole of religion, while showing in themselves, on every occasion, a temper of mind utterly at odds with what Scripture calls and counts holy. There is no surer way to unteach people every principle of religion, all reverence for God, and even common honesty. If such people were only inconsistent with themselves, without casting reflection on others, it might be easier to bear.
But it is a thing all sober people rightly detest, and that God abhors, to see or hear people who are proud, vengeful, worldly, sensual, neglecters of holy duties, and scoffers at religion and its power, standing up to plead for a holy life against the doctrine and practice of those who walked blamelessly before the Lord in all his ways, on whose very hearts and foreheads was written “Holiness unto the Lord,” as was true of most of the early Reformed divines these people criticize. I will set this point aside for now and go on with what I proposed.
Third, in discussing the necessity of holiness, along with its grounds, reasons, and supporting arguments, I will confine myself to two things:
1. The reasons, arguments, and motives I will offer are drawn from the gospel, from Scripture itself. They are not only consistent and compatible with the great doctrines of God’s grace in our free election, conversion, justification, and salvation through Jesus Christ, but they flow naturally from those doctrines, showing their true nature and tendency in this matter.
2. I will take for granted throughout what I mean by holiness. It is not the outward show and pretense that some plead for, not mere attention to, or observance of, some or all moral virtues alone, not a readiness for acts of piety and charity springing from a superstitious, proud notion that such acts merit grace or glory.
Rather, I mean the holiness described earlier, which can be reduced to three heads: (1.) an internal change or renewal of our souls, minds, wills, and affections by grace; (2.) a universal compliance with God’s will in every duty of obedience and abstinence from sin, arising from a principle of faith and love; (3.) a devotion of all life’s actions to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, according to the gospel. This is holiness: so to be, and so to act, is to be holy. I will divide my arguments into two kinds: (1.) those proving the necessity of holiness as to its essence, holiness in our hearts and natures, and (2.) those proving the necessity of holiness as to its degree, holiness in our lives and conduct.
First. The nature of God as revealed to us, our dependence on him, our obligation to live for him, and the nature of the blessedness we find in enjoying him, all require without exception that we be holy. Scripture everywhere makes the holiness of God’s nature the foundational reason for the necessity of our own holiness. God himself grounds his command for it on this: “For I am the LORD your God, ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:44; compare Lev 19:2; Lev 20:7). To show the everlasting force and fairness of this reasoning, it is carried over into the gospel: “As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet 1:15–16).
God lets his people know that his nature is such that, unless they are sanctified and holy, there can be no proper relationship between him and them as God and people. He states the point of this command plainly: “I brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:45). Without holiness, the intended relationship, that he should be our God and we his people, cannot be maintained.
The same truth appears in the description of his nature in Psalm 5:4–6: “For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the LORD will abhor the bloody and deceitful man.” This matches the prophet’s words, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity” (Hab 1:13). Such is his nature, so pure and holy, that even before we consider any free decision of his will, it is evident he can take no pleasure in fools, liars, or workers of wickedness.
So Joshua tells the people that if they continue in their sins they cannot serve the Lord, “for he is an holy God” (Josh 24:19). All worship offered by unholy people to this God is utterly lost and rejected, because his own holiness makes it impossible for him to accept it.
Our apostle argues the same way: “Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:28–29). He grounds the necessity of grace and holiness in worship on the holiness of God’s nature, which, like a consuming fire, will devour whatever does not suit it or is inconsistent with it. There would be no end to tracing this reasoning through every place Scripture states it explicitly. I will only add, in general, that God of old strictly required that nothing unholy, unclean, or defiling remain in the camp of his people, because of his presence among them, he himself being holy, and he declared that without exact obedience to this requirement, he would depart and leave them.
If we had no other argument to prove the necessity of holiness, and that it is indispensably required of us, but only this, that the God whom we serve and worship is absolutely holy, and that his being and nature are such that we can have no delightful fellowship with any who are unholy, this alone would be sufficient. Whoever resolves not to be holy had best seek another god to worship and serve, for with our God he will never find acceptance.
This is why the heathen, who gave themselves up to filthiness with delight and greediness in order to stifle the notion of a divine being that might restrain them in their sins and pleasures, invented gods for themselves who were wicked and unclean, so that they could freely conform to them and serve them with satisfaction. God himself lets us know that men of wicked and shameless lives secretly think that he is not holy, but like themselves (Ps 50:21). If they did not think this, they could not avoid it: they would have to either abandon him or abandon their sins.
But we must observe a few more things to see the full force of this argument.
First, in our present state, it is not the holiness of God considered absolutely, as merely an infinite eternal property of the divine nature, that is the immediate ground of and motive to holiness in us. Rather, it is the holiness of God as manifested and revealed to us in Christ Jesus. Considered under the first heading, we who are sinners can draw no conclusion from it but that of Joshua: “He is a holy God, a jealous God, he will not forgive their iniquities, nor spare.” From this we can indeed learn that nothing unholy can possibly stand before him or find acceptance with him.
But no creature can take from that consideration alone any motive or encouragement toward a holiness that falls short of absolute perfection. We should not, and must not, urge any argument for the necessity of holiness that cannot be answered and fulfilled by the grace of God as to its substance, even though we fall short in degree. My point is this: no argument for the necessity of holiness can be rationally and usefully pressed unless it also contains within itself an encouraging motive to pursue it. To declare holiness necessary for us while also declaring it impossible for us does nothing to advance it.
Those who suppose that God’s holiness and man’s are absolutely and immediately matched to one another, or that we can draw an encouraging motive to duty from that notion alone, understand neither the holiness of God nor the holiness of man. No creature is even capable of a holiness perfect enough to fully answer the infinite purity of the divine nature, apart from a covenant condescension (Job 4:18, Job 15:15). It is the holiness of God as he is in Christ, and as represented to us in Christ, that gives us both the necessity of holiness and the motive to pursue it.
