Sanctification.  

If you’ve never heard of it (or maybe you have, and you’ve always felt a little dumb because you don’t really know what it means), you’re not alone.  It’s a big, fancy word.  People in “church world” often like to use big, fancy words; but, its definition is fairly simple.

“To sanctify”, in its most generic sense, means “to function properly”. 

A pencil can be “sanctified”, if it writes as it is supposed to… A pair of contacts can be “sanctified”, if they help you see well.  

In the Christian, theological sense, “to sanctify” means “to be used in a way that was intended by the designer”.  So, in order to understand what sanctification really means, in the biblical sense, we have to figure out what our Creator had in mind for us in the first place.

In the beginning, we were made “holy”. 

The Lord God created humanity in His image and likeness, and the Lord God is holy.  He is “set apart”.  He is “other”.  (He is not even a “He”.)  The Lord God is unlike any other entity, and He created us in His “likeness”.  

We were created “holy” and we were designed for a purpose.  

In the beginning, we functioned flawlessly, just as we were created to be.  We were “sanctified”; but then, as we all know, we fell from that perfection… and, we began to live a divided life.

As we experience, just as Adam and Eve did with that random piece of fruit, we live a life where we choose things… pick things… that in no way reflect the life God created us to live.

Now, God knows this about us, which is why God promised, and fulfilled, the “Jesus as the Atonement” plan. (“Atonement” being another fancy, church word that basically means “God fixed it”.)

The thing is, once we choose salvation through Jesus Christ, then…  

…God’s desire is to begin growing us back into that holy, set apart “likeness” of Himself… in every aspect of our lives.

He wants us to begin the process of “functioning properly” again.  He wants our lives to be used in a way that is intended by Him.  

He wants us to be sanctified.

So, how do we get there? How do we become what God intends for us to be? Maybe these thoughts will help…

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Here are a few more ways to understand & simplify this big, fancy word…

Is Sanctification the same as Salvation?

Sanctification is not to be confused with salvation.  

Salvation is the free gift of grace – eternal life through Jesus Christ – that can be accepted at any point on this earth.

Sanctification is how that gift of grace affects… grows… transforms… your life on this earth.

Imagine a tree, for instance.  The apostle Paul talks about a tree in Romans 11.  When we are believers in Jesus Christ, we are a part of that tree.  You, as a follower of Jesus, are now a piece of bark, a branch, a limb… a twig, if you’re a petite person… ok?  😉  You’re on there.  Salvation is yours.

Sanctification is your fruit. It is what grows from a life joined to Christ. 

The apostle Paul gives a fairly concise list to the church in Galatia of the “Fruit” that grows within us when we are living in the Spirit of Christ.  He says…

… the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, Patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  ~ Galatians 5:22-23 

Now, we must be careful...  I believe the process of sanctification is what often causes us to judge the salvation of others.  For instance, if I were to sit in a room full of people from my church, I couldn’t tell you, for certain, who is a believer in the Lord.  Hear me, I would have some pretty good guesses.  Why?  Because I know them and I feel like I can see the “fruit” of Christ in their lives; but, I do not have the mind of God.  I don’t truly know where anybody stands with the Lord other than myself (and, even in myself, God sees more about me than I do).  

This is why, as believers full of grace, we need to remember…

… we are all in different stages of our sanctification. 

For example, you may not be very “sanctified”, very “holy” or “as God intended”, in your speech.  You may have the habit of cussing like a sailor on occasion; however, when I see those things in you, that in no way means I know where you stand with the Lord.  I am not the judge of your sanctification.  That is not my job.

I have heard the following argument about people on their deathbeds: A person accepts Jesus Christ as their Savior.  They claim belief in him moments before they pass away.  Then, inevitably, a person will say, “Well, that’s not good enough, right?  Your deathbed is too late.  That person didn’t have time to prove it, to live it out, in his or her life.  They’re simply accepting Jesus because they are about to die.”

Well… maybe.  Maybe they are accepting Jesus because they’re about to die; and maybe their acceptance is very authentic, because death is fearful… and painful… and it can wake us up to the true reality of the human condition.  These feelings can be exactly what leads a person to accept Christ shortly before death.

This is often a situation where we are tempted to confuse salvation with sanctification.

That person got the salvation.  It’s a free gift, based solely on acceptance.  However, what that person didn’t have time for was the sanctification process.

There may be a lot of people walking around on this earth that have the salvation, but God is not able to use them in the ways He has purposed for them because they are not choosing to seek sanctification in their daily lives.

We are called to grow in our holiness, which leads us to…

Is Sanctification mandatory for a Christian?

If I’m a Christian, do I have to be working on my “holiness”?  Is trying to “function properly”, as God designed me, required to be a follower of Christ?

When speaking to his disciples in the midst of a crowd, Jesus once said…

For each tree is known by its own fruit. Indeed, figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor grapes from brambles.… For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.  ~ Luke 6:44-45

“For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”  Whatever is in you will come out of you, in some way.  

