Book Summary
The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, first published in 1692, is a classic Christian text by Walter Marshall, a 17th-century Puritan pastor and theologian.
We have updated this timeless classic into a modern, updated translation that anyone can read and understand.
This book is widely regarded as one of the most significant works on the doctrine of sanctification - the process by which believers grow in holiness and conformity to Christ. Combining theological depth with pastoral care, Marshall’s writing has earned praise from notable figures like John Murray, who called it “the most important book on sanctification ever written,” and Andrew Murray, who valued its contribution to “practical religion and godliness.”
Main Themes of Book
The book explores how sanctification is rooted in a believer’s union with Christ. Marshall emphasizes that holiness is not achieved through human effort or legalistic striving but flows from faith in Christ and reliance on God’s grace. He distinguishes sanctification from justification—while justification declares believers righteous before God, sanctification transforms them inwardly and outwardly over time. However, Marshall insists the two are inseparable, both grounded in the gospel.
The book is structured around fourteen “directions,” each offering practical and theological guidance on growing in holiness. These directions highlight the means of grace—such as prayer, Scripture, the sacraments, and the church—as essential tools God provides for sanctification. A key insight is Marshall’s rejection of self-reliance; he writes, “The way to get holy endowments and qualifications… is to receive them out of the fullness of Christ, by fellowship with Him.”
Historical Context
As a Puritan, Marshall wrote during a time of intense theological reflection in England, when debates about grace, works, and Christian living were prominent. His work counters misunderstandings of sanctification, such as the notion that believers must attain holiness before receiving salvation (a form of legalism) or that grace excuses sin (antinomianism). This historical backdrop underscores the book’s relevance as a balanced, gospel-centered response to these extremes.
Practical Application
Marshall’s teachings remain valuable for contemporary readers. His focus on union with Christ offers a source of encouragement, reminding believers that sanctification is powered by God’s grace, not their own strength. Practices like prayer and engagement with Scripture become not mere duties but lifelines to Christ, fostering spiritual growth. Whether for personal study or pastoral guidance, this book offers a vision of the Christian life—one where transformation is both a gift and a journey.
Gospel Mystery of Sanctification
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Chapter #1: Understanding the Goal and the Means to Holiness
To properly carry out the duties of holiness and righteousness required by the law, our first task is to learn the powerful and effective means by which we can achieve such a great goal.
Explanation
This direction can serve as an introduction to get you ready for what follows.
First, it tells you the main purpose of all the methods that will be discussed here: to teach you how to live a life of holiness, righteousness, or godliness, which means true religion and obedience. This is what God asks of us in the Law, especially in the Moral Law, summed up in the Ten Commandments, and more briefly in the two great commandments of loving God and our neighbor (Matt. 22:37, 39), and explained throughout the Bible. My job is to show you how to do the duties of this Law once you know them. So, don't expect me to spend a lot of time explaining them, as this has already been done in various catechisms and commentaries. However, to make sure you understand the goal, know that the holiness I want to guide you to is spiritual (Rom. 7:14). It involves not just outward acts of piety and charity, but also holy thoughts, imaginations, and feelings of the soul, mainly love, from which all other good works must come, or else they are not pleasing to God. It means not just avoiding sinful desires, but also wanting and enjoying doing God's will, and happily obeying God without complaining or feeling like any duty is a heavy burden to you.
Notice further that the Law, which is your target, is extremely broad (Ps. 119:96). However, this doesn't make it easier to hit because you must aim to fulfill every part of it with equal dedication, or else you miss the mark entirely. The Lord is not truly loved with the love he deserves as the Lord of all unless he is loved with all our heart, spirit, and strength. We are to love everything about him—his justice, holiness, sovereign authority, all-seeing eye, and all his decrees, commands, judgments, and actions. We should love him not just more than other things, but as the only true good, the source of all goodness. We must reject all fleshly and worldly pleasures, even our own lives, as if we hated them when they compete with our enjoyment of him or our duty toward him. We must love him by fully committing ourselves to his constant service in all things and accepting his control over us as our absolute Lord, whether it leads to prosperity or adversity, life or death. For his sake, we are to love our neighbor, including all people, whether they are friends or enemies, and treat them in all matters concerning their honor, life, chastity, worldly wealth, credit, and contentment as we would want them to treat us in similar situations (Matt. 7:12). This spiritual universal obedience is the great goal I am guiding you toward. And so you don't dismiss my effort as impossible, note that what I promise is no more than an acceptable performance of these duties of the Law, which our gracious and merciful God will certainly delight in and be pleased with during our imperfect state in this world. This will ultimately lead to perfect holiness and all happiness in the world to come.
