Have you ever asked the Lord that he would teach you to grow in faith and love and grace? Have you ever asked the Lord that you might know more of him, or that he might give you the desire to more earnestly seek his face? John Newton asked this of the Lord and later wrote a hymn about it. It is not one that we tend to sing in our churches, but it is one that is worth reading as a poem. Newton was granted what he asked, but not in the way he had wanted or in the way he had expected.

I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith and love and every grace
Might more of His salvation know
And seek more earnestly His face

Twas He who taught me thus to pray
And He I trust has answered prayer
But it has been in such a way
As almost drove me to despair

I hoped that in some favored hour
At once He’d answer my request
And by His love’s constraining power
Subdue my sins and give me rest

Instead of this He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart
And let the angry powers of Hell
Assault my soul in every part

Yea more with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Cast out my feelings, laid me low

Lord why is this, I trembling cried
Wilt Thou pursue thy worm to death?
“Tis in this way” The Lord replied
“I answer prayer for grace and faith”

“These inward trials I employ
From self and pride to set thee free
And break thy schemes of earthly joy
That thou mayest seek thy all in me,
That thou mayest seek thy all in me.”

The holiness of God is his glory and crown. It is the blessedness of his nature. It renders him glorious in himself, and glorious to his creatures. “Holy” is more fixed as an epithet to his name than any other. This is his greatest title of honor. He is pure and unmixed light, free from all blemish in his essence, nature, and operations. He cannot be deformed by any evil. The notion of God cannot be entertained without separating from him whatever is impure and staining. Though he is majestic, eternal, almighty, wise, immutable, merciful, and whatsoever other prefections may dignify so sovereign a being, yet if we conceive him destitute of this excellent perfection, and imagine him possessed with the least contagion of evil, we make him but an infinite monster, and sully all those perfections we ascribed to him before.

And here we are, at the end of another classic. If you’ve been doing this since the beginning, you’ve now read Holiness by J.C. Ryle, Overcoming Sin and Temptation by John Owen, The Seven Sayings of the Savior on the Cross by A.W. Pink, The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, Real Christianity by William Wilberforce, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs, Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray, The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes, Spurgeon by Arnold Dallimore. And, of course, The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul. I’ve spoken to a few people recently (in real-life even) who have kept up and who have enjoyed the book. So I’m glad to know that some of you continue to read along.

This week’s chapter was titled “Holy Space and Holy Time” and in wrapping up the book Sproul turns to a discussion of setting apart certain spaces and certain times as holy. He writes about traditional church architecture and its function in drawing people to the holy, something he has emphasized in several of his other books. He writes about what goes missing in churches that are designed to be functional rather than beautiful. “What is often lost in these functional church designs is the profound sense of threshold. A threshold is a place of transition. It signals a change from one realm to another.” If you have ever visited Dr. Sproul’s home church of St. Andrew’s you will see how he and the members of that church have sought to recapture traditional design including the concept of threshold.

He writes as well about sacred times and in particular the Sabbath and the Lord’s Supper.

The celebration of the Lord’s Supper involves sacred time in three distinct ways. First, it looks to the past, instructing believers to remember and to show forth Christ’s death by this observance. Second, it focuses on the present moment of celebration, in which Christ meets with His people to nurture them and strengthen them in their sanctification. Third, it looks to the future, to the certain hope of their reunion with Christ in heaven, where they will participate in the banquet feast of the Lamb and His bride.

So we’ve got just one week left in our reading of R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God. Next week we’ll wrap up—rather good timing, I think, since the holidays are just about upon us.

Summary

This week’s chapter was titled “Looking Beyond Shadows.” In the first part of the chapter, Dr. Sproul writes about the ways in which man refuses to acknowledge God as God. God has revealed himself clearly to each and every individual in the world, but left to ourselves we despise that revelation and suppress it.

