I have long been a mental maniac. I ruminate over unanswerable questions, turning the concepts of God and the universe over in my head to examine them from different angles, seeking to find clarity, certainty, and even mastery of the “metanarrative.” As a young adult, by some mixture of my pride and the societal value placed on intellectual aptitude, I considered that hyperactive mental posture to be positive, if not godly.

Enter G.K. Chesterton. He met me a century after he wrote Orthodoxy with words that were conviction to a prideful soul and balm to a tired mind:

To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits. (8)

“My mind cannot begin to hold the multidimensional mysteries of the universe.”

He confronted me with the stark reality that my mind cannot begin to hold the multidimensional mysteries of the universe. It cannot retain ages, nations, or species, much less shape them.

Magic in the Mystery

Chesterton opened a door that the almighty God walked through. His sarcastic diatribe against Job began to hit home: “Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it?” (Job 38:12–13). The questions are obviously rhetorical, but I hadn’t thoroughly considered how they applied to my arrogant, anxious thought life. Trying to figure out the world from a God’s-eye view was both sinful and maddening.

But my experience of God didn’t end in his mockery of me. I’m not sure that it even started there. He was simply asking me, with a knowing smile (in my mind’s eye), to breathe, to be a happy little creature in a vast world of his making. There was nowhere for me to run from his reality and no wand in my hand to change it as I saw fit.

“Mystery became magic where it had formerly been madness.”

Armed with my newfound smallness, creatureliness, and acknowledged mental ceiling, I began to wade into his infinite sea without trying to calm its waves. I began to embrace my place, owning my relative nothingness, and I watched the wide world, whether the things seen or the things unseen, become less wearisome and more wondrous. Mystery became magic where it had formerly been madness.

Head in the Heavens

Honestly, some twenty years after my first reading of Orthodoxy, the struggle is still very real. My god-complex will fight to the death, desiring control and stability on its own terms. But my patient heavenly Father is more relentless than my mind. He continues to impress several lessons upon me that began with Chesterton’s admonition.

1. The fathomless truths of God are meant to induce awe, not anxiety.

Our triune God sits in the heavens and does whatever he pleases (Psalm 115:3). He declares the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). He wrote the law behind the universe. He just is. Those are mysteries that inevitably bring the poet to his knees with his gaze fixed, wonder-filled, upon the heavens.

To the theological logician, such glories are unsettling. I remember John Piper saying once that if the deep mysteries of God don’t draw you to worship, put them down for a moment until they can. Repentance is often needed, but then again, we can handle only momentary glances of truth into the preexistent Godhead. Awe is the aim, not divine understanding. “Such knowledge,” the creature confesses, “is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139:6).

2. “Because God is God” is an acceptable answer.

When I was a new parent, I idealistically avoided the “because I told you so” or “because I’m your dad” refrains. I have come to embrace them, not so much because of their inherent convenience but because they allow my children to humbly and contentedly bow to a wiser authority. They must confront their clay-ness and allow themselves to be molded by their parental under-potters. Rebuttals must end. “Why?” questions, when chased to their end, inevitably yield the same answer: “Because God is God.” When we receive those words with the proper posture, they excite in us a sense of what C.S. Lewis calls the “Numinous,” an experience of the yawning gap between his being and ours.

3. The cross of Christ makes the awe-ful deity exhilarating.

Numinousness on its own isn’t necessarily a comfort. Some of my children (as well as most small dogs) find thunderstorms dreadful. Rightly so. They are the rumbling expression of the power of a mysterious God. I was similarly rattled as a child, but I have come to embrace the storms because I have come to understand that my Father sends forth the lightning, and he has told every bolt where to go (Job 38:35).

He has demonstrated his love for me, but that cozy fact doesn’t diminish the exhilaration of his God-ness. It enables me to cease my fearful attempts at control. I am simply chained to the mast with a front-row seat to the storm. I am still afraid, but afraid in a profoundly new way. Lewis illustrates the Christian numinous experience by citing The Wind in the Willows, as Rat and Mole approached the god Pan:

“Rat,” he found breath to whisper, shaking, “Are you afraid?”

“Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. “Afraid? of Him? O, never, never! And yet — and yet — O Mole, I am afraid.”

