In many churches across Africa, one of the most visible distortions of the Christian life is prosperity teaching. It measures God’s favour by health, wealth, advancement, and visible success. It mistakes material prosperity for spiritual maturity. Yet Scripture does not promise that sanctification will make the believer rich, healthy, or socially successful. It promises something much greater: that those who belong to Christ will be made like Christ.
A second error is the so-called “carnal Christian” doctrine. It teaches that a person may truly receive Christ as Saviour while continuing indefinitely under the rule of sin, with little or no evidence of repentance, obedience, or spiritual change. Scripture certainly recognises immature Christians; Paul rebuked the Corinthians as “people of the flesh” and infants in Christ (). But immaturity is not a permanent category of Christianity in which Christ saves a person without changing him. Scripture gives no assurance to a profession of faith that remains content under sin’s dominion. Christ does not merely deliver His people from sin’s penalty; He also breaks its rule and gives them new life. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” ().
Sanctification is the doctrine of that new life.
The Holy God
Sanctification begins with God, not man. God is holy. Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up while the seraphim cried, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts” (). There is no impurity, corruption, or moral defect in Him.
When God saves a people for Himself, He calls them to reflect His character. “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (). Sanctification, therefore, is not merely becoming more disciplined, respectable, or religious. It is God making His people holy unto Himself.
God chose His people “that we should be holy and blameless before him” (). Christ “gave himself for us” not only to redeem us from lawlessness, but “to purify for himself a people for his own possession” ().
A New Heart
Only a regenerate person can be sanctified. The natural man may reform his behaviour, abandon destructive habits, or adopt Christian morality. But he cannot produce spiritual holiness because holiness flows from a new heart.
God promised through Ezekiel, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you,” and then added, “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (). The new birth produces a new direction. Regeneration creates spiritual life where there was death and gives new desires where rebellion once ruled.
Regeneration and sanctification are therefore inseparable, but they are not identical. Regeneration is God’s sovereign act of making the sinner spiritually alive in Christ. Sanctification is the holy transformation that necessarily follows that new birth.
Set Apart in Christ
Scripture sometimes speaks of sanctification as something that has already happened. Paul could say to the Corinthians, despite their remaining sins, “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified” (). Hebrews likewise says that believers “have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” ().
This is often called definitive sanctification. Through union with Christ, the believer is decisively set apart for God and removed from sin’s former dominion. describes this change through our union with Christ in His death and resurrection. Our old self was crucified with Him so that we would “no longer be enslaved to sin” ().
Sin does not disappear, but it no longer reigns as master. The Christian still fights sin, falls into it, and must continually repent, but he no longer belongs to it. “Sin will have no dominion over you” (). The Second London Baptist Confession captures this well: sin’s dominion is destroyed, while its remaining lusts are increasingly weakened and mortified.
Being Made Holy
Progressive sanctification is the lifelong transformation of the believer into the likeness of Christ. The Holy Spirit takes the person whom He has made alive and increasingly renews the whole man. Paul describes Christians as “being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another,” adding that “this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” ().
Reformed theology has often described this under two movements: mortification and vivification. We put sin to death and grow in righteousness. Paul commands the Colossians, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you,” and then tells them to “put on” compassion, kindness, humility, patience, forgiveness, and love ().
Sanctification is therefore more than stopping bad behaviour. The liar learns truthfulness, the greedy become generous, bitterness gives way to forgiveness, and impurity to holiness. The Holy Spirit reshapes the whole person according to Christ.
Yet the believer is not passive. Paul says, “by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body” (). He tells the Philippians to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” precisely because “it is God who works in you” ().
God works in us so that we genuinely work. Grace does not destroy effort; it creates holy effort. Through faith, the believer resists temptation, watches, prays, repents, and pursues holiness. None of this earns acceptance with God. We obey because we have been accepted in Christ, not in order to become accepted.
The Ordinary Path of Holiness
God ordinarily sanctifies His people through the means He has appointed. Christ prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (). The Word of God, prayer, and the ordinances are therefore not merely religious habits. Through these ordinary means, the Spirit nourishes faith, exposes sin, strengthens obedience, and directs believers again and again to Christ.
These means are especially given within the life of the local church. Christians are not ordinarily sanctified in isolation. Christ gives pastors and teachers so that the saints may be equipped and the whole body may “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (). For this reason, meaningful membership in a faithful local church is not an optional addition to Christian growth, but part of the ordinary pattern by which God sanctifies His people. Membership joins us to particular brothers and sisters among whom we are known, shepherded, corrected, encouraged, and called to love. Here we hear the Word preached, pray together, receive baptism and regularly partake in the Lord’s Supper, bear burdens, confess sin, practice forgiveness, submit to godly oversight, and are confronted with sins that isolation would allow us to hide or excuse. Scripture commands believers to “exhort one another every day” lest they be “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (), and to gather so that they may “stir up one another to love and good works” (). Sanctification is deeply personal, but it is not private.
God also uses providence and suffering. Hebrews tells us that the Father disciplines His children “that we may share his holiness” (). Trials uncover our idols, humble our pride, and teach us dependence upon Him.
Sanctification is therefore usually slow and remarkably ordinary. God changes His people over years through His Word, prayer, worship, meaningful membership in His church, repentance, suffering, and countless acts of obedience. The Father who adopted us has not left us to make ourselves holy. He has given us His Spirit, placed us among His people, and through these appointed means steadily conforms us to the likeness of His Son.
The War Within
No Christian reaches sinless perfection in this life. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (). Paul confessed that he had not already obtained perfection, but pressed on toward the goal ().
The Christian life therefore contains real conflict. “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh” (). Remaining sin explains why believers stumble and why repentance and watchfulness remain necessary.
But conflict must never become an excuse for defeatism. Scripture denies perfection, not progress. The Christian will not become sinless in this life, but he is genuinely being changed. The fruit of the Spirit increasingly appears in his life ().
Holiness is not the ground of salvation, but it is its necessary fruit. Hebrews commands us to “strive for… the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (). We are not saved because we become holy. We become holy because God has saved us.
Holy at Last
Sanctification will not remain unfinished forever. What begins decisively at conversion and progresses throughout the Christian life will one day be perfected.
At death, the believer’s soul is made perfect in holiness and enters the presence of Christ. At the resurrection, the work reaches the whole redeemed person. Our lowly bodies will be transformed to be like His glorious body (). “When he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” ().
This is the destination toward which sanctification moves. God is conforming His people to the image of His Son (). The struggle with sin will end. Those whom Christ has cleansed will stand before Him “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” ().
Sanctification is not the anxious attempt of sinners to make themselves worthy of God. It is the gracious work of the triune God in those who belong to Christ. The Father wills our holiness, the Son has purchased it, and the Spirit works it within us. Sin’s dominion has been broken, its presence is being opposed, and one day its presence will be gone.
Frances Ridley Havergal gave fitting expression to this life of grateful consecration in Take My Life and Let It Be:
Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee;
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.