The Need for Personal Holiness by Arthur W. Pink

By our fall in Adam we not only lost the favor of God, but also the purity of our nature and therefore we need to be both reconciled to God and renewed in our inner man, for without personal holiness “no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). “As He that has called you is Holy, so be ye holy in all manner of behavior, for it is written ‘Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am Holy’” (1 Peter 1:15-16), God’s nature is such that unless we be sanctified there can be no intercourse between Him and us. But can a person be sinful and holy at one and the same time? Genuine Christians discover so much carnality, filth and vileness in themselves that they find it almost impossible to be assure they are holy. Nor is this difficulty solved, as in justification, by recognizing that though completely unholy in ourselves we are holy in Christ, for Scripture teaches that those who are sanctified by God are holy in themselves, though the evil nature has not been removed from them.

If You Can't Beat Them, Keep Attacking Them!

Many are the so-called Christians who seemingly are interested in proclaiming the truth, but in reality, all they do is embark upon a crusade against a particular doctrine. Nothing, it would seem, will dissuade them from what they see as a commission from God to right all the wrongs in the church. Take Reformed Theology as an example. There are few doctrines that draw as much criticism in our generation than the one that tells us that God is the decider—not man. And it is no wonder, for man's natural inclination is to want to have things his way--Burger King was on to something!

Take Heed to the Doctrine

“If our doctrine be true, and our lives be wrong, how terrible is our sin! For then we have brought despite upon the truth itself. On the other hand, however, it is also very sad when men use the social graces which God has given them, and the moral momentum of a godly ancestry, to commend a message which is false. Nothing in the world can take the place of truth.”

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism

One of the battles that the church of Christ has to wage in every generation is the battle for a pure doctrine. In today’s world, that is seemingly more important than it has been, perhaps more so than at any time in this country’s history. The hallmark of our current generation is the abandonment of doctrinal truth, or at the very least its neglect, at the expense of getting along and being “tolerant.” The modern church is awash in the attitude that our current generation has of overlooking truth in order to be more accepting. Witness the reaction from a so-called “evangelical” against the Nashville Statement (you can read the full article containing the quote here):