4. Even in glory, we will not have all the answers.

I often hear people comfort each other in trials by offering the hope of full understanding of all God’s purposes once we meet him after death. I am not convinced of this at all. While Jesus prays for our oneness with the Godhead in John 17, he doesn’t promise that we will become gods ourselves. I find it far more likely that our glorified selves will respond like Job’s on the tail end of God’s aforementioned rebuke:

I know that you can do all things,     and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’     Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. (Job 42:2–3)

Communion with God is not primarily the procurement of knowledge; it is learning to admire God as he is while admitting who we are.

I am still far from a perfect poet. I’m still prone to analyze where I should bow. I am still learning to sing,

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;     my eyes are not raised too high;I do not occupy myself with things     too great and too marvelous for me. (Psalm 131:1)

But my forgiving and unfathomable Father is ushering me deeper into the happy surrender of poetic admiration.

At various points in my Christian life, I’ve felt my cheeks burn with shame as I’ve faced my sin. I’ve felt humiliated, disappointed, and sometimes disgusted with what I’ve done.

Perhaps you’ve felt a similar anguish. You can’t believe those ugly words just came out of your mouth. You look back with a sense of embarrassment over how you acted so foolishly toward your parents. You’ve all but despaired over some ongoing sin that you cannot seem to confess.

As Christians, we have all looked at ourselves and felt sorrow over sin. But have we ever deeply considered why we do it in the first place? Why do we sin?

Searching Our Past Sins

In Confessions book 2, Augustine (354–430) probes for an answer to why we sin by considering moments in his own life. But he does so cautiously, clarifying that he looks back on his past sin “not for love of them but that I may love You, O my God” (2.1.1). He does not peruse past sins like we muse over old photos on our phone, but rather, like a doctor dissecting tissue to locate a cancerous tumor, Augustine remembers sin in order to discover its root cause. With Augustine, we should gaze at the darkness of past sin only to better understand our own hearts and, most importantly, to see the brightness of Christ’s mercy more clearly.

Augustine takes us back to his teenage years when his “delight was to love and to be loved.” Yet he “could not distinguish the white light of love from the fog of lust” (2.2.2). As he recounts how his “youthful immaturity” swept him away into “the madness of lust,” we expect him to stop and analyze the sinful motives behind his lusts. But he doesn’t. He turns instead, almost abruptly, to a very different kind of teenage sin: stealing pears with his pals as a prank (2.4.9).

“Behind every sin — from pride to greed to anger — is a perverse desire to imitate God.”

Augustine labors to understand this seemingly trivial sin to such an extent that some have worried he veers into scrupulosity. Yet he is not troubled with doubts about whether he sinned, as the overly scrupulous are. Rather, he struggles with understanding why he committed the sin at all. What motivated his teenage self to steal with such senseless disregard for God’s law against theft (Exodus 20:15)?

Why Steal Pears?

Augustine makes clear right away that the problem with his theft of the pears was that the pears themselves were not the problem. He had no desire for the pears. The pears were not lovely, and he had even better ones back at home. Nor did he steal because he was hungry: he and his buddies just threw them to the pigs after they had stolen them. So, why did he do it? Why steal something you don’t even want and won’t even use?

Before Augustine describes two motives for why he stole the pears, he considers what usually entices us to sin: disordered desire for otherwise good things. Our attraction to beauty, our delight in physical pleasures, and our satisfaction in success all become distorted when we love them apart from God. Like the prodigal son demanding his inheritance so he could run from his father (Luke 15:11–32), we sin when we spurn the Giver and selfishly love his gifts.

We can discern in disordered desires a certain logic to sin, even to a heinous sin like murder. Augustine points to Cataline, the archetypal Roman villain, to underscore that even in committing murder “he loved some other thing which was his reason for committing [his crimes]” (2.5.11). In our selfish pursuits, we may even commit murder to get what we want or protect what we’re afraid to lose.

But in Augustine’s case, he wasn’t motivated by a nefarious goal beyond the robbery or by distorted love for the sweetness of the pears. Rather, he says, he desired the sweetness of sin itself.

For the Thrill

When he considers why he stole the pears, he first says his “only pleasure in doing it was that it was forbidden” (2.4.9). The reward of the theft was not the pears but the stealing itself — “the thrill of acting against [God’s] law” (2.6.14). Augustine discerns something deeper in the thrill, though, than the racing heartbeat and giddy delight of getting away with a prank. Behind the thrill is the same desire to “be like God” that drove Adam and Eve to sin (Genesis 3:5). Even in rebellion, Augustine says, man is “perversely imitating [God]” (2.6.14).