So when God dealt with his people of old in this matter, he did not hold up the absolute perfection of his own nature as the standard to aim at. Instead he presented himself as holy as he dwelt among them and was their God, that is, in covenant, and both of these had respect to Jesus Christ. In him all the glorious perfections of God are represented to us in such a way that we not only learn our duty from them but are also encouraged to pursue it. For:
1. All of God’s properties, represented to us in this way, are more conspicuous, resplendent, alluring, and attractive than when considered absolutely. I do not know how much light and knowledge of the divine perfections Adam had in his state of innocence, when God had declared himself only through the works of nature. No doubt it was sufficient to guide him in his love and obedience, the life he was to live before God. But I do know that now, all our knowledge of God and his properties is insufficient to guide us in the life of faith and obedience we need, unless it comes to us in and through Jesus Christ.
He therefore gives us “the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6), that is, clear manifestations of his glorious excellencies. The light of this knowledge is a clear, useful, saving perception and understanding of them. And this knowledge not only directs us toward holiness, it also produces it. For by beholding the glory of the Lord in this way, we are “changed into the same image, from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18).
2. More specifically, the fiery holiness of God is represented to us in Christ in such a way that, while it loses nothing of its force in declaring the indispensable necessity of holiness in all who draw near him, it is tempered with such goodness, grace, love, mercy, and condescension that it invites and encourages us to pursue conformity to it.
3. Along with this representation of the holiness of God in Christ comes a revelation of what holiness he requires and will accept from us. As noted above, God’s holiness considered absolutely neither requires nor admits of anything short of absolute perfection; where we fail in even one point, all that we do is condemned (Jas 2:10). This can only torment and perplex the soul of a sinner, since it presses on him at once the necessity and the impossibility of holiness (Isa 33:14). But as God is in Christ, through his interposition and mediation, he accepts in us such holiness as we are capable of, and no one has any reason to be discouraged from pursuing it.
4. In and through Christ there is declared and administered a spiritual power of grace that will work this holiness in us, that is, the conformity to God’s holiness that he requires. From this fountain we draw, at one and the same time, both the reasons for the necessity of holiness and the strongest motives to pursue it in our souls. From this several things follow.
1.) The mediation of Christ, and in particular his satisfaction, is so far from hindering or discouraging holiness, as some blasphemously claim, that the great foundational reason for holiness in us, namely the holiness of God himself, can have no influence on us at all without this foundation and faith in it. Unless faith is built on this, no sinner who considers God’s holiness in the abstract can think anything but what Cain thought: “My sin is great, it cannot be pardoned.” God is a holy God, I cannot serve him, and so I will flee from his presence.
But the holiness of God as manifested in Jesus Christ, which includes the satisfaction made for what his absolute purity requires, and his consequent willingness to accept in Christ the holiness of truth and sincerity we are capable of, equally upholds the indispensable necessity of holiness and encourages us toward it. We can see how differently people conclude depending on which of these two views they take. Those who view God’s holiness only in the first way can come to no other conclusion than the one expressed by the prophet: “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire, who among us shall inhabit with everlasting burnings?” (Isa 33:14). God’s fiery holiness, seen this way, serves only to fill them with terror and despair.
But other conclusions follow naturally from considering the same holiness in the second way. “Our God,” says the apostle, “is a consuming fire.” What follows from this as our duty? “Let us have grace whereby we may serve him acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Heb 12:28–29). There is no more forceful reason, no more powerful motive, for holding fast to him in holy obedience. People will draw such different conclusions from these two ways of considering the holiness of God, once they take the matter seriously.
2.) It also follows that our holiness under the new covenant, though it shares the same general nature and one main end with the holiness required under the covenant of works, does not serve the same purpose. This is because it has a special source and origin that the other did not have, and it relates to several causes with which the other had no connection. The immediate end and use of holiness under the covenant of works was to answer the holiness of God as expressed absolutely in the law, on the basis of which we would have been justified. That has now been accomplished for us by Christ alone. The holiness God now requires of us serves only those ends that God has set for us in keeping with his own holiness, as he will glorify it in Jesus Christ. This will be explained further on.
Second, we may consider the particular instances in which this argument comes to bear on us, the specific reasons why we ought to be holy because God is holy. There are three.
1. Holiness is the whole of that conformity to God of which we are capable in this world, and it is our privilege, pre-eminence, honor, and glory. We were originally created in the image and likeness of God. That was the whole of our first estate’s privilege and blessedness, and everyone agrees that in substance it was nothing other than holiness. So without this conformity to God, without the impress of his image and likeness on us, we cannot stand in the relation to God that we were designed for at our creation. We lost this through the entrance of sin. If there is no way to recover it, we will always fall short of the glory of God and of the purpose of our creation.
This recovery happens only through holiness, for holiness is the renewal of the image of God in us, as Paul expressly declares (Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:10). It is useless, then, for anyone to expect a share in God, or anything of eternal advantage, who does not pursue conformity to him. Such a person despises all the glory God intended for himself in our creation, and all that he specially bestowed on us.
Whoever does not aim to be like God, according to his measure and a creature’s capacity, misses his end, his rule, and his way all at once. Our Savior wanted his disciples to act so that they might be “children of their heavenly Father” (Matt 5:45), meaning like him, representing him as children represent a father. If we ever lose sight of this necessity of conformity to God, the smallest temptation will easily turn us aside. In short, without the likeness and conformity to God found in holiness, we bear the image of his great adversary the devil before his eyes, and we can have no special relationship with him, nor he with us.
2. The force of this argument arises from its bearing on our actual fellowship and communion with God. This is what we are called to, and what we must aim for in all our acts of obedience. If there is no real fellowship between God and our souls in these acts, they are all just uncertain beatings of the air. We have this fellowship and communion with God when he accepts our duties and is glorified by them. But if we are not holy in our measure, according to his mind, since God himself is holy, this cannot happen. God neither accepts duties from unholy people nor is glorified by them, and for these very purposes he expressly rejects and condemns such duties.
