Sanctification is one of the principal benefits of the redemption purchased by Christ and applied by the Holy Spirit to believers. Those who believe in Christ are sanctified, or made holy, in their whole person by virtue of their union with Christ. Sanctification has both definitive and progressive—positional and transformative—elements to it. Definitive sanctification involves the radical breach with the power of sin and the positional status that believers have in their union with Christ. Progressive sanctification is the ongoing work of God’s grace whereby He enables believers to put sin to death in their lives and conforms them more and more to the image of Christ. The root of sanctification is regeneration. The goal of sanctification is Christlikeness. This is especially so with regard to the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit in the lives of believers. The Spirit is the agent of sanctification. The Word of God, the sacraments, prayer, church discipline, and suffering are the means by which God brings about sanctification in the lives of believers. Though sanctification is incomplete in this life, it will be brought to completion in the glorification of believers on the last day.

The message of the Cross is the heart of the Christian gospel. The records of the life of Jesus devote more attention to it than any other part of his ministry. The rest of the New Testament constantly underlines its centrality for Christian faith. But Jesus and the apostles spoke of ‘the cross’ as a principle of Christian experience as well as the chief symbol of God’s love. Belonging to Jesus Christ (he said) meant taking up the cross personally and living for him rather than for ourselves. In The Shadow of the Cross, Walter J. Chantry restores this often neglected teaching to its central place. Writing with the stirring and probing sharp-edged style which is the hallmark of all his books, he expounds in brief compass the practical necessity of bearing the cross and the joy of living under its shadow. He then applies this to such areas as marriage, Christian liberty, and the work of the ministry and prayer.

Among all the things that a pastor will do on any given day, he must not lose sight of his one ultimate goal: the sanctification of God’s people. This is the heart of God’s purpose for Christians.John MacArthur calls pastors to remember what all the countless hours preparing sermons, visiting hospitals, counseling, conducting weddings, and more are all about, even when the finish line seems so far in the distance that they’re tempted to give up. He encourages pastors with the power God gives them to place the sanctification of God’s people at the center of their ministry.

I think the best place to go for a one-sentence answer to that is Philippians 2:12-13, where Paul urges the Christians to work out their salvation—which is not working up their salvation, but working out the salvation that God has already worked in.

He says, “Work out your salvation in fear and trembling, because it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”

So we fulfill all the responsibilities that God has given to us in His word as we trust in Jesus Christ and seek the help of the Holy Spirit to fulfill that. So there’s an integrated relationship.

But we are never in a position where we can say, “Oh, that was the Holy Spirit,” and “Oh, that was me,” because what we do is always the fruit of the Spirit working in us.

Being holy isn’t merely about doing the right things. Nor should we mistake being holy with being gifted. Today, Sinclair Ferguson identifies the true fruit of sanctification: nearness and likeness to Jesus Christ.

What happens in a person’s life that causes a sinner to become a saint? Today, Sinclair Ferguson looks closely at a familiar Bible verse that gets to the heart of our spiritual transformation.

On this episode of Simply Put, Barry Cooper considers what it means to be sanctified: to be set apart by God for a purpose.

part of the 5 Things You Should Know collection.*

In saving us, God makes us new. Can a person be saved yet not be growing in grace? Today, John MacArthur addresses the important link between salvation and sanctification.

sanctification is God's renewing and transforming our whole persons—our minds, wills, affections, and behaviors. United to Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection and indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, we are dead to the reign of sin and alive to righteousness (Rom. 6:1-23; 8:1-11). We therefore are obligated to put sin to death and to present our "members to God as instruments for righteousness" (6:13; see 8:13).

Second, our justification is a complete and finished act. Justification means that every believer is completely and finally freed from condemnation and the wrath of God (Rom. 8:1, 33-34; Col. 2:13b-14). Sanctification, however, is an ongoing and progressive work in our lives. Although every believer is brought out once and for all from bondage to sin, we are not immediately made perfect. We will not be completely freed from sin until we receive our resurrection bodies at the last day.