Before I go further, take a moment to think about the great importance and excellence of these duties of the law. This will help you aim to perform them with high regard, which will make the following explanation of the means more appealing. The main duties of loving God above all and loving each other for His sake, from which all other duties flow, are so excellent that I can't imagine a more noble task for the holy angels in their glorious realm. These are the main works for which we were originally created in God's image, engraved upon us in the first creation. This beautiful image is renewed in us through our new creation and sanctification by Jesus Christ and will be perfected in our glorification. These works don't just depend on God's will to be commanded or forbidden, or left indifferent, or changed, or abolished at His pleasure, like other works related to the judicial or ceremonial law, or the means of salvation prescribed by the Gospel. Instead, they are inherently holy, just, and good (Rom. 7:12), and fitting for us to perform because of our natural relationship with our Creator and fellow creatures. They have an inseparable connection to the holiness of God's will and are firmly established by it. These works are enough to make those who perform them holy in all aspects of life, by the fruits they produce, even if no other duties were ever commanded. They establish the performance of all other duties as soon as they are commanded, and without them, no holiness of heart and life can be imagined. It was a great honor of Mosaic, and now of Evangelical ordinances, to support the performance of these duties as means that will cease when their end, this never-failing charity, is perfectly achieved (1 Cor. 13). These are duties we were naturally obliged to by the reason and understanding God gave to man at creation, to discern what was just and fitting for him to do. Even heathens are still obliged by the light of nature, without any written law or supernatural revelation (Rom. 2:14-15). Therefore, they are called natural religion, and the law that requires them is called the natural law, and also the moral law, because the behavior of all people, infidels as well as Christians, should conform to it (and if they had fully conformed, they would not have fallen short of eternal happiness, Matt. 5:19; Luke 10:27-28) under the penalty of God's wrath for violating it. This is the true morality that God approves of, consisting of conforming all our actions to the moral law. If those who argue strongly for morality today understand it as this, I am willing to agree with them in saying that the best morally honest person is the greatest saint, and that morality is the main part of true religion and the test of all other parts. Without it, faith is dead, and all other religious performances are just a vain show and mere hypocrisy. The faithful and true witness has testified about the two great moral commandments of love for God and our neighbor, saying there is no greater commandment than these, and that all the law and the prophets depend on them (Mark 12:31; Matt. 22:40).
The second thing included in this introductory direction is the need to learn the powerful and effective means by which this great and excellent goal can be achieved. It's important to make this the first task to complete before we can expect success in any attempt to reach it.
This is a very important note because many people tend to skip over the lesson about the means (which will be covered throughout this whole book) thinking it's unnecessary and useless. Once they understand the nature and excellence of the duties of the law, they think all that's needed is to perform them diligently. They rush into action without proper preparation, like in Exodus 19:8 where they quickly promise, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do," without considering the cost. They see holiness only as a means to an end—eternal salvation—not as an end in itself that requires significant effort to practice. When most people start to feel religious, they ask, "What good thing shall I do to have eternal life?" (Matt. 19:16) instead of asking, "How can I be enabled to do anything good?" Even many preachers, who are considered powerful, focus all their energy on urging immediate practice of the law without explaining the effective means to achieve it, as if righteousness were like simple tasks that require no skill, just hard work. To help you avoid this common mistake at the start of a religious life, I will try to show you that it's not enough to know what your duty is and why; you also need to learn the powerful and effective means to perform it before you can successfully start practicing. To help with this, I will present the following considerations.
1. By nature, we all lack the strength and ability to live up to the holiness and righteousness that the Law requires. We are spiritually dead in our sins and are under God's wrath because of the sin of our first father, Adam (Rom. 5:12, 15, 18, 19; Eph. 2:1-3; Rom. 8:7-8). This teaching about Original Sin, which most Protestants agree on, is a strong foundation for the point we're about to prove and for many other points in this discussion. If we believe this is true, we can't reasonably motivate ourselves to live a holy life until we know of some powerful and effective way to enable us to do it. When humanity was first created upright in God's image (Eccles. 7:29; Gen. 1:27), people could do God's will as soon as they knew it. But after the fall, they were quickly afraid because of their nakedness and couldn't fix it until God showed them the way to be restored (Gen. 3:10). If you tell a strong, healthy servant, "Go," he goes; "Come," he comes; "Do this," he does it. But a bedridden servant needs to know first how he can be enabled. The fallen angels surely know the need for holiness and tremble at their guilt, but they don't know any way to truly become holy, so they remain in their wickedness. It was pointless for Samson to say, "I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself," when he had lost his strength through sin (Judg. 16:20). People show themselves to be strangely forgetful or hypocritical when they acknowledge Original Sin in their prayers, catechisms, and confessions of faith, yet push themselves and others to follow the Law without considering any means of gaining strength and life, as if the only issue were a lack of activity, not ability.
2. Those who doubt or deny the doctrine of original sin should know about themselves (if their consciences aren't blind) that God's perfect justice is against them. They are under God's curse and sentenced to death for their actual sins if God were to judge them (Rom. 1:32; 2:2; 3:9; Gal. 3:10). Is it possible for someone who knows this is their situation and hasn't learned any way to escape it, to immediately follow the law? To love God and everything about Him—His justice, holiness, power, as well as His mercy—and to willingly submit to God's will, even if God were to bring sudden death upon them? Isn't there some skill or strategy needed in this situation to encourage the weary soul to practice complete obedience?
3. Even though heathens might understand a lot about the work of the Law through natural reason and understanding (Rom. 2:14), the effective way to perform it cannot be discovered through that natural understanding. This means we must learn it through supernatural revelation. Our natural understanding is just a small glimpse of what Adam had before the Fall. Even at its best, it wasn't enough to guide Adam on how to regain the ability to live a holy life if he lost it through sin. It also couldn't assure him that God would offer any means of recovery. God only warned him of death if he disobeyed (Gen. 2:17), which is why Adam hid from God when he realized his shame, expecting no mercy. We are like lost sheep, not knowing how to return until we hear the Shepherd's voice. Can these dry bones live in holiness for God? O Lord, you know, and we cannot know it unless we learn it from you.
4. Sanctification, where our hearts and lives are shaped to follow the law, is a grace from God given to us through certain means, just like justification. It involves teaching and learning things we cannot understand without the Word (Acts 26:17-18). There are many aspects of life and godliness that are given through knowledge (2 Pet. 1:3). God uses a form of teaching to make people free from sin and servants of righteousness (Rom. 6:17-18). There are various parts of the whole armor of God that we need to know and put on so we can stand against sin and Satan in difficult times (Eph. 6:13). Should we ignore and overlook the way of sanctification when learning the way of justification has been considered worth so many detailed writings?