Preaching the word is a good duty, but to the wicked God says, “What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee?” (Ps 50:16–17). And that is because they are unholy. Prayer is a good duty, but of those who are not “washed” and made “clean,” who do not “put away the evil of their doings from before his eyes,” God says, “When ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you, and when ye make many prayers I will not hear” (Isa 1:15–16). The same could be said of every other duty.
It is certain, then, that since God is holy, if we are not, all the duties we mean to perform toward him are lost forever as far as their true purpose goes. There is no fellowship or communion between light and darkness: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all; and if we say, We have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness,” as all unholy people do, “we lie, and do not the truth: but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:6–7 and 1:3).
Now what person, thinking this through, unless out of their mind, would for love of some sin, or to conform to the world, or for any other reason that damages the truth and substance of holiness, throw away and forfeit all the benefit of the very duties they may have labored hard and spent much to perform? Yet this is the condition of everyone who falls short in anything essential to complete holiness. Everything they do, everything they suffer, all the effort they put into religious duties, all their compliance with their convictions, whatever they do about it in private and in public, is entirely wasted as far as the glory of God and their own eternal blessedness are concerned, as surely as God is holy.
3. This argument arises from our future, everlasting enjoyment of God. This is our ultimate end. If we fall short of it (and life itself is the greatest of losses), it would have been ten thousand times better never to have existed at all, for without it, unending misery is inseparable from our condition. No unholy person can ever attain this enjoyment. “Follow holiness,” says Paul, “without which no man shall see God.” Only “the pure in heart” will see God (Matt 5:8). It is holiness that makes us “meet for the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col 1:12), and we cannot obtain that inheritance without first being made fit for it.
Nothing unclean, nothing that defiles or is defiled, will ever be brought into the glorious presence of this holy God. Of all the delusions that have ever made fools of mankind, none is more foolish or more dangerous than this: that people not purified, not sanctified, not made holy in this life, should afterward be admitted to the blessedness that consists in enjoying God. Nothing could be more insulting to his glory, or more inconsistent with the nature of the things themselves. Such people could not enjoy him, nor would God himself be a reward to them. They would have nothing by which to cling to him as their highest good, nothing in him that could give them rest or satisfaction, and no means by which God could communicate himself to them, so long as they remain unholy, as all must who leave this life in that condition.
Holiness is perfected in heaven, but its beginning is fixed unalterably in this world, and where that beginning fails, no hand will ever complete that work through all eternity. So all unholy people who comfort themselves with hopes of heaven and eternity do so only on false notions of God and blessedness, deceiving themselves. Heaven is a place where they would not wish to be even if they could, and cannot be even if they wished; it is neither desired by them nor fit for them. “Every man that hath this hope in him,” the hope of seeing God, “purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:2–3). There is, therefore, a manifold necessity of holiness laid on us by the very nature of the God we serve and hope to enjoy, who is holy.
I cannot leave this consideration without drawing out an important application. We have seen that all our relationship and share in God, both here and hereafter, depend on our being holy. Some have devised a highly effective means, indeed a fatal engine, for the ruin of true holiness in the world, by grounding it on nothing else, and urging it by no other motive, than that its acts and fruits are meritorious in God’s sight. Whether or not this is believed and accepted, true holiness is ruined unless some more effective reason replaces it. Reject this motive, and holiness seems needless, which I believe has actually happened to many who, taught that good deeds are not meritorious, concluded that they are useless. Accept this motive, and you destroy the nature of true holiness, turning all its supposed duties into fruits of spiritual pride and blind superstition.
But we have seen that the necessity of holiness with respect to God rests on other foundations, ones suited to and consistent with the grace, love, and mercy of the gospel. And we will show fully as we proceed that every motive to holiness that carries any real force fits perfectly with the whole doctrine of God’s free, undeserved grace toward us through Jesus Christ. None of these motives gives the least support to any notion of merit in ourselves, or draws us away from an absolute and total dependence on Christ for life and salvation. Yet they make it just as necessary for us to be holy, that is, to be sanctified, as it is for us to be justified.
Whoever thinks to please God and come to enjoy him without holiness makes God out to be unholy, heaping on him the greatest possible indignity and dishonor. May God deliver poor sinners from this deceit. There is no way around it: you must give up either your sins or your God. You could as easily reconcile heaven and hell while each remains itself, or erase all difference between light and darkness, good and evil, as secure acceptance for unholy people with our God.
Some live without God in the world. Whether or not they have any notion that he exists is beside the point; they live with no regard for him, either as their present ruler or as the one who will one day determine their fate. It is no wonder that holiness, both the name and the thing itself, is universally despised by such people. Their whole aim is to serve their desires to the fullest and immerse themselves in worldly pleasures without ever giving God a thought, so they can hardly do otherwise.
But for those who live with some constant sense of God and of their eternal accountability to him, who do many of the things he requires and abstain from many sins that their inclinations and opportunities would otherwise tempt them into, yet fail to pursue the complete holiness that alone will be accepted by him, this is a deplorable folly. Such people spend their whole lives worshiping an idol. Whoever does not strive to be like God instead wickedly imagines that God is like himself. It is true that our relationship with God is not built on our holiness, but it is equally true that we have no relationship with him without it. If this principle were once firmly fixed in people’s minds, that without holiness no one will see God, and that this follows from the very nature of God himself, it could not fail to move them to far greater diligence in pursuing it than most now show.
