Sanctification

Sanctification is not the product of human willpower or self-imposed suffering, as illustrated by the frustrated efforts of monks and hermits who tried to conquer sin by fleeing the world or punishing the body, but is instead the continuing work of God’s grace in the believer; regeneration is God’s act alone, and sanctification is God’s ongoing application of the death and resurrection of Christ to our lives, whereby our self-confidence is shattered, our reliance on grace deepened, and our old nature progressively exposed, crucified, and buried, even as we are continually renewed inwardly after the image of God in knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion. Far from being a merely negative avoidance of temptation, sanctification is a victorious, lifelong process in which sin no longer has dominion, because it is not evaded but put to death through Christ, while new life is steadily strengthened by the Holy Spirit, so that those who are justified more and more die unto sin and rise unto newness of life by the power of God working within them.