5. God has provided in the Holy Scriptures, through His inspiration, abundant instruction in righteousness, so that we may be fully equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16-17). This is especially true since the dawn from on high has visited us through the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ, to guide our feet in the way of peace (Luke 1:78-79). If God humbles Himself to teach us this way in the Scriptures and through Christ Himself, it must be very necessary for us to sit at His feet and learn it.
6. The way to attain godliness is not something we can know without learning from the Holy Scripture. Even when it's clearly revealed here, it's not as easy to learn as the duties of the law, which are partly known through natural understanding and therefore more easily accepted. This is the way that brings the spiritually dead to live for God, and it's definitely beyond all human wisdom and guesses. It's the way of salvation, where God will destroy the wisdom of the wise and make the understanding of the clever useless by revealing things through His Spirit that the natural person cannot accept; they seem foolish to him and he can't understand them because they are spiritually understood (1 Cor. 1:19, 21; 2:14). Without a doubt, the mystery of godliness is great (1 Tim. 3:16). Learning it requires extra effort because we must unlearn many of our old, deeply held beliefs and become like fools to become wise. We must pray earnestly to the Lord to teach us, as well as search the Scriptures, to gain 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 to the end" (Ps. 119:5, 33). "Teach me to do thy will" (Ps. 143:10). "The Lord direct your hearts unto the love of God" (2 Thess. 3:5). Surely, these saints didn't need as much teaching and direction about the duties of the law as they did about the way and means to do them.
7. Knowing these powerful and effective means is extremely important and necessary for strengthening our true faith and avoiding errors that go against it. We can't reasonably doubt that the moral duties of loving God and our neighbor are absolutely essential to true religion, so it can't exist without them. From this principle, we can confidently conclude that anything opposing these holy duties shouldn't be accepted as a point of faith given to us by the most holy God. Whatever is truly necessary, powerful, and effective in leading us to practice these duties should be believed as coming from God because it reflects His holiness and righteousness. This is a reliable test, which those who are sincerely religious will use to examine spirits and their teachings to see if they are from God. They can't reasonably accept any teaching as religious if it doesn't align with godliness (1 Tim. 6:3). Christ uses this test to prove His teachings are from God because He seeks God's glory in them (John 7:17-18). He also teaches us to recognize false prophets by their fruits (Matt. 7:15-16), where the results of their teachings are especially important. Therefore, until we know what the effective means of holiness are, we lack a necessary test for divine truth and can easily be misled by false teachings or remain uncertain about the truth of any religion, like the Seekers. If you mistakenly believe ineffective means are effective, or vice versa, this error will serve as a false test for evaluating other teachings, leading you to accept errors and reject the truth. This has caused many errors in religion recently. By learning this lesson, you'll have a true test to evaluate the various teachings of Protestants, Papists, Arminians, Socinians, Antinomians, and Quakers, helping you discover and hold onto the truth with confidence amidst all the debates and controversies of these times. This way, you can determine whether the Protestant religion established among us contains any elements of Antinomianism, whether it has any significant flaws in practical principles, and whether it needs to be drastically changed with new teachings and methods, as some learned individuals have recently suggested with their tests.
8. It is very important and necessary for us to be established in holy practice. We can't hope to succeed in practicing holiness unless we have some faith in God's help, which we can't expect if we don't use the means God has appointed. God meets those who remember Him in His own ways (Isa. 64:5) and punishes those who don't seek Him in the right way (1 Chr. 15:13). He has chosen and set up means of sanctification and salvation for His own glory, and He only blesses those means for us. He doesn't reward anyone unless they strive lawfully (2 Tim. 2:5). Experience shows, both with non-believers and Christians, how harmful ignorance or misunderstanding of these effective means can be to holy practice. Non-believers generally fail to perform the duties of the law they know because they are ignorant of this point. Many Christians are satisfied with external performances because they never knew how to achieve spiritual service. Many reject the way of holiness as harsh and unpleasant because they don't know how to remove a right hand or pluck out a right eye without unbearable pain. If they knew the ways of wisdom, they would find them to be pleasant and peaceful (Prov. 3:17). This leads to delaying repentance as something strange. Many others start practicing holiness with great zeal and run fast, but they don't take a single step in the right way. When they find themselves often disappointed and overcome by their desires, they eventually give up and return to their old ways. This has led to several writings showing how far a reprobate can go in religion, which discourages many weak believers who think these reprobates have gone further than they have. However, most of them never knew the right way or took a single correct step in it, for few find it (Matt. 7:14). Some of these ignorant zealots harm their bodies with fasting and other harsh practices to kill their desires, and when they see their desires are still too strong, they fall into despair and, driven by a guilty conscience, end their lives, bringing scandal to religion. Perhaps God may bless my explanation of the powerful means of holiness enough to save someone from taking their own life, and such a result would make my effort worthwhile. I hope God will open the hearts of many through it, so they can run with great cheerfulness, joy, and thanksgiving in the ways of His commandments.
Chapter 2: The Essential Qualities for Holy Living
Several abilities and qualities are necessary to help us immediately follow the Law: specifically, we must have a desire and tendency in our hearts towards it. Therefore, we need to be confident in our reconciliation with God, our future enjoyment of eternal heavenly happiness, and having enough strength to both want and perform all duties acceptably until we reach that happiness.
