WE HAD JUST COMPLETED two days of speaking to an exuberant group of couples in the southeast end of London. The venue was only two blocks from the famed Abbey Road Studios where tourists take countless photos of themselves walking over the zebra crossing to replicate the cover of the Beatles’ 1969 Abbey Road album.
Following our seminar, we ambled over to the crossing and did our own imitations of Paul and Ringo. We had the time because we were staying over a couple of days to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Our boys were safe at home in Seattle with their grandmother, so we were footloose and carefree—just the two of us.
Wedding anniversaries are big occasions with us, so we splurged shamelessly. A nice hotel, a leisurely brunch after waking without an alarm clock, window-shopping on Oxford Street, high tea at Fortnum & Mason in the afternoon, a dinner of prime rib and Yorkshire pudding and cherries jubilee that night at the Savoy Grill. Then, under a clear night sky, we strolled hand-in-hand along Westminster Bridge while taking in the majesty of Big Ben, London’s iconic landmark. Extravagant? Luxurious? Delicious? Romantic? Yes, all of the above. The entire experience was idyllic—one for the memory books.
And then, suddenly, without warning, it happened.
“I want to buy a couple of sweatshirts for the boys,” Leslie said.
“Um, hmm,” I replied, watching people hop onto the back of a bus. “Why don’t we have double-decker buses in Seattle?”
“Did you hear me?” Leslie said a bit sternly.
“Sure. You want to buy something for the boys.”
“Do you remember where we saw those red ones near the hotel?”
“They’re all over the place,” I said, pointing to a line of red buses.
“I’m talking about sweatshirts,” said Leslie. “Do you think they’d still be open this late?”
“I’m pretty sure we can’t fit two big sweatshirts into our suitcase. Besides, do you think they really need more sweatshirts?”
Sensing she was going to have to argue a strong case for buying the sweatshirts, Leslie replied with an edge in her voice, “I’m not going home without something for the boys.”
Empathy is the great unsung human gift.
JEAN BAKER MILLER
“Fine,” I replied, thinking we could still steer this conversation away from the brink. “How about something easier to pack?”
“They love those hooded sweatshirts. Are you going to help me find them or not?” Leslie abruptly unfolded a map of the city.
“I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re saying!”
“Oh, really?” I said with a caustic tone. “What am I saying?”
Leslie, having found something on the map—or just pretending she had—started to walk quickly, a couple of paces in front of me, without saying anything.
“Why are you walking so fast?” I asked as if I didn’t know.
“Angry energy,” she snapped without skipping a beat.
“Angry energy?” I asked with genuine intrigue and a little grin in my voice. It was a pretty astute comment for someone so perturbed.
She didn’t answer. We walked in silence for a few paces, Leslie marching two steps ahead of me.
At the end of the block, waiting for a traffic signal to change, she said, “Maybe we should stop in there for a while.” She pointed to a sign on an historic building: Cabinet War Rooms.
I smiled.
She smiled back.
That was it.
We found a turning point. The icy tension of our brief spat was about to thaw. Without saying another word, we held hands again and kept walking the better part of the block. The pressure was off, but we needed a moment to let our hearts recalibrate.
After a few more strides, Leslie squeezed my hand to say she was with me. I got the message and squeezed back.
We came to Downing Street. “Shall we see if the prime minister is in?” I asked.
“He’s probably managing an international conflict somewhere,” she said, knowing she was lobbing me an easy one.
“Or maybe one with his wife,” I quipped.
We walked a few more steps and turned the corner, literally and metaphorically.
“We did a nice job there,” Leslie said, still holding my hand.
I knew exactly what she meant.
We were quietly congratulating ourselves on putting the kibosh on what could have become a full-fledged fight. In spite of the flare-up, we were still an “us.” We’d staved off a quarrel that was looking to come between us. We’d turned around our tiny tiff in just a few moments, and we knew we were stronger because of it. Early in our marriage, the same kind of quarrel could have snowballed into a brawl that would have spoiled the whole trip. One of us would have resorted to fighting dirty, sabotaging the solution with sanctimonious blame or upping the ante by sniping at the other’s character.
Not now. We’ve gotten wise to the ways of the marital street fight. We’ve learned to cut it down before it cuts us up. No blood. No scars. Not even a scratch. We’ve learned a better way that actually draws us closer. In short, we’ve learned the difference between fighting with honor and fighting without it. The former is always better.
Parrott, D. L. & L., & Parrott, L. (2013). The good fight: how conflict can bring you closer. Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing.
IN THE ROMANTIC COMEDY Just Married, Tom Leezak, played by Ashton Kutcher, is a blue-collar radio reporter when he meets Sarah McNerney, the daughter of a millionaire, played by Brittany Murphy. The unlikely couple falls in love and gets married.
They fly to Europe for what turns into an excruciatingly long honeymoon. An accident en route to their hotel forces them to sleep overnight in a car that is stuck in a snowbank. Once in their hotel, they’re kicked out when an accidental fire breaks out in their room. With no vacancies in any other hotels, the couple is forced to stay at a filthy boardinghouse.
Tensions between the two escalate. In Florence, Sarah wants to visit churches and museums, but Tom is content to hang out in an American bar and watch the Dodgers on satellite television. To make matters worse, Sarah’s ex-boyfriend shows up on a business trip and attempts to spend time with her.
The couple returns from their honeymoon seething with anger and convinced they made a terrible mistake in getting married. Both agree that they want a divorce. Sarah’s family hovers around her in their gated mansion while Tom seeks solace from Kyle, his old roommate.
Convinced he doesn’t have what it takes to measure up to Sarah’s wealthy family’s expectations (or hers), Tom retreats to his dad’s house. The scene opens with Tom seated on the couch next to his father in the family room. He and his dad are watching a baseball game on television.
His dad asks, “Gonna tell me what you’re chewing on?”
Tom responds without looking at his dad: “I just don’t know if love is enough anymore.”
“What do you mean, ‘enough’?” his father questions.
“I mean, even if Sarah and I do love each other, maybe we need more time to get to know each other.” Tom’s eyes nervously dart toward the ground.
The father looks at his son with compassion and replies, “So what you’re saying here is a couple of bad days in Europe and it’s over? It’s time to grow up, Tommy. Some days your mother and me loved each other. Other days we had to work at it.”
He reaches down to the coffee table and picks up a family photo album. “You never see the hard days in a photo album, but those are the ones that get you from one happy snapshot to the next. I’m sorry your honeymoon stunk, but that’s what you got dealt. Now you gotta work through it. Sarah doesn’t need a guy with a fat wallet to make her happy. I saw how you love this girl, how you two lit each other up. She doesn’t need any more security than that.”
