What Most Christians Get Wrong About Holiness

You have tried to make yourself holy. You have fought your sin with white-knuckled determination. You have resolved, journaled, and wept over the same failures. And still, the same sins cling to you like a garment you cannot remove. What if the problem is not that you are trying too hard, but that you are trying the wrong way entirely?

That is the argument Walter Marshall makes in The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification. His claim is startling. Most Christians believe they are justified by a righteousness Christ accomplished for them, yet they try to be sanctified by a holiness they must produce in themselves. That contradiction is the root of much spiritual misery. What follows is an explanation of his teaching.

What It Means to "Receive" Holiness from Christ

The main point is stated plainly. The way to obtain the holy qualities we need for obedience to God's law is to receive them out of the fullness of Christ by fellowship with Him. And we can only have this fellowship if we are in Christ and Christ is in us through a real, spiritual union.

This means that holiness is not something we manufacture from within. It is something already prepared and completed in Christ for us. We are not to work together with Christ in making or producing that holy frame in us. We are to take it to ourselves and use it, as made ready to our hands.

The parallel is important. Just as we are justified by a righteousness Christ worked out and God credits to our account, so we are sanctified by a holiness first worked out in Christ and then given to us. And just as our sinful nature was produced in Adam and passed down to us, so our new nature is produced in Christ and passed down to us by His Spirit.

Why So Many Sincere Christians Struggle

This teaching is not aimed at careless people. It is aimed at the seriously devout. Think of the believer who takes great pains to mortify corrupt desires, who strives earnestly to master sinful habits, who presses hard upon his own heart with every motive for godliness. That kind of effort is like trying to squeeze oil out of a flint.

The mistake is not a lack of effort. It is a wrong method. These believers assume that while justification comes from outside of them, through Christ's work, sanctification must come from inside of them, through their own striving. If they understood that the true way of mortifying sin is by receiving a new nature out of the fullness of Christ, they might save themselves many a bitter agony and a great deal of misspent labor.

This does not mean the Christian is passive. We do not produce our new nature any more than we produced our original corruption, but we do actively receive it. The distinction matters. A branch does not manufacture its own sap. But a branch does bear fruit. The life comes from the vine. The fruit shows in the branch.

The Mystery of Union with Christ

Scripture calls this a mystery, and rightly so. Our union with Christ stands as one of the three greatest mysteries in all of Christian teaching, alongside the Trinity and the union of divine and human natures in Christ. Paul himself called it "a great mystery" in an epistle full of mysteries (Eph. 5:32).

This is not a figure of speech. Some theologians have reduced union with Christ to a mere agreement of minds or a political relationship, as if Christ were simply a governor and believers His subjects. But Scripture speaks in far stronger terms. Christ is in believers and they are in Him (John 6:56; 14:20). They are one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17). They are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones (Eph. 5:30-31).

This union is made possible by the Holy Spirit, who dwells in Christ and in us, binding us to Him. Christ may be in heaven and we on earth, but the Spirit bridges that distance without any change in the substance of either Christ or the believer. According to the Scriptural phrase, it is all one to have Christ Himself and to have the Spirit of Christ in us (Rom. 8:9-10).

Seven Pictures Scripture Uses to Explain This Union

Scripture gives us seven illustrations to show that our new life and holy nature are first in Christ and then in us by real union with Him. Each one teaches the same truth from a different angle.

We receive holiness from Christ as Christ lived in our nature by the Father (John 6:57). We receive it as we received original sin and death from the first Adam (Rom. 5:12, 14). We receive it as a body receives sense and motion from its head (Col. 2:19). We receive it as a branch draws sap and fruit-bearing power from the vine (John 15:4-5). We receive it as a wife brings forth children by virtue of union with her husband (Rom. 7:4). We receive it as stones become a holy temple by being built on the cornerstone (1 Pet. 2:4-6). And we receive it as we receive nourishment from bread by eating it and wine by drinking it (John 6:51, 55, 57).

That last picture is the one sealed to us in the Lord's Supper. Each of these images points in the same direction. The life originates in Christ. It flows to us through union with Him. We do not generate it. We receive it.

How Christ's Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection Prepared Our Holiness

The preparation of our holiness can be traced through three great events in Christ's work.

