Q35. What is sanctification?

A. Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.

In his Institutes, Francis Turretin posed the question of the necessity of good works, and he showed the classic Reformed view between two extremes. “There have been three principle opinions about the necessity of good works … The third is that of [the Reformed] who … recognize a certain necessity for them against the Libertines, but uniformly reject the necessity of merit against the Romanists. This is the opinion of the orthodox.”1

The Grace of Sanctification

SANCTIFICATION IS THE WORK OF GOD’S FREE GRACE. That’s how this answer begins. And it has to be, for a similar reason to what we saw about God’s perfect righteousness. Now we deal with God’s equally perfect holiness. What does the word sanctify mean? It means to make holy. God alone is holy in Himself. 

So here is our problem in holiness: “that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn. 1:5). 

This immediately brings up the question of whether sanctification is monergistic or synergistic or both. In review of those terms, monergistic simply means “the work of one,” while synergistic means a “cooperative work.”

It is called “sanctification by the Spirit” (2 Thess. 2:13) and “the sanctification of the Spirit” (1 Pet. 1:2). I am sure many of you have seen the sculpture of the “self-made man.” Or at least, perhaps, you have seen a picture of it? Well, it is a piece of art depicting a block of stone, out of which half is the unfinished, unshaped marble; and the whole top half of the sculpture is the man having emerged, wielding a hammer high over head, ready to bring down that next strike against the chisel. The problem here is not the amount of effort the man expends. The problem is that he is the primary wielder of the tool. Paul says, 

“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10).

The last thing we need to see about sanctification being a grace comes in retracing our steps in that order of salvation. In a few different ways, we have talked about justification being distinction from sanctification and coming before sanctification. We now need to complete that thought in insisting that justification is foundational for sanctification. We need to mean something very specific by that. By “foundational” we do not simply mean that is comes before. We mean that it upholds it, as a foundation does to the structure of a house; but also that it empowers it and characterizes it. Let me give scriptural backing to this with Paul’s words,

“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. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that 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. 6:4-6).

Now the words justification and sanctification don’t appear anywhere here. In fact, we don’t even see that imagery of God’s courtroom and God’s house. So what does this have to do with the relationship between justification and sanctification? The answer is this. Justification (like the atonement) has to do with the legal-declarative ground of salvation; Sanctification (like the power of Christ’s resurrection) has to do with the moral-transformative flow of salvation from there. In other words, Paul is grounding your moral victory over the old man of sin in real life in the legal fact that your old man is dead in the courtroom. 

The Nature of Sanctification

Our answer continues: WHEREBY WE ARE RENEWED IN THE WHOLE MAN. The moment we look into the nature of sanctification is where we begin to see the concurrence of God’s working and our working. We are renewed. That is, we are being renewed. There is a passive element. But this renewal is in “the whole man,” so that the man becomes animated to be, finally, truly and wholly man! So there is both a monergistic element not only in God’s grace initiating, but his power animating. We need that power to be primary everywhere in the Christian life. But let’s hear Paul giving an imperative to see our action:

“to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22-24).

Philippians 2:12-13 takes both sides into view. What is more, Paul treats God’s action as causal to man’s action. In other words, it is not God working and man working as mere parallel truths that we have to take together in some nebulous way. 

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

Now I could include the next words under the “nature” or the “ends” of sanctification, because its actually what we would call an end cause of sanctification. The words AFTER THE IMAGE OF GOD. This is an end because it is the goal or aim or design of sanctification. It is what the Spirit directs us toward, namely, “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). But in being an end cause it is also a cause. So it’s part of the nature of sanctificaton—part of the “how to” of sanctification. Let me show Paul speak in this way:

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18).

Another place where we see the same is Colossians 3:10: “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” So what are we seeing in these two places? By viewing Christ as the goal that I am to conform to, I do conform to Him. This reflects the principle that we become like what we behold. Beholding begest becoming. 

Let’s take another look at that comparison chart between justification and sanctification. 