How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.
SIGMUND FREUD
Grateful for his dad’s advice, Tom glances toward his father and says, “Thanks.”
The scene dissolves to Kyle and Tom in conversation. His old roommate asks, “Is it over?” To which Tom replies, “Not even close!”
Marriage, over time, is made up of more hard days than most of us can count. After all, we fall in love with a dream and marry a fantasy. We can’t help it. Our hopes are high and our outlook is at the peak of optimism. Our partner’s flaws are hidden deep in the background. Our challenges haven’t even registered. Because this person loves us and we love this person, we feel connected and completed.
But eventually—though not typically on the honeymoon—things start to go badly. The illusion begins to fade, and we start seeing less-than-appealing qualities in our mate we hadn’t seen before. Even traits we once admired begin to grate on our nerves. We feel our partner isn’t loving us and caring for us as promised. Since we’re no longer getting what we need, we try to coerce our mate into caring through criticism, intimidation, shame, withdrawal, crying, anger—whatever works. Of course, our partner is doing the same with us. The power struggle starts and the bickering begins.
Why? The answer is often deeper than you might think.
Parrott, D. L. & L., & Parrott, L. (2013). The good fight: how conflict can bring you closer. Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing.
May I read you a few lines from Tolstoy’s War and Peace?
When Boris entered the room, Prince Andrey was listening to an old general, wearing his decorations, who was reporting something to Prince Andrey, with an expression of soldierly servility on his purple face. “Alright. Please wait!” he said to the general, speaking in Russian with the French accent which he used when he spoke with contempt. The moment he noticed Boris he stopped listening to the general who trotted imploringly after him and begged to be heard, while Prince Andrey turned to Boris with a cheerful smile and a nod of the head. Boris now clearly understood—what he had already guessed—that side by side with the system of discipline and subordination which were laid down in the Army Regulations, there existed a different and more real system—the system which compelled a tightly laced general with a purple face to wait respectfully for his turn while a mere captain like Prince Andrey chatted with a mere second lieutenant like Boris. Boris decided at once that he would be guided not by the official system but by this other unwritten system.
When you invite a middle-aged moralist to address you, I suppose I must conclude, however unlikely the conclusion seems, that you have a taste for middle-aged moralising. I shall do my best to gratify it. I shall in fact, give you advice about the world in which you are going to live. I do not mean by this that I am going to talk on what are called current affairs. You probably know quite as much about them as I do. I am not going to tell you—except in a form so general that you will hardly recognise it—what part you ought to play in post-war reconstruction.
It is not, in fact, very likely that any of you will be able, in the next ten years, to make any direct contribution to the peace or prosperity of Europe. You will be busy finding jobs, getting married, acquiring facts. I am going to do something more old-fashioned than you perhaps expected. I am going to give advice. I am going to issue warnings. Advice and warnings about things which are so perennial that no one calls them “current affairs.”
And of course everyone knows what a middle-aged moralist of my type warns his juniors against. He warns them against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. But one of this trio will be enough to deal with today. The Devil, I shall leave strictly alone. The association between him and me in the public mind has already gone quite as deep as I wish: in some quarters it has already reached the level of confusion, if not of identification. I begin to realise the truth of the old proverb that he who sups with that formidable host needs a long spoon. As for the Flesh, you must be very abnormal young people if you do not know quite as much about it as I do. But on the World I think I have something to say.
In the passage I have just read from Tolstoy, the young second lieutenant Boris Dubretskoi discovers that there exist in the army two different systems or hierarchies. The one is printed in some little red book and anyone can easily read it up. It also remains constant. A general is always superior to a colonel, and a colonel to a captain. The other is not printed anywhere. Nor is it even a formally organised secret society with officers and rules which you would be told after you had been admitted. You are never formally and explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that it exists and that you are outside it; and then later, perhaps, that you are inside it.
There are what correspond to passwords, but they are too spontaneous and informal. A particular slang, the use of particular nicknames, an allusive manner of conversation, are the marks. But it is not so constant. It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out, but there are always several on the borderline. And if you come back to the same Divisional Headquarters, or Brigade Headquarters, or the same regiment or even the same company, after six weeks’ absence, you may find this secondary hierarchy quite altered.
There are no formal admissions or expulsions. People think they are in it after they have in fact been pushed out of it, or before they have been allowed in: this provides great amusement for those who are really inside. It has no fixed name. The only certain rule is that the insiders and outsiders call it by different names. From inside it may be designated, in simple cases, by mere enumeration: it may be called “You and Tony and me.” When it is very secure and comparatively stable in membership it calls itself “we.” When it has to be expanded to meet a particular emergency it calls itself “all the sensible people at this place.” From outside, if you have dispaired of getting into it, you call it “That gang” or “they” or “So-and-so and his set” or “The Caucus” or “The Inner Ring.” If you are a candidate for admission you probably don’t call it anything. To discuss it with the other outsiders would make you feel outside yourself. And to mention talking to the man who is inside, and who may help you if this present conversation goes well, would be madness.
Badly as I may have described it, I hope you will all have recognised the thing I am describing. Not, of course, that you have been in the Russian Army, or perhaps in any army. But you have met the phenomenon of an Inner Ring. You discovered one in your house at school before the end of the first term. And when you had climbed up to somewhere near it by the end of your second year, perhaps you discovered that within the ring there was a Ring yet more inner, which in its turn was the fringe of the great school Ring to which the house Rings were only satellites. It is even possible that the school ring was almost in touch with a Masters’ Ring. You were beginning, in fact, to pierce through the skins of an onion. And here, too, at your University—shall I be wrong in assuming that at this very moment, invisible to me, there are several rings—independent systems or concentric rings—present in this room? And I can assure you that in whatever hospital, inn of court, diocese, school, business, or college you arrive after going down, you will find the Rings—what Tolstoy calls the second or unwritten systems.
All this is rather obvious. I wonder whether you will say the same of my next step, which is this. I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside. This desire, in one of its forms, has indeed had ample justice done to it in literature. I mean, in the form of snobbery. Victorian fiction is full of characters who are hag-ridden by the desire to get inside that particular Ring which is, or was, called Society. But it must be clearly understood that “Society,” in that sense of the word, is merely one of a hundred Rings, and snobbery therefore only one form of the longing to be inside.
People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form. It may be the very intensity of their desire to enter some quite different Ring which renders them immune from all the allurements of high life. An invitation from a duchess would be very cold comfort to a man smarting under the sense of exclusion from some artistic or communistic côterie. Poor man—it is not large, lighted rooms, or champagne, or even scandals about peers and Cabinet Ministers that he wants: it is the sacred little attic or studio, the heads bent together, the fog of tobacco smoke, and the delicious knowledge that we—we four or five all huddled beside this stove—are the people who know.
