What is Sanctification?

In my last blog we looked at the question, what is justification?  Today we want to look at the sequel, what is sanctification.  As you may remember, justification is not looking for excuses for our wrongs; it is accepting the gift by faith that God counts us righteous despite our wrongs because of His Son whom He gave freely to pay for our sins.  It is God's amazing grace.

Does that mean that we can now go out and live in and enjoy our sins?  Not at all!  We read in Romans 6:1-4, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life."

Martin Luther, the great teacher of justification by grace through faith, warns preachers that allowing the notion that Christians can live in sin because they are justified by faith is like preaching Good Friday and Easter without preaching Pentecost or the coming of the Holy Spirit.  There were some teachers in his day who were doing exactly that. But God not only justified us through the cross of Jesus and His resurrection but He gives His Holy Spirit to everyone who truly believes and receives this gift.  The Holy Spirit is the sanctifying power of God in our lives.  Whereas our good works could not save us, they are the fruit of being saved.

But sanctification is not an automatic result of justification.  In theology justification is said to be monergistic.  Monergistic means that justification has one cause, viz. God.  God operated on us by His divine grace bringing faith to life in us through His Word.  Faith is therefore a revelation of what God has done.  A key passage is John 1:12-13, "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God."  Justification is all God's doing.  Someone might say, "But I have to receive it."  That is true but that doesn't mean you added something to it.  Lazarus received a resurrection from Jesus but that doesn't mean he did something.  He was dead and could do nothing to raise himself.  It was the words of Jesus that raised him from the dead.  In the same way, that's what we mean when we say that justification is monergistic.  It is God's doing.

But sanctification is synergistic.  That is, because we became new creatures in justification, we are no longer dead in our trespasses and sins.  We have new identities.  We want to live God pleasing lives.  If we do not wish to live that way it is a certain proof that our faith is dead (James 2:17).  But where faith is alive the Holy Spirit is at work placing into our hearts new desires.  Ezekiel prophecies the coming of Pentecost in Ezekiel 36:26-27, "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."  But we have a role to play in our sanctification.  We have to cooperate with the Holy Spirit.  We need to die to self, love not the world and resist the devil, which are the three enemies of our soul.

In C.S. Lewis' stories of Narnia the four Pevensie children are given weapons by Aslan.  But the weapons do not do battle by themselves.  The children must use them.  The Holy Spirit working through the Word gives us all the weapons we need in our battle with the flesh, the world and the devil but we must use them.

There is an interesting passage in Colossians 3.  First he says in verse 3, "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."  When did that happen?  As we read in Romans 6, it happened in our baptism.  It's done; it's complete; it's finished.  Our baptism was the funeral for our old self.  But it was also a celebration of our new resurrection life.  However, that is not the end of the story.  Paul continues in Colossians 3, verse 5-6, "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming."  Even though our old self died in our baptism, there is a daily putting to death the ways of the flesh, the world and the devil.  That takes effort on our part but it is not our own effort alone.  By the Holy Spirit in us we are strengthened to become overcomers as we fight the good fight and keep the faith.  The Holy Spirit does that as we spend time in God's Word and fellowship with likeminded believers in His Church.  That is sanctification.