What Andrew Murray Meant by Holiness
⏱ 11 min read
You have been trying to be holy and failing daily and starting to give up. The trying has been faithful — verses, prayers, the small disciplines, the long honest examen at the end of hard days — and the failing has been the quiet ground note underneath it. Andrew Murray, in Holy in Christ, wrote the patient extended account of why this exhausting model of holiness was never the model scripture taught, and the slow walk through three of his passages below is for the woman whose holiness has felt like a project she cannot finish and is ready, slowly, to hear that it was never her project to finish in the first place. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries this kind of slow doctrinal reading into a daily companion if you would like a place to take the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
Murray wrote Holy in Christ across the last decades of his ministry, when the same exhausted question had come to him from too many faithful Christians too many times to ignore. I have been trying to be holy and I keep failing. What am I doing wrong? His answer is the slow distinction this article walks. What is biblical holiness? In Murray’s reading, it is not a moral achievement you slowly construct through your own discipline. It is Christ’s own holiness, given to you, dwelt in by you, lived from by you. The exhausted model treats holiness as something you are producing. Murray’s model treats holiness as something you are receiving. The difference is not a fine point. It is the difference between a life that gives up at year seven and a life that, slowly, finds the failing has been the wrong thing to keep measuring.
The first passage — He makes holy where He rests
Murray, in the chapters that turn from the doctrine of holiness toward the interior practice of it, said the sentence that names what holy actually is.
“It is where Thou enterest to rest, to refresh and reveal Thyself, that Thou makest holy. O my God! may my heart be Thy resting-place. I would, in the stillness and confidence of a restful faith, rest in Thee, believing that Thou doest all in me. Let such fellowship with Thee, and Thy love, and Thy will be to me the secret of a life of holiness.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
The hinge clause is the small one. Thou makest holy. Not I make myself holy through prolonged effort. Not I will, by discipline, become holy. Thou makest holy. The subject of the verb is God. The object of the verb is the heart that has offered itself as His resting-place. The Christian woman whose holiness has been a frustrated project has, almost always, been operating from the assumption that she was the subject of the verb and holiness was the object she was supposed to be producing. Murray inverts the picture. She is not the subject. She is the place. The subject is the One who enters to rest, and the making holy is what He does in the place He has been given to rest in.
This is the first piece of what Murray meant by holiness. Holiness is the consequence of the indwelling, not the condition of it. The exhausted model has been waiting to become holy enough to host Him. Murray is saying — gently, urgently — that the order is reversed. You host Him first. The hosting is the daily small offering of the heart as His resting-place. The holiness happens in the resting, performed by Him. The Christian who has been failing at the producing has not been failing at holiness. She has been failing at the wrong model of holiness — and the failing has been, in a quiet way, the kindness of God refusing to bless the model that would have left her exhausted and self-congratulatory if it had ever worked.
Thou doest all in me. This is the line that names the inward atmosphere of the new model. The exhausted model has been doing all by itself. The new model lets Thou doest all in me become the actual sentence the soul lives from. The doing is His. The resting is yours. The holiness is His doing in your resting. The secret of a life of holiness, in Murray’s hand, is the daily small offering of the heart as His resting-place, and the slow learning to let Him do the work the exhausted model has been trying to do alone.
The second passage — the sense of unholiness becomes the strength of trust
Murray, a few chapters later, said the sentence that names what happens to the failing once the model has shifted. (If the failing has been compounded by confusion about how holiness even works, what is sanctification and how does it actually happen? walks the wider doctrinal frame, and the difference between justification and sanctification walks the legal-versus-lived distinction that underlies what Murray is doing here.)
“Like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me, here is my Lord Jesus with me in His hidden but Divine and most real presence. My faith must in quiet rest and trust bow before the Father, of whom and by whose Mighty Grace I am in Christ: He will reveal it to me with ever-growing clearness and power. He does it as I believe, and in believing open my whole soul to receive what is implied in it: the sense of sinfulness and unholiness must become the strength of my trust and dependence. In such faith I abide in Christ.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
The line in the middle is the one to keep near the page. The sense of sinfulness and unholiness must become the strength of my trust and dependence.
Murray is doing something almost no modern Christian book does with the experience of inward failing. He is redirecting it. The exhausted model uses the failing as evidence the woman is not holy and needs to try harder. Murray uses the same failing as the strength of her trust and dependence — meaning, the failing is the daily small reminder that her holiness has never been her project, and the reminder, received rightly, deepens her dependence on the One whose holiness it actually is. The failing does not invalidate the model. The failing fuels the model. Every honest acknowledgement of inward unholiness becomes, in Murray’s hand, a small daily renewal of the trust that the holiness is His and is being given.
