Sanctification Summarized

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.

This week on Things Unseen, we’ve been thinking about what the New Testament means when it talks about sanctification, or holiness. And we’ve seen its basic meaning is that we are now reserved for the Lord Jesus. We now belong to Him in order to be transformed by His Spirit into His likeness. Yes, we still remain ourselves; we don’t lose our individual personalities. But in those personalities, we become more and more like Him. And yesterday, we saw what that looks like in fairly practical terms. It means the life of love that’s described in 1 Corinthians 13.

Now today, I want to look at this from a different perspective, but one that’s also, I think, very important. What happens to people like us—people who were once dead in trespasses and sins, fast bound in sin and nature’s night, as Wesley put it—what happens to us to turn us into saints? I think a good verse to help us here is one that, when I was a younger Christian, we were all encouraged to memorize. It’s Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

I sometimes say that these words give us sanctification in four prepositions. So let me point them out to you briefly, although there’s actually hours of meditation in these words.

The first preposition to notice is the word “for”: Christ “loved me and gave himself for me.” And that’s the foundation of everything, isn’t it? Christ died in my place, the just for the unjust, to bring me to God. And you remember how later in these writings, Paul says that there are several dimensions to this death of Christ. He died for the guilt of sin.

But hold that thought and notice the second preposition: “I have been crucified with Christ.” And this means that because by faith, I’m united to Christ—of course, in God’s plan, He united me to Christ from before the foundation of the world—but when I actually come to faith in Christ, then I come to share in the death that He died. He died for my sin, and so in Him, I’m free from its guilt. But He also died to sin, to the reign of sin, as Paul says in Romans 6. And so, because I’m united to Him, I share not only in the freedom that I have now from guilt but in deliverance from my bondage because I share in Christ’s death to sin. In Christ, I too died to sin and was raised to newness of life. So, as Paul says, sin no longer has dominion over me; Jesus has. I’m no longer under the authority of king sin, but King Jesus. I’ve been delivered from the kingdom of sin so that I can be set free from its lifestyle and live in the kingdom of the Lord Christ and in the lifestyle of the kingdom of God. Sin no longer governs me, but holiness, Christlikeness governs me.

And then there’s a third preposition in Paul’s words: Christ now “lives in me.” Think about it this way: it’s one thing to be given a new nationality, to come from one kingdom to another kingdom, but it is another thing to be able to speak the language of that new kingdom fluently. That takes time. How do we get the resources, the power that we need to live a life of holiness? Well, here’s the answer: the Lord Jesus Christ by His Holy Spirit comes to indwell our hearts and lives. That‘s staggering really, isn‘t it? No wonder Satan often tries to hide this from us and make us lose sight of it, even forget it. But those who know that the Lord Jesus indwells them, they know where the strength to live for Him really comes from.

And then there’s a fourth preposition: we “live by faith in the Son of God.” The Spirit of Christ indwells us and works in us, but he doesn’t push us out of the way, as though to say: “I’m here now. I’ll do it all. You just sit down there, say nothing, and do nothing.” No, when holiness becomes real, then you and I actually become holy. We begin to think holy thoughts and have holy desires and do holy things and live holy lives. That is to say, we actually become more like Jesus because His Spirit indwells us and works in us and through us. Sanctification isn’t a matter of the Spirit turning us into an automaton. Actually, it’s the reverse. And that’s why Paul says, “The life I now live . . . I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” So, sanctification becomes ours by faith, not by faith as a single act, as a kind of crisis moment, as some have taught in, I think, a muddle-headed way—no, but by living day by day, hour by hour, trusting in the Lord.

So, here are four prepositions that summarize the way of holiness. Christ died for us—that’s the foundation. And because of that, we died with Christ, and Christ lives in us, and we live by faith. But the thing is, it takes the whole of our lives to learn how to live that way. So let’s remember Galatians 2:20, and let’s live by faith in Christ today.