There is indeed a great plea among us for morality, or moral virtue. I hope this comes more from a love of virtue itself and a conviction of its usefulness than from a design to cast contempt on the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel as it is declared by its faithful ministers. Still, we are bound to believe the best of all people. Where we see those who plead for moral virtue being themselves modest, sober, humble, patient, self-denying, charitable, and useful toward all, we should believe that their pleas for moral virtue come from a genuine love of it. But where men are proud, violent, worldly, revengeful, profane, intemperate, covetous, and ambitious, I cannot make much sense of their fine speeches about virtue.
For now I would simply ask what they mean by their “morality.” Do they mean the renewal of the image of God in us by grace? Our conformity to him in his holiness? Our being holy in every way, because God is holy? Our acting in all duties of obedience from a principle of faith and love, according to the will of God, by which we have communion with him here and are led toward the enjoyment of him?
If this is what they mean, then what is wrong with them? Why are they so afraid of the words and expressions of Scripture? Why won’t they speak of the things of God in the words the Holy Spirit teaches? People never dislike the words of God unless they dislike the things of God. Is it because these expressions are unintelligible, so that people don’t know what they mean, while this “moral virtue” they understand perfectly well? We appeal to the experience of everyone who truly fears God, against this claim. There is not one of them for whom Scripture’s descriptions of the causes, nature, work, and effects of holiness fail to convey a clear, felt understanding. But with their “moral virtue,” neither they nor anyone else knows quite what they mean, since they either do or must reject the ordinary meaning of the term, which is simple honesty among men.
So then: if what they mean is the holiness required of us in Scripture, grounded specifically in the holiness of the God we serve, they fall into deep contempt for the wisdom of God. They despise the very expressions of it that the Holy Spirit has given us, expressions suited to the spiritual light and understanding of believers, and substitute in their place their own arbitrary, uncertain sentiments and words. But if they mean something else, as is clearly the case (for no one seems to understand by their design anything more than sobriety and usefulness in the world, things good enough in their proper place), then it can only be regarded as a scheme of Satan to undermine the true holiness of the gospel and put in its place a deceitful, deceiving shadow.
What we have already discussed also thoroughly exposes the folly and falsehood of the noisy accusations that charge the gospel’s most important truths with being inconsistent with, even opposed to, holiness. The Socinians say that the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ ruins all care and effort toward a holy life. Their reasoning: if people believe Christ has satisfied the justice of God for their sins, they will become careless about sin, even inclined to live in it. This supposition turns believers into monsters of ingratitude and folly. It rests on nothing but the claim that if Christ removes the guilt of sin, there is no remaining reason, either in the nature of things or in Scripture, why we should need to be holy, keep ourselves from sin’s power, filth, and dominion, or glorify God in any way in this world. That inference is weak, false, and ridiculous.
The Papists, and others alongside them, level the same charge against the doctrine of justification through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us. It is remarkable with what bitter railing the Papists press this charge, and with what scorn, mockery, and invented stories some among ourselves try to expose this sacred truth to contempt, as though everyone who believes it must consequently be careless about holiness and good works. I do not deny that such men may find, in their own minds, a strong connection between these things, since there is a principle in the corrupt human heart that would “turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.” But, as I will prove in due course, this sacred truth is both doctrinally and practically the great constraining principle behind holiness and fruitful obedience.
For now, I will answer these objections only by saying that the objectors are entirely mistaken about our thoughts and views of the God we serve. The God in Christ whom we worship has revealed his own holiness to us, and what that holiness requires of us, so clearly that we know it would be foolish, wicked, and blasphemous for anyone to think they could please him, be accepted by him, or come to enjoy him, apart from the holiness he requires and, by his own nature, cannot help but require.
The idea that the grace, mercy, or love of this God, who is our God, would encourage those who truly know him toward sin, or excuse them in neglecting holy obedience to him, is a monstrous notion. There are, as I will show later, other compelling reasons and motives for holiness. But this one consideration alone, held by those who believe the grace of the gospel, is enough to clear them of this charge.
From what has been said, we should all charge ourselves with blame for our sloth and negligence in this matter. It is to be feared that none of us has pursued growth into this image and likeness of God as we ought. Though our hearts may not condemn us on the whole, there are, without doubt, many particulars in which we have all fallen short. Our likeness to God, in which we bear his image, is our holiness, as has already been shown. Wherever the holiness of truth described earlier exists in its essence, there is a fundamental conformity and likeness to God. Through the promises of the gospel we are first made partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). This is a new spiritual nature that reflects God’s own, since we are begotten by him and made partakers of his nature.
But just as all children share their parents’ nature, and yet some may be quite deformed and bear little resemblance to them, so it is here. We may have the image of God in our hearts and still fall short of the likeness to him, in its full degree and growth, that we ought to pursue.
This happens in two ways. (1.) When our graces are weak, withering, and unfruitful. Our likeness to God is shown in their flourishing and fruit-bearing, and the glory of God in this world lies in that flourishing. (2.) When, through the power of our corruptions or our temptations, we take on a deformity, something bearing the likeness of the old crooked serpent. Wherever either of these happens to us, whether our graces are weak and unfruitful or our corruptions strong and active and frequently showing themselves, then, though the image of God may still be in us, little of his likeness remains upon us. We fall short of our duty in this great and fundamental calling of our faith and profession.
So far as this is true of us, should we not blame ourselves greatly? Why are we so slow, so negligent, in pursuing our chief interest and happiness? Why do we let anything at all divert our minds or slow our efforts in this pursuit? So, in hopes of stirring up our diligence in this, I will add a few motives toward it, and some directions for it, so that we may be found “perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord,” which is the only way we may be like him in this world.
First, our likeness to God is what gives our nature its excellence, raising it above all other creatures, and gives our persons their pre-eminence above other people who do not share in his image.