First, by His incarnation, Christ created a new humanity in a holy frame far more excellent than Adam's original state. In Christ, human nature was joined to God in the closest possible union. The purpose was that He might share this holy frame with all who would be born of Him by His Spirit, just as Adam shared his fallen frame with all who were born of him by nature. Christ came down from heaven as living bread so that those who eat Him may live by Him (John 6:51, 56).

Second, by His death, Christ freed Himself from the guilt of our sins that had been laid on Him, and from the weakness of human nature He had carried for our sake. In doing so, He prepared freedom for us from our whole corrupt condition. Paul tells us that our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be destroyed (Rom. 6:6). This destruction happens not by wounds we give to sin ourselves, but by our sharing in the freedom from sin that Christ already accomplished through His death.

Third, by His resurrection, Christ took possession of spiritual life for us. His resurrection was our resurrection to the life of holiness, just as Adam's fall was our fall into spiritual death. Paul says we were made alive together with Christ and raised up with Him, even while we were still on earth (Eph. 2:5-6). The new life existed in Christ first. It flows to us by union with Him.

What Union with Christ Actually Gives the Believer

The practical results of being joined to Christ are not abstract ideas. They are the real spiritual changes that every believer needs and that only union with Christ can provide.

First, our hearts are no longer left under the power of sinful tendencies. The Spirit of Christ dwells in us and gives us a real bent and inclination toward holiness (Rom. 8:1, 4-5; Gal. 5:17).

Second, we have full reconciliation with God and are brought into higher favor than Adam enjoyed before the fall. The righteousness of Christ, which is called the righteousness of God because it was accomplished by one who is both God and man, is credited to us for justification (2 Cor. 5:21).

Third, we receive the Spirit of adoption, who enables us to cry out to God as Father (Rom. 8:15). This same Spirit assures us of our future inheritance and gives us confidence that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ (Rom. 8:17, 35, 37, 39).

But doesn't this kind of assurance lead to careless living? No. This assurance is given only through union with Christ, and union with Christ always includes sanctification. You cannot have justification or any saving privilege in Christ without also receiving Christ Himself and His holiness. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit (Rom. 8:1).

Why This Teaching Changes Everything About Holiness

This teaching confronts a mistake that Christians have been making for centuries, and that many are still making today. We sing that Christ is our righteousness, and we believe it. But then we go home and try to be our own sanctification. We treat justification as God's work and sanctification as ours. Scripture teaches that both come from Christ. Both are received by union with Him. Both depend on His fullness, not on our effort.

This does not mean we sit still and do nothing. It means we stop trying to squeeze holiness out of our own stony hearts. Instead, we look to Christ. We feed on Him by faith. We abide in Him as branches abide in the vine. And from that union, fruit grows. Not because we forced it, but because He is the source of it.

Walter Marshall closes Chapter Three with a sober warning from 1 John 5:11-12. God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son does not have life. Can we desire that God should more clearly teach us that all spiritual life and holiness are fixed in Christ so inseparably that we cannot have them except we be joined to Him?

The answer to our sin problem is not more effort. It is deeper union with Christ. That is the mystery Marshall wants every struggling Christian to grasp. And it changes everything about how we pursue holiness.

Short Biography of Walter Marshall

Walter Marshall (1628–1680) was an English Puritan minister educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. Ejected from his parish in 1662 for refusing to conform to the Act of Uniformity, he became minister of an Independent congregation at Gosport, Hampshire, where he served until his death.

Marshall personally struggled with spiritual depression and the pursuit of holiness before a conversation with Thomas Goodwin helped him see that his greatest sin was failing to trust Christ for righteousness and sanctification. This breakthrough shaped his ministry and his most significant work, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, which became a beloved classic — James Hervey famously said he would take it to a desert island alongside his Bible.

Marshall died in 1680, confident in the doctrines he had preached. His colleague Samuel Tomlyns eulogized him as one who "wooed for Christ in his preaching, and allured you to Christ by his walking."^[1]

Bibliography

• Beeke, Joel R., and Randall J. Pederson. Meet the Puritans: With a Guide to Modern Reprints. Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006.
• Marshall, Walter. The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2013. First published 1692.