In Christian discipleship, biblical and theological reflection are inseparable from a life faithfully lived for God’s glory. If God’s word is living and active, it should profoundly impact the way we conduct ourselves in public and private, before God and before others. Theology at its best invokes doxology and invites orthopraxy, ushering us once more to the throne of grace for worship and renewal.
This triangulation of theological faithfulness, exuberant worship, and sanctified living, all empowered by God’s grace, typified the life and ministry of 19th-century English pastor, bishop, and author, J.C. Ryle.
In “Ryle on the Christian Life” (Crossway, 2025), Andrew Atherstone introduces modern readers to the bishop of Liverpool and his boldly-biblical, culturally-keen ministry. Atherstone is professor of modern Anglicanism at the University of Oxford and Latimer Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and this work is Crossway’s latest installment in its “Theologians on the Christian Life” series.
Ryle was a prolific author of tracts, which during his lifetime were printed in the millions, earning him the moniker “prince of tract-writers.” Despite Ryle’s recent renaissance, many of his tracts remain in relative obscurity, so Atherstone introduces readers to teachings from Ryle’s lesser-known tracts. The book reads like a buffet of the Reformed tradition’s contributions to the doctrine of the Christian life, with Ryle simply dressing the dishes with his characteristic garnishes and Atherstone skillfully serving.
Ryle was confessionally a committed Anglican with a strong emphasis on God’s grace in the gospel during a time when evangelical sympathies were wearing thin in Victorian England. The 19th century promised Brits technological advancement and opportunity, but frequently this progress came at the price of troubling secularism.
Ryle was called into ministry in the midst of this vast cultural transformation, and in both his preaching and printing ministries he maintained deep attention to these shifting cultural winds. His prose was punchy, passionate, and persuasive, brimming with biblical simplicity and illustrative innovation. He was a minister uniquely qualified and gifted to speak the ancient word of grace into an increasingly industrialized and preoccupied modern culture.
“Ryle on the Christian Life” is organized with a trained eye toward the theological systems reflected in the creeds and confessions from the Reformation era. Chapter One introduces readers to Ryle’s tracts concerning the nature, inspiration, and authority of Scripture. Ryle was committed to the doctrines of inerrancy and infallibility, and was convinced that the Spirit of God uses the Word of God to convert sinners to Christ and sanctify them in the grace and knowledge of Jesus.
Chapter Two covers both anthropology and christology, our sin and the salvation offered to us by grace in Christ. For Ryle, sin was not caused merely by a failure of nurture, or errors in habituation or imitation; it was ultimately the result of inherited guilt and pollution from Adam. But in diagnosing sin in his readers, Ryle was quick to offer the remedy: atonement achieved by Christ alone.
A master of illustration, Ryle would often marshall material from the mutating Victorian culture around him to call people to faith and repentance, drawing on examples from current affairs, politics, architecture, art, agriculture, recreation, and many others. Ryle is at his best when seeking to win people to Christ, displaying a deep heart for the lost. His style was direct, clear, and urgent, always eager to invite his listeners or readers to trust in Christ. His effectiveness came from consistently rehearsing the gospel of grace in accessible language.
Chapters 4–7 move from Christ’s accomplished work for his people to exploring how the Holy Spirit applies the benefits of that work to Christians, particularly in the grace of sanctification. These chapters demonstrate Ryle’s warmth and passion for God’s grace to permeate every aspect of the believer’s life.
Although Ryle’s contemporary Charles Spurgeon has often been called the last of the Puritans, Ryle’s own tracts and treatises are strongly influenced by the Puritan tradition. Like his Puritan predecessors, Ryle was deeply concerned with matters of the heart. It was not enough, he insisted, to simply attend church on Sundays, or read the Bible on occasion, or even live in relative conformity to Scripture’s imperatives. One needed to possess a personal, living faith in Christ, one that believes and beholds Jesus the Savior in all of his grace and glory, and expresses itself in acts of sacrificial love and joyful obedience. In other words, delight in Christ must precede devotion to Christ.
For Bishop Ryle, delight preceding devotion was no easy feat; it was nothing less than spiritual warfare, but a war in which Christ himself equipped and protected his people as he preserved them to the end.
Chapters 8-9 address the means of grace in public and private worship and preaching’s essential role in pastoral ministry. Ryle placed a premium on one’s personal, experiential communion with God flowing downstream from the riches of one’s union with Christ by faith. Personal Bible reading, private prayer, Sabbath keeping, and weekly public worship were all designed to aid weary saints in their pursuit of heaven.
However, it was the preached Word that Ryle believed, in God’s providence, held the greatest potency for converting sinners. He understood the importance of searching the human heart and learning to detect its deepest longings, skills he developed during his many years as a pastor. The bishop’s nearly six decades of ordained ministry mostly consisted in the ordinary shepherding of his parish churches.
It is important to note here that Ryle’s tracts didn’t clinch a wide readership through theological originality. If anything, Ryle was less a theological innovator and more of an unusually skilled popularizer of Scripture’s most precious truths. His lesser-known tracts captured the attention of the masses because of their biblical fidelity, clear language, and urgent and direct appeals that invited a personal response. Ryle staked his life and ministry on the extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit accomplished through the ordinary means of the word of God communicated plainly and clearly to people right where they were.
The final two chapters take readers further into the heart of Pastor Ryle, considering suffering in the Christian life and the believer’s final days before entering the presence of Christ. Ryle was no stranger to the sorrows of this life. Sudden and tragic death abruptly ended his first two marriages, and Ryle himself was plagued for many years with pain and illness. The promise that sustained him through these trials was the comprehensive and compassionate providence of God. Pain and suffering could only make sense and find purpose in the tender and powerful plans of a heavenly Father who ordained these things for his own glory and the good of his beloved children.
But the reality of a Savior risen, reigning, and returning anchored Ryle’s greatest hopes. He trusted that the gospel was true, that grace was effectual, and that King Jesus was powerful enough to preserve his own. Tireless to the end, Ryle resigned his bishopric in March 1900 due to declining health, only to pass away three months later.
Atherstone has gifted the church a fine, accessible, and impressively brief introduction to the Bishop of Liverpool’s life and theology from places where the modern reader is less likely to explore. The book whets the appetite for a deeper dive into the Bishop’s vast corpus. But the volume serves an additional and greater purpose: it heralds God’s grace in Christ, inviting readers to remember and rejoice in the transformative power of the gospel.
Ryle’s enduring legacy is his unwavering and emphatic commitment to the primacy of grace in the gospel as both the source and sustenance of the Christian life. It seems fitting that the promise of grace that converted Ryle was the same grace that preeminently animated his ministry to the end: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
Jack Roylston is the senior pastor at Carolina Presbyterian Church in Locust, North Carolina.