The real person of God is really known through the real revelation that takes place in the real realm of nature. But the problem is that in the case of God, we distort our knowledge of Him with an image that we create ourselves. This is the essence of idolatry; replacing the reality with a counterfeit. We distort the truth of God and reshape our understanding of Him according to our own preferences, leaving us with a God who is anything but holy.

Paul does not bring a universal indictment against humanity for the failure to know God. That is not our problem. It is not that we fail to know that God is and who God is; it is that we refuse to believe what we know to be true. Here we face a problem that is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem. It is the problem of dishonesty. All idolatry is rooted in this fundamental dishonesty.

God’s holiness is not an arcane secret that may be discovered only by some spiritually elite group of people. Rather God’s holiness is on display daily for everyone to see. Again it is not merely that it is available to be seen for those who earnestly search for it. Rather Paul’s point is that God’s holiness is seen, and it is seen clearly.

…The knowledge of God that is given through creation is not a knowledge we warmly receive and embrace. Instead it is our nature to abhor this knowledge of God’s holiness. It is characteristic of the reprobate mind not to want to retain God in our knowledge. We prefer to change the holy into something less than holy. It is this rejection of God’s majesty that leaves us with minds that are darkened. It results in a massive foolishness that has disastrous consequences for our lives. Once we refuse to honor God as God, our whole view of life and the world becomes distorted.

We have just a few chapters left in our reading of R.C. Sproul’s classic book The Holiness of God. This week we come to chapter 9 which is titled, “God in the Hands of Angry Sinners,” a clear play on the title of Jonathan Edwards’ most famous or notorious sermon.

Summary

I hope no one will accuse me of laziness if I continue posting lists of my favorite quotes from the chapter. I am trying this this time around because a) it may help jog the memories of those who are reading along and b) it gives a sense of the chapter for those who are not reading the book but who are enjoying these posts; it is the way they can most benefit from these articles.

In this chapter Dr. Sproul uses Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” as a jumping-off point to look at an aspect of God’s holiness that we naturally hate: his wrath.

If we despise the justice of God, we are not Christians. If we hate the wrath of God, it is because we hate God Himself. A loving God who has no wrath is no God. He is an idol of our own making as much as if we carved Him out of stone.

If we are unconverted, one thing is absolutely certain: We hate God. The Bible is unambiguous about this point. We are God's enemies. We are inwardly sworn to His ultimate destruction. It is as natural for us to hate God as it is for rain to moisten the earth when it falls.

By nature, our attitude toward God is not one of mere indifference. It is a posture of malice. We oppose His government and refuse His rule over us. Our natural hearts are devoid of affection for Him; they are cold, frozen to His holiness. By nature, the love of God is not in us.

If God were to expose His life to our hands, He would not be safe for a second. We would not ignore Him; we would destroy Him.

The failure of modern evangelicalism is the failure to understand the holiness of God.

We may dislike giving our attention to God's wrath and justice, but until we incline our selves to these aspects of Gods' nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace.

Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power. The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds His holy love in our hearts, unless He stoops in His grace to change our hearts, we will not love Him.

Today we continue with our readings in R.C. Sproul’s classic work The Holiness of God. This week we come to chapter 8, “War and Peace with a Holy God.” I know that quite a few of you continue to read along; I trust you’re enjoying this rather amazing book.

Summary

As with last week, I think I’m going to focus on quotes from the chapter rather than writing out a summary of it (since that is meaningful even to people who aren’t involved in the project). I find that this is a very quotable book and that even the short quotes offer a lot to ponder.

The saints of Scripture were called saints not because they were already pure but because they were people who were set apart and called to purity.

…

My sins have not brought me happiness. But my sins have brought me pleasure. I like pleasure. I am still very much attracted to pleasure. Pleasure can be great fun. And not all pleasures are sins. There is much pleasure to be found in righteousness. But the difference is still there. Sin can be pleasurable, but it never brings happiness.

