Two very persistent questions that Christians have are really just two sides to the same coin. We often ask: “If God could eliminate all of our sin the very first moment that we are saved, then why doesn’t He?” or else, “If we are called ‘righteous’ in Christ, why do we still have sin?” Now these might look like slight variations on the same question. In one sense they are. When we ask in either way, we are lamenting that sin is not gone, forgotten, never to be seen again. Yet in another sense, there is an important distinction to observe. The first question is moral and experiential, while the second question is legal—at least, it should be. We are far too unaware of this distinction. That God forgives sinners in Christ and declares them perfectly righteous belongs to the doctrine of justification. This declaration by the Judge changes our status and our relationship to God; but it does not deal with the sin nature in our hearts. That fight against sin belongs to a different doctrine: sanctification. 

The Meaning of the Word

The Westminster Shorter Catechism offers this definition in answer to Question 35, “What is sanctification?” Answer: “Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.” Some texts to consider are 2 Thessalonians 2:13, Ephesians 4:23-24, Romans 6:4-6 and 8:1-13. For anyone wanting a more concise definition, we could say that sanctification is the progressive work of the Spirit, through our efforts, to conform us to the image of Christ. Each of those little prepositions will be crucially important.

Here in sanctification, we are not after only righteousness, but holiness. Only God is holy in Himself, yet He can make whatever He wants to “holy” in a secondary sense, or, in a derived or reflective sense. If we understand what holiness is, then we can understand the task of pursuing it. One author provides a definition with the help of etymology that moves from Latin (which is where our English word more directly comes from) back to the Greek:

“Sanctificare means making sanctus, ‘holy.’ ‘Sanctification,’ translating hagiosmos in New Testament Greek, is the name for that operation that makes God’s people ‘holy’ for him.”1

The root word is qodesh (קֹדֶשׁ) in the Hebrew. Throughout the Old Testament, when God calls something outside of Himself “holy,” this can refer to individuals, to the nation, to objects in the tabernacle, or to places, like Jerusalem. The Greek (ἁγιασμός) has the same root idea (ἅγιος). In fact, moving forward now, from the Greek to the Latin, it is that word hagioi, used in the plural for “holy ones,” that our English translations will render as “saints.” Thus a “saint” is not someone that is produced by the fiat of Rome, but is anyone who has been removed by the Holy Spirit from the common stock of humanity and made a believer in Christ.

One reason why this is useful to know is so that we don’t miss all of the places that the Bible is speaking about this. Someone may say, “But I don’t see the word ‘sanctify’” in this or that text. Examples of other words that will function in this context are cleansing, purifying, forming, shaping, renewing, restoring, growing, etc. Whenever these are being discussed, the odds are that something of sanctification is being discussed.

Nuance Required

Since the word “sanctify” most generally means to set aside, or to consider special, there is one sense in which God sanctified us all at once (1 Cor. 1:2; 6:11), and another where becoming holy or “being sanctified” (Heb. 10:14) is what is in view. There is debate over which is the more dominant meaning in the New Testament. These two are also sometimes called definitive (or positional, or immediate) and progressive sanctification. Definitive sanctification is an act, whereas progressive sanctification is a process. Since the latter covers the wider terrain of actual Christian experience, it is imperative that doctrinal treatments of this idea spend more time here. 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8 gives a helpful summary of what sanctification is in this sense. Paul speaks of the pursuit of a life pleasing to God.

This new life seeks after conformity to God’s word (vv. 1-2). It is recognition that this is God’s will (v. 3) or what He has called us to (v. 7). This contrasts with “impurity” (v. 7), specifically unclean passions (vv. 4-5) and wronging our brethren (v. 6). Hence the Holy Spirit is called “holy” (v. 8) and He is the active agent of sanctification in us to produce that very quality of holiness (v. 7).

The question of whether sanctification is either monergistic (the work of one—namely, of God alone) or synergistic (a cooperative work) can often likewise be one-dimensional. As to its power, it is clearly the work of God the Holy Spirit. But when considered in its totality, sanctification has a cooperative dimension in that the new man begins to actively pursue holiness and conformity to Christ. Philippians 2:12-13 is the classic passage that shows both going together: “[you] work out … for it is God who works.”

Some in the Reformed tradition—not usually noteworthy theologians—are easily troubled by the suggestion that there is anything synergistic about an area belonging to salvation. However, this element of sanctification in no way implies that salvation as a whole is synergistic in any of the relevant ways held to by Roman Catholic or Arminian doctrine.