Often the desire conceals itself so well that we hardly recognize the pleasures of fruition. Men tell not only their wives but themselves that it is a hardship to stay late at the office or the school on some bit of important extra work which they have been let in for because they and So-and-so and the two others are the only people left in the place who really know how things are run. But it is not quite true. It is a terrible bore, of course, when old Fatty Smithson draws you aside and whispers, “Look here, we’ve got to get you in on this examination somehow” or “Charles and I saw at once that you’ve got to be on this committee.” A terrible bore… ah, but how much more terrible if you were left out! It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free because you don’t matter, that is much worse.
Freud would say, no doubt, that the whole thing is a subterfuge of the sexual impulse. I wonder whether the shoe is not sometimes on the other foot. I wonder whether, in ages of promiscuity, many a virginity has not been lost less in obedience to Venus than in obedience to the lure of the caucus. For of course, when promiscuity is the fashion, the chaste are outsiders. They are ignorant of something that other people know. They are uninitiated. And as for lighter matters, the number of people who first smoked or first got drunk for a similar reason is probably very large.
I must now make a distinction. I am not going to say that the existence of Inner Rings is an Evil. It is certainly unavoidable. There must be confidential discussions: and it is not only a bad thing, it is (in itself) a good thing, that personal friendship should grow up between those who work together. And it is perhaps impossible that the official hierarchy of any organisation should coincide with its actual workings. If the wisest and most energetic people held the highest spots, it might coincide; since they often do not, there must be people in high positions who are really deadweights and people in lower positions who are more important than their rank and seniority would lead you to suppose. It is necessary: and perhaps it is not a necessary evil. But the desire which draws us into Inner Rings is another matter. A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous. As Byron has said:
Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet
The unexpected death of some old lady.
The painless death of a pious relative at an advanced age is not an evil. But an earnest desire for her death on the part of her heirs is not reckoned a proper feeling, and the law frowns on even the gentlest attempts to expedite her departure. Let Inner Rings be unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?
I have no right to make assumptions about the degree to which any of you may already be compromised. I must not assume that you have ever first neglected, and finally shaken off, friends whom you really loved and who might have lasted you a lifetime, in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more esoteric. I must not ask whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of the outsiders after you, yourself were in: whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable.
I will ask only one question—and it is, of course, a rhetorical question which expects no answer. IN the whole of your life as you now remember it, has the desire to be on the right side of that invisible line ever prompted you to any act or word on which, in the cold small hours of a wakeful night, you can look back with satisfaction? If so, your case is more fortunate than most.
My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it—this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this. Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care. That will be the natural thing—the life that will come to you of its own accord. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of conscious and continuous effort. If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an “inner ringer.” I don’t say you’ll be a successful one; that’s as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in—one way or the other you will be that kind of man.
I have already made it fairly clear that I think it better for you not to be that kind of man. But you may have an open mind on the question. I will therefore suggest two reasons for thinking as I do.
It would be polite and charitable, and in view of your age reasonable too, to suppose that none of you is yet a scoundrel. On the other hand, by the mere law of averages (I am saying nothing against free will) it is almost certain that at least two or three of you before you die will have become something very like scoundrels. There must be in this room the makings of at least that number of unscrupulous, treacherous, ruthless egotists. The choice is still before you: and I hope you will not take my hard words about your possible future characters as a token of disrespect to your present characters.
And the prophecy I make is this. To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”
And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.
That is my first reason. Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.
My second reason is this. The torture allotted to the Danaids in the classical underworld, that of attempting to fill sieves with water, is the symbol not of one vice, but of all vices. It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.
This is surely very clear when you come to think of it. If you want to be made free of a certain circle for some wholesome reason—if, say, you want to join a musical society because you really like music—then there is a possibility of satisfaction. You may find yourself playing in a quartet and you may enjoy it. But if all you want is to be in the know, your pleasure will be short lived. The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic.
Once the first novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or wit or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be “in.” And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring. The rainbow’s end will still be ahead of you. The old ring will now be only the drab background for your endeavor to enter the new one.
And you will always find them hard to enter, for a reason you very well know. You yourself, once you are in, want to make it hard for the next entrant, just as those who are already in made it hard for you. Naturally. In any wholesome group of people which holds together for a good purpose, the exclusions are in a sense accidental. Three or four people who are together for the sake of some piece of work exclude others because there is work only for so many or because the others can’t in fact do it. Your little musical group limits its numbers because the rooms they meet in are only so big. But your genuine Inner Ring exists for exclusion. There’d be no fun if there were no outsiders. The invisible line would have no meaning unless most people were on the wrong side of it. Exclusion is no accident; it is the essence.
The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.
And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.
We are told in Scripture that those who ask get. That is true, in senses I can’t now explore. But in another sense there is much truth in the schoolboy’s principle “them as asks shan’t have.” To a young person, just entering on adult life, the world seems full of “insides,” full of delightful intimacies and confidentialities, and he desires to enter them. But if he follows that desire he will reach no “inside” that is worth reaching. The true road lies in quite another direction. It is like the house in Alice Through the Looking Glass.
_____________________________
* C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. “The Inner Ring” was the Memorial Lecture at King’s College, University of London, in 1944. http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php
BUILDING BLOCK #7: TOUCHING
There’s power in appropriate touching between friends. A genuine friend should be someone you feel you can hug, someone you can pat on the back.
A while back, I was eating alone in a restaurant, and I noticed that a certain man in the restaurant was giving his waitress a very hard time about something. Rather than respond in a negative manner, she reached out and touched him lightly on the shoulder and said, “I’m sorry …” She didn’t have to say anything more. The instant she touched him, he melted—his countenance changed and so did the tone of his voice.
Most people are hungry to be touched—it’s a sign to them of care, empathy, concern, appreciation, and value. If a person comes to me after a church service and tells me that he’s heartbroken—perhaps his wife has abandoned their family, he has been left alone with their children, and he doesn’t know where to turn or what to do—this man doesn’t want me to keep my distance and say coldly, “Well, I know God will help you.” No. He wants a pastor who will reach out and hug him or put his arm around him and look him in the eye and say, “I hurt for you. I’m going to pray for you and believe for God’s best in your life. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you.”
I am certainly not advocating that you hug every person in sight, or that you be overly affectionate with casual acquaintances. You must be sensitive to what another person needs and desires—you should touch another person only in a way you know is comfortable for that person. A friend, however, should be someone that you don’t think twice about touching when you desire to express pure, nonsexual affection, comfort, or appreciation.
