What are the Misconceptions of the Doctrine of Sanctification?

By Robb Brunansky

Published August 28, 2025

Throughout church history, several errors have arisen over the relationship between justification and sanctification in the Christian life. Let’s consider three of the most significant errors and how to correct them.

The first error collapses sanctification and justification into essentially one element.

This error denies that a sinner is justified by faith alone or Christ’s righteousness alone, and instead insists that our spiritual transformation is part of our justification. Adherents of this position insist that our obedience forms part or all of the basis for our acceptance with God. In other words, our justification is based, at least in part, on our sanctification.

This is the predominant view, for example, in the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Bradley Nassif, a notable scholar and theologian in Orthodoxy, wrote, “The conception of justification as conformity to Christ in his righteousness maintains that, in the justification event, believers are given a new identity – are made Christlike through their mystical union with him in baptism.” In short, Nassif says that in justification, believers are “made” Christlike, and that justification is “conformity to Christ in his righteousness.” The difference between Orthodoxy and Paul’s writings is significant.

Justification is not the transformation of a sinner into a righteous person, but the declaration that the sinner is righteous because of Christ’s righteousness alone. God justifies sinners while we are still ungodly. He does not first make us godly and then declare us righteous based on that transformation in our lives. Yet, this is precisely what Orthodoxy is asserting: that justification means we are conformed to Christ and made Christlike. Michael Horton, a Presbyterian scholar, responded, “We do not believe Orthodoxy affirms justification but that it simply collapses it into sanctification.”

The Roman Catholic Church commits the same error as the Orthodox Church in collapsing justification into sanctification. At the Council of Trent in the 16^th century, the Roman Catholic Church declared in Canon 24, “If any one says, that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works; but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of Justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof: let him be anathema.” To Catholics, the righteousness we receive before God in Christ can be increased by good works, which are a cause of our justification before God.

In canon 30, the Church adds this: “If any one says, that, after the grace of Justification has been received, to every penitent sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened [to him]: let him be anathema.” The Roman Catholic Church pronounces a curse on those who say that through the work of Christ alone all our sins are blotted out, we are fully and freely forgiven forever, Jesus bore our full punishment on the cross, and He provided a full atonement to God that requires and accepts none of our works as part of that atonement.

The Roman Catholic Church is collapsing sanctification and justification such that sanctification is at least a significant part of the basis of one’s justification before God. Both positions, the Eastern Orthodox and of the Roman Catholic, are denials of the biblical gospel, going astray at the doctrine of justification and how it relates to sanctification.

Another error that has crept up, especially over the past 50 years, is the belief that sanctification is unnecessary, and that a person can be justified without being sanctified.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer referred to this idea as cheap grace – grace that only provides partial salvation rather than the entire saving work of Christ. More recently, it has been called easy-believism. It’s the idea that a person might believe in Christ and receive His imputed righteousness but not receive sanctification. The intent here is to preserve the doctrine of justification by faith alone, but the problem is that the doctrine of sanctification is eliminated. One doctrine is sacrificed to save another, and thereby both are lost.

However, Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 1:30 that Christ has become to us both righteousness andsanctification. This verse cannot be taken to mean that those in Christ could pick and choose what parts of Christ they want. People cannot say they are in Christ, but they want no part of Christ as their sanctification and their holiness; or that they prefer to be justified but not sanctified.

We cannot have part of Christ. We can be justified and sanctified by Christ, or we can be outside of Christ and neither justified nor sanctified by Christ; but we cannot have one without the other. Christ is not divided, and neither is His saving work. What Jesus became for one of His children, He became for all of His children. What He gives to any one of us in salvation, He gives to all of us in salvation, so that we all receive Him as our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption.

If Christ is not our sanctification, He is not our justification – and that’s not because justification is by faith plus sanctification. It’s because Christ provides full salvation to everyone He saves, so we receive Him and His benefits by faith, including justification and sanctification.

A third error about the relationship of justification and sanctification is the thinking that we must achieve a certain level of sanctification if we are to be justified.

This error essentially states that one must work to prove salvation and thus be acquitted on Judgment Day. In practice, this becomes basically the same thing as being justified by works, where Christians inspect themselves to see how much fruit they have – and if it’s enough fruit to prove their justification. If it’s not enough fruit, they try to produce more fruit to ensure they have the “necessary quota” to provide proof of their justification. This results in people looking to themselves and what they have done for assurance of salvation, rather than looking to Christ and what He has done.

Let me be clear: sanctification is the evidence that we have been justified. We must be clear about how this works, though. Holiness is not an evidence we should examine by measuring quantity with the idea that Christians all will produce some bare minimum amount. The question is not how much fruit of the Spirit is in your life but is the fruit of the Spirit present in your life and growing. The reality of sanctification flows out of union with Christ by faith, so we must diligently guard against the erroneous mindset that our sanctification precedes or causes our union with Christ.

If we say, “We don’t really see the fruit of the Spirit in our lives at all,” then what should we do? The solution is not to say, “We need to work harder! We need to find some evidence we’re saved.” Rather, the solution is to understand that if the Spirit of God is not active in our lives, then we are not really saved. We must not look within ourselves to figure out why we aren’t producing fruit, but look away from ourselves and put our faith in Jesus Christ, who is the sanctification of everyone in Him through faith. When we look away from ourselves and we trust in Christ to save us, we will find that He is both our righteousness and sanctification. We will experience the peace of knowing our sins are forgiven and the joy of becoming more like our Savior.