Christ our Sanctifier

I know how easily Christian life can become a project of trying harder. I can measure myself by whether I have avoided the wrong things, done enough of the right things, or felt close enough to God.

Christ our Sanctifier brings me back to a different starting place: Jesus is at work in me. I have a part to play, but I am learning to depend on him rather than treat spiritual growth as something I must manufacture.

This is an important emphasis in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the tradition that has shaped much of my life. It is also personal. I want to become more like the Jesus I believe in.

What does sanctification mean?

Sanctification means being set apart for God and made holy. Holiness concerns a life that reflects God’s character. It reaches into our desires, habits, relationships, and treatment of other people.

The word can sound remote. In practice, it concerns questions such as whether I am becoming more patient, honest, loving, and willing to serve. Galatians 5:22–23 describes the fruit of the Spirit: qualities such as love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness. Fruit is a picture of what grows from a life.

I understand sanctification in two closely related ways. Positional sanctification describes belonging to Christ, being set apart through what he has done. Progressive sanctification describes the continuing growth through which that belonging becomes more visible in daily life.

In 1 Corinthians 6:9–11, Paul speaks of believers as already washed, sanctified, and justified. Yet his letters also call Christians to change how they live. We belong to Christ, and we need to learn to live that reality.

What Jesus’ death and resurrection have to do with growth

Paul connects Christian life with Jesus’ death and resurrection. In Romans 6:1–14, he describes believers as sharing in Christ’s death to sin and his new life.

Christians call this union with Christ: being joined to him so that what he has done shapes our identity and future. It does not mean that we become Jesus or lose our personhood. It means our life is bound up with his.

That gives me a reason to resist sin that goes deeper than fear of being caught. I am being called to live in keeping with the life Christ has given me. Paul’s language about considering ourselves dead to sin and alive to God asks for a practical response.

Ephesians 2:6 describes believers as raised and seated with Christ. Ascension refers to Jesus being exalted to the Father after his resurrection. Sharing in his life gives us a new standing and hope while we continue living here.

This does not make the struggle disappear. Colossians 3:1–10 calls people who have been raised with Christ to put away destructive conduct. The gift and the responsibility belong together.

The Holy Spirit’s work in an ordinary life

Christians confess the Holy Spirit as God personally present and active among us. When I speak of the Spirit changing me, I mean God working in my understanding, desires, decisions, and relationships.

The Spirit convicts, teaches, and gives strength. Conviction is the recognition that something in my life needs to change. It should lead me toward truth and a response to God, rather than leave me trapped in vague self-condemnation.

Second Corinthians 3:18 describes an ongoing transformation into Christ’s likeness. Galatians 5:16–25 connects life in the Spirit with a changing pattern of conduct. The Spirit’s work concerns what I become over time as well as what I experience in a particular moment.

Paul sometimes uses flesh for human life turned away from God. He is not saying that having a body is bad. The contrast concerns the direction of a life: self-centered desires or responsiveness to God’s Spirit.

The Alliance speaks of yielding to the Spirit’s control. I understand that as willing surrender, not the removal of my ability to choose. I am learning to bring my choices into agreement with God’s purposes and trust him for the strength to respond.

Listening, practicing, and serving

In practical terms, that involves prayer, Scripture, attention, and obedience. Christians sometimes call these spiritual disciplines: practices that make room to respond to God. They are not a scorecard for earning his favor.

I need time to pray and listen. I also need to study Scripture so that I can test what I think I am hearing. A strong impression is not automatically God’s direction. Thoughtful discernment includes allowing others to question an impression and considering what it produces over time.

Growth also reaches outward. Acts 1:8 connects the Spirit’s power with bearing witness to Jesus. Ephesians 2:10 speaks of a life of good works. If I am becoming more like Christ, that should affect how I love, serve, and speak to people.

Sanctification has consequences beyond my private spiritual life. It matters in a difficult conversation, the use of money, the way I lead, and my willingness to care for someone who has nothing to offer me.

Why I call Jesus the Sanctifier

First Corinthians 1:30 connects Christ himself with our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. That keeps the focus on a person rather than a method.

In John 15, Jesus uses the image of branches drawing life from a vine. Abiding in Christ means remaining in that relationship of trust, love, and obedience. I cannot expect a living branch’s growth while treating the vine as an occasional resource.

Hebrews 7:25 also describes Jesus as continually interceding for his people. Intercession means acting and speaking on another’s behalf. I do not walk through this process alone. The Christ who calls me to change is also sustaining me.

A decisive surrender and a continuing journey

The Alliance often describes a crisis experience in sanctification. Here, crisis means a decisive turning point: recognizing the limits of self-reliance and entrusting ourselves more fully to Christ.

It need not be a frightening event or an emotional high. For some people it happens in a dramatic encounter. For others it is a quiet, firm decision in prayer. Romans 12:1, with its call to offer ourselves to God, helps explain what is meant.

I believe such a surrender can matter deeply. But it does not finish the journey. There are choices to make the next morning and habits to face the next week. Luke 9:23 describes following Jesus as a daily taking up of the cross.

I do not want people to spend their lives chasing a feeling or wondering whether their experience was dramatic enough. God’s grace is sufficient in weakness. A decisive moment matters through the life of trust that follows it.

How my own expectations changed

One important season came during a Divine Healing class at Nyack College and Alliance Theological Seminary. I believed God could heal, but I was skeptical about whether he actively did so in the ways others described.

While praying with classmates for another student, I experienced what I understood to be the Holy Spirit’s presence in a way that challenged that skepticism. I left knowing that I needed to reconsider my expectations of God’s power.

During a later closing prayer, I experienced a change in my own eyesight. When I opened my eyes, the room looked strikingly clear. I understood that as an answer to prayer and as an encounter with the God I had been studying.

I tell that as my experience and my understanding of it. It does not establish the cause of someone else’s illness or set a pattern everyone must experience. I tell the fuller story in Christ our Healer.

What these encounters changed was not simply my opinion about healing. They challenged the distance I had kept between ideas about God and a life of dependence on him.

Where Christians understand the process differently

Christians agree that life with Jesus should change us, but they differ about how to describe that change. Alliance teaching emphasizes surrender and the Spirit-filled life. Reformed Christians stress lifelong growth with an ongoing struggle against sin. Wesleyan traditions speak of being perfected in love, while Catholic and Orthodox accounts place transformation within their understanding of grace and participation in God’s life.

These differences deserve more than a label. Compare their biblical reasoning and read fuller explanations of sanctification →

For me, the practical invitation remains to trust Christ, respond to the Spirit, and keep learning obedience. I want his life to become increasingly visible in mine.