Explanation
The means that are closest to achieving the ultimate goal should be identified first, so we can learn how to obtain them through other methods mentioned in the following directions. Therefore, I have listed several qualities and abilities necessary to form a holy mindset and state of the soul, which enable us to follow the Law immediately, not just at the start but throughout its practice. It's important to note that these abilities must remain with us throughout our lives, or else our capacity for a holy life will be lost. They must come before practice, not in terms of time, but as a cause comes before an effect. I don't claim to have listed every necessary quality, but I can confidently say that anyone who gains these can also gain any other qualities that should be included with them. This is a matter worth serious consideration because few people understand that special abilities are needed for holy practice, beyond what is needed for other voluntary actions. The first Adam was given excellent abilities for holy practice when he was created in God's image, and the second Adam had even greater abilities to help him with a more challenging task of obedience. Since obedience has become more difficult due to the opposition and temptations that have arisen since Adam's fall, we, who are to imitate Christ, need to have very special abilities, just as Christ did. At the very least, we need abilities as good as or better than Adam's, since our task is harder than his. "What king, going to make war against another king, does not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?" (Luke 14:31). And should we dare to rush into battle against all the powers of darkness, worldly fears and temptations, and our own internal corruptions without considering whether we have enough spiritual resources to stand firm in the evil day? Yet many are satisfied with an ability to will and do their duty that they believe should be given to everyone, which leaves them no better equipped for the spiritual battle than the majority of the world, who are defeated by the wicked one. Therefore, their standing is not secured by it. It is difficult to determine what this universal ability is that so many argue for, what it consists of, how it is given to us, and how it is maintained.
Physical ability relies on things like muscles, nerves, ligaments, and bones, but this spiritual ability seems to be some hidden quality that we can't fully explain how it's given or what it's made of. To prevent anyone from being misled and failing in their efforts for holiness by relying on such a weak hidden quality, I've shown four qualities that true ability for practicing holiness must be made of and maintained by. I plan to explain later how these qualities are given to us and whether the inclination or persuasion mentioned here is perfect or imperfect. These qualities are so mysterious that even those who believe in the need for them to achieve holiness might think that less than these will do, or that some of these qualities might lead to immorality rather than holiness, especially since they are mentioned before any actual following of the moral law. Some might even think that things opposite to these qualities would better prepare us for holiness. Against all such thoughts, I will try to clearly demonstrate these qualities in a way that makes sense, discussing them in the same order I have listed them in the guidance.
Inclination to Duties
First, I want to say that having a desire and tendency in our hearts to follow the duties of the law is necessary to help us practice them right away. I don't mean a blind tendency like that of non-living things or animals to do what comes naturally to them. Instead, I mean a tendency suitable for intelligent beings, where they are guided by reason to approve and choose their duty and avoid sin. That's why I've suggested that the three other qualities mentioned in the guidance support this as the most important one, making it a rational tendency. This goes against those who, out of a desire for obedience based on knowledge, argue strongly for free will as a necessary and sufficient quality to help us do our duty once we understand it and our obligation to it. They praise this quality as the great benefit that universal redemption has given all humanity, even though they consider this free will without any actual inclination to do good. In fact, they must admit that in most people who have it, it is burdened with a tendency of the heart entirely towards evil. Such free will can never free us from being slaves to sin and Satan or prepare us to follow the law, so it's not worth the effort of those who argue so passionately for it. The will isn't free enough for practicing holiness until it has a desire and tendency towards it, as shown by the following arguments.
1. The duties of the law are such that they cannot be done if our hearts are completely against them or just indifferent, with no good inclination or tendency toward doing them. This is because the most important commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart, strength, and soul, to love everything about Him, to love His will and all His ways, and to see them as good. All duties must be carried out with this love. We must take joy in doing God's will; it should be as essential to us as food and drink. We should long and thirst for it, and it should be sweeter to us than honey or the honeycomb (Ps. 40:8; Ps. 30:4; Ps. 34:8; Ps. 63:1; Ps. 119:20; Ps. 19:10).
And this love, liking, delight, longing, thirsting, and sweet enjoyment must continue until the end. The initial, spontaneous desires of lust must be controlled by love for God and our neighbor. We must desire against sin (Gal. 5:17) and hate it (Ps. 36:2). If true obedience were simply loving our duty like a market-man loves the difficult road to the market, or like a sick person loves an unpleasant medicine, or like a captive slave loves hard work out of fear of something worse, then it could be done with reluctance. But we must love it like the market-man loves profit, like the sick person loves health, like enjoyable food and drink, and like the captive loves freedom. Surely, there can be no power in the will for this kind of service without our inclination being aligned with God's will, having a heart like His own, a dislike for sin, and a kind of aversion to it. As the saying goes, "like loves like"; there must be a harmony between the beloved person or thing and the disposition of the lover. Love for God must come from a clean heart (1 Tim. 1:5), cleansed from evil tendencies and inclinations. Reason tells us that the first impulses of lust, which are not under our conscious choice and deliberation, cannot be avoided without a firm inclination of the heart towards holiness.
2. The image of God (which God, in His infinite wisdom, decided to create in the first Adam with righteousness, true holiness, and uprightness, Gen. 1:27; Eph. 4:24; Eccles. 7:29) consisted of an actual tendency and inclination of his heart towards practicing holiness, not just a mere ability to choose between good or evil. This ability by itself is neither holy nor unholy, but merely a foundation on which either the Image of God or of Satan can be formed. It also did not consist of a neutral inclination towards choosing sin or duty, as this is a wicked tendency in an intelligent being who knows their duty and only makes us waver between God and Baal. God initially set Adam's soul with a completely right inclination, although Adam could choose to act against it if he wanted to; just as we can be persuaded to do things against our natural or rational inclinations, and it is easy to fail in our duty even though great preparation and resources are needed to perform it. The second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, was also born a holy being (Luke 1:35), with a holy disposition of his soul and an inclination towards goodness. Can we reasonably hope to rise to the life of holiness, from which the first Adam fell, or to be imitators of Christ, since duty has become so difficult due to the Fall, if we are not renewed to some extent according to the same Image of God and equipped with such a tendency and inclination?
