Holiness Through the Ages

Holiness is living life, as God would have us live it. For flawed human beings, this is impossible without the power of the Holy Spirit and a strong commitment to prayer, studying scripture, and repentance with self-reflection, along with other spiritual disciplines. No Christian tradition has a monopoly on teaching holiness. In fact, it has been a part of the teachings of the Church from the very start.

This book brings together many Christian writers from many different traditions, but all with a common focus on how to live a holy life. From the Romafn Catholics, Brother Lawrence and Blaise Pascal to Puritans, Methodists, Baptists, and early Pentecostals, they all have some important lessons to teach those who desire to faithfully follow Christ today.

Dr. Robert "Clem" Coleman, who started printing small booklets of excerpts or abridged versions of spiritual classics when he was a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, edited and wrote introductions for a number of these chapters. He continued this work with many others in producing booklets that were later published by the Billy Graham Center. Dr. Coleman wanted to use many of these writings for teaching a course in discipleship, but was frustrated by the difficulty of locating so many small booklets and reselling them to students. So we gathered permissions from all of the writers we could find, and are now publishing most of this material in one place.

Our hope is that this material, being made freely available online, will impact the lives of Christians all over the world. Holiness is what we are called to in the Christian journey. Conversion is just an important step on a much longer journey toward holiness. Never before have the needs of the world cried out for the People of God to live out their calling to be a light to the nations, as it has in this generation. Yet many believers still have not heard the message of living a holy life for a holy God.

Consumerism, materialism, individualism, rationalism, and the rejection of absolute truth have all led to a world desperately in need of the classical teachings of Christian holiness. This is just a small attempt to reintroduce these teachings once again. Read and reflect on these teachings and the lives of those who made such an impact in their own time. May their words inspire a new generation of Christians and light a fire in their hearts that will kindle a passion for holiness that will sweep over the earth