BUILDING BLOCK #8: TRANSPARENCY
Transparency means not holding deceitful motives, hiding your feelings, or harboring a secret agenda in your dealings with another person. If you are going to develop a genuine friendship with another person, you are going to have to let that person see the real you.
THE SUM IS LOVE
All of these building blocks add up to one simple four-letter word: love. A person you love is a person you spend time with, talk to, cry with and laugh with, are thankful for, do thoughtful things for, tolerate without complaining, touch with affection, are transparent with, speak the truth to, and trust.
The cardinal principle for having a deep, close, godly friend is to be such a friend.
Stanley, C. F. (2002). Walking wisely: real guidance for life’s journey (pp. 181–182). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
BUILDING BLOCK #5: THOUGHTFUL GESTURES
Sometimes the best way to show your appreciation for a friend is to do something for your friend or give something to your friend. The deed or item need not be grandiose or extravagant—rather, something that conveys the message, “I’m thinking of you. I listen to you. I know what you like—yes, even what you need.” A friend takes joy in giving something that he knows his friend desires.
One of my friends is a tremendous giver. He is always sending me something that he thinks I’ll enjoy—since he travels a lot and we have a number of common interests, his gifts are always meaningful to me and sometimes rather unusual. As much as I have protested about his gifts to me, he continues to send them. One day he said to me, “I’m just a giver. It’s what I do. You can’t ever out give me, so don’t even try. I get a lot of joy out of giving. Don’t rob me of that joy by telling me not to give.”
Husband, does your wife like flowers? Surprise her with a bundle of flowers now and then. Giving her something that you know she likes is a way of saying, “I’m glad you’re in my life.” Similarly, wife, give your husband something every now and then that is a special surprise, which says, “I am glad you’re with me.”
A woman told me recently what a friend had done for her. This woman had received word that a family of five was on its way to spend a week at her home while they enrolled their daughter in a nearby college. She had shared news of their impending visit with her friend. The next day, that friend showed up with a large casserole and the comment, “I made extra. I thought you might be able to use this.” This woman said, “Now that’s a friend! She knew exactly what would bless me most on that particular day.”
BUILDING BLOCK #6: TOLERANCE
Friends tolerate the occasional bad mood, the hurtful comment said in haste, or the bad attitude that’s the result of being too tired or too stressed out.
Sometimes tolerance means putting up with an annoying habit. Sometimes it means cutting that person some slack when he’s fifteen minutes late … again. Not long ago, I sat and listened to a friend of mine tell a story I’ve heard so many times I could tell it in detail myself. This man knew I’d heard the story. Everybody else at the table had heard it. But we all listened as if we were listening for the first time. He’s our friend.
Stanley, C. F. (2002). Walking wisely: real guidance for life’s journey (pp. 179–181). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
BUILDING BLOCK #3: SHARED TEARS AND LAUGHTER
Genuine friends cry together and laugh together. If a person is a genuine friend, you should have no hesitation whatsoever in going to that person when you are hurt, rejected, or disappointed … or when you have a triumphant moment!
Those who stuff all of their emotions—both sorrow and joy—do damage to their own physical health. We all need the “release” of tears and laughter in order to vent our emotions.
BUILDING BLOCK #4: EXPRESSED THANKFULNESS
A friend voices thanksgiving for his or her friends. Not too long ago, one of my friends showed up just when I needed someone to talk to about a situation I was facing. I said to him, “You have an uncanny way of showing up just when I need a listening ear and feel the need to pour out my heart. I’m thankful for you in my life. I’m thankful for the direction and wise counsel you give me!” And I am.
I have a photographer friend who calls me about once a week. I’m never quite sure where he’ll be when he calls—one of his recent calls was from Paris. I can always count on his saying two things to me at some point in the call: “I’m grateful to God for our friendship” and “I love you, brother.” To have a friend who will openly and frequently make those two statements is a wonderful thing! If you haven’t told a friend lately that you are grateful to God for his presence in your life … or if you haven’t said, “I love you,” to a friend … I encourage you to do so.
Stanley, C. F. (2002). Walking wisely: real guidance for life’s journey (pp. 178–179). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
Deep, constant, godly friendships don’t just “happen.” They are built. There are eight essential building blocks required.
BUILDING BLOCK #1: TIME
You must be willing to spend time with your friends. I must admit, I probably have lost some friends through the years because I have said, “I don’t have time,” when they invited me to go places or share experiences with them. The more honest truth is—I didn’t choose to make the time. We all tend to make time for the things we want to do. We must also make time for the relationships we desire to have.
When we don’t have time for our friends, we likely aren’t valuing our friends as we should. We also must be aware that we have only so much time in life, and we likely have only the necessary time for a handful of genuine deep friendships. That does not mean we can’t have more casual friendships—but for a truly deep friendship to develop, time together is a vital ingredient.
BUILDING BLOCK #2: TALK
A second building block to a good relationship is talk. Conversation is the way you discover more about a person—it is a window through which to peer into another person’s heart, mind, soul, and spirit. The more you converse with a person and see inside that person, the more you know about the person. And the more you know about a person, the more you love him or her—or perhaps, the more you realize that your friendship is likely to be short-lived.
Through the years I’ve heard countless wives say about their husbands, “I just wish he’d talk to me.” The fact is—these wives wanted to know their husbands better. They wanted to know what their husbands were thinking and feeling. When a man doesn’t talk to his wife, he puts up a barrier to her understanding him. Husband … take time to talk to your wife. You may not feel a need to talk, but she needs to hear you talk!
When you are with a friend, the topic of your conversation doesn’t really matter. I meet regularly on Saturday mornings to have breakfast with three of my buddies. We go to the same restaurant every Saturday—in fact, the restaurant personnel are so accustomed to our coming that they set aside a certain table just for us.
These three men are in professions different from mine, but we have many common interests. What do we discuss? Anything and everything. We talk about whatever pops into our minds. Our conversation is free-flowing, easy, and natural—no subject is off-limits, no topic is too trivial or too big. We are open with one another. We are friends.
Stanley, C. F. (2002). Walking wisely: real guidance for life’s journey (pp. 176–178). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
Another amazing creature is the ant. Solomon wrote, “Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which, having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest” (Proverbs 6:6–8). Solomon was right. Ants are some of the hardest workers in the animal kingdom. By most accounts, they are able to lift as much as fifty times their own weight. Ants also have proportionally larger brains than almost any other animal. They work cooperatively without any kind of supervisor. Their short lifetime (as brief as forty–five days in some species) is virtually nonstop work—building their nests, foraging for food, blazing trails, removing obstacles and otherwise maintaining those trails, and carrying food for the queen back to the nest. An ant’s life is no picnic. But ants are resilient. They can survive under water, in some cases for days. They can survive being frozen, and they can withstand high temperatures. They adapt quickly to changes in the environment or climate.
