Holiness
What is sanctification?

The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), Shorter Catechism, in Question and Answer No. 35 addresses the question of sanctification:

Q. 35. What is sanctification?
A. 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.

Sanctification is the application of redemption to a believer by God’s grace. Regeneration is the beginning of God’s work in a believer and sanctification brings about the completion of the work started in regeneration. A.A. Hodge in his commentary on the WCF gives the “how” of sanctification as follows:
This work of sanctification involves the destruction of the old body of sin, as well as the development of the grace imparted in regeneration: it is first inward and spiritual, and then outward and practical.
A.A. Hodge, The Confession of Faith, (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 158), p. 197.

A contemporary Reformed theologian, Sinclair Ferguson says that sanctification is set within the context of justification and: is the growth of the seed of regeneration and the outworking of the union with Jesus Christ. It is through this union with Christ that the believer receives the spiritual blessings of salvation. The WCF 12.1 declares that in sanctification, the new man is “more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.”

This process has traditionally been viewed as part of the “golden chain” of steps or links (ordo salutis) to understand the application of salvation to a life. But this process of sanctification designated the ordo salutis has its drawbacks. We cannot know how the Holy Spirit cleanses us from sin so an attempt to logically explain the work of God is trying to explain the inexplicable. It becomes an attempt to understand rather than believe and trust God. Other criticisms of the ordo salutis is that it displaces Christ by failing to consider the historica salutis (the accomplishment of redemption by Him); displaces the richness of the work of the Holy Spirit; fails to emphasize the work by replacing it with the process; and tends to separate the blessings of Christ from Christ Himself.

These ordo salutis issues are magnified in this age of radical individualism. In contemporary culture, man is the center of all things. And, that type of thinking has seeped into the Christian community. Incrementalism in salvation allows man to find a way to participate in the process. Sanctification is just another 5, 7 or 12 step program man accomplishes himself. Who needs the Holy Spirit?

John Calvin’s commentary on 1 Cor. 1:5 [“In Him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and all your knowledge”] points to the “in Christ” model of sanctification:
…for we are enriched in Christ because we are members of His body, and we have been engrafted into Him; and furthermore since we have been made one with Him, He shares with us all that He has received from the Father.
John Calvin, Commentary on 1 Corinthians, (Edinburgh: Andrews Press, 1960)
The believer is “enriched” in Christ”; “engrafted” into Christ; made “one” with Him and receives “all” that He has. Jesus is not only the source of blessing…He is the blessing of salvation. “The blessings of salvation become ours through the Spirit, exclusively, immediately, simultaneously and eschatologically in Christ.” Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, (Downers Grove, ILL: IVP, 1996), p. 102.

The benefits of belonging to Christ are the believers now. The focus of sanctification is the Holy Spirit applying the finished work of Christ to the believer in His sovereign and mysterious way. Sanctification that is not a bit by bit building block approach has several benefits. The blessings of salvation are never separated from Christ. The historical accomplishment of redemption by Christ is maintained. No one is permitted to labor under the assumption that “something more” is needed to apply salvation to a life. Avoided is the “self-centered spirituality” [Jesus saves but I am keeping my salvation] prevalent today. Jesus Christ alone is the ground of not only our justification but also our sanctification. The believer’s holiness is a work of and by Him.