Doctrine & Theology
What is sanctification?
Short Answer
Sanctification is God's ongoing work of making believers more like Jesus in character, conduct, and devotion. At conversion, Christians are set apart for God; throughout life, they grow in practical holiness. This growth involves God's grace and the believer's active obedience. Sanctification does not earn salvation, but it is the normal and expected fruit of genuine salvation. You have been saved, you are being saved and you will be saved.
It is a long word for something every Christian experiences and few can name.
The simplest version: God making you into what He has already declared you to be.
You have been saved, you are being saved, you will be saved
All three are true, and confusing them causes most of the anxiety Christians feel about their progress.
At conversion you were set apart for God. That is finished and it does not fluctuate.
Throughout your life you are being made practically holy. That is in motion.
One day you will be free of sin entirely. That is guaranteed and still ahead.
It is God's work
For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication…
Not your project. His will.
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:
He finishes what He starts, which means your growth does not finally depend on your stamina.
It is also your obedience
Scripture puts both sides in a single breath, without apology.
work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
Work out, because God works in.
Your effort is not what earns the change. It is the shape the change takes.
Growth is rarely a straight line
Most Christians expect a steady upward climb and then panic when they find a plateau or a fall.
Sanctification is not a graph. It is more like a season, and seasons include winter.
A setback does not prove nothing real has happened. Slow growth is still growth.
What it is aiming at
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
The goal is not respectability. It is Christlikeness.
So what is sanctification?
God's ongoing work of making you like Jesus.
By His grace.
Through your obedience.
Over a lifetime.
It never earns your salvation.
It is the ordinary evidence that your salvation is real.
Bottom line
Sanctification is God's ongoing work of making believers more like Jesus, involving both His grace and their active obedience. It never earns salvation. It is the ordinary evidence that salvation is real.
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