The wide variety of ant species is phenomenal. Nearly ten thousand different species of ants have been catalogued, and most entomologists believe there are thousands more species that have not yet been studied. The largest species of ants grow to more than an inch long; the smallest are less than a tenth of a centimeter. And yet ants probably make up more than 10 percent of the earth’s total biomass (meaning that ants account for more than a tenth of the world’s living tissue by total volume). Experts believe that all the world’s ants combined would outweigh all the humans in the world.
Ants live in colonies and are incapable of survival on their own. An ant colony is itself a kind of massive organism, with each individual ant contributing to the welfare of the whole colony. There is an intricate and well–defined hierarchy in every ant colony. At the heart of the colony is the queen—
a single queen in some species, multiple queens in others. The queen lays up to two or three thousand eggs per day. Worker ants are infertile females, and they make up the largest number of ants in any colony. Male ants exist primarily to mate with the queen, and they leave the nest and die shortly after mating. If the queen dies, the entire colony will soon die.
After a colony is established and ready to spawn new colonies, the queen lays special eggs that develop into males and young queens. Once they develop into adults, the young queens and males fly off together in swarms and mate in midflight. One mating flight supplies the queen with all the male seed she will need to fertilize every egg she will ever lay. She then flies off to plant a new colony—usually alone. (In some species, however, several tiny workers cling to her legs with their powerful jaws, thus traveling with her to help plant the new colony.)
After this initial flight, the queen loses her wings and will never fly again. She prepares a nest and seals the entrance. In most species, she will stay in the nest for the remainder of her life. Until workers hatch and begin bringing her food, she lives off her own body fat, even consuming the now useless musculature that made her wings work. Her entire life from that point on will consist of laying eggs. (Queens have a much longer life span than worker ants, living as long as ten to twenty years.) She thus populates her entire colony, laying hundreds of thousands of eggs in a lifetime. In order to keep up this prodigious output, she requires massive amounts of food, all brought to her by the worker ants.
Some species of ants actually raid other colonies, take other ants’ pupae back to their own nests, and raise them as slaves. Amazon ants, for example, cannot survive without slaves. The shape of their mandibles does not permit them to dig their own nests or feed themselves. So they use other ant species as slaves.
Other species of ants actually cultivate fungus in their nests, fertilize their subterranean gardens with leaves and other organic material, and then harvest the fungus for food. One type of fungus growers are called leaf–cutting ants. They use their sharp mandibles to cut away large leaf–segments and carry them in long single–file lines back to their underground nests, where they chew the leaves and use the pulp as a medium for cultivating an edible fungus. Armies of leaf–cutting ants have been known to strip an entire fruit grove of leaves in a single night.
Dairying ants live off the honeydew left by aphids. They even “milk” the aphids by stroking them to get the aphids to release the honeydew. In return, the ants defend the aphids from predators. In the winter, dairying ants store aphid eggs in their nests and when they hatch in the spring, the ants carry the young aphids out to the plants. Some dairying ants keep permanent “herds” of aphids in their underground nests, where the aphids feed on roots while the ants harvest the honeydew. A queen of this species will carry an egg–laying aphid between her mandibles when she flies off to start a new colony.
Who taught those ants such efficient farming techniques? Clearly God did. He created ants in such abundant variety for a host of purposes that are ultimately beneficial for the whole earth. Ants serve a vital function in the maintenance of earth’s soil, aerating and fertilizing the soil, pollinating many plants, and performing a host of other ecological housecleaning services. Ants are so vital to earth’s well–being that if all the ants on earth died, the effect would be catastrophic. All earth’s land–based ecosystems would quickly collapse.
In fact, ants and plants are so utterly dependent on each other that one could not have possibly evolved before the other. This is further proof that a mere five literal days have elapsed since the beginning of creation. Had these been long eras rather than short days, the plants created on day three would have all perished long before the arrival of the ants on day six. They must have been created together, as Scripture says—in the same week. And the ants are yet another vivid reminder of God’s creative ingenuity.
MacArthur, J. (2001). The battle for the beginning: the Bible on creation and the fall of Adam (pp. 148–150). Nashville, TN: W Pub. Group.
III. Let me, in the last place, offer a word of advice to all who desire to be holy
Would you be holy? Would you become a new creature? Then you must begin with Christ. You will do just nothing at all, and make no progress till you feel your sin and weakness, and flee to Him. He is the root and beginning of all holiness, and the way to be holy is to come to Him by faith and be joined to Him. Christ is not wisdom and righteousness only to His people, but sanctification also. Men sometimes try to make themselves holy first of all, and sad work they make of it. They toil and labour, and turn over many new leaves, and make many changes; and yet, like the woman with the issue of blood, before she came to Christ, they feel “nothing bettered, but rather worse.” (Mark 5:26.) They run in vain, and labour in vain; and little wonder, for they are beginning at the wrong end. They are building up a wall of sand; their work runs down as fast as they throw it up. They are baling water out of a leaky vessel: the leak gains on them, not they on the leak. Other foundation of “holiness” can no man lay than that which Paul laid, even Christ Jesus. “Without Christ we can do nothing.” (John 15:5.) It is a strong but true saying of Traill’s, “Wisdom out of Christ is damning folly,—righteousness out of Christ is guilt and condemnation,—sanctification out of Christ is filth and sin,—redemption out of Christ is bondage and slavery.”
Do you want to attain holiness? Do you feel this day a real hearty desire to be holy? Would you be a partaker of the Divine nature? Then go to Christ. Wait for nothing. Wait for nobody. Linger not. Think not to make yourself ready. Go and say to Him, in the words of that beautiful hymn,—
“Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling;
Naked, flee to Thee for dress;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace.”
There is not a brick nor a stone laid in the work of our sanctification till we go to Christ. Holiness is His special gift to His believing people. Holiness is the work He carries on in their hearts, by the Spirit whom He puts within them. He is appointed a “Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance” as well as remission of sins.—“To as many as receive Him, He gives power to become sons of God.” (Acts 5:31; John 1:12, 13.) Holiness comes not of blood,—parents cannot give it to their children: nor yet of the will of the flesh,—man cannot produce it in himself: nor yet of the will of man,—ministers cannot give it you by baptism. Holiness comes from Christ. It is the result of vital union with Him. It is the fruit of being a living branch of the True Vine. Go then to Christ and say, “Lord, not only save me from the guilt of sin, but send the Spirit, whom Thou didst promise, and save me from its power. Make me holy. Teach me to do Thy will.”
