Note: If you are new to this blog, I suggest you start at post #1 ("Introduction") and work your way from oldest post to newest.
"How do we get there?"
Many people, Marshall went on, aren't interested in knowing anything other than where we're going. Once the goal is set, they "account nothing wanting but diligent performances; and they rush blindly upon immediate practice, making more haste than good speed" (p. 3). In other words, they do a lot of pedaling without much forward progress.
What they lack is the "powerful and effective means" for accomplishing this "great and excellent end" (p. 4).
It's not just the people in the pews who often misunderstand the enormity of the task. Pastors, too, Marshall noticed, "spend all their zeal in the earnest pressing the immediate practice of the law, without any discover of the effectual means of performance" as if the accomplishment needed "no skill and artifice at all, but only industry and activity" (p. 3).
What is this "powerful and effective means?" That's the question. Marshall pointed out several things:
- It's just as much the result of an act of God as justification is. That is, we can't sanctify ourselves any more than we can save ourselves.
- It's something we can’t see on our own by just figuring it out or by effort or work; God has to open our eyes to it.
- It requires the “double work” of first unlearning many deeply-rooted notions before finding the right way to go about it.
Marshall advised, "We must pray earnestly to the Lord to teach us, as well as search the Scripture that we may get this knowledge" (p. 4).
He hoped that God would bless his discovery of this "powerful means of holiness" so far as to "save some one or other from killing themselves" (p. 5). This was a man who knew first-hand the awful failure that results from trying to sanctify oneself!
His hope was that in the reading of this book that God would "enlarge the hearts of many by it, to run with great cheerfulness, joy, and thanksgiving in the ways of His commandments" (p. 5).
In the next post: the mindset we need before we can think about even beginning to practice holiness.
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