What is sanctification? What is the definition of Christian sanctification?

But I am going now to speak a little more on the important subject of sanctification. What is sanctification? Holiness. The primary presentation of it is in the scripture before us. It has two sides — the absolute side, and the progressive side. There is the positional side, and the practical side. On the positional side you have the truth of the soul being set apart for God. And then there is the practical change, and holy progress in the walk of the saint. He first learns that he is set apart for God, and then learns to shape his ways accordingly. Where would you begin if you were thinking of the subject of sanctification? I know where I began. I began with myself. I thought, dear me, what an immense amount of change and progress ought to go on inside me. But if I am going to talk of sanctification according to Scripture, I must begin with the positional aspect first, and hence I must begin with Christ. Oh, you say, do you think that the Lord Jesus can ever he altered? No, God forbid. Turn to Scripture and let us hear what it says.

To some sanctification means just sanctimoniousness. It really means nothing of the sort; nor does it even mean becoming very holy, save in a secondary sense. The primary meaning of sanctify is to set apart - to separate from base uses to the service and pleasure of God. For example: "Thou shalt anoint the altar … and sanctify the altar … thou shalt anoint the laver … and sanctify it" (Ex. 40:10-11). "I [Jesus] sanctify Myself" (John 17:19). "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts" (1 Peter 3:15).

176 It may be well here to note the way in which sanctification is used in the Scripture. It always means separation to God, consecration to Him; but it may be, in us, sanctification of our persons, or of the state of our souls. As soon as we are believers, we are set apart to God, sanctified - all Christians are saints; and hence, strange as it may seem, when sanctification and justification come together, sanctification comes before justification.

But then there is, or ought to be, as to our actual state, a perfecting holiness in the fear of God, as growing up to Him who is the Head in all things, - the enlargement of spiritual apprehension of the objects on which the Holy Ghost fixes our affections - an enlarged acquaintance with them, and living in that new creation, and, as to our path here, senses exercised to discern good and evil, more confidence in

There need be no difficulty here if it be known and held in mind that sanctification means “separation to God.” All believers have been set apart to God in Christ, and are no longer of the world even as He is not of the world. In harmony with other New Testament writers Paul presents sanctification as three-fold:

Let me show, you what it is to he a Christian. Look at verse 12 — "Giving thanks to the Father, which has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." The moment you have faith in God's Son, you are fit to be with Him. The work of Christ alone makes us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. And who are the saints? Are you a saint? "Oh, no, sir." Why not? "Why, a saint is a very holy person." A saint is one who has been set apart to God by the work of Christ and the action of the Holy Ghost. But, you will say, there must he sanctification. What does being sanctified mean? Separated to God. There is nothing so simple as sanctification as it is given us in Scripture. If you call practical holiness sanctification, it follows justification. But there is a sanctification which comes before it — "Such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." So that really, viewed in one aspect, a man is sanctified before he is justified.

The firstborn had been delivered in a special manner in Egypt and because Jehovah had delivered them they were to be sanctified unto Him. There is an inseparable connection between redemption and holiness. What the Lord has redeemed He claims for Himself. Here we have a definition of sanctification; it is separation unto God. But let us notice that salvation out of the house of bondage is the foundation of all. The same order is more fully revealed in the New Testament. In Romans 3-5:11 we read of our salvation corresponding to the type in Exodus 12 and that is followed by the exhortation to holiness, separation unto God (chapter 6). We are saved unto holiness. The blood of atonement has sanctified us unto God. The more we realize this great redemption by blood, the more we shall yield ourselves and our members unto God.

A. It is sanctification in principle, a truth of deep importance, ignored everywhere in Christendom, by Protestants as well as Romanists, by Calvinists no less than Arminians. For by it is meant true living separation to God from the starting-point of faith, when one is "born of water and Spirit," in a new nature. This cries, as Saul of Tarsus did when converted, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? It is therefore as we see here, "unto obedience"; not only so but to Christ's obedience, not as a Jew under law, but as a child obeying its Father under grace, even though the sprinkling of the blood or justification had yet to be learnt, however soon it may follow. Hence we read in 1 Corinthians 6:11 "washed, sanctified, justified": the order of which is inexplicable to such as overlook the absolute setting apart, or personal sanctification, of believers from their first breath of new life as "born of God." The washing looks at our previous uncleanness, the sanctification at our separation to God, the justification at our resting on Christ's work of redemption, as the other two precede and go together.

There are those who constantly think and speak of sanctification as practical holiness, and exclusively so. It is granted that there is a sanctification in scripture which bears on practice. This is not the point here, but if possible a deeper thing; and for the simple reason, that practical holiness must be relative or a question of degree. The "sanctification of the Spirit" here spoken of is absolute. The question is not how far it is made good in the heart of the believer; for it really and equally embraces all believers. It is an effectual work of God's Spirit from the very starting-point of the career of faith. Elect of course they were in God's mind from all eternity, but they are sanctified from the first moment that the Holy Ghost opens their eyes to the light of the truth in Christ. There is an awakening of conscience by the Spirit through the word (for I am not speaking now of anything natural, of moral desires or emotions of the heart). Wherever there is a real work of God's Spirit — not merely a testimony to the conscience but an arousing of it effectually before God — the sanctification of the Spirit is made good.

The sanctification by the Holy Spirit is the beginning of the work of God in one’s soul, separating him from the world and follies he once loved, turning his heart to God, exercising him about his sinfulness, and leading him to personal faith in Christ. To this agree the words of the apostle Peter in 1 Peter 1:2. Sanctification of the Spirit is there shown to be the divine means used to lead the guilty soul to the blood of sprinkling. Having trusted in the work of Christ, the Spirit dwells personally in the believer and it is His blessed work to lead the soul on in the ways of Christ. Sanctification by the blood, or the one offering of the Son of God, is positional. That is, it has to do with the new position into which the saved one is brought. His sins are purged, his conscience is free, and he stands before God in all the value of the work of His Son. Thus he is forever perfected as to his conscience, and set apart from a world that lies in the wicked one, under the judgment of God. The believer can never again become part of that world. The work of Christ has come in between his soul and the judgment his sins deserved. Thus in the fullest possible sense he is sanctified by the blood of the everlasting covenant. If the profession be unreal (as contemplated in Hebrews 10:29), there is, of course, no abiding sanctification; but where faith is genuine he is sanctified eternally (note verse 14 of the same chapter).

The "sanctification of the Spirit" does not refer to the progressive work of the Spirit in the hearts of believers, conforming them more and more to the will of God. It refers rather to that setting apart for God which is achieved by the initial operations of the Spirit of God in the souls of men, operations which have in view His indwelling us when once the Gospel is believed. By this sovereign work of the Spirit we have been sanctified.