1. Learning the Way to Holiness
To perform acceptably the duties of holiness and righteousness required by the law, our first task is to learn the powerful and effective means by which we may reach so great an end.
Explanation
This direction serves as a preface, preparing the reader to understand and attend to those that follow.
First, it identifies the great end for which all the means discussed in this book are intended. My aim is to teach you how to attain the practice and way of life we call holiness, righteousness, godliness, obedience, and true religion. God requires this of us in the law, especially in the moral law summed up in the Ten Commandments, more briefly in the two great commandments to love God and our neighbor (Matt 22:37, 39), and more fully throughout the Holy Scriptures. My work is to show how the duties of this law can be done once they are known. Do not expect me to delay that purpose with a lengthy explanation of the duties themselves. Several catechisms and commentaries have already done that work.
Yet you must discern the goal if you are to reach it. In brief, the holiness to which I would bring you is spiritual (Rom 7:14). It consists not only in outward works of piety and charity, but also in the holy thoughts, imaginings, and affections of the soul, chiefly in love. All other good works must flow from love, or they are not acceptable to God. Holiness means more than refraining from sinful desires in action. It includes longing and delighting to do God’s will, and obeying him cheerfully, without complaining, fretting, or grudging at any duty as though it were a grievous burden.
Notice also that the law you are aiming to obey is exceedingly broad (Ps 119:96). This does not make it easier to meet its demands: you must aim to obey it in every duty, with an obedience as broad as the law itself, or you cannot meet them at all (Jas 2:10). The Lord is not loved with the love due to him as Lord of all unless he is loved with all our heart, spirit, and might. We must love everything in him: his justice, holiness, sovereign authority, all-seeing eye, and all his decrees, commands, judgments, and actions. We must love him not merely more than other things, but as the only good and the fountain of all goodness. When bodily and worldly enjoyments, even our own lives, compete with enjoying him or doing our duty toward him, we must reject them as though we hated them. We must love him enough to give ourselves wholly to his constant service in everything, and to his disposal of us as our absolute Lord, whether in prosperity or adversity, life or death.
For his sake, we must also love our neighbor, every person, friend or foe. In all matters concerning their honor, life, chastity, worldly wealth, reputation, and contentment, we must do to them whatever we would want others to do to us in the same condition (Matt 7:12). This spiritual and universal obedience is the great end toward which I am directing you. Lest you reject my undertaking as impossible, observe that I promise no more than an acceptable performance of these duties of the law. Our gracious and merciful God will certainly delight in such obedience and be pleased with it during our imperfect life in this world; it will end in perfect holiness and complete happiness in the world to come.
Before I go further, pause to consider the great dignity and excellence of these duties. Esteem the goal highly, so that the means I am about to explain will appear as welcome as they deserve. The chief duties are to love God above all and to love one another for his sake. All other duties flow from these. I cannot imagine a nobler work even for the holy angels in their glorious dwelling. These are the principal works for which we were first formed in the image of God, engraved on humanity at creation. For their sake, that beautiful image is renewed in us through our new creation and sanctification by Jesus Christ, and it will be perfected when we are glorified.
These duties do not depend merely on God’s sovereign choice to command, forbid, leave indifferent, change, or abolish them, as he might with works belonging to the judicial or ceremonial law or with means of salvation prescribed by the gospel. In their own nature they are holy, just, and good (Rom 7:12). They are fitting for us because of our natural relation to our Creator and fellow creatures. They are therefore inseparably connected with the holiness of God’s will and firmly established by it.
The fruits of these works would make those who performed them holy in every part of life, even if no other duties had ever been commanded. Once other duties are commanded, love fully establishes our obligation to perform them. Without love, no holiness of heart or life can be imagined. It was a great honor of the ordinances of Moses, as it is now of the ordinances of the gospel, to serve as means toward the performance of these duties. Those means will cease when their end, this love that never fails, is perfectly attained (1 Cor 13).
We were naturally obliged to these duties by the reason and understanding God gave humanity at creation to discern what is just and fitting. Even those without the written law or supernatural revelation remain obliged to them by the light of nature (Rom 2:14-15). For this reason, they are called natural religion, and the law requiring them is called both natural law and moral law. Everyone’s conduct, whether that of an unbeliever or a Christian, ought to conform to it. If people had conformed to it fully, they would not have fallen short of eternal happiness (Matt 5:19; Luke 10:27-28). Violating it brings the penalty of God’s wrath.
This is the true morality God approves: the conformity of all our actions to the moral law. If those who now contend so strongly for morality mean this and nothing less, I will join them in asserting that the most morally honest person is the greatest saint. Morality is the principal part of true religion and the test of every other part. Without it, faith is dead and all other religious performances are an empty show and mere hypocrisy. For the faithful and true Witness has testified that no commandment is greater than the two great moral commandments to love God and our neighbor, and that all the law and the prophets depend on them (Matt 22:36, 38-40; Mark 12:31).