JUSTIFICATION SANCTIFICATION

NATURE Legal Moral

MODE Declarative Transformative

ACTION Unilateral Bilateral

ORIENTATION Alien Experiential

TENSE Perfective Progressive

Yes, we are well aware of the immediate sense of sanctification, but for our purposes here, we want to get the big picture distinctions down, which in no way conflict with that nuance.

To say that the nature of sanctification is moral-not-legal is to understand that God is interested in making us both right and good. Justification made right; sanctification makes us good. Rome confuses the two into one. Evangelicalism dismisses it altogether. Both will get you confused about who saves what. You can’t tell God’s house from his courtroom, or the mirror of your own performance from the window into Christ’s. But if you see how all of the other distinctions follow this court versus house framework, you have a map to navigate all of the mistakes we make in falling off into either pride or despair. 

The Ends of Sanctification

We have seen one end already: to be transformed into the image of Christ. The rest of what the answer says are ends subordinate to that end: AND ARE ENABLED MORE AND MORE TO DIE UNTO SIN, AND LIVE UNTO RIGHTEOUSNESS. There is a negative and a positive side to sanctification. The words that the Heidelberg Catechism uses for these are mortification and vivification, but we could also say mortification and transformation, since it is not only a dying to sin and living to righteousness, but an overall change in us.

That dying unto sin is called mortification. Paul says, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13). Or, as John Owen summarized that verse: “always be killing sin or it will be killing you.”2 This mortification is called a spiritual thing; it cannot be done by the flesh. Notice how he says that “if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,” then, and only then, is it true mortification of sin.

Now there’s a deep theology of how mortification actually works by transformation, but it is a big subject [I try not to do this much, but in this case, it would just make this teaching too complex to try to cram in here—Listen to my session from the Heidelberg Catechism series called “Mortification, or the Dying of the Old Man.” But some hints can be found in Romans 8:5-6, 12:2, 2 Corinthians 3:18 and Colossians 3:1-5. In a nutshell of a hint, the only thing that will sever the roots of sin is a decisively superior pleasure in those “things above” that all of these passages point us to. But this mortification of sin is daily, rigorous work. Paul says, “I discipline my body and keep it under control” (1 Cor. 9:27).

Owen lists six reasons for this constant work: 

Reason 1: Indwelling sin always abides while we are in this world (Phi. 3:12, 21).

Reason 2: Sin is still acting and laboring to bring forth the deeds of the flesh (Gal. 5:17).

Reason 3: Sin, if not continually mortified, will bring forth great, cursed, scandalous and soul-destroying sins (Gal. 5:19-20).

Reason 4: The Holy Spirit and our new nature are given to us to oppose sin and lust (2 Pet. 1:4).

Reason 5: Neglect of this duty makes the inner man decay instead of renewing him (2 Cor. 4:16).

Reason 6: Our spiritual growth is our daily duty (2 Pet. 3:18).

He adds that, “When sin lets us alone, we may let sin alone; but sin is always active when it seems to be the most quiet, and its waters are often deep when they are calm.”3

The context of sanctification in the Heidelberg goes under the general heading of “Gratitude,” the idea being that this is not works to repay or to maintain, but rather to love and to praise. But this calls attention to sanctification not only as God setting us aside as holy, but as us presenting ourselves back to Him in holiness.

“Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness” (Rom. 6:13).

Or latter in that letter to the Romans: “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1), or to the Corinthians, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). 

It is a weak theological system that does not relate holiness to salvation by grace. I don’t just mean in that attribute of God that explains what we are being saved from. That is true too. However, I also mean that holiness is that excellency in God to be gained. Watson explains how sanctification begins to fit in its place in the chain of salvation,

“Sanctification is the first fruit of the Spirit; it is heaven begun in the soul. Sanctification and glory differ only in degree: sanctification is glory in the seed, and glory is sanctification in the flower. Holiness is the quintessence of happiness.”4

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1. Turretin, Institutes, II.17.3.2

2. Owen, The Mortification of Sin (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2005), 5.

3. Owen, The Mortification of Sin, 7.

4. Watson, A Body of Divinity, 242.