3. Original corruption (which makes us spiritually dead and slaves to sin from birth until the Son of God sets us free) is a tendency and inclination of the heart towards sin and a resistance to holiness. Without this tendency to sin, what is that "law of sin" in our bodies that fights against the law of our mind and makes us captives to sin? (Rom. 7:23). What is that poison in us that makes people be called serpents and vipers? What is that spirit of unfaithfulness in people that prevents them from turning to God? (Hos. 5:4). How is the tree first corrupt, and then its fruit corrupt? (Matt. 12:33). How can a person be described as abominable and filthy, drinking iniquity like water? (Job 15:16). How can the mind of the flesh be in constant opposition to the law of God? (Rom. 8:7). I understand there is also a blindness of understanding and other aspects of original corruption that contribute to this evil tendency of the will, but this tendency itself is the great evil, the indwelling sin that produces all actual sins. It must be removed or restrained by restoring the opposite inclination, which is the image of God, or else we will be resistant and unfit for every good work, and whatever freedom the will has will be used only in the service of sin.
4. God makes His people holy by giving them a new heart and a new spirit, taking away their heart of stone and giving them a heart of flesh (Ezek. 36:26-27). He changes their hearts so they can love Him with all their heart and soul. He also asks us to be transformed by renewing our minds so that we can understand what His acceptable will is (Rom. 12:2). David prays for the same thing, asking God to create a clean heart in him and renew a right spirit within him (Ps. 51:10). If anyone thinks that this new, clean, circumcised heart, this heart of flesh, this new right spirit, is just a power to choose good or evil, called free will, with a tendency toward evil or an indifference to both good and evil, it won't be worth my effort to convince them otherwise. But let them consider whether David would call such a heart clean and right when he prays, "Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to covetousness" (Ps. 119:36).
Persuaded of Reconciliation with God
The second gift necessary to enable us to immediately practice holiness, along with the other two that follow, is being convinced of our reconciliation with God. We must believe that the separation caused by sin between God and us is repaired by a solid reconciliation to His love and favor. This includes the great benefit of justification, which is how we are reconciled to God. Scripture describes this either by forgiving our sins or by crediting righteousness to us (Rom. 4:5-7), because both are part of the same justifying act. Just like one act of illumination includes the removal of darkness and the introduction of light, one act of repentance includes the death of sin and the bringing to life of righteousness. Every movement from one thing to its opposite is a single act, even though it may be described by different names depending on which of the two opposites is being removed or introduced. This is a great mystery (contrary to the understanding of not only ordinary people but also some learned theologians) that we must be reconciled to God and justified by the forgiveness of our sins and the crediting of righteousness before any sincere obedience to the law, so that we may be enabled to practice it. They believe that this teaching leads to the destruction of holy practice and is a major support of Antinomianism. They think the only way to establish sincere obedience is to make it a condition to be fulfilled before our actual justification and reconciliation with God. Therefore, some recent theologians have tried to reshape the doctrine of earlier Protestants concerning justification to make it more free from Antinomianism and more effective in ensuring holy practice. But their efforts are useless and harmful, leading to Antinomian immorality or, at best, superficial hypocrisy. True holiness cannot be secure unless the belief in our justification and reconciliation with God is first obtained without works of the law, so that we may be enabled to do them. I will now prove this with several arguments and also show in the following directions that such a belief in God's love, as given by God to His people, leads only to holiness, even though a misunderstanding of it may lead many to licentiousness.
Argument #1: First, when the first Adam was created to live a holy life, he was in God's favor and had no sin counted against him. He was seen as righteous in God's eyes because he was made upright in God's image. There's no reason to doubt that these qualities helped him live a holy life, and God's wisdom saw them as good for that purpose. As soon as he lost these qualities, he became dead in sin. The second Adam, Jesus, in our human nature, was loved by the Father and seen as righteous by God, without any sin counted against him, except for the sins he took on for others. Can we really expect to follow Christ by obeying more difficult commands than the first Adam had before the Fall, unless we are given similar advantages through reconciliation, forgiveness of sins, and the righteousness God gives us when we have none of our own?
Argument #2: Secondly, those who understand the natural deadness under the power of sin and Satan are fully convinced that if God leaves them to their own hearts, they can do nothing but sin, and that they can do no good work unless it pleases God, out of His great love and mercy, to work it in them (John 8:36; Phil. 2:13; Rom. 8:7-8). Therefore, to be encouraged and reasonably inclined to holiness, they must hope that God will work savingly in them. Now, I leave it to thoughtful people to judge whether such hope can be well-founded without a strong belief in a reconciliation and saving love of God for us that does not depend on any prior goodness of our works but is a sufficient cause to produce them effectively in us. Indeed, we know further, if we know ourselves well enough, that our death in sin came from the guilt of Adam's first sin and the sentence pronounced against it (Gen. 2:17). And that it is still maintained in us by the guilt of sin and the curse of the law, and that spiritual life will never be given to us to free us from that dominion unless this guilt and curse are removed from us, which is done by actual justification (Gal. 3:13-14; Rom. 6:14). This is enough to make us despair of living to God in holiness while we see ourselves as being under the curse and wrath of God because of our transgressions and sins still upon us (Ezek. 33:10).
