Holiness: The False and the True
Book Study
Resources
Click here to go to the free online archive copy of this book.​
In my work for the Lord over the years, I have encountered a great lack of clarity regarding the call to holiness among the saints. It seems that most saints just accept whatever lessons about holiness that were put before them when they were young in the faith. Such was the case for Ironside as well.
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This book has two sections:
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Part I- Autobiographical; about 40 pages; in which the author identifies how he was lead to believe certain unbiblical teaching about holiness in his life.
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Part II- Doctrinal; the remaining 90+ pages; in which the author identifies the full doctrine of holiness in the life of a believer from his own more mature study of God’s Word.
Section 1
If you read only the first section of the book, giving yourself time to consider it seriously, you will be confronted with what may well sound too familiar about your misconceptions about holiness in your own life. If you go on through the entire book, I am sure that your misapprehensions about holiness can be forever corrected through Ironside’s careful teaching.
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As I suggested at the first, the majority of saints I have encountered in American Christianity hold immature views about holiness. While they often outwardly reject the notion that Christians are to be ‘sinlessly perfect,’ there is a great ongoing struggle to at least ‘be as holy as they can manage to be.’ As a result, they find themselves measuring themselves [and other Christians around them] as to just how holy they really are. It becomes a constant ‘issue.’
Section 2
There are two primary reasons this is the norm among saints in conservative churches in America. The first is that, while they are taught that being ‘sinlessly perfect’ is beyond their reach, nevertheless, they must strive earnestly to manifest as much holiness as they possibly can. So there is enormous pressure for them to at the very least align with whatever their pastor and their church defines as a holy life. This changes from one pastor to the next and from one church to the next.
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The second is akin to that. This striving to be holy nearly always drives them to ‘behave religiously’ even when their heart is really not in it. Religious flesh thrives under such conditions. Unless genuine holiness is arising from a deep personal connectedness to Christ Himself, the trappings of a ‘dedicated Christian life’ are empty.
In his final chapter, Ironside says the following:
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"All efforts to attain sinless perfection in this world can only end in failure and leave the seeker disappointed and heartsick.
Is there not then a “higher life” than that which many believers enjoy? The true answer is that there is but one life for all God’s children. Christ Himself is our life. The only difference is that in some that blessed life is more fully manifested than in others, because all do not give Him the same place in the heart’s affections. It is a sad and unsatisfactory thing when He only He has only the first place in our hearts. He asks for the whole heart, not a part—though it be the most important part. If He be thus enthroned, and reign alone in the seat of our affections, we shall surely manifest that divine life more fully than if the world and self are allowed to intrude in what should be His sole abode." p.133
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When we as Christians are compelled to align with outward standards that in themselves purportedly ‘prove’ our holiness, it is no longer Christ Himself that others encounter in us, but our own religious flesh.