Christ has won both justification and sanctification for His people. Both graces are the concern of faith in Jesus Christ, but in different ways. In justification, our faith results in our being forgiven, accepted, and accounted righteous in God's sight. In sanctification, that same faith actively and eagerly takes up all the commands that Christ has given the believer. We dare not separate or conflate justification and sanctification. We do distinguish them. And, in both graces, we enter into the richness and joy of communion with Christ through faith in Him.

In this sermon, Dr. Sproul investigates the use of the word spirit—the relationship of the human spirit to the body and its relationship to the soul. He discusses the following four categories of people when it comes to salvation: not saved and know it; saved and know it; saved and not sure; and not saved but sure they are saved.

When someone has been justified by faith in Christ, the transformative work of sanctification begins. In this lesson, Dr. Sproul discusses the path of sanctification in the Christian life and the impact that it has for believers’ growth in grace.

Reformation theologians set various concepts in opposition when explaining how God’s gracious salvation is applied to human beings. They did so because the Bible sets various concepts in opposition. Therefore, we must do so as well if we are to be faithful to Scripture and to the Reformers’ example.With respect to salvation, it is important to see that we oppose grace and merit, not grace and human activity. What do we mean by this? At no point in salvation does our merit enter into the equation. We do not and cannot merit or earn election, regeneration, faith, justification, sanctification, or glorification. There are points in salvation, however, where we do act, though not in a meritorious way. For example, we act in the exercise of faith. We do something because we put our trust in Christ. Though faith is God’s gracious gift, God does not believe for us. We believe. But—and this is essential—our believing is not meritorious. The Lord does not take our faith as a payment for eternal life. He does not reward faith; faith merely lays hold of Christ and His righteousness, and that is what merits eternal life.Another place in salvation where grace and human activity are not opposed is in our sanctification, our growth in Christ and progress in holiness over our lifetimes. Just consider Philippians 2:12–13, wherein Paul tells us to work out our own salvation “with fear and trembling.” Clearly, Paul has some human activity in mind. But Paul stresses God’s initiative. We work because God works in us. The Lord’s grace is operative in sanctification. He works in us to give us the will to obey Him, and He works in us to produce good works of obedience. These good works are the result of grace, but they are not meritorious of salvation. God looks upon and is pleased with our sanctification, but it is not be-cause we keep His commandments that we receive eternal life. We receive eternal life because Christ kept God’s commandments perfectly.Grace and our own merit are opposed at every point in salvation. We can make no claim on God. But grace does not mean we are passive in the outworking of the Lord’s redemption. At key points—such as sanctification—we act, not to earn our place in heaven but because Christ has earned our place in heaven and because He is working in us to prepare us for heaven. God initiates, sustains, and completes our holiness. We act in a non-meritorious way to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we produce good works because God’s sanctifying grace alone guarantees them.

Martin Luther could hardly be accused of teaching that we are justified by our good works, and this makes quite remarkable what he says about saving, justifying faith in his introduction to Romans from his translation of the Bible. He says that because of faith, we “freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown [us] such grace. Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire!”

Luther’s statement reminds us that faith not only leads us to be declared righteous in God’s sight, but that it also results in our sanctification, which is the inward transformation we experience from the point of our conversion on. When we consider sanctification, note that Scripture speaks of it in two ways. First, the Bible describes the reality of positional or declarative sanctification. When we trust in Christ alone for salvation, we are definitively set apart as God’s holy people, our Creator’s special possession (1 Peter 2:9–10). We are holy in God’s sight and are forever marked as His. And yet, Scripture also tells us that until we are glorified, we are often unholy in practice. So, God’s Word calls us to engage with the Lord in the process of sanctification wherein we more and more die to self and live unto Christ, seeking to obey Him in all things. Because we have been marked out as holy, we are commanded to be holy, to become in our experience what we are already in God’s sight (vv. 11–12).

