It is hoped these 27 quotes will spur you on to read more of the man. “Most Christians are not joyful persons because they are not holy persons and they are not holy persons because they are not filled with the Holy Spirit, and they are not filled with the Holy Spirit because they are not separated persons. The Spirit cannot fill whom He cannot separate, and whom He cannot fill He cannot make holy, and whom He cannot make holy, He cannot make happy!”

In my irregular series of articles featuring key quotes from key Christians, I have done a number of them on the matter of holiness. No believer can deny that holiness is one of the most important and most often addressed themes in all of Scripture.
And I take it that most believers would know that one of the great Christians to speak and write on this biblical truth so often was the great American pastor A. W. Tozer. Those who want to know more about him can check out this article: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2009/10/02/notable-christians-a-w-tozer/
Most of Tozer’s sermons and writings in one way or another returned to this grand topic of holiness. Some of his books were totally given over to this topic. One of his most notable works is The Knowledge of the Holy. But any of his books and articles are also worth reading on this.
Here I provide, without references, just a few of many inspiring quotes, listed from shorter ones to longer ones. It is hoped these 27 quotes will spur you on to read more of the man.
“The true Christian ideal is not to be happy but to be holy.”
“Christians don’t tell lies they just go to church and sing them.”
“You knew one thing about a man who was carrying a cross out of the city… you knew he wasn’t coming back.”
“Every man is as holy as he really wants to be.”
“The holy man is not one who cannot sin. A holy man is one who will not sin.”
“It is because of the hasty and superficial conversation with God that the sense of sin is so weak and that no motives have power to help you to hate and flee from sin as you should.”
“No man should desire to be happy who is not at the same time holy. He should spend his efforts in seeking to know and do the will of God, leaving to Christ the matter of how happy he should be.”
“The vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions.”
“I cannot think of even one lonely passage in the New Testament which speaks of Christ’s revelation, manifestation, appearing or coming that is not directly linked with moral conduct, faith and spiritual holiness.”
“Although God wants His people to be holy as He is holy, He does not deal with us according to the degree of our holiness but according to the abundance of His mercy. Honesty requires us to admit this.”
“You cannot study the Bible diligently and earnestly without being struck by an obvious fact – the whole matter of personal holiness is highly important to God!”
“The spiritual giants of old would not take their religion the easy way nor offer unto God that which cost them nothing. They sought not comfort but holiness, and the pages of history are still wet with their blood and their tears.”
“We know nothing like the divine holiness. It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible and unattainable.”
“To love is also to hate. The heart that is drawn to righteousness will be repulsed by iniquity in the same degree. The holiest man is the one who loves righteousness most and hates evil with the most perfect hatred.”
“God is holy; and because He is holy, He is actively hostile toward sin. He must be. God can only burn on and burn on and burn on against sin forever. Never let any spiritual experience or any interpretation of Scripture lessen your hatred for sin.”
“We Christians must stop apologizing for our moral position and start making our voices heard, exposing sin as the enemy of the human race and setting forth righteousness and true holiness as the only worthy pursuits for moral beings.”
“Holy is the way God is. To be holy he does not conform to a standard. He is that standard. He is absolutely holy with an infinite, incomprehensible fullness of purity that is incapable of being other than it is. Because he is holy, all his attributes are holy; that is, whatever we think of as belonging to God must be thought of as holy.”
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The Christian family, Christian church, and Christian school must not assume that the next generations will accept the conclusions that seem so obvious to older generations. We must talk about the things our kids are already talking about among themselves. We must disciple. We must be countercultural. We must prepare them to love and teach them what biblical love really means. We must pass on the right beliefs and the right reasons for those beliefs.