Behind every sin — from pride to greed to sinful anger — is a perverse desire to imitate God. Pride, for instance, “wears the mask of loftiness of spirit,” even though God alone is high over everything (2.6.13). Greed hungers to possess more than it should, yet God possesses everything. Sinful anger seeks vengeance, but God alone can justly avenge. Therefore, we find a certain thrill in the forbidden precisely because, in pretending to be omnipotent, we perversely imitate God.

Such a perverse desire to be godlike, though, is not satisfied with sinning solo.

For the Fellowship

Our perverse imitation of God wants an audience. Augustine insists (three different times) that “I am altogether certain that I would not have done it alone” (2.8.16). “Perhaps,” he pauses to consider, “what I really loved was the companionship.” But no, he finally concludes, “since the pleasure I got was not in the pears, it must have been in the crime itself, and put there by the companionship of others sinning with me” (2.8.16). Augustine suggests that the good desire for fellowship with others, which symbolizes the ultimate fellowship enjoyed by God in his Trinitarian relations, becomes a perverse desire when it leads us into sin.

“Discovering the insanity of sin turns us back to the immeasurable mercy of Christ.”

These two motives — the thrill of transgression and friendship with fellow sinners — intertwine to move him to steal the pears. They go together because the feeling of a pretended omnipotence is consummated by the praise of others. The thrill of stealing, then, was not enough to motivate Augustine’s sin. Companionship adds the pleasure of praise to the thrill of the theft and becomes, in Augustine’s words, “friendship unfriendly” (2.9.17).

Yet, in naming these two motives, Augustine does not believe he has explained fully why he stole the pears.

Our ‘Complex Twisted Knottedness’

Even as Augustine lays out the two reasons for his theft, he asks himself, “What was my feeling in all this?” He wonders along with the psalmist, “Who can understand his errors?” (Psalm 19:12 KJV). Augustine recognizes that, at bottom, sin is persistently perplexing. Even a relatively trivial sin like a prank leaves Augustine uncertain about the root motive. Augustine’s analysis simultaneously reveals man’s desire for God even in our sinning and acknowledges man’s inability to explain why we pursue that desire for God by turning away from him.

What is finally inexplicable, then, about our sin is not that we sin without reasons but that those reasons do not ultimately make sense. Any attempt to peel back the layers of sinful motives ends in futility because identifying an original motive for evil is like trying to “hear silence” or “see darkness” (City of God, 12.7). We cannot see what is not there or hear what does not sound. Augustine points to a perverse imitation of God as the driving motive behind all vices, but why we desire to perversely imitate God in the first place is ultimately inexplicable.

Augustine feels the anguish of his inexplicable root motive when he exclaims, “Who can unravel that complex twisted knottedness?” (2.10.18). His anguish echoes Paul’s exclamation, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). Like Paul, Augustine looks to Christ’s mercy (Romans 7:25).

Discovering the insanity of sin turns us back to the immeasurable mercy of Christ. Just as a child who has made a mess of his problem runs to his parent for help, so too we must run to God for mercy from the mess we’ve made. We will not do that, though, if we don’t feel the desperation of our situation. The whole of Confessions, says biographer Peter Brown, is “the story of Augustine’s ‘heart,’ or of his ‘feelings’ — his affectus” (Augustine of Hippo, 163). In the story of stealing the pears, Augustine feels — and helps us feel — the anguish of our inexplicable decision to turn away from God. He shows the depths out of which we cry to God for help.

Prodigal’s Return

In our sin, we need the desperation of the prodigal son who, after he squandered all his inheritance, recognizes his only hope is to return to his father (Luke 15:17–19). Or like the psalmist who calls to the Lord for mercy from the abyss of his sin (Psalm 130:1–2), we too must turn to God with hope-filled pleas for mercy. “For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption” (Psalm 130:7). We have been led by the insanity of sin to run from our Father, but he is ready and eager to run to us, brimming with forgiveness.

Augustine’s final paragraph draws us away from the darkness of our sin to gaze, by the mercy of Christ, on the beauty of God’s holiness:

Who can unravel this most snarled, knotty tangle? It is disgusting, and I do not want to look at it or see it. O justice and innocence, fair and lovely, it is on you that I want to gaze with eyes that see purely and find satiety in never being sated. With you is rest and tranquil life. Whoever enters into you enters the joy of his Lord; there he will fear nothing and find his own supreme good in God who is supreme goodness. (2.10.18; trans. Boulding)

God’s full forgiveness restores us to rest with him forever. So, as you search your past or present sins, find hope in your Father’s “plentiful redemption.”