1. Compared to other things, this likeness is the highest excellence any created nature can have. Other things bore only external marks of God’s greatness, power, and goodness; man alone in this lower world was capable of bearing God’s image. The perfection, glory, and pre-eminence of our nature at the first creation were expressed in this alone, that we were made in the “image and likeness of God” (Gen 1:26–27). This gave us pre-eminence above all other creatures, and our dominion over them followed from it. God did grant us that dominion explicitly, so that we might better understand and be thankful for the privilege, but it was already a necessary consequence of bearing his image. This is what James has in view when he tells us that “every nature,” the nature of all things in their several kinds, “is tamed,” that is, subjected to the nature of man. He renders the Hebrew kabash of Genesis 1:28, “subdue it,” by the Greek damazō, where the Septuagint has katakyrieuō.
But we were not content to be like God in holiness and righteousness; we wanted to be as God in wisdom and sovereignty. Failing to attain what we aimed at, we lost what we already had (Gen 3:5). Being “in honour, we continued not, but became like the beasts that perish” (Ps 49:12); we were first like God, and then “like beasts” (2 Pet 2:12).
By losing the image of God, our nature lost its pre-eminence, and we were brought down into the ranks of perishing beasts. Even with some feeble relics of that image still remaining in us, in our fallen condition we actually carry more of the bestial nature than of the divine, with respect to our proper end. So the restoration of this image in us by the grace of Jesus Christ (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10) is the recovery of the pre-eminence and privilege our nature had foolishly lost. Through it, the authority of God is again impressed upon our natures, giving us pre-eminence above other creatures and rule over them. Indeed, the whole dominion that mankind scrambles for by craft and violence over the rest of creation depends on the renewal of God’s image in some of them.
I do not mean that people’s right and title to their portion in this world depends on their own personal grace or holiness. But if God had not designed to renew his image in our nature through Jesus Christ, taking our nature into union with himself in the person of his Son as the foundation of that renewal, and thereby gathering up all things to a new head in him, making him the firstborn of creation, the head and heir of all, he would not have preserved any right or title in it for us at all. It was on the promise, and through the establishment of the new covenant, that this right was restored to us.
So it is expressed in the renewal of the covenant with Noah and his children: “God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth on the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea: into your hand are they delivered” (Gen 9:1–2). This is an explicit renewal of the grant made to us at our first creation (Gen 1:28), the right to which we had lost when we lost the image of God.
That is why, in the service the creature still renders mankind, it is subjected to vanity and put into bondage. Though it groans and looks out, as it were, for deliverance, it must continue in that state until God has accomplished the whole design of the glorious “liberty of his children” (Rom 8:20–21). Whatever people may pride themselves in, their abilities or possessions, however they may indulge themselves in the use or abuse of other creatures, if the image of God is not renewed in them, they truly have no great pre-eminence above the things that perish under their hands (2 Pet 2:12). God, having exalted our nature by union with himself in the person of his Son, requires us to preserve its dignity above others.
2. Again, this likeness is also what gives privilege and pre-eminence to some persons above others. “The righteous,” says the wise man, “is more excellent than his neighbour” (Prov 12:26). This is seldom on account of civil wisdom, wealth, greatness, or power; nothing else can establish this rule except conformity and likeness to God. That is why such people are called the “saints in the earth, and the excellent” (Ps 16:3). Both Hebrew terms translated “saints” and “excellent” properly belong to God first. He alone is absolutely holy, and he alone is truly mighty (Ps 8:1); these terms are applied to people only insofar as they resemble him in holiness. This is what makes them the “saints and excellent in the earth,” and this is distinct from whatever pre-eminence of office and authority some hold above others.
The dignity of an office does reflect a dignity onto the person holding it, and communicates a kind of pre-eminence, since the office and its authority come from God, giving both the office and the person a real privilege and honor above others. But whatever dignity is original to persons themselves, in and of themselves, comes solely from the renewal of God’s image in them, and increases according to how fully they share in it. The more holy, the more honorable. That is why wicked men in Scripture are called vile, in the Hebrew, literally the trifling vilenesses of the sons of men (Ps 12:8), while the righteous are called precious and valuable.
This is also why an awe has often fallen on the spirits of vile and violent sinners at the mere appearance of God in holy people. Indeed, at all times, where people bear an eminent conformity to God in holiness, wicked men, provoked by their worldly interests, prejudices, and an unbreakable attachment to their lusts, may oppose them, revile them, reproach them, and persecute them. But secretly in their hearts they feel an awe at the likeness of God in such people, so that they will sometimes dread them, sometimes flatter them, and sometimes wish they did not exist, much as they deal with God himself. Why do we wear ourselves out over other things? Why do we spend our labor in vain, and our strength for that “which is not bread”? That is how every effort after any other kind of excellence will look in the end.
The whole dignity our nature was made for, and is capable of, lies here. Sin alone debases it; sin alone is what makes us base and contemptible. People’s self-satisfaction in the ways and fruits of sin, or in worldly advantages, and their mutual applause of one another, will suddenly vanish into smoke. Holiness alone is honorable, and only because it carries the image and representation of God.
We can be sure, then, that the dignity of believers above others does not consist in worldly or secular advantages, since very few of them have any: “not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called” (1 Cor 1:26). Nor does it consist in spiritual gifts. Many who have excelled us, not only in degree but even in kind, who have had extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, will be shut out of heaven with the worst of the world (Matt 7:22): “Many shall say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name cast out devils, and in thy name wrought many miraculous works,” more than any of us can claim. Yet Christ will “profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity,” you unholy people.
Nor does it lie in outward profession itself. Many practice rigid austerities, renounce the world, and perform outward works of charity beyond most of us, and yet perish in their superstitions. Nor does it lie in the purity of worship, free from the human inventions with which others corrupt God’s service. Multitudes may share in that purity within the “great house of God,” and yet be “vessels of wood and stone,” which, not being purged from sin, are not “vessels unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use” (2 Tim 2:20–21).