Would you continue holy? Then abide in Christ. He says Himself, “Abide in Me and I in you,—he that abideth in Me and I in him, the same beareth much fruit.” (John 15:4, 5.) It pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell,—a full supply for all a believer’s wants. He is the Physician to whom you must daily go, if you would keep well. He is the Manna which you must daily eat, and the Rock of which you must daily drink. His arm is the arm on which you must daily lean, as you come up out of the wilderness of this world. You must not only be rooted, you must also be built up in Him. Paul was a man of God indeed,—a holy man,—a growing thriving Christian,—and what was the secret of it all? He was one to whom Christ was “all in all.” He was ever “looking unto Jesus.” “I can do all things,” he says, “through Christ which strengthened me.” “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. The life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God.” Let us go and do likewise. (Heb. 12:2; Phil. 4:13; Gal. 2:20.)
May all who read these pages know these things by experience, and not by hearsay only! May we all feel the importance of holiness, far more than we have ever done yet! May our years be holy years with our souls, and then they will be happy ones! Whether we live, may we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, may we die unto the Lord: or if He comes for us, may we be found in peace, without spot, and blameless!
Ryle, J. C. (1889). Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties and Roots (71–73). London: William Hunt and Company.
II. Let me try, in the next place, to show some reasons why practical holiness is so important
Can holiness save us? Can holiness put away sin,—cover iniquities,—make satisfaction for transgressions,—pay our debt to God? No: not a whit. God forbid that I should ever say so. Holiness can do none of these things. The brightest saints are all “unprofitable servants.” Our purest works are no better than filthy rags, when tried by the light of God’s holy law. The white robe which Jesus offers, and faith puts on, must be our only righteousness,—the name of Christ our only confidence,—the Lamb’s book of life our only title to heaven. With all our holiness we are no better than sinners. Our best things are stained and tainted with imperfection. They are all more or less incomplete, wrong in the motive or defective in the performance. By the deeds of the law shall no child of Adam ever be justified. “By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephes. 2:8, 9.)
Why then is holiness so important? Why does the Apostle say, “Without it no man shall see the Lord”? Let me set out in order a few reasons.
(a) For one thing, we must be holy, because the voice of God in Scripture plainly commands it. The Lord Jesus says to His people, “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:20.) “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48.) Paul tells the Thessalonians, “This is the will of God, even your sanctification.” (1 Thess. 4:3.) And Peter says, “As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:15, 16.) “In this,” says Leighton, “law and Gospel agree.”
(b) We must be holy, because this is one grand end and purpose for which Christ came into the world. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again.” (2 Cor. 5:15.) And to the Ephesians, “Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it.” (Ephes. 5:25, 26.) And to Titus, “He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” (Titus 2:14.) In short, to talk of men being saved from the guilt of sin, without being at the same time saved from its dominion in their hearts, is to contradict the witness of all Scripture. Are believers said to be elect?—it is “through sanctification of the Spirit.” Are they predestinated?—it is “to be conformed to the image of God’s Son.” Are they chosen?—it is “that they may be holy.” Are they called?—it is “with a holy calling.” Are they afflicted?—it is that they may be “partakers of holiness.” Jesus is a complete Saviour. He does not merely take away the guilt of a believer’s sin, He does more,—He breaks its power. (1 Peter 1:2; Rom. 8:29; Eph. 1:4; Heb. 12:10.)
(c) We must be holy, because this is the only sound evidence that we have a saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The Twelfth Article of our Church says truly, that “Although good works cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s judgment, yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith; insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by its fruits.” James warns us there is such a thing as a dead faith,—a faith which goes no further than the profession of the lips, and has no influence on a man’s character. (James 2:17.) True saving faith is a very different kind of thing. True faith will always show itself by its fruits,—it will sanctify, it will work by love, it will overcome the world, it will purify the heart. I know that people are fond of talking about death-bed evidences. They will rest on words spoken in the hours of fear, and pain, and weakness, as if they might take comfort in them about the friends they lose. But I am afraid in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred such evidences are not to be depended on. I suspect that, with rare exceptions, men die just as they have lived. The only safe evidence that we are one with Christ, and Christ in us, is holy life. They that live unto the Lord are generally the only people who die in the Lord. If we would die the death of the righteous, let us not rest in slothful desires only; let us seek to live His life. It is a true saying of Traill’s, “That man’s state is naught, and his faith unsound, that finds not his hopes of glory purifying to his heart and life.”
(d) We must be holy, because this is the only proof that we love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. This is a point on which He has spoken most plainly, in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of John. “If ye love Me, keep my commandments.”—“He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me.”—“If a man love Me he will keep my words.”—“Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” (John 14:15, 21, 23; 15:14.)—Plainer words than these it would be difficult to find, and woe to those who neglect them! Surely that man must be in an unhealthy state of soul who can think of all that Jesus suffered, and yet cling to those sins for which that suffering was undergone. It was sin that wove the crown of thorns,—it was sin that pierced our Lord’s hands, and feet, and side,—it was sin that brought Him to Gethsemane and Calvary, to the cross, and to the grave. Cold must our hearts be if we do not hate sin and labour to get rid of it, though we may have to cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye in doing it.
(e) We must be holy, because this is the only sound evidence that we are true children of God. Children in this world are generally like their parents. Some, doubtless, are more so, and some less,—but it is seldom indeed that you cannot trace a kind of family likeness. And it is much the same with the children of God. The Lord Jesus says, “If ye were Abraham’s children ye would do the works of Abraham.”—“If God were your Father ye would love Me.” (John 8:39, 42.) If men have no likeness to the Father in heaven, it is vain to talk of their being His “sons.” If we know nothing of holiness we may flatter ourselves as we please, but we have not got the Holy Spirit dwelling in us: we are dead, and must be brought to life again,—we are lost, and must be found. “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they,” and they only, “are the sons of God.” (Rom. 8:14.) We must show by our lives the family we belong to.—We must let men see by our good conversation that we are indeed the children of the Holy One, or our son-ship is but an empty name. “Say not,” says Gurnall, “that thou hast royal blood in thy veins, and art born of God, except thou canst prove thy pedigree by daring to be holy.”
(f) We must be holy, because this is the most likely way to do good to others. We cannot live to ourselves only in this world. Our lives will always be doing either good or harm to those who see them. They are a silent sermon which all can read. It is sad indeed when they are a sermon for the devil’s cause, and not for God’s. I believe that far more is done for Christ’s kingdom by the holy living of believers than we are at all aware of. There is a reality about such living which makes men feel, and obliges them to think. It carries a weight and influence with it which nothing else can give. It makes religion beautiful, and draws men to consider it, like a lighthouse seen afar off. The day of judgment will prove that many besides husbands have been won “without the word” by a holy life. (1 Pet. 3:1.) You may talk to persons about the doctrines of the Gospel, and few will listen, and still fewer understand. But your life is an argument that none can escape. There is a meaning about holiness which not even the most unlearned can help taking in. They may not understand justification, but they can understand charity.
