What Is Reformed Theology? (Part 12)

by on January 19, 2026 | Comment

Sanctification

Our older theologians used to say that we are justified in order that we might be sanctified.1 The order in that expression was intentional. Before the Reformation many in the church had come to reverse justification and sanctification. Many had come to say that we are justified because we are sanctified. The great problem of this way of thinking and speaking, however, is that we are never completely sanctified in this life. In that case, one can never be justified in this life and yet Scripture plainly says, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1).2 Paul says, there “is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1).3 The teaching of the New Testament is clear. Our justification before God is not future nor is it dependent upon our obedience to the law of God. It is a present possession by divine favor alone, through faith alone.

Nevertheless, that is not the end of the story. The same God who graciously justified us once for all through faith alone in Christ (Rom 3:28) is also sanctifying us by that same power and favor, through faith alone.4 What is sanctification? The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1648) gives us a wonderful definition: “Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.”5 The first thing to notice is that it is God who sanctifies. This means that our sanctification is worked by one person, God. Second, it is by divine grace or favor. Just as he freely declares us righteous, so freely is he working in us to renew us in God’s image (Col 3:11). Notice too that the Shorter Catechism used a passive verb: “enabled.” This tells us that sanctification is something that is done in us not by us. The result is that we are more and more enabled to die to sin and live to righteousness. Sanctification results in a real change in those who are being sanctified.

In the Belgic Confession (1561) we say the Holy Spirit “regenerates” us, i.e., grants us new life and makes us a “new man” (2 Cor 5:17) and frees us from “the slavery of sin.”6 We speak this way because the teaching of Scripture (as we will see) but also because of the way the church has spoken for 1,645 years. In the Nicene Creed (AD 381) the church confessed the Holy Spirit to be “the Lord and giver of life.”7 This is the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ in John 3:7–8. The sovereign Holy Spirit is like the wind in his mysterious movement and it is the sovereign Holy Spirit who gives new life to those who were dead in sin (Gen 2:17; Eph 2:1–4; Rom 6:23).

Because of our Spirit-given new life, because of our Spirit-given union with Christ, we now serve God and our neighbor in thankfulness. Because our new life is from the Spirit it is impossible that it would be without fruit (Rom 6:22; 7:4; Eph 5:22–24).8 After all, there is no such thing as a person with new life and a dead faith. A good tree produces good fruit (Matt 7:17).9 This is why the Apostle Paul characterizes true faith as “working through love” (Gal 5:16).10 That working is fruit and evidence of new life and true faith—nothing more and nothing less. As important as they are as fruit and evidence of new life and true faith, good works are of no account toward our justification or even for salvation (Eph 2:8–10). It is Christ’s good works for us alone that count for our justification and salvation. The Reformed churches confess we cannot base our salvation on them because “we cannot do any work that is not defiled by our flesh and also worthy of punishment.”11 Were we to appeal to our good works for justification or salvation “we would always be in doubt, tossed back and forth without any certainty, and our poor consciences would be tormented constantly if they did not rest on the merit of the suffering and death of our Savior.”12 As important and necessary as good works are as fruit and evidence of true faith they are not sanctification but rather the fruit and evidence of sanctification.13

To Die And Live In LA

Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit. The process, however, has two parts: dying and being made alive. The old way of saying this was mortification and vivification. The first refers to the dying of the old man and the second is the making alive of the new man.14 Dying to sin means that we have “heartfelt sorrow for sin” and we “hate and turn from it more and more.”15 Again, the grace of hating sin and turning from it (and toward Christ) is itself the gift of God and evidence of the work of the Spirit in our heart, mind, and will. Let us begin with mortification.

Were you and I to visit a cemetery the first thing that would impress us is how quiet it is. There is a reason for that quiet. Apart from the grounds keepers and perhaps the occasional burial service, everyone else in that little community is dead and the dead make no noise nor do they sin.16 The fighting, debauchery, sexual immorality, murder, rebellion, and theft that we see outside the graveyard is absent inside the graveyard. The same is true figuratively or spiritually of us who are united to Christ. This is why Paul says that it is impossible that those who have died to sin with Christ should continue in sin (Rom 6:1–2). By virtue of our union with Christ we have died to sin (Rom 6:2–5). That is an important message of our baptism: in it we have been identified with Christ’s death (Rom 6:4). “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom 6:6; ESV). This is part of what it means to be enabled to die more and more to sin. By grace, we are being gradually and graciously conformed to Christ. This is why sin no longer has dominion over us (Rom 6:14).

