Sanctification is not really about response to the Gospel in the sense that I so often hear it talked about. Sanctification is not something we work after pondering with our minds the reality of justification. Sanctification it not an exercise of mind and then will. If you think it of it this way, you will hear talk of sanctification as nothing but law.
Sanctification is a reality. It is something that happened to you when water and word wetted you head (or body). Sanctification is who you are in Christ, not something you work apart from that. It is what starts growing in your life because you are recreated. You are new. And if you understand this, sanctification talk is good news and not bad.
Wow, that Fort Wayne Prof must have been very persuasive! :^D
What do you mean? That is what I was trying to teach him. 🙂
Sanctification is not a thing that resides in us (what I took him to say), it is us by grace. We do not have a new part but are a new creation.
The rub with the “reality” of our sanctification is that it has consequences, or should have consequences anyway. Do we think and talk about sanctification in terms of the law because we have to actually LIVE in it, rather than just simply BE in it?
Haven’t taken the time to fully think this through, but I tend to want to make a distinction between living and being and both involve God’s grace.
Thanks for making me think Phil!