If you have ever longed to be holy and come away only feeling tired, Andrew Murray wrote Holy in Christ for you. Its message can be put in three words that Murray calls some of the most wonderful in the Bible — holy in Christ. Holiness, he insists, is not first a height you climb to by effort but a gift already yours in Jesus. You do not manufacture it; you receive it, rest in it, and then live it out. This guide walks through what the book says, how it is arranged, the themes that run through it, who it is for, and how to read it today — so that you can open Murray’s Holy in Christ and let it do its quiet, searching work.
What the book is, and what Murray is after
Holy in Christ, published in 1887, is a month of daily meditations on holiness by the South African pastor whose small books on prayer and the deeper life have fed believers for well over a century. Its full subtitle names the aim exactly: Thoughts on the Calling of God’s Children to Be Holy as He Is Holy. Murray takes the great refrain of Scripture — “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16, echoing Leviticus 11:44 and Leviticus 19:2) — and asks the question that has wearied so many earnest Christians: how can a sinful person be holy as God is holy?
His answer is not a program of self-improvement. It is a person. Murray places the whole weight of holiness on the believer’s union with Jesus, and he says so with a rush of wonder:
Holy in Christ! Here is God’s provision for our holiness, God’s response to our question, How to be holy?
Andrew Murray
The distance between God’s holiness and ours can feel like a gulf that no striving will ever cross. Murray’s central image is that the gulf has already been bridged, and more than bridged:
In Christ! is the bridge that crosses the gulf; nay rather, His fulness has filled it up.
Andrew Murray
That is the aim of the whole book — to move the reader from anxious effort to restful faith, from trying to become acceptable to God to drawing on the holiness that is already theirs in his Son. Murray does this not by argument alone but by dwelling, slowly and prayerfully, on the “Holy” texts of Scripture until their truth sinks past the head into the heart.
How the book is arranged
The book is built as thirty-one short readings, one for each day of a month, with a brief preface and closing notes. Murray means it to be lived with, not raced through; the daily shape is deliberate, so that the truth of being holy in Christ becomes not a single insight but a settled way of seeing yourself.
Each reading opens with a passage of Scripture, and the chapter titles trace a path. The opening days set the foundation — “God’s Call to Holiness” and “God’s Provision for Holiness.” From there Murray follows holiness through the whole story of the Bible: “Holiness and Creation,” “Holiness and Redemption,” “The Holy One of Israel,” “The Thrice Holy One,” on through “The Holy One of God” and “The Holy Spirit” to the believer’s own life in chapters such as “In Christ our Sanctification,” “Holiness and the Body,” “The Way into the Holiest,” and finally “Holiness and Heaven.” The movement is from God’s holiness, to Christ as the meeting-place of that holiness with human nature, to the Spirit who communicates it, to the daily and even bodily life it is meant to fill. It reads less like a treatise and more like a slow pilgrimage through Scripture’s teaching on one great theme.
The threads that run through the book
The holiness of God comes first
Murray will not begin with our behaviour; he begins with God. Holiness is the word, he writes, “in which all God’s perfections centre, and of which His glory is but the streaming forth.” It is the word the seraphs cry with veiled faces — “Holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:3). Only when we have felt something of how high and pure God’s holiness is do we understand both why the call to “follow… holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14) is so serious, and why we can never meet it on our own. Murray insists that God’s call itself reveals God’s eternal purpose for us:
The call is the unveiling of the purpose that the Father from eternity had set His heart upon: that we should be holy.
Andrew Murray
Holiness, in other words, is not an optional extra of the Christian life. It is what we were chosen for — “He hath chosen us in Him, that we should be holy and without blame” (Ephesians 1:4) — and it is the very will of God for us: “this is the will of God, even your sanctification” (1 Thessalonians 4:3; see also 1 Thessalonians 4:7).
Holy in Christ, not holy by effort
Here is the book’s beating heart, and the thing that sets it apart from so much teaching on holiness. Murray points again and again to a phrase Paul uses of ordinary believers: “them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2). We are made holy in him, by union with him, before we have done anything about it. Christ “of God is made unto us… sanctification” (1 Corinthians 1:30). This means holiness is a gift to receive, not a wage to earn, and Murray is tender toward the discouraged reader who has tried and failed:
It is a life that is meant for the sinful and the weary, for the unworthy and the impotent.
Andrew Murray
Does this mean the believer need not pursue holiness at all? Murray is careful here, and it matters. He holds gift and calling together: because you are already holy in Christ, you are summoned to live a holy life. The indicative grounds the imperative. His point is never to excuse effort but to give it the right source and rest — holiness pursued out of what you already are in Christ, and by drawing on his life, rather than by straining to become acceptable to God.
The Spirit who makes it real
How does the holiness that is ours in Christ actually become ours in daily experience? By the Holy Spirit. Murray notes that believers are “elect… through sanctification of the Spirit” (1 Peter 1:2), and he devotes whole readings to the Spirit’s work of communicating Christ’s holy life into us. It is the Spirit who takes the holiness once revealed in symbol and promise and, having been given a true home in Christ’s human life and death, transmits that holy nature to the believer. This is why Murray can pray so confidently that “the very God of peace sanctify you wholly” (1 Thessalonians 5:23) — the sanctifying is God’s own work in us, and he draws the reader toward the boldness “to enter into the holiest” that is now ours in Christ (Hebrews 10:19).
Who should read it
This is a book for any Christian who longs for holiness but has found the longing turn into weariness. If you have heard “be holy” as a demand you can never satisfy, Murray means to set you free by showing you that holiness is first a gift you already possess in Christ. It is also for anyone drawn to Murray’s warm, Christ-centred devotion — the same vein he worked in The True Vine and Waiting on God. Readers who love those little books will find Holy in Christ is the same voice turned toward one of the deepest and most daunting words in Scripture. It especially helps the believer discouraged by striving, and it has fed generations who wanted a deeper, more restful pursuit of a holy life rather than an anxious one.
How to read it today
Read it the way Murray wrote it — slowly, one short chapter a day, over about a month. It is not built for a single sitting; the daily rhythm is part of how the truth is meant to settle. A few suggestions make it richer:
- Begin with the Scripture at the head of each reading. Murray builds every chapter on a text; read that verse first, and let his meditation open it up rather than replace it.
- Turn each reading into prayer. Murray himself often ended his meditations on his knees. Take the day’s truth and ask God to make it real in you, remembering that “Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24).
- Say the key words back to God. Murray counsels the anxious soul to take the divine words “holy in Christ” and repeat them, if need be a thousand times, until faith takes hold of them.
- Do not rush to application. Let the early chapters on God’s holiness do their work before you reach the practical readings on the body, the will, and service. The order is part of the cure.
Because Ochorus hosts the full text of Holy in Christ for free, you can read it a day at a time online, and follow Murray further into the deeper life through his other works and the story of his own long walk with God on the page for Andrew Murray.
For reflection
Use these questions on your own or with a group as you work through the book:
- When you hear the call to “be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16), is your first response effort or faith? What does Murray’s phrase “holy in Christ” change about that response?
- Murray says God calls us not merely to pardon or heaven but to holiness as “the element in which salvation and heaven are to be found.” How would taking holiness that seriously reshape what you are asking God for?
- Where in your life are you trying to manufacture holiness by striving, rather than drawing on the holiness already yours in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30)?
- Murray holds gift and calling together — you are holy, therefore be holy. How do you keep both truths, without collapsing into either passivity or anxious effort?
- What would it look like this week to depend on the Holy Spirit to sanctify you (1 Thessalonians 5:23), rather than to sanctify yourself?
