Sanctification is the work God begins the moment He declares a person righteous in Christ.
If justification is God’s verdict over our soul, sanctification is His ongoing work of
bringing our body, mind, and habits into alignment with the new heart and new spirit He has
already given. It is not self-improvement or religious performance—it is the Holy Spirit
patiently reshaping us into the likeness of Jesus.
The Spirit is the true agent of sanctification. He convicts, comforts, corrects, and empowers.
Our role is not to “fix ourselves,” but to respond to Him—to say yes when He calls us away
from what grieves Him, and yes when He draws us toward what delights Him. Sanctification is
cooperation with grace, not competition with it.
Five Key Practices for Sanctification
Scripture points to several habits that keep us soft and responsive to the
Spirit’s work. These are not spiritual “steps” or a checklist to impress God.
They are the well-worn paths where He has promised to meet His people and
conform them to the image of His Son.
Sacrifice of a Broken Spirit and Contrite Heart
(Psalm 51:17; Matthew 5:3)
True sanctification always begins with brokenness—the honest admission
that we are spiritually bankrupt on our own. God does not despise a humble,
contrite heart; He draws near to it. The poor in spirit are the ones who
receive the kingdom because they have stopped pretending they are sufficient.
Confession & Public Confession of Chronic Sin
(James 5:16; 1 John 1:9; Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43)
When sin becomes a pattern, secrecy becomes its shield. Scripture calls us not
only to confess our sins to God, but—when sin digs in its heels—to drag it into
the light before the Body of Christ. Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares
reminds us that believers and pretenders grow side by side until the harvest;
some will respond with compassion, others with discomfort or even scorn. That
exposure is part of the Cross, not a failure of the process. This is not
penance and it is not “performative holiness.” It is the mortification of the
flesh—allowing the shame of being seen to crucify the old self so its grip is
broken. Public confession does not erase shame up front; God uses that very
shame to kill the cycle of hidden sin and make room for real, Spirit-born
holiness.
Effectual Fervent Prayer of Righteous Brethren
(James 5:16; Acts 12:5; 1 John 5:16)
The Christian walk is personal, but it is never private. Sanctification grows
fastest in the soil of intercession—when believers carry one another’s
burdens, pray through weakness, and stand guard during seasons of temptation.
When confession and prayer meet, grace rushes in. The Spirit often moves most
powerfully through the prayers of those who love us enough to fight for us.
Mind Renewal via Meditation on God’s Word
(Romans 12:2; 2 Timothy 2:15)
The Holy Spirit rewires our thinking through Scripture. As we linger over the
Word—reading, studying, meditating, and letting it expose us—our desires begin
to change. We stop being shaped by the world’s stories and start being shaped
by God’s. Sanctification accelerates wherever the Word is not merely read, but
obeyed.
Forgoing Preoccupation with Secular Pursuits
(2 Corinthians 6:17; Philippians 4:8; 1 Peter 2:11)
A holy life isn’t anti-world, but it is anti-distraction. We loosen our
grip on the entertainments, habits, and mental clutter that numb our hunger
for God. We choose what is pure, lovely, excellent, and worthy of praise—not
to earn favor, but to stay awake to the Spirit’s voice.
A Life Shaped by Grace
Sanctification is a lifelong journey. Until we see Christ face to face, there is
always more to lay down and more grace to receive. But as we walk these paths
with honest, yielded hearts, the Holy Spirit faithfully does what we cannot:
He puts to death the old self and forms the life of Jesus within us.
If you want to see what this looks like in a real, imperfect life, the
Pursuing Holiness
blog is where I’ve begun to practice confession in the open—writing honestly
about sin, failure, hard lessons, and the slow work of grace. The
Faith Works
section pairs with it as a place for spiritual studies, epiphanies, and
practical helps for anyone trying to walk this same road.
Revival Revisited
A weary, sin-laden church groans for revival, perpetuating a cycle of drifting, cooling, and hiding our sins behind polished church smiles. We avoid honesty, put on the pious mask, let our hearts harden — and then, when everything collapses, we beg God to “send revival” and restore what’s been forfeited due to neglect. But sanctification depends on yielding to the Spirit, and when we grieve Him through secrecy and pretense, His work stalls — leaving us trapped in spiritual infancy instead of advancing into maturity.
We are not called to chase spiritual “highs,” but to walk in steady, growing sanctification. There will be dry seasons and real battles, of course. But the Christian life as God intends it is strengthened through trials, not weakened by them — tempered, not toppled — shaped into endurance rather than pushed into repeated collapse and desperate revival.
