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What is sanctification?
A. Sanctification is a work of God's grace, whereby they whom God hath, before the foundation of the world, chosen to be holy, are in time, through the powerful operation of his Spirit applying the death and resurrection of Christ unto them, renewed in their whole man after the image of God; having the seeds of repentance unto life, and all other saving graces, put into their hearts, and those graces so stirred up, increased, and strengthened, as that they more and more die unto sin, and rise unto newness of life.
Ezekiel 36:25–27
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
Acts 11:18
18 When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”
Romans 6:4–14
4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 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. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
1 Corinthians 6:11
11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
2 Corinthians 7:1
Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
Galatians 5:24
24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Ephesians 1:4
4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love
Ephesians 3:16–19
16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 4:23–24
23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Philippians 3:10
10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
Colossians 1:10–11
10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy;
Colossians 3:1–3
3 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
1 Thessalonians 5:23
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2 Thessalonians 2:13
13 But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.
Hebrews 6:11–12
11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
1 Peter 2:24
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
1 John 3:9
9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.
Jude 20
20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,
Welcome to the Reformed Standard. I'm Tony, let's get started. Question 75 of the Westminster Larger Catechism reads: What is sanctification? And the answer is: Sanctification is a work of God's grace, whereby they whom God hath, before the foundation of the world, chosen to be holy, are in time, through the powerful operation of his Spirit applying the death and resurrection of Christ unto them, renewed in their whole man after the image of God; having the seeds of repentance unto life, and all other saving graces, put into their hearts, and those graces so stirred up, increased, and strengthened, as that they more and more die unto sin, and rise unto newness of life.This question is a significant turning point in the Westminster larger catechism here, because as we've gone through this sort of little section here in the Ordo salute this, this is now turning from basically from what what happens and what's going on prior to being a Christian, to now what is happening after justification and adoption makes a person a born again, regenerated Christian. And so here we see the distinction that I've made reference to a couple times between a an act of God and a work of God. And so we see that sanctification is a work of God's grace. And what that means here in this question is that sanctification Although there is a starting point and a definitive reality that, that is sanctification. There's, there's this progressive unfolding of God's God's works in a person's life, and an increase in the saving graces that are given to us in our sanctification. And so the first part here is to comment that along with all the other elements of salvation, that this is applied to those who God has chosen to be holy. So this is not, this is not something that now we pick up. You know, we don't have justification adopting being something that God does, and then sanctification is something that we do. But these sanctification is rooted in God's for ordination and election in eternity past just as much as justification and adoption are. But here, what we see is that this this application of God's grace is done in time through a powerful operation of his spirit. And it's done by the application of the death and resurrection of Christ unto them. So we see, and we'll see this as we get to the end of the section here, but we see that there's these two elements of sanctification. There's these two components of sanctification. And the first is theologically called mortification. And so this is the reality of death, and the sinful nature being being stamped out or snuffed out over time. And so it's not the case that our sinful nature is entirely removed in sanctification. We don't become wholly sinless, pure, spotless people, in terms of the actual reality of our Constitution. But then there's also the application of the resurrection of Christ unto us which is is called vilification in theological terms. And so at the same time that God is killing our sin nature, but he's Destroying and removing our sin nature from us in this powerful application of God's grace by His Spirit and time, he's also making us alive unto Christ by applying the resurrection to us. And so the combination of these two things is that we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God. And so there is this definitive at a moment in time renewal where our entire, our entire person is affected by the by the beginning of sanctification. It's not as though there is some corner of our constitution that is not affected by sanctification. But this sanctification, this, this application of God's Spirit to us the grace of God in applying the death and resurrection of Christ is applied progressively to us throughout the remainder of our life as Christians. And so here there's a couple specific things that are applied to us and this is, this is really, really important because in my mind, in my view, this settles all of the debates. It's about whether the Presbyterian Westminster position is that repentance precedes justification. It which is is the Lordship controversy, the Lordship position is that repentance is a component of faith and so thus it, it proceeds for justification here repentance and not even repentance but the seeds of repentance, the very beginning of repentance is granted to us is put in our hearts in sanctification. And so in order to say that repentance comes prior to justification in the order solicitous, we would have to be able to say that a person is logically being made holy and being sanctified before they logically are freed from the penalty of the law, and made a part of God's family, which just doesn't work in terms of how we conceptualize and think about it. And it's not necessarily the case that that every time the Westminster Confession or The Westminster catechism, place something in the Ordo salute is prior to something else just in the order of the questions or the order of the chapters. It's not necessarily the case that that represents the logical order of salvation. But in most cases, that's a pretty good indicator. And so here we have sanctification with the beginning of repentance being a part of that, here after both justification and adoption. And so here it's another one of those catchphrases catch all phrases, that it's not just the seeds of repentance unto life, but all other saving graces as well are put into our hearts. And so these graces are put into our hearts. And then and then in addition to granting us these graces, they're stirred up and increased and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, and the end result is that an increasing fashion we live out our our life in in a state of mortification of dying into sin, and then a vilification rising on to new life. The Holy Spirit powerfully applies both the death and the resurrection of Christ on to us.