It consists, then, solely in that likeness to God which we have through holiness, together with everything that accompanies and is inseparable from it. Where this is missing, nothing else will set us apart from the common herd of perishing mankind.
Second, our progress toward glory keeps pace with our growth and improvement in this likeness to God. Every day we move nearer our natural end whether we intend it or not, and if we are not also drawing nearer our supernatural end in glory, we are miserable indeed. People deceive themselves if they suppose they approach glory in time without also approaching it in grace. It is one picture of future glory that we shall be isangeloi, “like, or equal unto angels” (Luke 20:36). But that describes only one particular of that state. A far more excellent description is that we shall be like God: “when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Our glory, considered from within, will be our likeness to God according to the capacity of creatures.
It is the highest folly to think we will love hereafter what we hate now, or that what we now abhor will become our glory. Such absurd contradictions fill people’s minds. There is nothing in this world people despise more than being like God, and they hate everyone who is; yet they claim to desire and expect that very state, which is nothing other than being so forever. But this will be our glory: “to behold the face of God in righteousness, and to be satisfied with his likeness” (Ps 17:15).
How, then, shall we make spiritual progress toward this glory, progress that at least matches our natural progress toward our end, since failing to do so is folly and inexcusable negligence? We have no way to do this except by thriving and growing in the likeness of God that we already have here in holiness. Only by this are we “transformed into the image of God, from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18), from one glorious degree of grace to another, until one great change gathers all grace and holiness into eternal glory.
In our desires for heaven, if they are rightly ordered, we think less about freedom from trouble than freedom from sin, and our aim is not chiefly complete happiness but perfect holiness. Those who desire heaven only as relief from their troubles, rather than as complete freedom from sin, will fall into a state where sin and trouble remain eternally joined. So if we would continually move toward our rest and blessedness, if we would have sure and clear pledges of it in our own souls, if we would have foretastes of it and an experiential acquaintance with it (and who would not want to know as much as possible of his eternal blessedness), this is the pursuit we ought to follow.
It is to be feared that most of us do not know how much of glory may already be present in grace, nor how much of heaven may be attained in holiness on earth. Some among us love to boast of perfection while their minds plainly lie under the power of darkness, their affections corrupt, their lives worldly. But our duty is to be always “perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.” Pursued rightly, this steadily transforms the soul into the likeness of God. Much of the glory of heaven may dwell in a simple cottage, and poor people, even in rags, may bear a striking likeness to God.
Third, only from our likeness and conformity to God do we become, or can we become, truly useful in the world, in right order and manner. I will say more on this later, so here I will touch on only one aspect of it. God is the great preserver and benefactor of the whole creation. He is good and does good, the sole cause and fountain of every good that any creature receives, of whatever kind. No property of God is more celebrated in Scripture than this goodness of his, and his giving out its fruits to all his creatures. He alone is good in such a way that nothing else is good in any sense except by participating in his goodness and bearing some likeness to him in it.
So those who are like God, and only they, are truly useful in this world. There has indeed been much good done by others, from various motives and toward various ends, but some flaw always creeps in. Superstition, vanity, self-interest, or the hope of merit, one thing or another, works its way into all the good done by unholy people and poisons it, so that even if it proves useful to particular persons at particular times, it does no good to humanity as a whole. Only the person who bears God’s likeness, and acts from that principle in everything he does, is truly useful. He represents God in his actions and does not spoil them with false aims of his own. So if we would preserve the privilege and dignity of our nature and persons, if we would make real and daily progress toward glory and blessedness, if we would be of any true use in this world, our great effort must be to grow ever more into this likeness of God, which consists in holiness.
It may rightly be asked here how, or by what means, we may thrive and grow more and more into this likeness of God. Setting aside other considerations for their proper place, I answer for now that some graces of holiness are especially assimilating, actively producing this likeness, while others are merely declarative, expressing the likeness of God already present in us.
First, those of the first kind, which have a particular power to promote the likeness of God in our souls, are faith and love. We ought to remain constant and abundant in exercising them if we intend to grow in likeness and conformity to God.
1. Faith is a part of our holiness insofar as it is a grace of the sanctifying Spirit, and it is a principle of holiness insofar as it purifies the heart and works effectively through love. The more faith operates in its proper exercise, the holier we become, and consequently the more like God. This theme could fill volumes, but I will confine it to one instance. As we showed earlier, the glorious properties of God are revealed in Jesus Christ. “In his face do they shine forth.” The only way we behold them, the only way we gain insight into them, is by faith. In Christ the glorious excellencies of God are presented to us, and by faith we behold them.
What is the effect of this? “We are changed into the same image and likeness, from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18). This is the great mystery of growing in holiness and thriving in the image of God, a mystery the world remains ignorant of and so labors in vain by other means to satisfy its own notions and convictions. But this is the great way and means God has appointed and blessed for that purpose: constantly, by faith, believing the revelation made in the gospel, to view, behold, and contemplate God’s excellencies, his goodness, holiness, righteousness, love, and grace as revealed in Jesus Christ, and to make use of and apply to ourselves and our condition the effects and fruits of these, according to the promise of the gospel.
This is the great secret of growing into the likeness of God. Without it, however much people multiply religious duties to satisfy their own convictions, they will gain no more conformity to God. Any professing believer who falls short here may know that this failure comes from a lack of constant faith exercised on God in Christ. So if we truly desire to become more like God, which is our privilege, safety, glory, and blessedness, this is the way we must take to accomplish it. Let us abound in acts of faith, and we will thrive in holiness. Whatever goes by the name of faith but does not surely produce this effect is nothing but presumption.
2. Love has the same tendency and power. I mean the love of God. Whoever would be like God must be sure to love him, or all other efforts toward that end will be in vain. And whoever loves God sincerely will become like him. Under the Old Testament, no one in his general course was so like God as David, called for that reason “the man after God’s own heart,” and no one ever expressed greater love for him, as we see continually throughout the Psalms.