…

Our marks of piety can actually be evidences of impiety. When we major in minors and blow insignificant trifles out of proportion, we imitate the Pharisees. When we make dancing and movies the test of spirituality, we are guilty of substituting a cheap morality for a genuine one. We do these things to obscure the deeper issues of righteousness. Anyone can avoid dancing or going to movies. These require no great effort of moral courage. What is difficult is to control the tongue, to act with integrity, to reveal the fruit of the Spirit.

…

The key method Paul underscores as the means to the transformed life is by the "renewal of the mind." This means nothing more and nothing less than education. Serious education. In-depth education. Disciplined education in the things of God. It calls for a mastery of the Word of God. We need to be people whose lives have changed because our minds have changed.

…

To be conformed to Jesus, we must first begin to think as Jesus did. We need the "mind of Christ." We need to value the things He values and despise the things He despises. We need to have the same priorities He has. We need to consider weighty the things that He considers weighty. That cannot happen without a mastery of His Word. The key to spiritual growth is in-depth Christian education that requires a serious level of sacrifice.

…

If we say we have faith, but no works follow, that is clear evidence that our faith is not genuine. True faith always produces real conformity to Christ. If justification happens to us, then sanctification will surely follow. If there is no sanctification, it means that there never was any justification.

I mentioned in this morning’s A La Carte that my youngest daughter had learned how to sleep (or had taught herself, more properly). Last night she had a nightmare, the first in probably six months, and was wide awake in terror for a long, long time. That meant I was also wide awake (though not in terror). So I am going to use the little bit of awareness I have to share just a few of my favorite moments from this week’s chapter of The Holiness of God as we continue to read the classics together.

Summary

This week’s reading was quite a bit different from the ones before it. Chapter 5, “The Insanity of Luther,” is almost a biographical chapter that looks at the struggles of Martin Luther as he came face-to-face with the holiness of God. Luther, even before he came to understand what would be known as Protestant theology, had a profound sense of God’s holiness. And that holiness very nearly drove him crazy. He had a clear assessment of the infinite gap in holiness that existed between himself and his Maker. Sproul points out, “Whatever defense mechanisms normal people have to mute the accusing voice of conscience, Luther was lacking.” He was devastated by every little sin, knowing that each one of them was sufficient to condemn him to hell.

It has been said many times that there is a fine line between genius and insanity and that some people move back and forth across it. Perhaps that was the problem Luther had. He was not crazy. He was a genius. He had a superior understanding of law. Once he applied his astute legal mind to the law of God, he saw things that many people miss.

Luther simply looked to the laws of God, saw how he fell short, and knew that he was a condemned man. This was far more genius than insanity, far more light than darkness.

Luther “realized that if God graded on a curve, He would have to compromise His own holiness. To count on God doing so is supreme arrogance and supreme foolishness as well. God does not lower His own standards to accommodate us.” Luther realized that even our good deeds are none too good.

Today, in this effort to read some of the classic works of the Christian faith, we come to chapter three of R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God. Sproul introduces the chapter this way: “Here we are, already in the third chapter of this book, and I still have not defined what it means to be holy.” So in this week’s reading he tries to move us toward a definition.

Summary

But that is not an easy task. In fact, he says:

I wish I could postpone the task even further. The difficulties involved in defining holiness are vast. There is so much to holiness, and it is so foreign to us that the task seems almost impossible. In a very real sense, the word holy is a foreign word. But even when we run up against foreign words, we hope that a foreign language dictionary can rescue us by providing a clear translation. The problem we face, however, is that the word holy is foreign to all languages. No dictionary is adequate to the task.

One of the difficulties is that the word holy is used in different ways throughout Scripture. At times it points toward pure, at other times it points toward separate and at other times it points toward transcendent. “When the Bible calls God holy, it means primarily that God is transcendentally separate. He is so far above and beyond us that He seems almost totally foreign to us. To be holy is to be ‘other,’ to be different in a special way.” All of which is to say that there is a mystery to holiness. It is so foreign to us that we cannot fully understand it. We can see glimpses of it, but we cannot wrap our minds around it.