Argument #3: Thirdly, the nature of the duties of the law requires an understanding of our reconciliation with God and His sincere love and favor towards us for doing them. The great duty is to love God with our whole heart, not just a contemplative love like philosophers might have for the objects of their studies, which they engage with only to please their curiosity. Instead, it's a practical love where we are willing for God to be the absolute Lord and Governor of us and the whole world, to decide our and others' fates according to His will, both in this life and eternally. We should want Him to be the only source of happiness for all who are happy. It's a love where we appreciate everything about Him as our Lord, including His justice, without wishing He were different, and where we desire His will to be done for us and everyone else, whether it brings prosperity or adversity, life or death. We should be able to sincerely praise Him for everything and find joy in obeying Him, even if it means suffering something as severe as death. Think about these things, and you'll see that we aren't ready to do them while we feel under God's curse and wrath or suspect that God might end up being our enemy. Fear might force us to do some hypocritical acts, like Pharaoh letting the Israelites go against his will, but the duty of love can't be forced by fear. It must be won and sweetly drawn out by understanding God's love and goodness towards us, as the loving and beloved disciple testifies: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us" (1 John 4:18-19). Notice that we can't love God before we understand His love for us. Think about your own experience—if you have any true love for God, wasn't it created in you by first sensing God's love for you? All of God's goodness and excellence can't make Him lovable to us unless we see Him as a good fit for us. I don't doubt that the devils know God's excellence as well as our greatest thinkers, but this only fills them with more tormenting horror and trembling, which is the opposite of love (James 2:19). The greater God's excellence and perfection, the greater the evil He is to us if He hates and curses us. Therefore, the principle of self-preservation deeply rooted in our nature stops us from loving what we see as our own destruction. If a man is an enemy to us, we can love him for the sake of our loving, reconciled God, because His love will make man's hatred work for our good. But if God Himself is our enemy, for whose sake can we love Him? Who can free us from the evil of His enmity and turn it to our advantage until He chooses to reconcile with us?
Argument #4: Our conscience must first be cleansed from dead works so we can serve the living God. This happens through the actual forgiveness of sin, achieved by the blood of Christ and revealed to our consciences, as shown by Christ's death for this purpose (Heb. 9:14-15; 10:1-2, 4, 14, 17, 22). A conscience that judges us to be under the guilt of sin and God's wrath is considered an evil conscience in Scripture, even if it performs its duty truthfully. This is because it is caused by the evil of sin and will lead us to commit more sin until it can judge us as justified from all sin and accepted into God's favor. Love, which is the goal of the law, must come from a good conscience, as well as from any other purity of heart (1 Tim. 1:5). David couldn't open his mouth to praise God until he was freed from blood-guiltiness (Ps. 51:14-15). This evil guilty conscience, which makes us think that God is our enemy and that his justice condemns us forever because of our sins, strongly supports and increases the power of sin and Satan in us. It causes harmful effects in the soul against godliness, even leading the soul to hate God and wish there were no God, no heaven, no hell, just to escape the punishment we deserve. It makes people so unfriendly toward God that they can't stand to think, speak, or hear about him and his law. They try to forget him through fleshly pleasures and worldly activities, becoming alienated from true religion, only blinding it and silencing it. It creates zeal in many outward religious acts, as well as false religion, idolatry, and the most inhumane superstitions in the world. I have often thought about how any sin could effectively destroy the whole image of God in the first Adam, and I conclude it was by first creating an evil guilty conscience in him. This made him believe that the just God was against him and cursed him for that one sin, which led to shameful nakedness through disorderly desires, turning his love entirely from God to the creature, and a desire to hide from God's presence (Gen. 3:8, 10), which was a total destruction of the image of God's holiness. We have reason to believe that the same cause leads to the ongoing malice, rancor, rage, and blasphemy of the devil and many notoriously wicked people against God and godliness. Some might think Job was unkind for suspecting not just that his sons had sinned, but that they had been so wicked as to curse God in their hearts (Job 1:5). But Job understood well that if the guilt of any ordinary sin lies on the conscience, it will make the soul secretly wish that God did not exist or that he was not such a just judge, which is a secret cursing of God that cannot be avoided until our consciences are cleansed from the guilt of sin by Christ's offering for us, which was symbolized by Job's burnt offerings for his sons.
Argument #5: God has clearly shown us in his Word that his way of bringing people from sin to a holy life is to first let them know that he loves them and that their sins are forgiven. When he gave the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, he first revealed himself as their God, who had given them a sure sign of his salvation by delivering them from Egypt (Exod. 20:2). Throughout the Old Testament, God made the entrance into religion through circumcision, which was not only a sign but also a seal of the righteousness of faith, by which God justifies people while they are still considered ungodly (Rom. 4:11, 5). This seal was given to children eight days old, before they could perform any act of sincere obedience for their justification, so that their preparation for holy living might be ready beforehand. Furthermore, in the Old Testament, God appointed various washings, and the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, to prepare and sanctify them for other parts of his worship in his tabernacle and temple. This was to symbolize his cleansing of their consciences from dead works by the blood of Christ, so they might serve the living God (Heb. 9:9, 10, 13, 14, 22). This was then figurative sanctification, as the word sanctification is taken in a broad sense, including all things that prepare us for the service of God, mainly the remission of sin (Heb. 10:10, 14, 18). Though if it is taken in a strict sense, focusing only on our conformity to the law, it must necessarily come after justification, according to the usual method of Protestant theologians. God also reminded them of the need to remove their guilt first, so their service might be acceptable, by commanding them to offer the sin-offering before the burnt-offering (Lev. 5:8; 16:3, 11). And to prevent the guilt of their sins from polluting the service of God, despite all their specific atonements, God appointed a general atonement for all their sins one day every year, where the scapegoat was to carry all their iniquities to a land not inhabited (Lev. 16:22, 34). Under the New Testament, God uses the same method by loving us first and washing us from our sins by the blood of Christ, so he may make us priests to offer sacrifices of praise and all good works to God the Father. He brings us into his service by washing away our sins in baptism, and he feeds and strengthens us for his service by the remission of sins given to us in the blood of Christ at the Lord's Supper. He encourages us to obey him because he has already loved us, and our sins are already pardoned. "Forgive one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children, and walk in love as Christ hath loved us" (Eph. 4:32; 5:1, 2). "I write unto you little children because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. Love not the world, neither the things of the world" (1 John 2:12, 15). I could quote many more texts of the same nature. We can clearly see from all this that God considers it very important and has taken great care in providing abundant means both under the Old and New Testament, so his people might first be cleansed from guilt and reconciled to himself, to prepare them for the acceptable practice of holiness. Away then with all the contrary methods of the new divinity.
