Abstract: This paper addresses the common Christian experience of sanctification as an endless battle against sin and weary attempts to live righteously.   A foundational understanding of a Christian’s union with Christ in his death and resurrection enriches and invites Christians to live the abundant life Jesus promised.  An examination of Ez. 36:24–27, Rom. 6:1–14 and Col. 3:1–24 will develop this idea further. These passages will demonstrate that sanctification is a Spirit-empowered work through our union in both Christ’s death and resurrection, which has significant implications for the Christian life.

Keywords: sanctification, union with Christ, sin, death, and resurrection

Understanding Sanctification

     The Christian life is often conceptualized as sin less and do better. After all, Jesus died for us, therefore, the least we can do is shape up our lives to show that His sacrifice was worth it. However, any honest Christian will admit that to sin less and do better is exhausting. From frustration in traffic to seemingly unbeatable addictions, sin haunts our daily lives whether we admit it or not. On a good day, we confess our sins to the Lord, but the shame lingers. This shame is not only because of the particular sin we committed but because our confession feels like a broken record. In addition to the entangling reality of sin, we may also face mundane jobs, painful disappointments, irritating neighbours, thankless parenting, and unexpected tragedies. As life’s trials come at us, the endless efforts to keep up the love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness that we know are supposed to mark the Christian life feels impossible. As a result, Sunday mornings are often filled with heavily burdened saints trying to keep their sins either under control or undiscovered. They are weary from running the treadmill of good works in an attempt to keep up with Divine expectations. 

     These experiences indicate a malnourished understanding of sanctification prevalent in the church today. Jesus’ death and resurrection are reduced to historical events that brought about our salvation, and now the Christian must navigate on their own how to “work out [their] salvation with fear and trembling.” We often feel a lingering sense that something is missing but most are at a loss to know how to access the abundant life that Jesus promised. According to Scripture, we are indeed missing out on the rich nutrients and liberating experience of the Christian life.  Sanctification is far from a tiresome work to achieve holiness through human effort and instead must be understood through our union with Christ. John Murray states that what “provides the basis of the sanctifying progress” is the fact that believers have both died and risen with Christ. Therefore the starting place for Christians is not their efforts, but their new identity found in Christ. In fact, His death and resurrection, by the mysterious work of the Spirit, become their own. This article will examine how sanctification by the Spirit was foreshadowed in Ezekial 36:24–27, and then how the Apostle Paul taught this reality in two distinct ways in Romans 6:1–14 and Colossians 3:1–24.  These passages will move us to rightly consider how to persevere as Christians with both sin and suffering while we are strengthened with joy rather than disheartened with despair. 

Ezekiel 36: Sanctification as a Work of God

     Ezekiel 36:24–27 is frequently cited as a parallel passage to Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus about rebirth in John 3. However, it also has significant implications for understanding sanctification as a work of God through the indwelling of the Spirit. In Ezekiel, God revealed how He had blessed Israel, and been patient with them but they in return had been repeatedly unfaithful. As a result, God removed them from their land and sent them into Babylonian captivity. God understood that their problem went deep and their very hearts were sick. Therefore, in the midst of their exile, God committed not just to bring them back to their homeland, but to cleanse them from their past sins and perform life-altering heart surgery: 

     I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses…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. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

     This “heart of flesh” would be unlike their stony hearts that were incapable of faithfulness. They would be indwelt by the Spirit of God and this radical, internal change would “create in them both the will and the ability to follow God’s decrees and laws.” 

     Jesus explains this radical change to Nicodemus as being born again. As with all Old Testament prophets, what Ezekiel understood as only a shadow, comes into living colour through Christ. Through His perfect life, sacrificial death, and triumphant resurrection, Christ brought about the fulfillment of this “purificatory and renovatory” promise. His blood would provide the cleansing from all uncleanness and idolatry through the indwelling Spirit that Ezekiel prophesied —the Spirit of Christ whom he sent as he ascended to the right hand of God. Union with Christ through His Spirit is the force behind God’s commitment that with new hearts of flesh, his people would now “walk in [his] statutes and be careful to obey [his] rules.”  Ezekial 14 captures the power of regeneration, the believer’s “radical breach” with sin, and conveys the ongoing effect of sanctification. It foreshadows a death to the way of the stony heart.  A new way of life enlivened by the Spirit made possible for believers as they are united in the death and resurrection of Christ. These realities are further expanded on and filled out in Paul’s writings, particularly in Romans 6 and Colossians 3.

Romans 6: Sanctification as Freedom from the Reign of Sin 

     In Romans 5, Paul established that through faith the ungodly are justified by Christ’s blood and therefore reconciled to God. This was a revolutionary act of grace and confronted Christians with all kinds of questions as they sought to understand their new identity. Such an inconceivably free offer of grace begged the question: “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Paul’s answer is an emphatic no, with an appeal to understand their identity in Christ in terms of a “realm transfer,” as those who have been brought from the dominion of sin into freedom under grace. 

