#holiness

Curiously enough, it is a fear of how grace will change and improve them that keeps many souls away from God. They want God to take them as they are and let them stay that way. They want Him to take away their love of riches, but not their riches—to purge them of the disgust of sin, but not of the pleasure of sin. Some of them equate goodness with indifference to evil and think that God is good if He is broad-minded or tolerant about evil. Like the onlookers at the Cross, they want God on their terms, not His, and they shout, “Come down, and we will believe.” But the things they ask are the marks of a false religion: it promises salvation without a cross, abandonment without sacrifice, Christ without his nails. God is a consuming fire; our desire for God must include a willingness to have the chaff burned from our intellect and the weeds of our sinful will purged. The very fear souls have of surrendering themselves to the Lord with a cross is an evidence of their instinctive belief in His Holiness. Because God is fire, we cannot escape Him, whether we draw near for conversion or flee from aversion: in either case, He affects us. If we accept His love, its fires will illumine and warm us; if we reject Him, they will still burn on in us in frustration and remorse. ↗

— Fulton J. Sheen

#sanctification #change

Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man. ↗

— Oswald Chambers

#end #happiness #holiness #man

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#dignity #even #holiness #imagine #more

This perfection is the restoration of man to the state of holiness from which he fell, by creating him anew in Christ Jesus, and restoring to him that image and likeness of God which he has lost. ↗

— Adam Clarke

#christ #creating #fell #god #him

Certainly our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters need to be supported in living out their call to holiness. ↗

— Salvatore J. Cordileone

#call #certainly #gay #holiness #lesbian

All things as they move toward God are beautiful, and they are ugly as they move away from Him. ↗

— A.W. Tozer

#sanctification #beauty

But saints and angels behold that glory of God which consists in the beauty of His holiness; and it is this sight only that will melt and humble the hearts of men, wean them from the world, draw them to God, and effectually change them. A sight of the awful greatness of God may overpower men's strength, and be more than they can endure; but if the moral beauty of God be hid, the enmity of the heart will remain in its full strength. No love will be enkindled; the will, instead of being effectually gained, will remain inflexible. But the first glimpse of the moral and spiritual glory of God shining into the heart produces all these effects as it were with omnipotent power, which nothing can withstand. ↗

— Jonathan Edwards

#god #holiness #love #beauty

Christ's death is the Christian's life. Christ's cross is the Christian's title to heaven. Christ "lifted up" and put to shame on Calvary is the ladder by which Christians "enter into the holiest," and are at length landed in glory. ↗

— J.C. Ryle

#christ #christianity #christianlife #christians #cross

My righteousness is just as good as Jesus' righteousness, because it IS Jesus' righteousness! ↗

— E.W. Kenyon

#faith #holiness #jesus #righteousness #faith

Holiness has most often been revealed to me in the exquisite pun of the first syllable, in holes- in not enough help, in brokenness, mess. High holy places, with ethereal sounds and stained glass, can massage my illusion of holiness, but in holes and lostness I can pick up the light of small ordinary progress, newly made moments flecked like pepper into the slog and the disruptions. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#faith #holiness #holy #ordinary #faith