I’ll be the first to admit it. In church-topia we have our own dialect. Sometimes you walk through the doors of a church building on a Sunday morning and it’s like you’ve entered a foreign country. You hear all kinds of things that are just not part of everyday speech. Actually some of the things we do in a worship service are a bit confusing but that’s a topic for another time.
Back to the confusing words for a minute. Two words that are really big in the lives of Jesus followers are justification and sanctification. I know! What the heck are those all about? Who talks like that? Slow down. It’s much easier than you might think. We can break these words down pretty simply and make them a little easier to understand. So whether you’re a church type or a not so sure about the whole Jesus thing kind of person, give me a couple of paragraphs and hopefully things can become a little clearer.
Justification is where we really need to start. You see without this one sanctification has a totally different understanding. Justification is you and I being covered in the good stuff of God because of Jesus. We are justified or made right. It’s something that happens to us and for us. It’s not something we do or choose or decide or any of that nonsense. Justification is God’s action toward us. It’s like taking your dirt and someone cleaning it. It’s like a free car wash, but better because it’s not a bunch of teenagers scratching your clear coat as they raise money for a trip. It’s yours. Free. You don’t do anything for it. It just is. Think about it in legal terms.
You have been found guilty of a crime, a crime that you indeed did commit. You trespassed on someone’s property. You didn’t live inside the boundaries of life. You stole something. You murdered someone. The crime doesn’t matter because when it comes to justification, they’re all alike. Every action has a consequence as we all know. Even from a young age we know that every misdeed has a consequence. When we disobeyed our parents there was a punishment. This is where justification comes into play. Justification is God declaring us innocent, not because we served the terms of our punishment but because Jesus did it for us.
There’s also a relational side to justification. You were lost, alone on the street. You were abandoned by everyone. Cold, wet, lonely on the curb with no one to take care of you and no one to provide anything for you. Along comes God who picks you up and takes you into his home. He adopts you as his own child, giving you his name. He clothes you, feeds you, pays for your schooling, gives you everything you need. He didn’t do it because you deserved it or because you asked him to do it, but because of something called grace. Grace is the catalyst for justification. So you are declared innocent and you are adopted. That’s justification! You have a new name, a new identity and a new start. You now live out a new reality.
Living out that new reality of being a child of God with a new start is what we call sanctification. It’s really that easy. Sanctification isn’t you doing something to be right with God. It’s you living what’s been fed into you. Maybe you remember hearing something about the vine and the branches from Jesus’ teachings. If Jesus is the vine and we are the branches then the fruit that comes out of us is a life of sanctification. It’s just the natural outflow of what we’ve already received.
See because of Jesus you’ve been justified by his grace. Now that you’ve been justified, you are able to receive sanctification. Did you catch that? Sanctification is something you receive not something you do!
Listen up this is really important! Justification is the work of Jesus, God’s Son for you. Jesus does it. We receive it. Sanctification works the same way! It’s a continuation of that justification. They are two separate things that are so closely united you can’t pull them away from each other. So that means that sanctification is the work of God’s Spirit in you. The good you want to do, you can’t do on your own. The bad you don’t want to do, no matter how hard you try, you still end up doing those silly things. So there’s no way we could work our own good. Enter the Holy Spirit and sanctification.
So sanctification is God continuing his work in you through the power of the Holy Spirit. God desires for you to think, desire and do good things. He desires for you to love him and love your neighbor. He desires for you to serve those in need. He is well aware that on our own, there’s no way we could do it. So he helps us, actually better than that, he works through us.
There you have it. Justification is the work already done for you. It was God’s act of cleaning up your act through his Son’s action on the cross. And sanctification is the work being done in you. It’s God’s act of changing your actions to match up with his design for your life. You’ve been justified and are being sanctified, and all of it is the work of God. So stop stressing and trying to impress God. He’s the one at work anyway. Love God. Love your neighbor. Serve others in need. Let God has his way. It’s much easier that way, believe me!
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