The second half of the nineteenth century was not kind to Victorian evangelicals.

Darwin’s ideas, which first appeared in print in The Origin of Species in 1859, began to undermine the faith of some, just as German higher criticism of the Old Testament reached British shores in Essays and Reviews. Meanwhile, the Ritualists were busy unprotestantizing the Church of England, as men of “broad views” were insisting that sincerity — not truth — was the “one thing needful.” To make matters worse, relations between evangelical churchmen and dissenters reached new lows, and attacking (or defending) the establishment became a near-universal ecclesiastical obsession.

But in the 1870s, a renewal movement imported from America seemed to offer new spiritual life to embattled evangelicals. It promised full salvation and complete deliverance from all known sin — essentially a second conversion experience — and all one had to do was simply “let go and let God.” A series of popular meetings was held throughout England to promote this new vision of the Christian life, and the Keswick Convention was born.

Holiness Unfolded and Defended

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900), the “Anglican Spurgeon” and undisputed leader of the evangelical party within the Church of England, was entirely unsympathetic with Keswick spirituality. He, along with other evangelical leaders of the old guard, attempted to redirect this new interest in personal holiness into more orthodox channels. Articles were written. Speeches were made. A rival conference was even held in 1875 to promote scriptural holiness. Even so, the Keswick Movement continued to gain steam, especially among younger evangelicals. So, Ryle published his own response in 1877, which was then enlarged in 1879.

Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots proved to be one of Ryle’s most popular works. It is one of the best presentations of Puritan and Reformed spirituality ever written, and thanks to the simplicity and forcefulness of Ryle’s writing style, it is certainly one of the most accessible. Think of Holiness as The Pilgrim’s Progress stated propositionally. And like Bunyan’s masterpiece, it has proved to be remarkably enduring. It went through five editions during Ryle’s lifetime, and it has been republished regularly since the prompting of Martyn Lloyd-Jones in 1952.

“Think of ‘Holiness’ as ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ stated propositionally.”

The enlarged edition of Holiness (1879) contains twenty-one papers, as well as an excellent introduction. The first seven chapters are the heart of Holiness and form a book within a book (this was the original edition of 1877). Here Ryle explains “the real nature of holiness, and the temptations and difficulties which all must expect who follow it” (xiii). The rest of the book consists of a series of holiness-related sermons that are arranged thematically: biblical character studies (chapters 8–12), the church (chapters 13–14), Christ (chapters 15–20), and extracts from Robert Traill and Thomas Brooks (chapter 21).

Rather than discussing each chapter, allow me to introduce you to some of the great themes of this spiritual classic.

Holiness

Holiness takes holiness seriously. Personal holiness is essential for final salvation. Such a claim is neither legalism nor a threat to the precious doctrine of justification by faith alone. It is the clear and sobering truth of Scripture: “Strive . . . for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). If Holiness accomplishes anything, it reminds the reader of this critical and potentially uncomfortable truth. Read the chapter on Lot’s wife (chapter 10), or consider this question Ryle poses to the indifferent:

Suppose for a moment that you were allowed to enter heaven without holiness. What would you do? What possible enjoyment could you feel there? To which of all the saints would you join yourself, and by whose side would you sit down? Their pleasures are not your pleasures, their tastes not your tastes, their character not your character. How could you possibly be happy, if you had not been holy on earth? (53)

Expect to be convicted. Expect to be challenged. And expect to be encouraged if you are determined to pursue holiness with greater zeal.

Sin

Holiness takes sin seriously. Ryle argues that he who “wishes to attain right views about Christian holiness must begin by examining the vast and solemn subject of sin” (1).

Sin is a vast moral disease that affects the whole human race. It consists in “doing, saying, thinking, or imagining anything that is not in perfect conformity with the mind and law of God” (2). It is a family disease that we all inherit from our first parents, and it infects every part of our moral constitution. Its guilt and vileness — the very sinfulness of sin itself — must be viewed in light of its remedy: “Terribly black must that guilt be for which nothing but the blood of the Son of God could make satisfaction” (8). But in a deft pastoral move (which is typical for Holiness), Ryle pivots from the guilt of sin to the grace of God:

There is a remedy revealed for man’s need, as wide and broad and deep as man’s disease. We need not be afraid to look at sin, and study its nature, origin, power, extent, and vileness, if we only look at the same time at the almighty medicine provided for us in the salvation that is in Jesus Christ. Though sin has abounded, grace has much more abounded. (11)

