As far as books on holiness, many good ones are already out there. Two that I have read are Holiness by J.C. Ryle and The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges. What more could possibly be said about the subject?
While it’s true that Kevin DeYoung didn’t break completely new ground, that’s a good thing. There’s certainly nothing new under the sun, and any author who remains faithful to Scripture is not going to want to come up with something new. When it comes to the gospel and its application to our lives, new is not a good thing.
The Hole in OUr Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness is about the process of sanctification, or the process of growth in a Christian’s life that conforms them to the image of Christ. But the strength of this book is the strength of DeYoung’s other books: he shows us how these truths apply in a timeless manner, while at the same time giving a gentle nudge where he thinks we may be getting off track. DeYoung seems to have a pastor’s heart, and his books aren’t written in a vacuum. I can see that they grow out of conversations with real people with real people, but he still offers hope.
I know it makes a more exciting book if I say everyone else has missed the boat. That’s not the case, however. The sky is not falling, and it won’t until Jesus falls from it first. But we don’t have to pretend everything else is wrong to recognize we don’t have everything right. (page 21)
One corrective that I think is needed occurs when he talked about the idea of moral equivalence.
[I]t seems humble to act as if no sin is worse than another, but we lose the impetus for striving and the ability to hold each other accountable when we tumble down the slip-n-slide of moral equivalence. All of a sudden the elder who battles the temptation to take a second look at the racy section of the Lands’ End catalog shouldn’t dare exercise church discipline on the young man fornicating with reckless abandon. When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness; we’ve cheapened God’s goodness. (page 72)
This book is fairly short at 146 pages. Since it has study questions in the back, it would be a good book to work through with a small group. It’s not the most in-depth book on sanctification, but it’s timely and helpful.
Many thanks to Crossway for providing this book for review.
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