DEVOTED TO GOD:
Blueprints for Sanctification
By Sinclair B. Ferguson
Banner of Truth Trust. 296 pages. £8.00
ISBN 978 1 848 716 902
It is a great pleasure to be able to warmly commend this wonderful new book from the pen of Sinclair Ferguson. It is an absolute classic and a must-read on a much neglected subject today – that of the Christian’s call to holiness or Christlikeness.
In my opinion this is the best book on the subject since JC Ryle’s Holiness. The thesis of the book is that God calls us to be who he has made us in Christ and to begin by his grace to show the family DNA in Christlike character. This develops in us as we begin to understand the depth of all that God has done for us in our Saviour, and as we respond to that with a new devotion relying on all the resources that God has given us in him that we might be ‘conformed to the image of his Son’.
Sinclair, whose books I have always enjoyed and profited from, and who I have always thought of as a kind of next generation J.I. Packer, writes with a clarity of mind and an aptness of application which makes difficult ideas easy to grasp. This is a profound book that will repay careful study, but it is not difficult to understand. Many of the chapters are worth the price of the book in their own right. My particular favourites being – ‘A Different Kind of Death’, which expounds the magnificent but hard to fully u n d e r s t a n d Romans 6 better than I have ever read or heard before. Also there is a wonderful chapter on the place of the Law in the Christian life, and an appendix about the Christian’s attitude to Sunday which is very helpful. ‘Keep Going’ gives us tremendous encouragement from Hebrews 12 to run the Christian race and pursue holiness.
The whole book is centred around ten key NT passages about holiness/sanctification, (which are conveniently collected in an Appendix for further thought) and is full of fresh and helpful insights from a master teacher and preacher who is extremely good at communicating truth faithfully and well.
One tiny niggle! I so want people to read this book – if you read one book this year make it this one! – I wish the cover had been a bit more attractive and attention grabbing! But don’t judge a book by its cover- this one’s content is brilliant and life changing!