I believe there is far more harm done by unholy and inconsistent Christians than we are at all aware of. Such men are among Satan’s best allies. They pull down by their lives what ministers build with their lips. They cause the chariot wheels of the Gospel to drive heavily. They supply the children of this world with a never ending excuse for remaining as they are.—“I cannot see the use of so much religion,” said an irreligious tradesman not long ago; “I observe that some of my customers are always talking about the Gospel, and faith, and election, and the blessed promises, and so forth; and yet these very people think nothing of cheating me of pence and halfpence, when they have an opportunity. Now, if religious persons can do such things, I do not see what good there is in religion.”—I grieve to be obliged to write such things, but I fear that Christ’s name is too often blasphemed because of the lives of Christians. Let us take heed lest the blood of souls should be required at our hands. From murder of souls by inconsistency and loose walking, good Lord, deliver us! Oh, for the sake of others, if for no other reason, let us strive to be holy!
(g) We must be holy, because our present comfort depends much upon it. We cannot be too often reminded of this. We are sadly apt to forget that there is a close connection between sin and sorrow, holiness and happiness, sanctification and consolation. God has so wisely ordered it, that our well-being and our well-doing are linked together. He has mercifully provided that even in this world it shall be man’s interest to be holy. Our justification is not by works,—our calling and election are not according to our works,—but it is vain for any one to suppose that he will have a lively sense of his justification, or an assurance of his calling, so long as he neglects good works, or does not strive to live a holy life. “Hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.”—“Hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts.” (1 John 2:3; 3:19.) A believer may as soon expect to feel the sun’s rays upon a dark and cloudy day, as to feel strong consolation in Christ while he does not follow Him fully. When the disciples forsook the Lord and fled, they escaped danger, but they were miserable and sad. When, shortly after, they confessed Him boldly before men, they were cast into prison and beaten; but we are told “they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.” (Acts 5:41.) Oh, for our own sakes, if there were no other reason, let us strive to be holy! He that follows Jesus most fully will always follow Him most comfortably.
(h) Lastly, we must be holy, because without holiness on earth we shall never be prepared to enjoy heaven. Heaven is a holy place. The Lord of heaven is a holy Being. The angels are holy creatures. Holiness is written on everything in heaven. The book of Revelation says expressly, “There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie.” (Rev. 21:27.)
I appeal solemnly to every one who reads these pages, How shall we ever be at home and happy in heaven, if we die unholy? Death works no change. The grave makes no alteration. Each will rise again with the same character in which he breathed his last. Where will our place be if we are strangers to holiness now?
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?
Now perhaps you love the company of the light and the careless, the worldly-minded and the covetous, the reveller and the pleasure-seeker, the ungodly and the profane. There will be none such in heaven.
Now perhaps you think the saints of God too strict and particular, and serious. You rather avoid them. You have no delight in their society. There will be no other company in heaven.
Now perhaps you think praying, and Scripture-reading, and hymn singing, dull, and melancholy, and stupid work,—a thing to be tolerated now and then, but not enjoyed. You reckon the Sabbath a burden and a weariness; you could not possibly spend more than a small part of it in worshipping God. But remember, heaven is a never-ending Sabbath. The inhabitants thereof rest not day or night, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,” and singing the praise of the Lamb. How could an unholy man find pleasure in occupation such as this?
Think you that such an one would delight to meet David, and Paul, and John, after a life spent in doing the very things they spoke against? Would he take sweet counsel with them, and find that he and they had much in common?—Think you, above all, that he would rejoice to meet Jesus, the Crucified One, face to face, after cleaving to the sins for which He died, after loving His enemies and despising His friends? Would he stand before Him with confidence, and join in the cry, “This is our God; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation”? (Isa. 25:9.) Think you not rather that the tongue of an unholy man would cleave to the roof of his mouth with shame, and his only desire would be to be cast out! He would feel a stranger in a land he knew not, a black sheep amidst Christ’s holy flock. The voice of Cherubim and Seraphim, the song of Angels and Archangels, and all the company of heaven, would be a language he could not understand. The very air would seem an air he could not breathe.
I know not what others may think, but to me it does seem clear that heaven would be a miserable place to an unholy man. It cannot be otherwise. People may say, in a vague way, “they hope to go to heaven;” but they do not consider what they say. There must be a certain “meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light.” Our hearts must be somewhat in tune. To reach the holiday of glory, we must pass through the training school of grace. We must be heavenly-minded, and have heavenly tastes, in the life that now is, or else we shall never find ourselves in heaven, in the life to come.
And now, before I go any further, let me say a few words, by way of application.
(1) For one thing, let me ask every one who may read these pages, Are you holy? Listen, I pray you, to the question I put to you this day. Do you know anything of the holiness of which I have been speaking?
I do not ask whether you attend your church regularly,—whether you have been baptized, and received the Lord’s Supper,—whether you have the name of Christian,—I ask something more than all this: Are you holy, or are you not?
I do not ask whether you approve of holiness in others,—whether you like to read the lives of holy people, and to talk of holy things, and to have on your table holy books,—whether you mean to be holy, and hope you will be holy some day,—I ask something further: Are you yourself holy this very day, or are you not?
And why do I ask so straitly, and press the question so strongly? I do it because the Scripture says, “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” It is written, it is not my fancy,—it is the Bible, not my private opinion,—it is the word of God, not of man,—“Without holiness no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14.)
Alas, what searching, sifting words are these! What thoughts come across my mind, as I write them down! I look at the world, and see the greater part of it lying in wickedness. I look at professing Christians, and see the vast majority having nothing of Christianity but the name. I turn to the Bible, and I hear the Spirit saying, “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.”
Surely it is a text that ought to make us consider out ways, and search our hearts. Surely it should raise within us solemn thoughts, and send us to prayer.
You may try to put me off by saying, “You feel much, and think much about these things: far more than many suppose.” I answer, “This is not the point. The poor lost souls in hell do as much as this. The great question is not what you think, and what you feel, but what you DO.”
You may say, “It was never meant that all Christians should be holy, and that holiness, such as I have described, is only for great saints, and people of uncommon gifts.” I answer, “I cannot see that in Scripture. I read that every man who hath hope in Christ purifieth himself.” (1 John 3:3.)—“Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.”
You may say, “It is impossible to be so holy and to do our duty in this life at the same time: the thing cannot be done.” I answer, “You are mistaken.” It can be done. With Christ on your side nothing is impossible. It has been done by many. “David, and Obadiah, and Daniel, and the servants of Nero’s household, are all examples that go to prove it.”
