It’s the testimony of almost all saints that as they get closer to God they see more of their ungodliness. It’s normal to feel less holy as you become more holy. Being more aware of sin in your life is usually a sign of the Spirit’s sanctifying work, not of His withdrawal.
That All May See Progress by Kevin DeYoung taken from The Hole in Our Holiness by Kevin DeYoung, copyright 2012, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org, p. 139.
There is no pride so dangerous, none so subtle and insidious, as the pride of holiness.
Humility, Whitaker, 1982, p. 56. All quotations taken from books published by Whitaker House are used with permission of the publisher. Whitaker House books are available at Christian bookstores everywhere.
The greatest test of whether the holiness we profess to seek or to attain is truth and life will be whether it produces an increasing humility in us. In man, humility is the one thing needed to allow God’s holiness to dwell in him and shine through him. The chief mark of counterfeit holiness is lack of humility. The holiest will be the humblest.
We have so much of the Pharisee in us by nature, that it is sometimes well that our good is hid from us… It is a good life which is attended with a faith of righteousness and a sense of corruption. While I know Christ’s righteousness, I shall the less care to know my own holiness. To be holy is necessary; to know it, sometimes a temptation.
Works, VI:600-601.
Humility…see[s] more evil in [one’s] own heart than in any other in the world.
Taken from Holiness by J.C. Ryle, Moody Publishers, copyright 2010, p. 85.
I believe the holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him.