     In  Paul’s explanation that follows, sin is personified as a tyrannical power and enslaving master to which all people are subjected apart from Christ. This is why Paul states that sinless Christ, still “died to sin.” Jesus condescended to become human, be subjected to the reign of sin, and therefore break its power through His undeserved death. When a believer is “baptized into Christ Jesus,” they demonstrate their union with Christ in His death to their old slave master. Baptism is a significant mark of a Christian’s death to an entire way of living. It symbolizes their burial as if their flesh itself lay in the tomb with Christ. Paul carefully clarifies that it is not sin that has died, but the believer who has died to the power of sin.  To die to the power of sin is like having “weedkiller in your being” so that it becomes unnatural for the weeds of sin to grow, where this was once our only disposition. Therefore, the believer is no longer compelled to obey the rules and reign of sin’s passions. It is as if they have been brought from one country with its own set of laws into another with an entirely new set of laws. Paul demonstrates that the believer’s union with the death of Christ means that this is their new reality, and warns them not to continue as if they were still servants under the reign of sin. 

     In Christ, Christians have also been “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, [that] we too might walk in newness of life.” Christians are “living people from the dead,” they are not stuck in the grave but breathe the fresh air of freedom in Christ. As Calvin has described, sanctification is about both the “mortification of the flesh and the quickening of the Spirit.” Paul exhorts Christians to therefore “consider [themselves]. . .alive to God in Christ Jesus”  and as “instruments of righteousness.” In other words, this resurrection life is not “only the motive, but also the basis, that provides the dynamic for actual obedience and holy living.” Being delivered from the reign of sin provides Christians the freedom and opportunity to live differently, and live better! 

    As we live under this new reign, sin will still show up, however, it “can no longer dominate us. . .we now have the ability to resist and rebel against it.” This means that when we sin it is because we have lost sight of who we are. Confession then comes with a refreshing reminder that we are in Christ and being in Christ is what is most true about us. Moreover, life in this new domain comes with a gracious invitation to live a godly life. Rather than viewing obedience as burdensome, to walk in God’s righteous commands is to experience true freedom from slavery to selfishness and sin.

Colossians 3: Sanctification as New Identity with New Affections

     In Colossians,  Paul opens the letter with a rich description of Jesus as the exact image of God, the one who holds all things together and the one through whom God’s people are “reconciled in his body” through His death and resurrection. Nearing the end of the letter, Paul articulates for his readers what the reconciled union means for them. It is imperative to grasp that Jesus had not merely died and been raised on their behalf, but that in Him they too had both died and been raised. Therefore, while Romans 6 was primarily about a realm transfer through our union with Christ, in Colossians 3 Paul helps the church consider more practical implications of this new identity. It is evident in Paul’s view that the Christian experience of the sanctification process should also bear the marks of both death and resurrection. 

     Paul addresses how the believer is to put to death all that opposes life and holiness as he begins Colossians 3. While in Romans 6, his focus was on being set free from the power of sin, here Paul tells them that their love of sin has also been crucified. Paul lists a general summary of idolatrous affections that capture the human heart and how these desires bear fruit in things like sexual immorality, anger, and slander. These idolatrous affections are the familiar paths they used to walk that were characteristic of being in the old self (Col 3:9). The concept of the old self could come across as a challenge by Paul to a psychological separation from their personal history. However, Paul highlights the old self was in Adam, and this identification has already been removed because now they are in Christ, the new self (Col 3:10). In Adam, these practices were the norm, but now they have a new normal. However, since the presence of sin still remains, their response to these things is to put them to death, having already died to them. As paradoxical as it sounds, Paul exhorts the believers to live as they already are—because they have died in Christ, “they are therefore, to shun and to do battle to the death against all sins, all works of the flesh, all worldly desires.”

     Yet, the Christian life is not simply a war with the remaining influence of sin in our lives, since we have been “raised with Christ,” Christians are to embrace the resurrected life. They have been united with the “Resurrected Man” and are now identified as “chosen, holy, and beloved.”  These words that had described Israel throughout redemptive history now apply to all believers. The people of God are not identified by race, gender, or social class but by the new reality that “Christ is all and in all.” Therefore Christians not only have a renovated nature but belong to a new humanity, the body of believers of which Christ is the head. Although the resurrection has already been accomplished, in a sense it also remains to aspire to; it is “both a possession and a goal; it is both a gift and a task.” 

     Paul then outlines what it means to be united in Christ’s resurrection and put on this new identity. He uses clothing imagery to demonstrate that being in Christ means wearing the same virtues that characterized Him: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. The power and love of sin are replaced by the peace of Christ which rules their hearts, the word which indwells them richly, and a selfless love “which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” What is powerful about this description of the resurrection life is that it meets Christians in their everyday experiences. Paul writes about how to respond to offense or annoyance with forgiveness and patience, and how in marriage, parenting, and employment they ought to live according to their renewed identity. Therefore, the sanctification process affects change in every area of our lives and involves “the engagement of our whole being.” This is what it means to be united with Christ in His victorious resurrection as we increasingly become who God created us to be. 

 The Reality of Sanctification

     To the ordinary Christian who feels heavy-laden and weary of doing good: consider the realities of your union with Christ in His death and resurrection. You have not been saved merely to take up the task of killing sin and forcing piety—you share in all that Christ “has accomplished and now is, by virtue of His death and resurrection.” You can therefore expect that life will feel like death sometimes—the influence of sin remains but it is not your master. You are also united to the resurrected Christ and God has filled you with His Spirit as the means to “follow [his] statutes and carefully observe [his] ordinances.” He does this not by “[injecting] the righteousness and holiness of Christ into us mechanically,” but through the organic process of becoming who we already are until the day “when Christ, who is [our] life appears, then [we] also will appear with him in glory.” May we humbly walk through the real struggle of sin and suffering with delighted boldness towards that day.