Quotes about Holiness

Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer. I cannot forget this. I look at men's lives. I believe that few pray.

Holiness is the habit of being of one mind with God, according as we find His mind described in Scripture. It is the habit of agreeing with God's judgment — hating what He hates, loving what He loves, and measuring everything in this world by the standard of His Word. He who most entirely agrees with God is the one who is the most holy.

When days of darkness come upon us, let us not consider it a perplexing thing. Rather, let us remember that lessons are learned on such days that would never have been learned in sunshine. Let us say to ourselves, "This also is for my profit, that I may be a partaker of God's holiness. It is sent in love. I am in God's best school. Correction is instruction. This is meant to make me grow.

Simply put, where there is no sanctification of life, there is no real faith in Christ.

I have had a deep conviction for many years that practical holiness and entire self-consecration to God are not sufficiently attended to by modern Christians in this country. Politics, or controversy, or party-spirit, or worldliness, have eaten out the heart of lively piety in too many of us.

How true it is that the holiest saint in his humanness is a miserable sinner and a debtor to mercy and grace to the last moment of his existence

Gold is not less gold if it is mingled with alloy, nor is light less light if it is faint and dim, nor is grace less grace because it is young and weak. But after every allowance, I cannot see how anyone deserves to be called holy who willfully allows himself to sin and is not humbled and ashamed because of sin. I dare not call anyone holy who makes a habit of willfully neglecting known duties or willfully doing what he knows God has commanded him not to do.

To expect wages after doing no work, prosperity after making no effort, or learning after neglecting books is utter foolishness. But to expect heaven without faith in Christ, or the kingdom of God without being born again, or the crown of glory without the cross and a holy walk — all this is greater folly still and yet more common. Sadly, this is the foolishness of the world!

The holiest people have many blemishes and defects when weighed in the balance of the sanctuary. Their life is a continual warfare with sin, the world, and the devil. Sometimes you will see them being overcome rather than overcoming. The flesh is always fighting against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh (Galatians 5:17),

For another thing, let us be certain of our own condition and never rest until we feel and know that we are sanctified ourselves. What are our tastes, choices, likings, and inclinations? This is the great test question. It matters little what we wish and hope and desire to be before we die. Where are we now? What are we doing? Are we sanctified or not? If not, the fault is all our own.

Most men hope to go to heaven when they die; but few, it may be feared, take the trouble to consider whether they would enjoy heaven if they got there. Heaven is essentially a holy place; it's inhabitants are all holy; it's occupations are all holy.

Of spiritual strife, exertion, conflict, self-denial, keeping watch, and battle, they know literally nothing at all. Such Christianity may satisfy people, and those who say anything against it may be considered to be very harsh and uncharitable, but it certainly is not the Christianity of the Bible. It is not the religion that the Lord Jesus founded and His apostles preached. It is not the religion that produces real holiness. True Christianity is a "fight.