However much effort people put into acts and duties of obedience, if these do not flow from a principle of divine love, their likeness to God will not increase through them. All love in general has a shaping power; it casts the mind into the mold of the thing loved. So love of this world makes people earthly minded, their minds and affections growing earthly, carnal, and sensual. But of all kinds, divine love is most effective for this purpose, since it has the noblest, most fitting, and most compelling object. It is our holding fast to God with delight, for who he is in himself as revealed in Jesus Christ. By it we cling to God, stay near him, and so draw transforming power from him. Every approach to God through ardent love and delight transforms us. And this love works itself out continually through (1.) contemplation, (2.) admiration, and (3.) delight in obedience.
1.) Love acts itself through contemplation. Its nature is to meditate on the excellencies of God in Christ. This is love’s very life; where this is missing, there is no love. A heart filled with the love of God will be occupied night and day with thoughts of God’s glorious excellencies, rejoicing in them. This is what the psalmist urges: “Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness” (Ps 30:4). Love does the same with respect to all God’s other attributes; see Psalm 63 throughout. This furthers our likeness to God: our minds are changed by contemplation into the image of what we behold, and we come to strive that our lives conform to it as well.
2.) Love also works through admiration. This is love’s own voice: “How great is his goodness! how great is his beauty!” (Zech 9:17). The soul, as it were ravished by the sight it has of God’s glorious excellencies in Christ, has no way to express its affections except through admiration. And this beauty of God is that sweetness and holy harmony of glory (if I may put it that way) among all his perfections, all exalted together in sweet correspondence in Christ; this is the proper object of our love. To see infinite holiness, purity, and righteousness together with infinite love, goodness, grace, and mercy, all equally glorified toward the same persons and things, a glimpse of which cannot be had anywhere in the world outside of Christ, is the beauty of God that draws the love of a believing soul and fills it with holy admiration. This too is a most effective means toward our conformity to him; without these steps, we will labor in vain to attain it.
3.) Love, again, gives delight in obedience and all its duties. The familiar example of Jacob is well known: his seven years of service seemed short and easy to him because of his love for Rachel. He did with delight what he would never have undertaken afterward for the greatest wages.
But we have a greater example. Our Lord Jesus Christ says of all the obedience required of him, “Thy law, O God, is in my heart; I delight to do thy will.” And yet we know how terrible to nature were the things he did and suffered in obedience to that law. His unspeakable love for God and the souls of men made all of it his delight. From this follow intensity and frequency in every duty. Where these two, intensity of mind and spirit together with frequent holy duties, both spring from delight, holiness will thrive, and so will our conformity to God grow with it. In short, love and likeness to God are inseparable and grow together in proportion. Without love, no acts of obedience are any part of his image.
Second, there are graces that declare this assimilation, that evidence and manifest our likeness to God. I will give only two examples.
1. The first, though Scripture gives it many names, is really one and the same thing. This is goodness, kindness, goodwill, love, together with a readiness to do good, to forgive, to help, and to relieve, extended toward all people on all occasions. It stands opposed to an evil habit of mind that expresses itself in many vices sharing the same underlying nature: anger, wrath, envy, malice, revenge, contrariness, selfishness. All these directly oppose the grace of holiness now being described.
I fear this point is not considered as it should be, for if it were, it would not be so common for people to argue loudly for imitating God while, in nearly everything they do, giving us a full picture of the devil instead. This universal goodwill and love toward all is the greatest representation of God’s nature on earth, just as fierceness, envy, wrath, and revenge represent the devil’s nature. If we want to be like our heavenly Father, to show that we are, to represent him to the world, it must come through this frame of spirit and actions consistently shaped by it. Our blessed Savior teaches us this in Matthew 5:44–45. A person who is good in this way, whose nature has been healed and corrected by grace, and who is therefore useful and helpful, free from deceit, envy, selfishness, pride, and self-importance, is the best representation we can have of God on earth since Christ’s human nature was taken from us.
This, then, is what we must labor after if we intend to be like God or to display his glory in our lives before the world. No small part of our holiness consists in this. Many lusts, corruptions, and disordered passions must be subdued by grace if we aim for excellence. Strong inclinations to react against the countless provocations and irritations we will face must be corrected and set aside. Many duties must be constantly attended to, and various graces kept active. The whole swarm of temptations, whose force lies in a pretended concern for self, must be scattered or resisted. This is why Scripture so often speaks of a good, merciful, useful, generous person with marked eminence and distinction, as one toward whom God has a special regard and to whom particular promises belong.
But when people live only for themselves, satisfied that they do no harm even if they do no good; when they are self-protective, selfish, wrathful, irritable, or restrict their kindness to their own relations; when they are useful only under pressure and even then comply reluctantly, counting anything done for others’ relief as wasted, and thinking it wisest to be suspicious and doubt the real needs of others; in short, when they make self and self-interest the goal of their lives, then whatever else they profess, and however diligent they are in religious duties, they do very little to represent or glorify God in the world.
If we intend to be holy, then, let us constantly labor after conformity to God in our families, toward our relations, in our churches, in our dealings with the world and with all people, toward our enemies and persecutors (so far as they are only that), and toward all mankind as opportunity allows. Let us express our likeness to him in this love for mankind, goodness, kindness, condescension, and readiness to forgive, help, and relieve others. Without this, we neither are nor can be children of our Father in heaven.
This disposition of heart, and the actions that match it, are especially required of us toward the saints of God, toward believers. God himself, whom we are bound to imitate and to whom we press toward conformity, exercises his goodwill and kindness toward them in a particular way: “He is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe” (1 Tim 4:10). There is a special quality to his saving goodness toward believers. In keeping with this, we are likewise commanded “to do good unto all men, but especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10). We are bound to show the goodness described above to all people as opportunity allows, but we are also permitted, indeed commanded, to hold a special regard for the household of faith.
