The Boast of the Humble, Part 5

By Robb Brunansky

Published August 21, 2025

In 1 Corinthians 1:30-31, the apostle Paul shows us that God’s effectual power has united us with Christ.

Furthermore, Christ Himself has become to us wisdom and righteousness. There is no real wisdom outside of Christ. We say with Paul in Colossians 2 that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. When we want to understand God’s thoughts and ways, we look to Christ as revealed in Scripture because He perfectly reveals the Father to us.

Christ is also our righteousness. Everything we need to stand before God’s judgment seat and be declared righteous is found in Christ alone. We cannot add to Jesus’ righteousness with our obedience or take away from it with our disobedience. The believer’s justifying righteousness is the same yesterday, today, and forever because Christ alone is our righteousness.

It is precisely at this point where confusion often enters the picture, revolving around the relationship between justification and the third term in Paul’s list of treasures Christ has become for us: sanctification. For believers, Christ has become righteousness that justifies and holiness that sanctifies. But how are these two related, if at all?

Throughout church history, several errors have arisen as people have inaccurately explained the relationship between righteousness and sanctification in the Christian life.

The first error collapses sanctification and justification into essentially the same thing. This belief rejects that sinners are justified by faith alone or by Christ’s righteousness alone. It instead insists that our transformation is part of our justification, and our obedience forms at least part of the basis for our acceptance with God.

Another error is the thinking that sanctification is unnecessary, and that a person can be justified without being sanctified. This is the idea that a person might believe in Christ and receive His imputed righteousness but not receive sanctification.

A third error is the mindset that we will achieve a certain level of sanctification if we are justified. In practice, this becomes basically the same thing as being justified by works.

We must understand, then, what it means that Christ has become for us sanctification because of how many people have gone astray at this very point of Scriptural teaching. There are two ways Christ has become sanctification for us.

The first is positional sanctification.

Positional sanctification is the aspect of sanctification we rarely think about, which is tragic because it is foundational to this doctrine. Positional sanctification simply means that God has set believers apart for Himself in Christ. Christians are holy and sanctified – not because of something we have done, but because of what God has done in claiming us for Himself and setting us apart as His.

We find this aspect of sanctification throughout the Bible, but specifically in 1 Corinthians 1:2, where Paul says that we have been sanctified. Even though the Corinthians were not currently living according to their sanctified position, they were sanctified as a once-for-all gift of God in Christ, whereby God declared that they belonged to Him.

Paul also calls the Corinthian believers saints by calling, which means God calls them holy ones. This is another way of describing the completed aspect of sanctification. We have been called holy by God; and we can be described as holy, not because we have done something to become holy in ourselves, but because in Christ, we are holy. When God sees us in union with Christ by faith, He sees us as holy in His sight.

Now, this positional sanctification leads to the second aspect of sanctification, which is progressive sanctification.

Progressive sanctification is the process of becoming what we are in Christ. We are saints; we are holy; and we have been sanctified, positionally, because of our union with Christ. So now because of this reality, we are to grow in holiness in how we live, and to become in practice what God has declared us to be in Christ in position. There are three truths that will help us, not only to understand progressive sanctification, but also to pursue holiness in our lives.

First, progressive sanctification is intentional.

We must pursue sanctification and seek to grow in holiness. No one becomes holy by accident or grows in godliness by osmosis. If we would become what we are, we must intentionally pursue holiness. In 1 Timothy 6:11 and 2 Timothy 2:22, Paul tells Timothy that sin is chasing us, so we need to run from it and to run after holiness, godliness, and righteousness.

We pursue sanctification through the means of grace God has given us, starting with His Word. Through our reading, study, hearing, and meditating on God’s Word, we become more holy because Christ is our sanctification. We also intentionally pursue sanctification through prayer. It is in prayer that we fellowship with the One who is our sanctification and makes us more like Him as we seek His face before the throne of grace. Another pursuit of sanctification is through fellowship with other believers. Hebrews 10:24-25 tells us we should consider how to stir one another up to love and good deeds.

These are some of the means God gives to us to grow in holiness. What should stand out when we consider these means of grace, is that we are not seeking holiness in some abstract sense apart from Christ, but by seeking Christ Himself in His Word, in prayer, and in His church.

Second, progressive sanctification is incremental.

This reality is so vital for us to grasp. We do not become holy in an instant, but we grow more like Christ little by little. We can easily get the wrong idea that if we pursue holiness, we will quickly become holy and be done with sin, but that simply is not the case. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul describes this work of sanctification as a transformation into the image of the Lord. We are becoming more like Christ and looking more like Him as time passes.

Christians should be patient with the process of sanctification. We shouldn’t become discouraged about ourselves or others. If we see the fruit of the Spirit in our life, even if it is but small pieces of unripe fruit, take courage that the Lord is working, and that those small pieces of fruit will grow to be large and ripe someday as we continue to pursue Christ, our sanctification. It is important to give this same grace to others, too.

Finally, progressive sanctification is inevitable.

Here, we return to where we started: Christ is our sanctification; He will sanctify us if He has justified us. If we are truly born again, justified by grace alone based on the righteousness of Christ alone, and set apart as belonging to God in Christ, we will become more like Christ. In Romans 6:14, Paul states that God’s grace will not allow the believer to live a life marked by disobedience and ungodliness devoid of the fruit of the Spirit.

This truth is why we can intentionally pursue holiness with full confidence in Christ to sanctify us. In Philippians 2:12-13, Paul tells us to have confidence in this process, incremental though it may be, because we know our sanctification does not depend on us, but on God, who is at work in those who are in Christ.

Because Jesus Christ is our sanctification and holiness, believers stand holy before God, knowing the Spirit is making our lives manifest Christ’s holiness in ever-increasing measure. Our justification does not depend upon our sanctification, but it cannot exist without our sanctification, because Christ saves completely, not partially. This rock beneath our feet allows us to stand firm on God’s grace, knowing sin will never be master over us.