If you're serious about sanctification, you can expect to experience heart-wrenching moments that try your faith, your endurance, and your patience.
To love someone is to desire and work toward their becoming the best version of themselves. The one person in all the universe who can do this perfectly for you is God.
Part of what we pick up in looking at Jesus in the gospel is a way of viewing the whole world. That worldview informs all our values and deeply shapes our thinking and decision-making. Another part of what we absorb is greater confidence in Jesus' counsel and his promises. This has its own powerful effect on what we fear and desire and choose. Another part of what we take up from beholding the glory of Christ is greater delight in his fellowship and deeper longing to see him in heaven. This has its own liberating effect from the temptations of this world. All these have their own peculiar way of changing us into the likeness of Christ. Therefore, we should not think that pursuing likeness to Christ has no other components than just looking at Jesus. Looking at Jesus produces holiness along many different paths.
The moment we begin to feel satisfied that we are making some progress along the road of sanctification, it is all the more necessary to repent and confess that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Yet the Christian life is not one of gloom, but of ever increasing joy in the Lord. God alone knows our good works; all we know is His good work.
There is a sanctification in sacrificeβthatβs where the Greek word comes from. Now whether you take that sanctification (or holiness) literally or figuratively, there is a glow about people who serve and give and sacrifice for others. β£
Prayer shall purify thee.
Sorrow sanctifies the soul.
Suffering is the first step towards sanctification.
To know God as he is, is to love him as he is and to want to be like him.
Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.
Sanctification is not regeneration.