The second matter in this introductory direction is the need to learn the powerful and effective means by which this great and excellent end can be reached. Learning them must be our first work if we expect any attempt at holiness to succeed.
This warning is much needed. Many are inclined to skip the teaching about the means, which will occupy this whole book, as though it were unnecessary and useless. Once they know the nature and excellence of the law’s duties, they think nothing remains but to perform them diligently. They rush blindly into immediate practice, making haste without making progress. They are quick to promise, “all that the Lord hath spoken, we will do” (Exod 19:8), without first sitting down to count the cost. They regard holiness only as a means to an end, eternal salvation, rather than as an end whose practice requires substantial means of its own.
When most people first become concerned about religion, they ask, “What good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” (Matt 19:16). They do not ask, “How shall I be enabled to do anything good?” Indeed, many who are considered powerful preachers spend all their zeal urging the immediate practice of the law without showing people the effective means of doing it. They speak as though works of righteousness were menial tasks requiring no skill or understanding, only effort and activity. To keep you from stumbling at the very threshold of a religious life through this common oversight, I will show you that knowing what your duty is and why you ought to do it is not enough. You must also learn the powerful and effective means of performing it before you can successfully put it into practice.
For this purpose, I offer the following considerations.
First, by nature we all lack the strength and ability to perform acceptably the holiness and righteousness the law requires. Through the sin of our first father Adam, we are dead in trespasses and sins and are children of wrath, as Scripture testifies (Rom 5:12, 15, 18-19; Eph 2:1-3; Rom 8:7-8). The doctrine of original sin, which Protestants generally profess, is a firm foundation for this assertion and for many others throughout this book. If we believe it, we cannot reasonably encourage ourselves to attempt holy living until we know some powerful and effective means that will enable us to live it.
While man remained upright in the image of God in which he was first created, he could sincerely do God’s will as soon as he knew it (Eccl 7:29; Gen 1:27). But after he fell, he quickly became afraid because he was naked, and could do nothing to remedy his condition until God revealed the means of restoration (Gen 3:10, 15). Tell a strong, healthy servant to go, and he goes; to come, and he comes; to do something, and he does it. A servant confined to bed must first learn how he can be enabled to act.
No doubt the fallen angels know that holiness is necessary and tremble at the guilt of their sin. But they know of no means by which they can effectively attain holiness, and so they remain in their wickedness. It was useless for Samson to say, “I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself,” when he had forfeited his strength through sin (Judg 16:20). People show themselves strangely forgetful or hypocritical when they profess original sin in their prayers, catechisms, and confessions of faith, yet urge themselves and others to practice the law without considering any means to strengthen and enliven them. They act as though the only thing lacking were activity, rather than ability.
Second, even those who doubt or deny original sin can know this about themselves, unless their consciences are blind: because of their actual sins, God’s exact justice stands against them. If God were to enter into judgment with them, they would be under his curse and sentence of death (Rom 1:32; 2:2; 3:9; Gal 3:10). Can someone who knows this is his condition, yet has learned no means of escaping it, immediately practice the law? Can he love God and everything in him, including his justice, holiness, and power as well as his mercy? Can he willingly submit to God’s disposal of him even if God should suddenly put him to death? Does encouraging a fainting soul to practice universal obedience in such a condition require no knowledge or skill at all?
Third, people without Scripture may know much of what the law requires through the common light of natural reason and understanding (Rom 2:14). But that light cannot reveal the effective means of obeying it. Those means must be learned wholly from supernatural revelation. What is our natural light but a few sparks and glimmers of the light Adam had before the fall? Even at its brightest, that light could not have shown Adam how to recover the ability to walk in holiness if he lost it through sin. Nor could it have assured him beforehand that God would grant him any means of recovery. God had set nothing before him but death in the event of transgression (Gen 2:17). When Adam saw the shame of his nakedness, he therefore hid from God, expecting no favor from him.
We are like sheep that have gone astray and do not know the way back until we hear the shepherd’s voice. Can these dry bones live to God in holiness? Lord, you know; we cannot know unless you teach us.
Fourth, sanctification, by which our hearts and lives are conformed to the law, is a grace God communicates to us through means, just as he does justification. It involves teaching us something we cannot see without the Word (Acts 26:17-18). Several things belonging to life and godliness are given through knowledge (2 Pet 1:2-3). God uses a form of doctrine to set people free from sin and make them servants of righteousness (Rom 6:17-18). We must know and put on the several pieces of the whole armor of God if we are to stand against sin and Satan in the evil day (Eph 6:13). Should we overlook the way of sanctification when learning the way of justification has been thought worthy of so many carefully written books?
Fifth, through his inspiration, God has given abundant instruction in righteousness in the Holy Scriptures, “that we may be thoroughly furnished for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17). This is especially so since the “day-spring from on high hath visited us” through the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, “to guide our feet in the way of peace” (Luke 1:78-79). If God has condescended to teach us this way in the Scriptures and through Christ, it is surely necessary for us to sit at his feet and learn it.
