Holy in Position, Unholy in Practice?
You’ve believed the gospel. You know you’ve been forgiven, declared righteous, made new. And yet your mind still wanders to things that aren’t holy. Your affections aren’t automatically godly. Sin still has influence in your life. If you’ve truly been set apart to God, why doesn’t it feel complete?
Two Sanctifications, Not One
Sanctification is not a single, simple idea. There is a sanctification that has already taken place — immediate, permanent, needing no more work. And there is another sanctification still unfolding — a practical, ongoing possessing of yourself in holiness. If you don’t understand both, you will misunderstand both your identity and your purpose: you’ll miss what you once were and are no longer, and you’ll miss what it means to walk it out day by day.
Washed, Sanctified, Justified: A Settled Identity
Come with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Paul names plainly what the Corinthians once were: fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, thieves — unrighteous people who will not inherit the kingdom of God. That is not a flattering list, and some of the Corinthians were still acting in ways consistent with it. Paul doesn’t soften it. “Be not deceived,” he says — don’t let the world’s permission and pleasure in these things fool you into thinking they aren’t serious before a holy God.
Then comes the turn. “And such were some of you.” Past tense. That was who you were. “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.” Not a water washing — the text itself says it was done “by the Spirit of our God.” The natural washings of the Old Testament, the washings we do with our own bodies, all pointed toward this greater washing, the one the Spirit performs the moment you believe.
We see this again in Titus 3. Before: “serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.” Then: “after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” Regeneration — immediate and permanent, done once. This is the sanctification by which Paul can say to the church at Corinth that they are already “sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” — not sanctified by their behavior, but sanctified in Him. By one offering, Hebrews tells us, He has perfected forever them that are sanctified. That is finished. That cannot be undone.
Dead to Sin: A Changed Relationship, Not a Changed Feeling
This settled identity also means something has changed in your relationship to sin itself. Come with me to Romans 6. Paul asks the question that naturally follows grace reigning where sin once reigned: “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” He doesn’t answer by telling you simply not to sin. He goes deeper: “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” Sin is no longer your jurisdiction. It’s not that sin is dead, or that you are dead — it’s that your relationship to sin is dead.
“Our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed.” Not that the body is destroyed, or that sin is removed from it — but that this body no longer belongs to sin the way it once did. Think of someone who was kidnapped and held under another’s dominion for years, then finally freed — and yet still hears the old captor’s voice, still struggles with what was said to them. The identity has changed completely. The relationship has changed completely. But the influence can still linger. That’s why Paul doesn’t call you a dead man, but says the old man is old — the way an old covenant is made old and is ready to vanish away, even before it’s gone. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” You don’t wait to feel it. You reckon it, because it’s true whether or not it feels true.
Possessing Your Vessel: A Daily, Ongoing Work
But sanctification is not only something done to you once. It is also something you do, day by day. Come with me to 1 Thessalonians 4. Paul writes that this is the will of God — “even your sanctification” — and that each of you should “know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor.” Your vessel is your body. You possess it, moment by moment, in holiness.
We see the same ongoing dimension in Ephesians 5, where Christ “might sanctify and cleanse [the church] with the washing of water by the word.” Some of that washing happens the moment you hear the gospel — but some of it is an ongoing cleansing of your mind and your affections, which does not happen automatically the instant you believe. You don’t get holy thoughts and godly affections overnight. That’s why Paul can write in Romans 12, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This is how you possess your vessel — not by conformity to what’s around you, but by the ongoing renewing the Spirit does within you.
Two Realities, One Life
So the believer who feels incomplete isn’t wrong to feel the tension — he’s living in both realities at once. The positional sanctification is already finished: you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified, named by what God has declared rather than by what you once did. The practical sanctification is still unfolding: you are being renewed, possessing your vessel in honor, being transformed by the Word, fellowship, and prayer.
Both matter. Without the first, you have no identity to stand on — you’re still trying to become what only God can declare you to be. Without the second, you mistake a finished positional reality for an excuse to neglect the daily fight. God has made you holy. And God is making you holy. Walk in both.
Look Up,
—Josh Strelecki, Pastor-Teacher
This is the seventh article from Sanctification in Christ Lesson 7 in a ten-part study on Union in Christ at Twin Cities Grace Fellowship. Next up: glorification in Christ.
Has anyone else ever noticed that there is something so very sinister and mischievous that can happen when one desires to renew the mind unto the truth of God's word?
The trap of the liar is for us to have the starting point of our mind renewal based upon what we see in our behaviors that are not in alignment with the fruit of the Spirit.
If we "renew our mind" on that basis, we have stepped back into the law so as to think we can improve what we see in our flesh.
What I am learning is that the Spirit's starting point in mind renewal is first knowing my identification with/in Christ; having been completely separated unto holiness; set apart solely unto God by the Spirit.
With this complete sanctification being the starting point in mind renewal, as I read about the fruit of the Spirit and the newness of life walk given me, I do not toggle back to look at my flesh to immerse my mind in how my attitude/behaviors fall short.
Instead, I live reckoning what He tells me is true having been crucified with Christ.
Starting in the truth of who we have been made by Christ's sufficiency, we day after day further ingrain in our minds those actual spiritual realities. Being the mind tends to slip back into forgetting the work of Christ in me being all sufficient, it needs renewal to these actual true spiritual realities.
But if we fall for the liar's trap and allow our eyes to be consumed by how we fall short, the mind renewal that will go on will automatically fall back into a self improvement effort...trying to re-crucify that which has been perfectly sanctified by the Spirit already.
"And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." Gal. 5:24
So with the starting point being having already had that flesh perfectly crucified, I fix my eyes upon all that I am in Him to know how Christ-in-me lives and walks in the Spirit.