The Fruit of Sanctification

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.

Welcome to Tuesday’s Things Unseen, where all this week we’re planning to think about one big Bible word: sanctification—being set apart from the world for the Lord, becoming His possession. I think it’s important to put it that way. Sanctification is not just a matter of being separated from sin, although that very definitely comes into it. Sanctification—being a saint—is not only something that’s true of some Christians, but true of all Christians because sanctification is simply that our life is now reserved for the Lord. In other words, it means belonging to the Lord Jesus, living with Him and for Him. And so at the end of the day, since we become like those with whom we live, it means becoming like the Lord Jesus. As Paul says in that great verse, Romans 8:29, that’s the purpose that God has for us, that we should become like His Son.

I think seeing holiness in these terms really helps us. For one thing, it protects us from some of the false ideas about sanctification that we can encounter. For instance, we know that holy people will do holy things, but this personal dimension—being like Jesus—means that being holy isn’t just a matter of doing the right things, performing in the right ways. That can be very mechanical and even metallic, and sometimes it’s not very appealing. It can turn you into a rather cold fish of a Christian. You might not realize it, but when you’re in the presence of others, instead of warming to you, people stiffen up and feel uncomfortable. I remember hearing that the famous Scottish minister, Alexander White, once said, “There is such a thing as sanctification by vinegar.” It hardens you and it’s not very attractive. It has a sharp odor, and that odor repels. And when you’ve messed up, you don’t want to share your heart with a vinegary Christian, but you would with somebody who is really like the Lord Jesus.

And here’s something else about sanctification: sanctification saves us from confusing gifts with graces. Now, of course, the graces—the fruit of the Spirit that Paul mentions in Galatians 5:22–23—grow in us only because of God’s grace. And in that sense, they are gifts too, but you know what I mean, I’m sure. I’m thinking about the fact that having special gifts—the gifts that the New Testament sometimes talks about—is not the same thing as the fruit of the Spirit, as grace, as holiness. And the Bible stresses this because we can be deceived into thinking that because someone has special gifts—and the more special, the better—we can be deceived into thinking that they must be particularly holy. And some people trade on that. But remember that Jesus said it’s not by people’s gifts, but by the fruit that’s produced in their lives that real holiness is seen.

Didn’t He say towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount that many would stand before Him and tell them about the mighty gifts they had and the marvelous things they did in His name, and yet be told: “Depart from Me. I never knew you” (Matt. 7:23)? Those words are intriguing, I think. Jesus doesn’t deny that they did things in His name. What He denies is that He knew them, or to put that in other words, He says: “There was no real relationship between us. You were all about performance, all about what you did, but you never said, ‘I want to be like the Lord Jesus and known by Him.’”

I think that’s why, by and large, if you want to know what holiness looks like, what it means to be a saint, you need to avoid the current trend in the evangelical subculture of focusing on well-known preachers, or on people who make YouTube or other videos and, maybe I should add, people who do podcasts. Instead, you need to look around in your own church family because in these public spheres, what you see is usually people’s gifts—or people who think they have gifts. It’s not so easy to see or hear or sense whether they have these graces that the New Testament calls the fruit of the Spirit. So instead, I think we should focus on the believers who belong to our own church family. Look at some of them and see how in these sometimes thought of as “little people” the fruit of sanctification is evident to our eyes.

Now, I don’t think you’ll misunderstand me. I’m certainly privileged to have friends who are well-known preachers with great gifts, and I’ve certainly seen the grace of the Lord Jesus in them. But it is usually from the hidden people in the churches that I belong to that I’ve learned most about what it actually means to be a saint, to be sanctified, to become more and more like Jesus. And at the end of the day, that’s the only thing about us that’s going to last forever, isn’t it? Only what reflects the Lord Jesus is going to last through all eternity in heaven.

So, friends, let’s never forget how important sanctification is, but let’s also never forget that it means becoming like the Lord Jesus Himself.