Charles Spurgeon lamented the constant need for revival in his day and wrote:
“It is a sorrowful fact that many who are spiritually alive greatly need reviving. It is
sorrowful because it is proof of the existence of much spiritual evil... Such should be the
constant condition of the sons of God. Feeding and lying down in green pastures and led by
the still waters, they ought not always to be crying, 'my leanness, my leanness, woe unto
me.'... For a church to be ever in need of revival is the indication of much sin, for if it
were sound before the Lord it would remain in the condition into which a revival would uplift
its members. A church should be a camp of soldiers, not a hospital of invalids.”
Revival, Confession, and Power
Spurgeon wasn’t dismissing revival; he was reminding us that its purpose is health,
steadiness, and maturity. A healthy believer continues to grow, learn, and endure —
not collapse again and again. Revival should fortify us for faithful, obedient
service, not usher us back into the same weakness that made it necessary.
And this is where the professing church often reveals its drift. Over time,
confession shifted from a shared discipline in the early church, to a clerical
ritual in the medieval era, to a private, internal practice in much of
Protestantism. As confession moved into the shadows, so did holiness. The outward
appearance of respectability replaced transparency, and the Body ceased to bear
one another’s burdens in the open. The result was predictable: a weakened church,
thin in maturity and anemic in power.
When the early church walked in the light, confessed openly, and bore the shame of
their sins before one another, the power of the Spirit moved freely. Gifts
flourished. Boldness spread. Signs followed those who believed (Mark 16:17–18).
Holiness wasn’t merely taught; it happened. We see this vividly in Acts
19:18–20 — public confession leading to purification, spiritual authority, and the
“mighty increase” of the word of the Lord.
But as confession retreated into secrecy (Hebrews 3:13), so did holiness. Instead
of dragging sin into the open where it could die, believers were deceived into
believing they could manage it privately, quietly, and “respectably.” Jesus said
that those who do evil avoid the light, while those who live by the truth
come into the light so that their deeds may be seen (John 3:20–21). And
the result of abandoning His command is precisely what Scripture warns: the Spirit
is quenched (1 Thessalonians 5:19), pride survives (James 4:6), and spiritual
gifts wither. It isn’t that the gifts ceased — it’s that the fertile soil that
once sustained them was choked out by secrecy.
Much of the church became functional cessationists not because the Bible changed,
but because the practice did. You cannot crucify the flesh in private and expect Pentecost in public. Crosses are not borne in secret; they are
borne in the light of scrutiny, where shame becomes the hammer that nails the old
self down. Jesus tied discipleship to death — “take up your cross” — and the
apostles tied spiritual power to honesty, humility, and confession. When the
church traded public confession for private self-management, it traded apostolic
power for institutional safety.
If the church exposes her sin to the light, the Refiner’s fire will burn the dross
away and once again form vessels fit for the Master’s use — and in those purified
vessels the Spirit will move with unhindered sanctifying power, just as He did in
the beginning.
Walking in the Light
The truth is not complicated: where believers hide sin, the Spirit grows quiet.
Where believers confess sin, the Spirit moves. Revival does not come through
louder worship, better programs, or more emotional Sundays. It comes the same way
it did in the book of Acts — when God’s people stop pretending, step into the
light, and let the old self die in the presence of God and His people. When
confession, prayer, and obedience converge, James 5:16 becomes reality:
power and spiritual vitality return.
Sanctification, the Cross, and Confession
At its core, sanctification is the long, slow “outworking” of the same cross Jesus
calls us to take up. To be sanctified is to let the Holy Spirit apply the finished
work of Christ to the unfinished parts of our character. That means saying “no” to
the old self, “yes” to the Spirit, and accepting that
dying to self (2 Timothy 2:11–12) is always painful, always humbling, and
never private — it is a form of suffering without which we cannot share in
Christ’s life.
One of the most neglected tools God has given us in this process is honest
confession before others. When we drag chronic sins into the light, we are not
adding works to the cross — we are submitting ourselves to it. Public confession
doesn’t compete with grace; it is grace at work, killing our pride and breaking
the cycle of secret compromise. Together with prayer, Scripture, and separation
from what dulls our affections, confession becomes a powerful catalyst for real,
lasting sanctification.
If you want to explore this more deeply, the page on
Confession unpacks how bringing sin into
the open can move us from endlessly “needing revival” into a steady, growing walk
of holiness.
References:
Spurgeon, C. H. (1882). One Antidote for Many Ills. Metropolitan
Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume 28, Sermon #1673.