I love the Olympics. I got up early and stayed up late to watch whatever I could in real time. As a family, we figured out the various NBC platforms and turned on something from the Olympics almost all the time for two weeks. I’d put our knowledge of Olympic swimming and (especially) track and field up against almost anyone. I’m a big fan of the Olympics.
But something was different this time around. And judging from conversations with many others, I’m not the only one who noticed.
You couldn’t watch two weeks of the Olympics—or at times, even two minutes—without being catechized in the inviolable truths of the sexual revolution. Earlier in the summer, I watched parts of the Euro, and you would have thought the whole event was a commercial for rainbow flags. And yet, the packaging of the Olympics was even more deliberate. Every day we were taught to celebrate men weightlifting as women or to smile as a male diver talked about his husband. Every commercial break was sure to feature a same-sex couple, a man putting on makeup, or a generic ode to expressive individualism. And of course, Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird were nearly ubiquitous. If America used to be about motherhood and apple pie, it’s now about birthing persons and lesbian soccer stars hawking Subway sandwiches.
Some will object at this point that the last paragraph is filled with a toxic mix of homophobia, heteronormativity, cisgender privilege and a host of other terms that were virtually unknown until five minutes ago. But those labels are not arguments against biblical sexual morality so much as they represent powerful assumptions that no decent person could possibly believe that homosexuality is sinful behavior, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that switching genders is a sign of confusion more than courage. What NBC presented as heroic and wonderful was considered wrong and troublesome by almost everyone in the Christian West for 2,000 years.
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Perhaps the most helpful part of this book, dare I say the most entertaining, is the section called “The Parable of the City Park.”  This is a fantastic little story meant to drive home the Biblical teaching of infant baptism, and it does the job.  This little story is well worth the read. Soon after reading it I read it to my family. In fact, this is a good example of how ministers might well communicate complex truths using simple methods without fear of distorting the truth.

Jonathan Gibson has gifted the church a wonderful book titled, I will build My Church: Selected Writings on Church Polity, Baptism, and the Sabbath, published by Westminster Seminary Press (2021). I say that Gibson has gifted the church, but he is the editor and not the author.  Who is the author?  In the foreword, Sinclair Ferguson reminds us that the author was a man little known to church history. His name is Thomas Witherow. Gibson has brought the three best known works of Witherow into one volume. Here we find a work on church polity (The Apostolic Church), baptism (Scriptural Baptism) and the Lord’s Day (The Sabbath).  He introduces all three with a brief but informative biography, which leans heavily on Witherow’s autobiography.
A Prince of Irish Presbyterianism: The Life & Work of Thomas Witherow
The brief biography of Witherow is about 66 pages in length and every one of them is interesting.  Packed into these pages we find Witherow’s work as a pastor and the transition to his work as a professor.  However, ironies abound in this little account.  For example, Witherow loved to preach but found the expectation of pastoral visitation tiresome.  He once said, “My people were not satisfied expect I paid three hundred and fifty visits in the year and preached twice every Sabbath.”  He even said, “There is nothing in regard to which the Presbyterian people seem to me so thoughtless and unreasonable as in the matter of pastoral visitation.” However, it was a man by the name of Henry Cooke, Witherow’s pastor while in his theological studies, who convinced him of Presbyterianism.  Yet, later when Witherow was seeking to become a professor at Magee College, Henry Cooke participated in some political maneuvering that would aid his son-in-law, Josiah L Porter, in landing the post instead of Witherow.  However, much later in life Witherow would be asked to deliver a lecture named after Cooke!  He gladly offered it.
It is also remarkable to read about the sad providences that characterized Witherow’s life.  Witherow’s grandfather died the day he preached his first sermon.  What is more, Witherow preached the day he lost his five-year-old son, Hugh, named after his father. Grief was only compounded when Thomas and his wife Catherine experienced yet another death of a son. He too was named Hugh after his brother and grandfather.  However, the biography contains many other interesting elements.  Witherow did transition to the life of a professor, he witnessed the Ulster Revival of 1859 and he even served on the local committee that oversaw food rations during the Great Famine of 1845-49.  The biography is only one of the book’s delights.
The Apostolic Church
The second section of the book is titled the Presbyterian Distinctives of Thomas Witherow, which is made up of a collection of three short books from his pen. The first is The Apostolic Church, which was published in 1855 though the imprint says 1856.  The book is simple and straightforward.  However, its simplicity should not lull the reader into thinking that it is not worth his time.  This book is a witty polemic which had, according to W. T. Latimer, a contemporary professor in Belfast, “the effect of rendering members of our church better Christians and more consistent Presbyterians.”
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