Many Christians think sanctification means becoming less disappointing to God.

That’s why self-help books are quite popular with lots of Christians. And why many Christian books are quite similar to self-help books. Because if you view sanctification as essentially moral improvement, it is essentially “self-help.”

Many of these same Christians rightly affirm that sanctification is something that develops from faith; that Christ’s work on the cross is the reason why we are sanctified. But many of us don’t understand what that connection really means.

But thinking this way has more serious consequences too. It can quietly turn sanctification into a performance review. A need to make progress in some area of our lives. And all this does is direct our attention away from Christ onto ourselves. Rather than growing in Christ’s grace by looking at the Gospel in the means of grace, I continually try to improve by looking at the Law.

But the Law can only expose my lack of love; it cannot create love in me.

If I try to use the Law to create love, it gives me nothing more than a futility loop: the Law shows me that I am not what I should be, so I stare harder at myself and try harder to improve, which only makes me more conscious of failure. We described that loop in a post published a couple of months ago.

I was struck recently by the incredible observation Luther makes in his commentary on Galatians that sanctification is, in reality, growth in faith. Because faith is the assurance that God is in a good mood with me because of Jesus. And Luther observes that to grow in this assurance is to grow in God-likeness:

The apostle also speaks of this form of Christ in Col. 3:10: “Put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.” Therefore Paul wants to restore the image of God or of Christ in the Galatians. It had been deformed or distorted by the false apostles, and it consists in this, that they feel, think, and want exactly what God does, whose thought and will it is that we obtain the forgiveness of sins and eternal life through Jesus Christ, His Son, whom He sent into the world to be the expiation for our sins and for those of the whole world (1 John 2:2), so that through the Son we might acknowledge Him as our Father, who has been placated and is kindly disposed toward us. Those who believe this are like God; that is, they think of God altogether as He feels in His heart, and they have the same form in their mind that God or Christ has. This, according to Paul, is to “be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God” (Eph. 4:23–24). (Luther’s Works 26:431)

Luther is saying that Paul’s description of the Christian’s “renewed mind” that appears in several of his letters is not some sort of intellectual prowess, but just the increasing confidence that God is positive toward them in Christ. The renewed Christian increasingly thinks what God thinks: that forgiveness and eternal life are given to them through Christ, who has made satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.

This observation is amazing, and shows how perfectly the apostle Paul’s theology coheres with that of the apostle John. Here’s a passage I preached on last Sunday that describes exactly this process of sanctification just in completely different language:

¹⁶ So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. ¹⁷ By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. (1 John 4:16-17)

Verses 18-19 then describe the fruit of this sanctification in our lives:

¹⁸ There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us.

For an explanation of how sanctification produces these effects, check out that sermon from last Sunday.

The Gospel is simply the assertion that God is in a good mood with us, purely because of Jesus. This corrects our distorted picture of God—which by nature is that he is transactional and is only good to us in response to us being good to him first. Our sinful instinct tells us that God must be reluctantly tolerating us, waiting for improvement before he can really be pleased with us. Christ tells us otherwise.

This is why what we said in our post yesterday is so important: faith is not and cannot be a “decision” we make for God. Faith is not a quality we have that makes us worthy before God. Faith is not something in us that changes God’s mind about us.

The Gospel declares a universal, paradoxical, crazy truth: All “are justified” (Romans 3:24). “One has died for all, therefore all have died” (2 Corinthians 5:14). “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them,” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Jesus is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).

Faith isn’t something in us that makes this true. It is simply the assurance, recognition, that it’s already true. Because if Christ has taken away the sin of the world, then he’s taken away my sin—because I am one of those in the world.

Faith is this assurance. And sanctification is simply growth in this assurance.

Through that assurance, the Spirit brings the fruit of love. But these good works of love are the Spirit’s work—not mine! Don’t focus on and look at your good works, or your progress in trying to fight sin. Because this is useless at creating positive change in you in and of itself. The only reason to look at yourself, and to gaze at yourself in the Law, is to make you see again that you aren’t what you should be, and immediately drive your gaze onto Christ.

Focus on and look at Christ.

Because it is only as I look at him that I see, and am further assured, that God “has been placated and is kindly disposed toward us,” or in other words is in a good mood with me.

You can’t see Jesus with your eyes, which is why God put his means of grace in the church: Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, Preaching, Absolution, the Consolation of other Christians. These are where you see Jesus reveal to you God’s good and kindly disposition toward you. Come and receive these means of grace at Manchester Lutheran Church every Sunday. Join us at 10:45am for coffee and 11:00am for the service: https://mcrlt.ch/sundays/

If you live outside Greater Manchester, you can gather online with the Confessional Lutheran Church every Wednesday at 6:00pm to hear this Gospel and receive faith alongside Christians from across the country and beyond: https://lutheran.ch/online-service/