Sixth, far from being known without study of the Holy Scriptures, the way to godliness is harder to learn even when plainly revealed there than the duties of the law are. We know those duties in part by the light of nature and therefore assent to them more readily. But this is the way by which the dead are brought to live to God. It must surely be far above every thought and conjecture of human wisdom. It is the way of salvation in which God will “destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent,” revealing by his Spirit things that “the natural man receiveth not; for they are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 1:19, 31; 2:14). “Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness” (1 Tim 3:16).
Learning it involves a double task. We must unlearn many deeply rooted ideas and become fools so that we may be wise. We must earnestly pray for the Lord to teach us, as well as search the Scriptures for this knowledge. “O that my ways were directed to keep Thy statutes! Teach me, O Lord, the way of Thy statutes, and I shall keep it unto the end” (Ps 119:5, 33). “Teach me to do thy will” (Ps 143:10). “The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God” (2 Thess 3:5). Surely these saints needed teaching and direction less about which duties the law required than about the way and means by which they might perform them.
Seventh, certain knowledge of these powerful and effective means is of the greatest importance if we are to be established in the true faith and avoid errors contrary to it. We cannot reasonably doubt that the moral duties of loving God and our neighbor are absolutely necessary to true religion, which cannot exist without them. From this principle we may firmly conclude that nothing opposed to the practice of these holy duties should be received as a point of faith delivered by the most holy God. Whatever is truly necessary, powerful, and effective in bringing us to practice them should be believed to come from God, for it bears the image of his holiness and righteousness.
This is a sure test by which those who are seriously religious will try spirits and their teachings to see whether they are from God. They cannot reasonably approve any teaching as religious if it does not accord with godliness (1 Tim 6:3). By this test Christ proves that his teaching is from God, because in it he seeks God’s glory (John 7:17-18). He also teaches us to know false prophets by their fruits (Matt 7:15-16). In judging those fruits, we must especially consider the fruits their teaching tends to produce.
Until we know which means of holiness are effective and which are not, we lack a necessary test of divine truth. We may easily be deceived by false teaching or left merely uncertain about the truth of any religion, like the Seekers. If you mistake ineffective means for effective ones, and effective means for weak or even harmful ones, your error will become a false test for judging other teachings. You will then be ready to approve errors and reject the truth. This has given rise to many harmful religious errors in recent times.
Learn this lesson and gain a true test. You will then be able to examine the differing teachings of Protestants, Papists, Arminians, Socinians, Antinomians, and Quakers, and to discern and hold to the truth with confidence amid the disputes and controversies of our times. You may judge whether the Protestant religion established among us contains any real support for Antinomianism, whether it has any intolerable defect in its principles for holy practice, and whether it deserves to be altered and turned almost upside down by new doctrines and methods, as some learned people in recent times have concluded by the tests they use.
Eighth, this knowledge is also greatly important and necessary if we are to be established in holy practice. We cannot set ourselves to practice holiness with hope of success unless we have some faith that God will assist us. We have no ground to expect that assistance if we do not use the means through which he has appointed to work. “God meeteth them that remember Him in His own ways” (Isa 64:5); he also broke out against those who did not seek him in the appointed order (1 Chr 15:13). He has chosen and ordained means of sanctification and salvation that serve his glory, and those alone he blesses for our good. Nor does he crown anyone who strives unless he “strive lawfully” (2 Tim 2:5).
Experience among both non-Christians and Christians gives abundant evidence of how harmful ignorance or mistaken ideas about these effective means are to holy practice. In general, those without Scripture fell short of acceptable obedience to the duties of the law that they knew because they lacked this knowledge.
(1.) Many Christians content themselves with outward performances because they never learned how to attain spiritual service.
(2.) Many reject the way of holiness as harsh and unpleasant because they do not know how to cut off a right hand or pluck out a right eye without intolerable pain. They would find “the ways of wisdom,” if they knew them, “to be ways of pleasantness, and all her paths to be peace” (Prov 3:17). Their mistake leads them to put off repentance again and again as something strange and forbidding.
(3.) Others begin practicing holiness with fervent zeal and run very fast, yet never take a step along the right path. Repeatedly disappointed and overcome by their sinful desires, they finally give up and return to wallow in the mire. This has prompted several books describing how far a person who will ultimately be rejected may go in religion. Many weak believers are discouraged by them, thinking such people have gone farther than they themselves have. Yet most of those people never knew the right way or took one step in it, for “few there be that find it” (Matt 7:14).
(4.) Some of these misguided zealots subject their bodies to inhumane severity through fasting and other austerities in an effort to kill their sinful desires. When they find that those desires are still too strong for them, they fall into despair. Horror of conscience then drives them to sinfully take their own lives, to the scandal of religion. Perhaps God will bless my account of the powerful means of holiness enough to save someone from doing so. That one result would repay my labor. Yet I hope God will also enlarge the hearts of many, so that they run in the ways of his commandments with great cheerfulness, joy, and thanksgiving.
