SANCTIFICATION-PRACTICAL

Sanctification is a process – the process of becoming more like Christ, of growing in holiness. This process begins the instant you are converted and will not end until you meet Jesus face-to-face. Sanctification is about our own choices and behavior. It involves work. Empowered by God’s Spirit, we strive. We fight sin. We study Scripture and pray, even when we don’t feel like it. We flee temptation. We press on; we run hard in the pursuit of holiness. And as we become more and more sanctified, the power of the gospel conforms us more and more closely, with ever-increasing clarity, to the image of Jesus Christ.

C.J. Mahaney

The Cross Centered Life, 2002, Sovereign Grace Ministries, p. 31. Used by permission of Multnomah Publishers, Inc. Excerpts may not be reproduced without prior written consent of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

Sanctification means intense concentration on God’s point of view. It means every power of body, soul, and spirit is chained and kept for God’s purpose only. It will cause an intense narrowing of all our interests on earth, and an immense broadening of all our interests in God. Are we prepared for God to do all in us that He separated us for? The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized its meaning from God’s standpoint. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled Him will rule us. Jesus has prayed that we might be one with Him as He is one with the Father. The one and only characteristic of the Holy Spirit in a person is a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ and freedom from everything that is unlike Him.

Oswald Chambers

Sanctification is simply the marvelous expression of the forgiveness of sins in a human life, but the thing that awakens the deepest well of gratitude in a human being is that God has forgiven sin.

Oswald Chambers

My Utmost for His Highest, 1935, Devotion for November 20.

The one marvelous secret of a holy life lies not in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfections of Jesus manifest themselves in my mortal flesh. Sanctification is “Christ in you.”… Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy; it is drawing from Jesus the holiness that was manifested in Him, and He manifests it in me.

Oswald Chambers

My Utmost for His Highest, 1935, Devotion for July 23.

Advance in the Christian life comes not by the work of the Holy Spirit alone, nor by our work alone, but by our responding to and cooperating with the grace the Holy Spirit initiates and sustains.

Donald Whitney

Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, 1991, p. 243, Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com, All rights reserved. For more information please see the website www.BibicalSpirituality.org.

There is much Spirit-filled human effort involved in sanctification. On the one hand, “it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). On the other hand, we’re commanded in 1 Tim. 4:7, “discipline [ourselves] for the purposes of godliness.” God uses means of grace to sanctify us, chief of which are the personal and corporate spiritual disciplines. In the personal realm, these include intake of God's Word, prayer, private worship, fasting, silence and solitude, etc. These are balanced by disciplines we practice with the church: public worship, hearing God's Word preached, observance of the ordinances, corporate prayer, fellowship, etc.

Don Whitney

What Role Does Sanctification Play in Salvation? www.BiblicalSpirituality.org. Used by Permission.

If traces of Christ’s love-artistry be upon me, may He work on with His divine brush until the complete image be obtained and I be made a perfect copy of Him, my Master.

Unknown Puritan

Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us, and the Holy Spirit has been sent to prepare us for that place.

Author Unknown

Progressive sanctification is subjective or experiential and is the work of the Holy Spirit within us imparting to us the life and power of Christ, enabling us to respond in obedience to Him.

Jerry Bridges

Progressive sanctification very much involves our activity. But it is an activity that must be carried out in dependence on the Holy Spirit. It is not a partnership with the Spirit in the sense that we each – the believer and the Holy Spirit – do our respective tasks. Rather, we work as He enables us to work. His work lies behind all our work and makes our work possible… He is not dependent on us to do His work. But we are dependent on Him to do our work; we cannot do anything apart from Him.

Jerry Bridges

Initial sanctification occurs instantly at the moment of salvation when we are delivered from the kingdom of darkness and brought into the Kingdom of Christ (see Colossians 1:13). Progressive sanctification continues over time until we go to be with the Lord. Initial sanctification is entirely the work of God the Holy Spirit who imparts to us the very life of Christ. Progressive sanctification is also the work of the Holy Spirit, but it involves a response on our part so that we as believers are actively involved in the process.

Jerry Bridges

Scripture speaks of both a holiness we already possess in Christ before God and a holiness in which we are to grow more and more. The first is the result of the work of Christ for us; the second is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in us. The first is perfect and complete and is ours the moment we trust Christ; the second is progressive and incomplete as long as we are in this life. The objective holiness we have in Christ and the subjective holiness produced by the Holy Spirit are both gifts of God’s grace and are both appropriated by faith.

Jerry Bridges

God’s ultimate goal for us, however, is that we be truly conformed to the likeness of His Son in our person as well as in our standing… Jesus did not die just to save us from the penalty of sin, nor even just to make us holy in our standing before God. He died to purify for Himself a people eager to obey Him, a people eager to be transformed into His likeness… This process of gradually conforming us to the likeness of Christ begins at the very moment of our salvation when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us and to actually give us a new life in Christ. We call this gradual process progressive sanctification, or growing in holiness, because it truly is a growth process.

Jerry Bridges

A righteous identity must issue in righteousness behavior. Such behavior is the outward manifestation of the inward transformation, and it is the only sure proof that such transformation has taken place.

John MacArthur

Some Christians overlook the blessing of sanctification, and yet to a thoroughly renewed heart this is one of the sweetest gifts of the covenant. If we could be saved from wrath, and yet remain unregenerate, impenitent sinners, we should not be saved as we desire, for we mainly and chiefly pant to be saved from sin and led in the way of holiness.

C.H. Spurgeon

Treasury of David, Psalm 23.