This is what makes Murray’s account of biblical holiness so durable for the woman who has been about to give up. The giving-up has been because the failing has felt like the disqualification. Murray is saying — patiently, slowly — that the failing is, in fact, the qualification. The Pharisee who feels holy is the one who has stopped depending. The woman whose sense of unholiness is acute is, by that very acuteness, in the inward posture from which the received holiness can actually be received. The failing is not the end of the journey. The failing is the daily small entry-point back into the trust the journey is walked from.
What is biblical holiness in this second reading? It is the lived posture of the soul whose sense of unholiness has become the strength of her trust, and who is, from that posture, abiding in Christ — letting His holiness be the actual inward life she is, hour by hour, dwelling inside.
A small somatic, here
Set the article down for a moment. Let the body soften, particularly the small ongoing bracing around the chest and the jaw — the bracing that has been carrying the exhausted holiness project for years. Take one slow exhale. Let the failing, if it is acute today, be acknowledged once, quietly, not as the evidence of disqualification but as the evidence of dependence. The body learns this redirection before the mind does. The holiness Murray is naming is more available in an un-braced body than in a tense one, because the un-braced body has stopped performing the holiness it was never going to produce.
The third passage — cleansing is His doing, applied by the Holy Spirit
The third passage names the practice. Murray, in the prayer at the end of one of Holy in Christ’s longer chapters, said the sentence that names where the cleansing actually comes from.
“Blessed Lord! graciously reveal in Thy Holy Light all that is defilement, even its most secret working. Let me live as one who is to be presented to Thee without spot or wrinkle or any such thing — cleansed with a Divine cleansing, because Thou gavest Thyself to do it. Under the living power of Thy word and blood, applied by the Holy Spirit, let my way be clean, and my hands clean, my lips clean, and my heart clean. Cleanse me thoroughly, that I may walk with Thee in white here on earth, keeping my garments unspotted and undefiled.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
The hinge phrase is cleansed with a Divine cleansing, because Thou gavest Thyself to do it.
This is the practice Murray is asking the woman to walk in place of the exhausted model. The exhausted model has been doing the cleansing herself — through resolution, through discipline, through the repeated promise to do better tomorrow. Murray is asking her to receive the Divine cleansing, applied by the Holy Spirit, on the ground of Christ’s already-given self. The cleansing is not your work. The cleansing is His, applied. Your work is the daily small asking — Blessed Lord, graciously reveal in Thy Holy Light all that is defilement — and the daily small receiving of the cleansing that is being applied by the Spirit, on the ground of the blood that was given.
This is what is biblical holiness in Murray’s practice. It is the daily small asking — cleanse me thoroughly — and the daily small receiving of the cleansing that is His to give. The failing of the exhausted model is the proof that the model was wrong, not that the holiness is impossible. The Divine cleansing is available in any ordinary Tuesday morning, to any woman whose heart is offered as His resting-place and whose sense of unholiness has become the strength of her trust. The slow walk into the new model is the slow walk into a holiness that was never your work to manufacture in the first place. (If the daily companion practice has not had a home in your week, the Bible Study Workbook for Women is built for exactly this — a short page that opens the small daily asking and receiving, with the failing redirected into trust the way Murray walks it here.)
The companion articles in this short series will walk the practical extensions of the same reading. Andrew Murray on working for God without striving walks the holiness-in-action piece for the woman whose ministry has been exhausting her. Andrew Murray on the Christian’s whole life as service walks the wider posture of holiness that lives in the ordinary day, not only in the religious hours. And Andrew Murray on consecration as daily renewal walks the daily small re-consecration the received holiness is sustained by over years.
What the slow walk does over a year
What changes, if you sit with Murray’s three passages — one a month for three months — and then let the practice of offer the heart as His resting-place, let the failing become the strength of your trust, receive the Divine cleansing become the daily small shape of your inward life, is not a sudden moral perfection. The change is quieter than that. The exhausted model you have been carrying for years begins to be set down, not by an act of willpower but by the slow daily small Thou doest all in me. The failing stops being the evidence you are not holy and starts being the small daily entry-point back into trust. The cleansing happens in the chair, applied by the Spirit, on the ground of the blood that was given — and the woman who, a year ago, was about to give up, finds she is still walking, slowly, in a holiness that is not hers and never was, and the not-hers is the part that has made the walk sustainable for the first time in years.
What is biblical holiness, in Murray’s hand? It is Christ’s own holiness, given to you, dwelt in by you, lived from by you. The trying-and-failing model has not been holiness at all. It has been the exhausted shadow of holiness, run on the wrong fuel. Murray is gentle. The actual holiness is more available than the exhausted woman has been told. It is given. The receiving is small and daily. The making-holy is His. (We hope, in time, to bring Holy in Christ back into print through Everspring Press, so the slow reading has a clean, contemplative edition to live inside.)
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A daily home for the slow receiving
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women.
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Murray’s slow vocabulary — the heart as His resting-place, the failing redirected into trust, the Divine cleansing applied by the Spirit — into a daily companion for the woman who has been trying to be holy and is ready, in small evenings, to let the holiness be His doing in her.