Doctrine

Holiness takes doctrine seriously. In the first seven chapters of the book, Ryle treats the doctrine of sanctification systematically, beginning with sin (chapter 1) and ending with assurance (chapter 7). These chapters are undoubtedly the most theologically sophisticated of the book. Ryle defines terms, exegetes Scripture, makes important distinctions, discusses church formularies, quotes authorities, and refutes opponents. Yet at the same time, he never loses sight of the pastoral purposes of the work. I’m not aware of anything comparable in terms of theological depth and pastoral sensitivity.

The same is true of the chapters that make up the rest of the work. Because they were originally sermons, they necessarily contain more exhortation and practical application than the first seven chapters, but they are by no means theologically anemic. Ryle has no problem discussing the person of Christ, the inspiration of Scripture, or the nature of the church when the sermon text calls for it.

Ryle’s works are well-known and well-loved for their combination of solid doctrinal content and practical pastoral wisdom. In this respect, Holiness is probably Ryle at his very best.

Growth

Holiness takes growth seriously. Christians must grow in holiness, for sanctification is a progressive work. Holiness will force you to come to terms with this reality. True Christianity is a fight: “To be at peace with the world, the flesh, and the devil is to be at enmity with God, and in the broad way that leads to destruction. We have no option. We must either fight or be lost” (67).

Ryle reminds the reader that it is costly to follow Christ. It will cost a man his sin and self-righteousness, his love of peace and ease, and the favor of the world. Long before Dietrich Bonhoeffer criticized cheap grace, Ryle noted, “A religion that costs nothing is worth nothing! A cheap Christianity, without a cross, will prove in the end a useless Christianity, without a crown” (86).

Moreover, the Christian must “grow in grace.” Ryle explains,

When I speak of a man “growing in grace,” I mean simply this — that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual-mindedness more marked. He feels more of the power of godliness in his own heart. He manifests more of it in his life. He is going on from strength to strength, from faith to faith, and from grace to grace. (101)

And how do Christians grow? “He that would grow in grace must use the means of growth” (109), which include the private means of grace (prayer and Bible reading, meditation and self-examination, and habitual communion with Christ) and the public means of grace (the preached word and worship, the sacraments and Sabbath rest).

“It will cost you to follow Christ, but those costs pale in comparison to the reward that awaits those who persevere.”

These chapters are challenging, to be sure, but I find Ryle’s realism refreshing. There are no rose-colored glasses here. Ryle’s description of the Christian life is one that most of us can recognize and identify with. It is a fight. There are costs. Growth is essential and difficult. And there is an urgency here that is palpable. Even so, I emerge from these chapters more encouraged to pursue holiness than when I begin reading. There are resources as well as challenges. True Christianity is a good fight. Ryle reminds us that we have the best generals, the best helps, the best promises, and assurance of victory. It will cost you to follow Christ, but those costs pale in comparison to the reward that awaits those who persevere. And growth is necessary, but there are means available within the reach of all believers that will help them to “grow in grace.”

Christ

Finally, Holiness takes Christ seriously. The person and work of Christ is, perhaps, the greatest theme of this work. Ryle certainly intended it to be so.

Christ is “the sun and center” of Christian piety. “What the sun is in the firmament of heaven, that Christ is in true Christianity” (377). Communion with Christ is “the one secret of eminent holiness. He that would be conformed to Christ’s image, and become a Christ-like man, must be constantly studying Christ Himself” (234). Moreover, Christ is the “mainspring both of doctrinal and practical Christianity. A right knowledge of Christ is essential to a right knowledge of sanctification as well as justification. He that follows after holiness will make no progress unless he gives to Christ his rightful place” (370).

The last chapter sums up the place of Christ in Holiness — “Christ is all.” It is one of the most outstanding chapters Ryle ever wrote, which is saying quite a lot. Instead of describing it, let me just encourage you to read it, along with the chapters that precede it. It is a moving reminder that personal holiness is Christocentric and cruciform. Ryle closes Holiness with these words:

Let us live on Christ. Let us live in Christ. Let us live with Christ. Let us live to Christ. So doing, we shall prove that we fully realize that “Christ is all.” So doing, we shall feel great peace, and attain more of that “holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.” (389)

J.C. Ryle’s Holiness certainly can help you along in this great pursuit.