#santification

[wisdomfish]

"Sanctification means that the Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

[crazysexycool-blog]

[coffeeandtheology23]

Holiness is Perfection; Perfection is Not Holy

Something that I’m becoming more and more aware each day is Christians’ perception of what it means to be perfect and holy. When we look at scripture, we are admonished to “be holy, as I (God) am holy,” and that we are seeking perfection. But our ideas of perfection and holiness are not the same as God’s ideas of perfection and holiness. 

If we believe in what Jesus did for us in His life, on the cross and through His resurrection, then we are justified before God, meaning that He already sees us as perfect. The process of sanctification is how God makes us holy. When we look at our lives however, we don’t see our need for holiness, we see our need to be perfect. And so we strive to meet standards of perfection that humanity for centuries has striven, and failed, to meet. 

Rather than continue to work towards perfection, trying to follow every law perfectly and thus continuously failing, we should just work towards being set apart, which is what holiness actually means. We need to set aside the world’s ideas of identity and hold onto the fact that we are already found in God. God did, through Jesus, what humanity has been unable to do. Our perfection is not found through our own work ethic but through the actions of a God who loves His creation so much that He was willing to die for it. 

[catolicos-buscando-la-santidad]

[wisdomfish]

"Justification is the new creation of the new man, and sanctification his preservation until the day of Jesus Christ."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

[wisdomfish]

The election which is not “unto sanctification” is not of God, but of the devil. The hope that does not make a man holy is no hope at all.

J.C. Ryle

[wisdomfish]

Those . . . who have been instructed in God’s law and gospel, as found in the Bible, will ordinarily have a more vivid awareness of their sinfulness, and of their particular sins, because the divine light that shines on them from Scripture to show them to themselves is brighter. This is one reason (there are others) why converted Christians regularly experience deeper conviction of sin after their conversion than they knew before, and why one dimension of spiritual growth . . . is growth downward into a more thorough humility and more radical repentance. Though not much is said about this nowadays, a deepening sense of one’s sinfulness remains a touchstone of the genuine Christian life

Packer, (Rediscovering Holiness, 52-53).

[wisdomfish]

"Sanctification is not a nice, neat package. Sanctification is a winding slow walk, not a light switch we turn from off to on. The Christian life is a lifelong journey of daily renewal of every dimension of our lives as we live out the ramifications of the gospel."

Robert W. Kellemen