Yet we do not always experience the freedom from sin that Christ has won for us.17 The Apostle Paul himself was brutally honest about the struggle every Christian has with sin. In Romans chapter 7 he says that the law is spiritual but I, even in Christ, even after receiving the gift of new life, am not, at least not entirely. Speaking as a Christian he says, “I am of the flesh, sold under sin” (Rom 7:14; ESV). He goes on to explain that there is the old “I,” the flesh and the new I, regenerated by sovereign grace and being sanctified by the Spirit: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom 7:15; ESV). In this life, before Christ returns (or before we die), there is a sense in which when I sin, it is not the new man who does it. Rather, it is, he says, “sin that dwells within me” (Rom 7:17; ESV). The struggle with sin is not imaginary. It is grievous and painful. He says, “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing because for willing to do good is in me, but doing good is not” (Rom 7:18).18 Listen again to Paul: “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:21–24; ESV). This is not the confession of an unbeliever. No, this is the cry of the Christian in the midst of the struggle—when it feels as if he is losing. But there is more and his concluding doxology confirms both what he has said about the struggle with sin and the hope we have in Jesus Christ: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (Rom 7:25; ESV).

It is vitally important for us to be as realistic and honest as Paul was about the battle with sin that rages within every believer. Some Christian traditions teach that it is possible to reach what they call entire sanctification in this life but Romans 7 and many other passages of Scripture forbid this conclusion. It is also important to be clear about what is happening within us since, pretending that there is no struggle can lead to despair, hopelessness, and a loss of the assurance of salvation.

Our confidence, however, does not lie principally in what the Spirit is doing within us but in what Christ has accomplished outside of us, for us and what he has declared to us: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1; ESV). Paul, who was at the same time justified and sinner, found hope where we must find hope and confidence: in the finished work of Christ for us. That work for us, however, has great consequences for the work of the Spirit in us. Hope and assurance are offered to those who are “in Christ Jesus.” As John Calvin (1509–64) wrote, “as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.”19

“For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:2–5; ESV). The work of the Spirit in us is a secondary source of assurance that we do indeed belong to Christ.20 By grace alone, the righteous requirement of the law is being fulfilled in us. This is why we say that we were justified in order that we might be sanctified. Christ has broken the reigning power of sin, even though we do not always experience that reality.

Just as, in Christ, we have died to sin, so too, in Christ, we have been raised to a new life. This is what our forefathers called vivification or being made alive with Christ. Outside of Christ, we were dead in sins and trespasses (Eph 2:1–3) but now, just as Christ was raised, so too we have been spiritually raised with him “that we might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4; ESV). The same Spirit who literally raised Christ from the dead has raised us spiritually (Rom 6:15).

This is why we now “reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ” (Rom 6:11; ESV). Another way to say this is to say that we are not our own but we have been “bought with a price.” Therefore we seek to honor God with our bodies (1 Cor 6:19–20; ESV). Because we have been raised with Christ, even though we continue to struggle with sin, we are not “in the flesh but in the Spirit” (Rom 8:9; ESV).

Christ did not justify us to abandon us. By his Spirit he has united us to himself and himself to us. We are his body (Eph 5:30). Despite our struggle with sin and in the midst of it he is at work in us by his Spirit renewing us and making us like himself (Col 3:10). Because sanctification is a gift from God, with Paul, we know “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20; ESV).

Notes

  1. E.g., Caspar Olevianus, In epistolam ad romanos notae (Geneva, 1579), 206.
  2. My translation.
  3. My translation.
  4. Belgic Confession art. 22 says, “And therefore we justly say with Paul that we are justified “by faith alone” or by faith “apart from works.” This is an interpretation of Romans 3:28 which agrees with Martin Luther’s translation of Romans 3:28.
  5. Westminster Shorter Catechism 35.
  6. Belgic Confession art. 24.
  7. Nicene Creed.
  8. Belgic Confession art. 24.
  9. Belgic Confession art. 24.
  10. My translation.
  11. Belgic Confession art. 24.
  12. Belgic Confession art. 24.
  13. Canons of Dort 1.9,12,13; RE 1.5, 7; 3/4.11; RE 5.7; Belgic Confession art. 24; Heidelberg Catechism 64, 86.
  14. Heidelberg Catechism 88.
  15. Heidelberg Catechism 89.
  16. Heidelberg Catechism 42.
  17. One of the best discussions of this aspect of the Christian life is found in Canons of Dort 5.1–5.
  18. My translation.
  19. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 3.1.1.
  20. Heidelberg Catechism 86.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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