How does this process of sanctification advance? Since today’s passage says we are “sanctified by faith” in Christ (Acts 26:18), the answer is that faith is no less essential for our sanctification than it is for our justification. We must believe God in order to bear fruit for God. Our Creator calls us to do many things that seem strange from a this-worldly perspective. We are exhorted not to trust in princes, our bank accounts, or anything else in this world but to believe Christ and do what He says even when we know it will come at a great cost to us personally (Ps. 146:3; Luke 14:25–33). We will not place Him first and suffer for His name’s sake by obeying Him even when it is difficult unless we believe that He will reward us with more than we can ever imagine (Mark 10:29–31). In other words, without faith, we cannot pay the cost of discipleship that is required to conform us to Christ’s image. We are justified by faith, but even the sanctification and good works that follow our justification are based on faith

In our last two lessons, we looked at Paul's teaching on sanctification from Romans 6 and 7, especially as it related to our union with Christ in His death and resurrection and how we live under His rule. In Christ, sin no longer reigns in our lives, but it does remain, leaving us to struggle against it throughout the entire Christian life. In this lesson, Dr. Waters opens up one more area in Paul's thought related to sanctification. Specifically, he shows us that this Christian life of dying to sin and living to righteousness remains impossible without the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit is absolutely indispensable to the victorious Christian life. We will look at His ministry in connection to His indwelling presence and role as the Spirit of adoption.

In our last lesson, we began studying sanctification, which is very much a part of the gospel Paul preached (Rom. 6:19). Those who are justified become slaves of righteousness in glad submission to Christ and in the power of His resurrected life. However, we must not see sanctification as a steady succession of victories completed in weeks or months, but as a constant battle against sin in this life. In this lesson, Dr. Waters opens up Paul's teaching on this struggle in Romans 7, which finds connections to Paul's teaching on the battle fought between the flesh and the Spirit (Gal. 5:17) and in the armor of God (Eph. 6) and his own personal fight for self-discipline (1 Cor. 9:27). We come, then, to consider this battle for ourselves and will do so in light of Paul's teaching on the law and remaining sin.

We have just studied justification by faith alone, which is at the heart—but is not the totality of—the gospel Paul preached. Indeed, we are delivered not only from the guilt and penalty of sin in justification, but also sin's dominion, presence, and power in sanctification, which entails becoming "slaves to righteousness" (Rom. 6:19). Thus, we move from the standing of justification by imputed righteousness to the renewed life of sanctification by transformational righteousness. Paul opens up sanctification at length in Romans 6, 7, and 8, which concern us in this and the next two lessons. In this message from Romans 6, Dr. Waters shows us from two perspectives the resources available to believers in this life as they battle against sin and live unto holiness.

our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom. 6:6, emphasis added). Sin’s power was broken in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Christ came not only to cancel sin’s debt; He came also to break its power. Therefore, the apostle exhorts, “You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11). When we forget that sin’s power over us was broken in the death of Christ, we will inevitably fail to walk in the newness of life that we have in union with Him. If we neglect this crucial aspect of Christ’s work, we will inevitably end up living in bondage, fear, doubt, and anxiety — or else we will become selfrighteous, judgmental, and proud.

Union with Christ is truly one of the most precious doctrines for Christian living. It is mentioned nearly 150 times in the New Testament by use of such phrases as “in Christ,” “in Him,” “in Jesus,” or “in Jesus Christ.” The apostles relentlessly remind believers of their position in Christ. By faith we are united to Him, in whom we receive all the spiritual blessings of God (1 Cor. 1:31).

We do not come to Christ by faith for justification and then depart from Him for sanctification. In Christ our sins are pardoned, and in Him the reign of sin is overthrown. The same Christ who justified us also sanctifies us; therefore, the same faith that justifies us also sanctifies us (John 15:1–5). John Owen captured this truth magnificently when he wrote, “While by faith we contemplate the glory of Christ as revealed in the Gospel, all grace will thrive and flourish in us towards a perfect conformity unto Him.” By union with Christ, believers have power to put indwelling sin to death (Col. 2:20–3:17). With the apostle, we answer the question: “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” with the joyful exclamation: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”