You may say, “If you were so holy you would be unlike other people.” I answer, “I know it well. It is just what you ought to be. Christ’s true servants always were unlike the world around them,—a separate nation, a peculiar people;—and you must be so too, if you would be saved!”
You may say, “At this rate very few will be saved.” I answer, “I know it. It is precisely what we are told in the Sermon on the Mount.” The Lord Jesus said so 1800 years ago. “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” (Matt. 7:14.) Few will be saved, because few will take the trouble to seek salvation. Men will not deny themselves the pleasures of sin and their own way for a little season. They turn their backs on an “inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away.” “Ye will not come unto Me,” says Jesus, “that ye might have life.” (John 5:40.)
You may say, “These are hard sayings: the way is very narrow.” I answer, “I know it. So says the Sermon on the Mount.” The Lord Jesus said so 1800 years ago. He always said that men must take up the cross daily, and that they must be ready to cut off hand or foot, if they would be His disciples. It is in religion as it is in other things, “there are no gains without pains.” That which costs nothing is worth nothing.
Whatever we may think fit to say, we must be holy, if we would see the Lord. Where is our Christianity if we are not? We must not merely have a Christian name, and Christian knowledge, we must have a Christian character also. We must be saints on earth, if ever we mean to be saints in heaven. God has said it, and He will not go back: “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” “The Pope’s calendar,” says Jenkyn, “only makes saints of the dead, but Scripture requires sanctity in the living.” “Let not men deceive themselves,” says Owen; “sanctification is a qualification indispensably necessary unto those who will be under the conduct of the Lord Christ unto salvation. He leads none to heaven but whom He sanctifies on the earth. This living Head will not admit of dead members.”
Surely we need not wonder that Scripture says “Ye must be born again.” (John 3:7.) Surely it is clear as noon-day that many professing Christians need a complete change,—new hearts, new natures,—if ever they are to be saved. Old things must pass away,—they must become new creatures. “Without holiness no man,” be he who he may, “no man shall see the Lord.”
(2) Let me, for another thing, speak a little to believers. I ask you this question, “Do you think you feel the importance of holiness as much as you should?”
I own I fear the temper of the times about this subject. I doubt exceedingly whether it holds that place which it deserves in the thoughts and attention of some of the Lord’s people. I would humbly suggest that we are apt to overlook the doctrine of growth in grace, and that we do not sufficiently consider how very far a person may go in a profession of religion, and yet have no grace, and be dead in God’s sight after all. I believe that Judas Iscariot seemed very like the other Apostles. When the Lord warned them that one would betray Him, no one said, “Is it Judas?” We had better think more about the Churches of Sardis and Laodicea than we do.
I have no desire to make an idol of holiness. I do not wish to dethrone Christ, and put holiness in His place. But I must candidly say, I wish sanctification was more thought of in this day than it seems to be, and I therefore take occasion to press the subject on all believers into whose hands these pages may fall. I fear it is sometimes forgotten that God has married together justification and sanctification. They are distinct and different things, beyond question, but one is never found without the other. All justified people are sanctified, and all sanctified are justified. What God has joined together let no man dare to put asunder. Tell me not of your justification, unless you have also some marks of sanctification. Boast not of Christ’s work for you, unless you can show us the Spirit’s work in you. Think not that Christ and the Spirit can ever be divided. I doubt not that many believers know these things, but I think it good for us to be put in remembrance of them. Let us prove that we know them by our lives. Let us try to keep in view this text more continually: “Follow holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”
I must frankly say, I wish there was not such an excessive sensitiveness on the subject of holiness as I sometimes perceive in the minds of believers. A man might really think it was a dangerous subject to handle, so cautiously is it touched! Yet surely when we have exalted Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life,” we cannot err in speaking strongly about what should be the character of His people. Well says Rutherford, “The way that crieth down duties and sanctification, is not the way of grace. Believing and doing are blood-friends.”
I would say it with all reverence, but say it I must,—I sometimes fear if Christ were on earth now, there are not a few who would think His preaching legal; and if Paul were writing his Epistles, there are those who would think he had better not write the latter part of most of them as he did. But let us remember that the Lord Jesus did speak the Sermon on the Mount, and that the Epistle to the Ephesians contains six chapters and not four. I grieve to feel obliged to speak in this way, but I am sure there is a cause.
That great divine, John Owen, the Dean of Christ Church, used to say, more than two hundred years ago, that there were people whose whole religion seemed to consist in going about complaining of their own corruptions, and telling everyone that they could do nothing of themselves. I am afraid that after two centuries the same thing might be said with truth of some of Christ’s professing people in this day. I know there are texts in Scripture which warrant such complaints. I do not object to them when they come from men who walk in the steps of the Apostle Paul, and fight a good fight, as he did. against sin, the devil, and the world. But I never like such complaints when I see ground for suspecting, as I often do, that they are only a cloak to cover spiritual laziness, and an excuse for spiritual sloth. If we say with Paul, “O wretched man that I am,” let us also be able to say with him, “I press toward the mark.” Let us not quote his example in one thing, while we do not follow him in another. (Rom 7:24; Philip. 3:14.)
I do not set up myself to be better than other people. and if anyone asks, “What are you, that you write in this way?” I answer, “I am a very poor creature indeed.” But I say that I cannot read the Bible without desiring to see many believers more spiritual, more holy, more single-eyed, more heavenly-minded, more whole-hearted than they are in the nineteenth century. I want to see among believers more of a pilgrim spirit, a more decided separation from the world, a conversation more evidently in heaven, a closer walk with God,—and therefore I have written as I have.
Is it not true that we need a higher standard of personal holiness in this day? Where is our patience? Where is our zeal? Where is our love? Where are our works? Where is the power of religion to be seen, as it was in times gone by? Where is that unmistakable tone which used to distinguish the saints of old, and shake the world? Verily our silver has become dross, our wine mixed with water, and our salt has very little savour. We are ail more than half asleep. The night is far spent, and the day is at hand. Let us awake, and sleep no more. Let us open our eyes more widely than we have done hitherto. “Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us.”—“Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiless of flesh and spirit, and perfect holiness in the fear of God.”—(Heb. 12:1; 2 Cor. 7:1.) “Did Christ die,” says Owen, “and shall sin live? Was He crucified in the world, and shall our affections to the world be quick and lively? Oh, where is the spirit of him, who by the cross of Christ was crucified to the world, and the world to him!”
Ryle, J. C. (1889). Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties and Roots (57–71). London: William Hunt and Company.
Bible Studies For Life Sunday School Lessons 