The first thing you need to understand about sanctification is that it isn’t a thing you can get.

It isn’t something you put in your pocket or hang on your wall or add to your resume. It isn’t a status effect or a diagnosis. It’s not a degree or a rank or a condition.

It is not something you can achieve.

Sanctification quite literally means “the act of being made holy.”  

And already, we have a problem…

You see, the Hebrew prophets insisted that holiness belongs to God.  The word “holy” is used to describe the nature of what God is: God is wholly other—holy. God is holy because God is not like anything in all creation, including people. So what sense can it possibly make that we are called to be holy? How can we be holy if we are not God?

We can’t. That’s why sanctification is a miracle.

Okay, take a deep breath because this is going to be complicated.

If you’ve heard of sanctification at all, what you may have heard is that after being saved, you can subsequently come to a place where you don’t sin anymore. Congratulations—now you’re perfect! Some people say that is what sanctification is: sinless perfection.  

But that’s not quite right. Sanctification is the process of God wrapping us up into His own holy life. We are made holy because God opens himself up to us and invites us in. From our first breath, our entire lives are wrapped up in a steady progression of either saying YES or saying NO to God’s invitation to come into His divine life.  

To put it in $10 theological words: initial sanctification is the moment we first say yes to God’s invitation.

Entire sanctification is the moment in which we are completely conformed to the likeness of Jesus—as if we were one of His own brothers or sisters. And our whole existence is lived from one moment of sanctifying grace to the next.

All of this happens by the power of the Holy Spirit. God’s Spirit is alive in this world, awakening people to life, which is found only in God. The death and resurrection of Jesus is what opens up the possibility of entering into this life—when the Father raised the Son from the realm of the dead, even death itself became sanctified by God’s holy love.

This is why sanctification isn’t something you can strive to attain. It’s a gift poured out from the inner triune life of God Himself.  Our part is to simply stop resisting the call into that life, which we find very difficult.  This is why repentance and (prepare yourself for another $10 theological word) consecration are a part of this process: we get to participate as active partners in God’s work of redemption by laying down our defenses and accepting what God’s Spirit is doing in our lives.

John Wesley, perhaps the pastor who was most insistent on the beauty of sanctification, wrote a prayer expressing what what consecration might look like in a person. Read the prayer (paraphrased into modern English—Wesley was into “thee’s and thou’s!) and search your heart to see if you’re ready to pray something like this..