Beware of self-righteousness. The black devil of licentiousness destroys his hundreds, but the white devil of self-righteousness destroys his thousands.

C.H. Spurgeon

The saints are sinners still. Our best tears need to be wept over, the strongest faith is mixed with unbelief, our most flaming love is cold compared with what Jesus deserves, and our intensest zeal still lacks the full fervor which the bleeding wounds and pierced heart of the crucified might claim at our hands. Our best things need a sin offering, or they would condemn us.

C.H. Spurgeon

I dare say that the best faith, or the highest degree of sanctification to which a believer ever attained on earth, considered in itself, is worthy of God’s eternal wrath!

Don Fortner
The Sinner’s Advocate, 1 John 2:1, Used by Permission.

This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection, but the preparation for it.

Richard Baxter

We are not sanctified by our good works, rather, because God sanctified us, by grace, He produces good works in our lives. In fact, we do not sanctify ourselves any more than we justify ourselves. Sanctification is God’s work, and His work in us produces good works.

Kim Riddlebarger

The Cause and Effect, Tabletalk, April, 2009, p. 55. Used by Permission.

Sanctification, therefore, must be understood as being both definitive and progressive. In its definitive sense, it means that work of the Spirit whereby He causes us to die to sin, to be raised with Christ, and to be made new creatures. In its progressive sense, it must be understood as that work of the Spirit whereby He continually renews and transforms us into the likeness of Christ, enabling us to keep on growing in grace and to keep on perfecting our holiness.

Anthony Hoekema

Quoted by Bryan Chapell, Holiness by Grace, Crossway Books, p. 48.

Social ethics must never be substituted for personal ethics. Crusading can easily become a dodge for facing up to one's lack of personal morality. By the same token, even if I am a model of personal righteousness, that does not excuse my participation in social evil. The man who is faithful to his wife while he exercises bigotry toward his neighbor is no better than the adulterer who crusades for social justice. What God requires is justice both personal and social.

R.C. Sproul

Leadership, v. 9, n. 2

The Christian life requires hard work. Our sanctification is a process wherein we are coworkers with God. We have the promise of God's assistance in our labor, but His divine help does not annul our responsibility to work (Phil. 2:12-13).

R.C. Sproul

Holiness or sanctification is not just about purity or discipline. It is about displaying your radical difference, showing the marks of God's ownership, and illustrating through your behavior the unusualness of your new life in Christ.

Jim Elliff
A Mission of Peculiarity: John 17:13-19, Christian Communicators Worldwide, www.CCWtoday.org. Used by Permission.

Holiness is not something we are called upon to do in order that we may become something; it is something we are to do because of what we already are.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Brief history of Christian interpretation of sanctification:

1. Early church fathers (Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp) – though noting the grace of God, they emphasized a striving toward holiness.

2. Gnosticism – converts are perfect, set apart from the world.

3. Montanism – demanded separatism from unholy body of believers.

4. Clement of Alexandria – necessity for denial of world and bodily needs.

5. Pelagianism – holiness is result of self-willed moral effort.

6. Augustine – sanctification is God’s activity; not by human effort.

7. Bernard of Clairvaux – mystical personal piety by imitation of Jesus.

8. Peter Lombard – sanctifying grace by infusion of Spirit in believer.

9. Thomas Aquinas – no distinction between justification and sanctification; just infusion of God’s grace in man.

10. Council of Trent – grace inheres in soul of believer by Holy Spirit, and becomes permanent condition or attribute of believer.

11. Roman Catholic doctrine – misstated and overstated subjective implications of infused sanctifying grace, providing a boost of human ability toward perfectibility and divinization.

12. Reformers (Luther, Calvin, et al) – justification emphasized and separated from sanctification; insistence on absence of human merit.

13. Protestant doctrine – over-reacted and overstated objective implications of forensic, legal and extrinsic factors of justification and sanctification.

14. Pietists – reverted to moralistic behavioral standards of holy living, in reaction to epistemological emphasis on doctrine.

15. John Wesley – “entire sanctification,” perfect holiness possible in this life; necessity of “second blessing” experience; Holiness Movement.

16. Karl Barth – reemphasized subjective implications of Christocentric and ontological dynamic of holiness. Evangelical Protestants for the most part resisted; Catholic theologians recognized and appreciated.

James Fowler

Excerpted from: Sanctification, Study Outlines, 1999, www.christinyou.net. Used by Permission.

I caution against referring to “carnal” and “spiritual” as rigid categories or classes of Christians. The idea of a distinctive class or category implies a strict line of demarcation between one group of believers and another. It suggests there are readily identifiable stages in the Christian life into which one may enter if certain things are done or out of which one may fall if other things are done. Sanctification, however, is far too fluid for such strict categorization. In other words, sanctification is a process which, because of its constantly dynamic and progressive nature, defies rigid classifications.

Sam Storms
The Carnal Christian – Study of 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.

I am not what I might be, I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I wish to be, I am not what I hope to be. But I thank God I am not what I once was, and I can say with the great apostle, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

John Newton

We change because we have seen a superior beauty and worth and excellence. If you look into the face of Christ and then look into Sports Illustrated or Glamour and are not moved by the superior beauty and worth and excellence and desirability of Christ, then you are still hard and blind and futile in your thinking. You need to cry out, “Open my eyes to see wonderful things out of your Word!” And your life will show it. Where your treasure is – your desire, your delight, your beauty – there will your heart be also – and your evenings and your Saturdays and your money. We are changed by seeing the glory of God in the Word of God.

John Piper

Wonderful Things from Your Word, Sermon, January 11, 1998, www.DesiringGod.org. Used by Permission.