If this were practiced more, if we considered ourselves obligated (despite the provocations and irritations we meet, or think we meet, when perhaps none were given or intended) to show this kindness, goodness, patience, and love toward all believers in a special way, it would prevent or remove many of the scandalous offenses and hostilities found among us. If we merely love those who love us, do good to those who do good to us, and delight in those who share our company and our path, we rise no higher than the Pharisees and tax collectors, for they did the same. But if, even among believers, we love and delight only in those who share our party, or who are kind and friendly toward us, or who have never truly provoked us (nor even in our imagination), then we are worse than the Pharisees or tax collectors.
We must strive for conformity and likeness to God not only as he is the God of nature, good to all his works, but as he is our heavenly Father, good, kind, generous, and merciful in a special way toward the whole family of his children, however much they differ among themselves, or even when they are unkind or provoking toward him. I confess, when I see people quick to hold on to old grievances and disputes, ready to take offense at new ones or imagine offenses where none exist, distrustful of others who sincerely profess readiness for love and peace, quick to assume the worst, harsh and severe toward this or that group of believers, unwilling to help them, scarcely wishing them well or even safety, I cannot but see this as a serious blemish on their profession, whatever else may be true of them. And by this same standard, I would have my own ways examined.
2. Truth is another grace, another part of holiness, of the same nature and importance. Scripture uses “truth” for uprightness and integrity: “Thou requirest truth in the inward parts” (Ps 51:6). It also frequently speaks of the doctrine of truth, God revealed and believed by us. But what I mean here is simply what the apostle commands, that in all things we should “speak the truth in love” (Eph 4:15).
Our fall from God was, in a special way, a fall from him as the God of truth. We opposed that very attribute in trying to dethrone him from his glory; we would not believe that his word was truth. Sin entered the world through a long train of lies, and ever since, the whole world and everything in it has been filled with lies, which display the nature of him who is the father of lies and liars. In this way the world visibly and openly continues in its rebellion against the God of truth. I would gladly linger to show how the whole world is corrupted, depraved, and stained by lies of every kind, but I must not turn aside to that now. So truth and sincerity in our words, which is all I will address here, is an effect of the renewal of God’s image in us and a way of representing him to the world.
No duty is pressed on us more often: “Put away false speaking,” “lie not one to another,” “speak the truth in love.” This matters especially for all who, in their way of life, are engaged in trade, both because the evil practices of some (many, though not most) have brought discredit on that calling, and because failures in truth creep into such dealings in countless ways, often without the person even noticing. “It is naught, it is naught, says the buyer, but when he is gone, he boasts;” and “it is good, it is good,” says the seller, but once he has sold it, he boasts, or takes pleasure in the advantage his words have gained him.
But such things bear the image of Satan, and stand utterly opposed to the God of truth. This necessary duty deserves fuller treatment elsewhere. For now, I only note this: where truth is not kept universally, with the utmost watchfulness of sincerity and love, every other mark and sign of God’s image in a person is not merely tarnished but effaced, and the image of Satan gains the upper hand instead. I could not leave these things unsaid, since they follow naturally from that first great argument for the necessity of holiness which we have proposed and pursued.
Having finished this first argument, and added some particular applications of it to our practice, it remains only to free it from one objection to which it seems exposed. The objection arises from considering the infinite grace, mercy, and love of God as they are set out in the gospel.
Someone may say, and given the temper of people’s minds in our day, probably will say: do you not yourselves, who press us toward holiness and its necessity by appealing to the nature of God, also preach every day the greatness of his mercy toward sinners of every sort, his readiness to receive them, his willingness to pardon them freely in Christ, apart from any worth, merit, or righteousness of their own? And in doing so, do you not invite every kind of sinner, the worst and the greatest, to come to him through Christ for pardon and acceptance? How then can any argument for the necessity of holiness arise from the nature of this God, whose treasures of grace, and the freedom of whose love and mercy toward sinners, no tongue, as you yourselves say, can fully express?
Answer 1: This objection comes naturally to carnal and unbelieving minds, so we will meet it at every turn. Nothing seems more reasonable to them than that we may go on sinning because grace has abounded. If people must still be holy, they see no need or use for grace, and they cannot see God as gracious in any meaningful sense if people can still perish for lacking holiness. But our apostle raises this very objection, and rejects and condemns it, and we may rest in his judgment (Rom 6:1). In that same passage he gives the reasons why, despite the overflowing grace of God in Christ, there remains an unavoidable necessity that all believers be holy.
Answer 2: God himself has anticipated this objection. He proclaims his own name in Exodus 34:6–7: “The Lord, the Lord God, gracious and merciful, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgressions, and sin.” If he had stopped there, and said nothing further, anywhere in Scripture, about his nature and unchanging purposes toward sinners, this objection might have some plausibility. But he immediately adds, “and that will by no means clear the guilty,” meaning, as countless other Scripture passages make clear, those who go on in their sins without regard to the obedience and holiness that spring from the atonement made for their guilty souls in the blood of Christ.
Answer 3: We do, and we should, declare the rich and free love, grace, mercy, and generosity of God toward sinners in and through Jesus Christ. Woe to us if we are not found doing this work all our days, encouraging sinners of every kind to come to him for the free pardon of their sins, “without money or price,” with no merit and nothing deserved on their part; for this is the gospel.
But even with all this grace and condescension, we also declare that God does not dethrone or deny himself, does not change his nature or become unholy, in order to save us. He remains God, naturally and essentially holy, holy even as he is in Christ, reconciling the sinful world to himself. Therefore he necessarily requires that those whom he pardons, receives, and brings into fellowship with himself should also be holy. These two truths are not only compatible but inseparable. Without considering this grace in God, we would have no encouragement to be holy, and without the necessity of holiness in us, that grace could be neither glorified nor put to use.