Persuaded of Heavenly Happiness
The third gift we need to help us live a holy life, without which believing we are reconciled with God would have little power to make us want holiness, is being convinced of our future enjoyment of eternal heavenly happiness. This belief must come before our holy actions as a reason that encourages and attracts us to it. There are several groups who disagree with this idea. Some believe that being sure of our future happiness before we have continued in sincere obedience leads to immoral behavior, and they think the way to do good works is to make them a necessary condition for gaining this assurance. Others criticize all actions motivated by the hope of future heavenly happiness as legalistic and selfish, saying they come from self-love and not pure love for God. They imagine true godliness as a person holding fire in one hand to burn up heaven and water in the other to put out hell, suggesting that true service to God should not come from hope of reward or fear of punishment, but only from love. To support the truth against these errors, which are so opposed to it and to each other, I will present the following considerations.
1. The nature of the duties of the law is such that they cannot be sincerely and universally practiced without this gift. This gift must be present in us, as I have already shown by everything I've said about the necessity of believing in our firm reconciliation with God through our justification, to prepare us for this practice, because it includes a belief in future happiness, or else it is of little worth. All I have to add here is that sincere obedience cannot reasonably exist unless it is attracted, encouraged, and supported by this belief. Let me therefore suppose a Sadducee who believes in no happiness after this life, and ask the question: Can such a person love God with all their heart, might, and soul? Wouldn't they think it reasonable to lessen and moderate their love towards God, so they won't be too troubled to part with Him by death? We think it's most reasonable to hold our affections loosely from things we must part with. Can such a person be satisfied with the enjoyment of God as their happiness? Wouldn't they rather consider the enjoyment of God and all religious duties as vanities like other things, because soon we will have no more benefit from them than if they had never existed? How can such a person be willing to lay down their life for the sake of God when by their death they must part with God as well as with other things? How can they willingly choose afflictions over sin when they will be more miserable in this life for it and not at all happy afterward? I agree that if affliction comes unavoidably upon such a person, they may reasonably judge that patience is better than impatience; but it will displease them that they are forced to use such a virtue, and they will be prone to complain and grumble at their Creator, and wish they had never existed, rather than endure such miseries and be comforted only with vain, temporary enjoyments. I think I have said enough to show how unprepared such a person is for holiness; and the one who would disregard heaven and ignore hell to serve God out of love leaves themselves little better prepared than the Sadducee; one denies them, the other refuses to consider them at all in this case.
2. The sure hope of the glory of heaven is commonly used by God since the fall of Adam to encourage the practice of holiness, as the Scripture abundantly shows. Christ, the great example of holiness, endured the cross and despised the shame for the joy set before him (Heb. 12:2). While I cannot say that the first Adam had such a sure hope to keep him in innocence, he did have the present possession of an earthly paradise and a happy state in it, which he knew would last if he continued in holiness or be changed into a better happiness. The apostles did not lose heart under affliction because they knew it worked for them a more exceeding eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:16-17). The believing Hebrews joyfully accepted the loss of their possessions, knowing they had a better and more enduring substance in heaven (Heb. 10:34). The Apostle Paul considered all his sufferings worthless if not for a glorious resurrection, and said Christians would be the most miserable of all people, suggesting that the doctrine of the Epicureans, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die," would be preferable. He exhorts the Corinthians to be abundant in the work of the Lord, knowing that their labor will not be in vain in the Lord (1 Cor. 15:58). Just as worldly hope keeps people busy in their various jobs, God gives his people the hope of his glory to keep them dedicated to his service (Heb. 6:11-12; 1 John 3:3). And it is such a sure hope that will never make them ashamed (Rom. 5:5). Those who think it beneath the excellence of their love to work out of hope for the heavenly reward are elevating their love beyond that of the apostles, the early saints, and even Christ himself.
3. This belief in our future enjoyment of everlasting happiness cannot lead to immoral behavior if we understand well that perfect holiness is a necessary part of that happiness, and that even though we have a right to that happiness through free justification and adoption, we must reach it through a path of holiness (1 John 3:1-3). It is not legalistic or self-serving to be motivated by this belief, since the belief itself is not obtained by following the law, but by free grace through faith (Gal. 5:5). And if it involves self-love, it is certainly not the sinful self-love that the scripture condemns as the root of sinfulness (2 Tim. 3:2), but a holy self-love that inclines us to prioritize God over the flesh and the world, the kind of self-love God directs us to when he exhorts us to save ourselves (Acts 2:40). It is not contrary to the pure love of God; rather, it leads us to love God more purely and completely. The more we perceive God as good and beneficial to us for all eternity, the more lovely God will be to us, and our affections will be more inflamed towards him. God will not be loved as a barren wilderness or a land of darkness to us, nor will he be served for nothing (Jer. 2:31; Isa. 45:19). He would consider it a dishonor to be acknowledged by us as our God if he had not prepared a city for us (Heb. 11:16). He draws us to love him with human-like cords, the kind of cords that human love is drawn by, through his own love for us, by presenting his benefits to us (Hos. 11:4). Therefore, the way for us to keep ourselves in the love of God is to look for his mercy unto eternal life (Jude 21).