Think of it this way. Who prays: you or God? Who believes: you or God? Who attempt to copy some virtue in another Christian: you or God? Who benefitted from that sermon or that sacrament: you or God? And so on and so on, with other examples. God empowers these and gives grace through these—but He does not do these for us. In a similar way, the wider circle made up of these activities that we call “sanctification” is empowered by God, and yet that very power empowers what? Something or nothing?

The divine does not eliminate the human here. The divine causes the finally functioning human to begin moving like a human was meant to move. Remember Paul’s words in that Philippians 2:12-13 text. He gives the command for us to work, and then that is grounded in God's working in us. Think of the analogy of the river turning the wheel of a mill. Would anyone argue that the wheel’s motion is a denial of the river’s flow? In fact, the more God moves, the more our faculties (mind, affections, will) are activated and become more human (rather than less).

Answering the Challenge to Progressive Sanctification

It is often suggested that the Reformed downplay the definitive sense of sanctification. It is explained by critics of the Reformed that there is too much of a fear not to mix justification and sanctification. It may also be a lingering concern to avoid being guilty of the charge initially placed on the Reformed doctrine by Rome: that it will lead to antinomianism. Perhaps the Reformed in America have heard one too many from the later offshoots of the Methodists echoing early Wesley’s emphasis on immediate sanctification. The Nazarenes in fact taught an “entire and immediate” sanctification, that can branch off into either legalistic perfectionism, or else so-called easy-believism that assumes a low-bar sinlessness. Each of these points require a separate section.

We can only say here that these are all legitimate concerns of the Reformed, as such errors would indeed compromise the gospel. Moreover, it is fallacious to argue against a position on the ground that it was formed only (or even partly) on the basis of some fear. The thing is either taught in Scripture, or it is not. We must, therefore, ask: Is progressive sanctification taught in Scripture?

That sanctification is a gradual or lifelong process is taught by the Bible in various ways. Here are four ways to consider:

First, even the best Christians still have indwelling sin for which they must regularly confess (Rom. 7:18, Phi. 3:12, 1 Jn. 1:8-10).

Second, Christians are called to the action of killing their sin, which wouldn’t make sense if they were already rid of it (Rom. 8:13, Gal. 5:16-17, 1 Cor. 9:24-27).

Third, Jesus makes the petition of God forgiving our sins a part of regular communion with God while in this life (Mat. 6:12).

Fourth, God himself takes part in the work of sanctification inside of us (Phi. 2:12-13), which, if progressive sanctification were an error or sin, would involve God in error or sin. And that is obviously absurd.

The Causes of Sanctification

John Murray speaks to what is being operated upon in sanctification, namely, “the subjective disposition and habitus … the whole man in heart, disposition, inclination, desire, motive, interest, ambition, and purpose.”2 If the whole person fell into sin and misery, then God is after the restoration of the same whole. All of this highlights the fact that the regenerated man takes part in sanctification’s causes.

What is ultimately occurring in sanctification is conforming to the image of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the efficient cause, but Christ’s character is the end cause. It operates from the inside out because the Spirit dwells in us, giving birth to spiritual fruit (see Galatians 5:16-23). What is often neglected in treatments of sanctification is how Christ is the “informing” end cause. In other words, the idea of Jesus Christ, beheld as an Object of our supreme admiration—that this vision, in a sense, “becomes us.” We become like what we behold. Consider the words of the apostles, Paul and John, here.

“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. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).

“Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2).

What do we notice in these two passages? There is a difference, to be sure. John speaks of what will happen, all at once, one on glorious Day; whereas Paul speaks of what happens little by little, so imperceptibly that we are tempted to frustration, as if there is no change occurring. Yet there is this commonality. What is the change agent in both? I am not merely asking who is the change agent. That is surely Christ. But how does it work—whether all at once, or day by day? It is by beholding Christ.

Just as we cannot love anyone with whom we are unfamiliar, and so there is this link between doctrine and doxology, neither can we be expected to want to be like anyone who is not envisioned in their personal holiness, their moral qualities. So it is that we do come to imitate Christ.

And though the production of personal holiness is not primarily bodily, since He is redeeming the whole of us, it does have implications for how we use our body and in fact how we use all other things.

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1. Henri Blocher, “Sanctification by Faith?” in Kelly M. Kapic, ed. Sanctification (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 58.

2. John Murray, Collected Writings, Vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), 170.