Review: THE PURSUIT OF HOLINESS by Jerry Bridges

Holiness is badly misunderstood among most Christians today. Simply put, to be holy is to be like God. Holiness doesn't come naturally to us, though it does to him. That's because the only place to get it is from the source, and the only source is God.

Christians are supposed to grow in holiness; that is, we're supposed to become more like God. Unfortunately, that isn't always the case. Most of my experience has been among Southern Baptists, and Baptists tend to view conversion as the goal. Once a person professes belief in Christ, he can sit in church for the next fifty years never growing at all, just because conversion is seen as the end of a process rather than the beginning of a life of greater and greater affinity to God.

Bridges tries to change that with this book, but is severely undercut by his own commitment to Calvinism. If everything, including one's growth in holiness, has already been determined by God, it's difficult to see why we should care about anything Bridges has to say.

I'm not picking on Bridges in particular, and I admit that I'm judging "Reformed theology" from the outside, but Calvinism is too deeply embedded in this book to recommend it.