I could not adequately summarize all Sproul says about the deeper meanings of the word, so I will leave you to read that on your own. And seriously, if you aren’t reading the book with us, you should at least pick it up and read it on your own.

This is now week 2 of this project in which we are reading together through R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God. Before we discuss this week’s chapter, I wanted to make you aware of an interesting interview with Sproul on this very subject. It comes from a 1990 issue of Tabletalk magazine and, if you are interested, you can read it here: Striking a Chord in the Heart of of the Believer.

Summary

This week’s chapter is titled “Holy, Holy, Holy” and in it Sproul turns to the pages of Isaiah (Isaiah 6 in particular) and the prophet’s experience with coming into the presence of God. He looks first to those seraphim in God’s presence who continually cry out “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;the whole earth is full of his glory!”

Only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession. The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that He is merely holy, or even holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that God is love, love, love; or mercy, mercy, mercy; or wrath, wrath, wrath; or justice, justice, justice. It does say that he is holy, holy, holy that the whole earth is full of His glory.

God is not just holy, but holy, holy, holy. Using a rhetorical device of the Hebrew language, the Bible expresses the extent of God’s holiness by emphasizing it through repetition.

Isaiah was a good man, it seems, a noble one. And yet before the presence of God he was completely undone.

If ever there was a man if integrity, it was Isaiah ben Amoz. He was a whole man, a together type of a fellow. He was considered by his contemporaries as the most righteous man in the nation. He was respected as a paragon of virtue. Then he caught one sudden glimpse of a holy God. In that single moment, all of his self-esteem was shattered. In a brief second he was exposed, made naked beneath the gaze of the absolute standard of holiness. As long as Isaiah could compare himself to other mortals, he was able to sustain a lofty opinion of his own character. The instant he measured himself by the ultimate standard, he was destroyed- morally and spiritually annihilated. He was undone. He came apart. His sense of integrity collapsed.

Called by God in dramatic fashion, Isaiah was set apart for his task despite being a sinful man, a man who had a filthy mouth. And yet God chose to cleanse him and to set him apart to this most difficult, thankless ministry. A seraph pressed a hot coal to Isaiah’s lips. “His was no cruel and unusual punishment. A second of burning flesh on the lips brought a healing that would extend to eternity. In a moment, the disintegrated prophet was whole again. His mouth was purged. He was clean.”

At long last it is time to read another classic work of the Christian faith, and to read it together. This time around we are reading R.C. Sproul’s book The Holiness of God. Of all the books we’ve read in this Reading Classics program, this is the one that has been written most recently (1985). And yet there is little doubt that it is a classic, even if we must add the word “modern” to the monicker. It’s a modern classic and one destined to stand the test of time, I’m sure.

Over the next 11 weeks we are going to be reading this book together. If you are interested in participating, you are free to do so. All you need to do is find a copy of the book and read (or listen—use coupon code CHALLIES10 to get the audio book for just $2.98) along with us. Check in here every Thursday for your chance to reflect on the book or simply to read the reflections of other participants. It’s that simple.

And away we go…

Summary

This week’s reading was chapter 1 which is titled “The Holy Grail.” Sproul begins with a little biographical snippet in which he relates a time in his Christian life when he became aware of God’s holiness. He says that until this time he was a Unitarian of sorts, someone who loved Jesus but who had not yet come to love or appreciate the Father. And yet in a moment he was given a sense of the majestic holiness of God. And his life was forever changed.

In this initial chapter Sproul starts to introduce this God, this Father. He first introduces him as the creator, as the one who existed before anything else existed. He contrasts the beauty and power of God’s creative act with the folly of believing that all that is came out of nothing. “Some modern theorists believe that the world was created by nothing. Note the difference between saying that the world was created from nothing and saying that the universe was created by nothing. In this modern view the rabbit comes out of the hat without a rabbit, a hat, or even a magician. The modern view is far more miraculous than the biblical view. It suggests that nothing created something. More than that, it holds that nothing created everything—quite a feat indeed!”