As James said in his letter to the church in the late 1st century, we don’t earn our salvation through “works”; however, if we have faith, the work of God will show itself in our lives.  

This came up for the church at Corinth, too. The apostle Paul was actually a bit peeved at the Corinthian church, as we glean quickly from the first few chapters of his letter to them. Their “sanctification processes” don’t seem to be going all that great.  He starts his first letter to them with an encouraging note, saying…

To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people… ~ 1 Corinthians 1:2

However, as we see at the beginning of chapter 3, Paul goes on to explain that there is a disconnect here.  In a nutshell, he says, “Though you are called to be holy, you are looking a lot more like the world than you are looking like God.”

In fact, Paul goes on to call them a bunch of babies.  He says they are “mere infants” in Christ, meaning they are not spiritually mature, which is not good, since the church in Corinth (much like the culture we live in today) is dealing with some major…

… “for mature audiences only” situations.   

They have some very “adult” things going on in their lives; however, they can’t figure out how to handle their situations, because they became believers in Christ Jesus, but they aren’t seeking to grow in their understanding of God’s Word and in their relationship with Jesus Christ.  

The believers in Corinth were stuck in infancy mode.  Now, we all have to start out in infancy mode, right?  Physically-speaking, I’m pretty sure Adam and Eve were the only ones who didn’t start out as babies, but I’m thinking they’re the only ones.

We all start out in infancy mode, but we’re not supposed to stay there.  

It seems the church in Corinth was treating their Christianity like, “We’re born again.  We’re saved.”  Our ‘Salvation Card’ has been stamped.  Done.  Check. Now, if a person wants to learn more about God’s Word… about Jesus Christ… about how to pray… about how to live more like him… Well, that’s great… if you have time to do that… 

Paul’s like, “No! No! No!”  

Maturing in your faith is not meant to be an option.  It’s meant to be what happens.  

There was a woman in my congregation many years ago.  She was a beautiful friend, who accepted Christ fairly late in life.  She was in her early 60s when she came to faith in him – decades later than many in the congregation.  

And yet, I’m telling you, friends, this woman started “running the race” of her faith so hard that, in just a handful of years, she was running circles around many that had claimed Christianity long before her. 

She ate up the Word of God. 

She was a prayer warrior. 

She practiced the presence of God in every aspect of her life. 

Her spiritual infancy was brief… as it is supposed to be.    

When we confess and believe in the salvation and transformative power of Jesus Christ, we are called to grow.  So, the question for each follower of Jesus is this…

“Do I really want to be sanctified?”

We’ve all got areas of our lives that are not sanctified.  We’ve all got parts of our lives that are not growing as they should… They are not functioning properly, in the way the Lord God designed.  

Now, we are not called to perfection in any part.  The Lord God knows human perfection is unable to occur while we are in this world; however, we are called to grow closer to His image with each passing day.  

I’m not ignorant to the fact that many of us (if not all) have an area of our lives that we have divided off from the Lord; and, truth be told, we don’t want Jesus to touch it.  We like it.  We don’t want it to go anywhere.  We don’t want it to “work as it should”.  We like it just fine the way it is.

Is that you?… Ok, thank you for being honest. If it is, then, simply do this. Ask yourself…  

“What part am I willing to give Him?”  

It’s okay to be honest with God. He already knows the parts of your life that you’re currently unwilling to sanctify for Him. So, just say that. Say to Him, “I won’t give you this part, Lord, but I’ll give you that.  You wanna sanctify that?”  (BTW, God’s answer will always be, “Why, yes.  Yes, I do.”)  

Start there. (It’s okay to start small.) 

But, let me warn you…

… as you work alongside the Lord God… 

… and God sanctifies that little area…

… and, over time, you find yourself so fulfilled, so at peace, so in awe of how God restored that part of your life… 

… eventually…

… you will be ready to give him every other part that you have.  

In fact, once you experience the transformation of God in that part, you may be THROWING those other parts… (you know, the ones you didn’t want Him to touch)… into His mighty hands, exclaiming, “Now this part, Lord!  You gotta help me sanctify this!”

Sometimes, we don’t give things over to the Lord… we don’t choose to be sanctified and desire to do His will in them… because we just don’t have enough faith yet.  We don’t yet trust that His design for all things really is the best one.  

And, that’s okay.  Remember, sanctification is a process.  A long one.  It’s about simply beginning to open your hands… open your life… and begin handing Him the broken things, one piece at a time.  

He’s the Master Designer.  He knows how to stitch it all back together, no matter what order you hand it to Him in… 

Now, as the apostle Paul wrote in one of his first letters, to a church in Thessalonica… 

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:23

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For some tangible ways to live out the Christian life, watch Following Jesus: 3 Practical Ways to Live the Christian Life

For some thoughts on how to love difficult people, read How to Love Our Enemies: What Jesus’ Words REALLY Mean