Persuaded of Strength to Perform
The final gift, just like the previous one, is to ensure we are confident that we have enough strength to both desire and actually fulfill our duty in a way that pleases God, until we reach heavenly happiness. This counters the mistake of those who think it's sufficient if we have the strength to practice holiness only if we choose to, or to desire it if we feel like it. They argue that this is the sufficient strength given to all humanity through universal redemption. It also opposes the mistake of those who believe that practicing godliness and wickedness is equally easy, except for some difficulty in changing bad habits initially and dealing with persecution, which they consider rare since the world's kingdoms have embraced Christianity. They also think that God only asks people to do their best, meaning what they are able to do, and it makes no sense to say they can't do what they can do. According to their view, it's unnecessary to worry much about having enough strength for holy practice. To support this statement against these errors, consider these arguments.
1. By nature, we are dead in our sins and unable to want or do anything spiritually good, even with Christ's redemption, until Christ actually brings us to life (Eph. 2:1; Rom. 8:7-9). Those who are fully enlightened and humbled understand that this is their natural state. They realize they lack not just the power to do good, but mainly the desire to want it and be pleased by it. They know that if God doesn't work in them to both want and do good, they will neither want nor do anything pleasing to Him (Phil. 2:13). If God leaves them to their own corruption after starting a good work in them, they will surely become terrible apostates, and their end will be worse than their beginning. We can conclude from this that anyone who boldly tries to follow the Law without being convinced of having enough power to be genuinely willing and able to perform it until they have completed the whole work of obedience acceptably, has never truly been humbled or come to understand the corruption of their own heart. They do not truly believe in the doctrine of original sin, no matter what formal profession they make of it.
2. Those who think that sincerely following the law in everyday situations is so easy show that they don't really understand the law or themselves. Is it easy to fight, not just against our own desires, but against powerful forces and spiritual wickedness in high places (Eph. 6:12)? Is it easy not to desire or covet according to the Tenth Commandment? The Apostle Paul found it so hard to obey this commandment that his desires became stronger because of it (Rom. 7:7-8). Our task is not only to change bad habits but to put to death the corrupt natural desires that created those habits. We must not only deny fulfilling sinful desires but also be full of holy desires, so much so that restraining corrupt desires and acting against them is often like cutting off a right hand or plucking out a right eye (Matt. 5:29-30). If obedience is so easy, why did the heathens generally do things that their own consciences condemned as worthy of death (Rom. 1:32)? And why do many among us try to enter this narrow gate and are not able (Luke 13:24)? Why do they break so many vows and promises of obedience and fall back into their sinful habits, even though the fear of eternal damnation weighs heavily on their consciences?
For those who think that persecution for religion is rare these days, they should be cautious. They might be too much like the world, and that's why the world loves them. If they were truly godly, they would find that just claiming to be religious doesn't protect them from different kinds of persecution. Even if people don't persecute us for our religion, it's still very hard to deal with big injuries from others, losses, poverty, physical pain, long illnesses, and untimely deaths. We need to handle these with a genuine love for God and for those who hurt us, and with patience in accepting God's will, as God's law requires. I admit that God's work is easy and pleasant for those whom God equips properly for it. But those who say it's easy for people in their usual state are being foolish, contradicting the common experience of both non-believers and Christians. Even though many duties don't need much physical or mental effort and could be done easily if we were willing, it's harder to change our hearts to want and love doing them than to move a mountain. I don't need to worry about those who think everyone has enough strength for holy actions just because they can try their best, meaning they can do what they can. God requires us to actually fulfill his commands. What if our efforts achieve nothing according to the standard? Should the law be satisfied with no real performance? And should such efforts be considered enough holiness? And what if we can't even try in the right way? If human ability were the standard for acceptable duty, the commands of the law would mean very little.
3. God's wisdom has always provided people with a strong belief in having enough strength to both want to and actually do their duty. The first Adam was given such strength, and we have no reason to think he was unaware of it or that he needed to fear being left to his own corruptions, because he had no corruptions in him until he created them himself by sinning against that strength. When he lost that strength, he couldn't practice holiness again until he learned about a better strength, which would crush Satan's head (Gen. 3:15). Our Lord Christ certainly knew the infinite power of his deity to enable him for everything he was to do and suffer in our nature. He knew the Lord God would help him, so he wouldn't be ashamed (Isa. 50:7). The Scripture shows how God gave Moses, Joshua, Gideon, and the Israelites strong assurance of strength when he called them to great tasks, like conquering the land of Canaan. Christ wanted the sons of Zebedee to consider if they were able to drink from his cup and be baptized with his baptism (Matt. 20:22). Paul encourages believers to live a holy life by persuading them that sin won't dominate them because they are not under the law but under grace (Rom. 6:13-14). He also urges them to be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power so they can stand against the devil's tricks (Eph. 6:10-11). John advises believers not to love the world or the things in it because they are strong and have overcome the evil one (1 John 2:14-15). Those called by God in the past to perform miracles were first made aware of the gift of power to do them, and no wise person would try to perform them without knowing about the gift. Similarly, when people dead in sin are called to live a holy life, which is a great miracle in them, God reveals the gift of power to them to encourage them in a sensible way to undertake such a wonderful task.