Jesus and Sanctification — The God Who Showed Us How To Be Holy

Jesus and Sanctification — The God Who Showed Us How To Be Holy (part 1 of 2)

There is something almost breathtaking about the fact that God did not simply hand down a list of requirements for holiness from a safe distance and leave humanity to figure it out alone. He came. He put on human flesh. He walked dusty roads, sat at tables with broken people, wept at gravesides, felt hunger and exhaustion and the full weight of human suffering. And in doing all of that He showed us not just what holiness looks like in theory but what it looks like in a human life lived in complete and unbroken surrender to the Father. Jesus did not just teach sanctification. He lived it. Every single day. In full view of everyone watching. And that is one of the most extraordinary and humbling realities in all of human history.

The word sanctification means to be set apart. Made holy. Consecrated to God. Separated from what corrupts and drawn toward what is pure and true and eternal. And Jesus was and is the only human being who ever walked this earth in whom sanctification was not a process but a permanent reality. He was not becoming holy. He was holiness itself dwelling in human form. And yet He chose to walk the path of sanctification in a way that every human being could see and follow. Not because He needed to. But because we did.

He Was Completely Surrendered to the Father
The first and most fundamental thing Jesus showed us about sanctification is that it begins and ends in complete surrender to the will of God the Father. Not partial surrender. Not surrender when it is convenient or comfortable. Complete. Total. Unconditional. He demonstrated this in the most human and the most costly moment of His entire earthly life when He knelt in the garden of Gethsemane knowing what was coming and said:

Father if thou be willing remove this cup from me nevertheless not my will but thine be done. (Luke 22:42 KJV)

Not my will but thine. Five words that contain the entire secret of sanctification. Every battle with sin, every struggle with selfishness, every moment of temptation that any human being has ever faced comes down to exactly this choice. My will or His. And Jesus showed us in the darkest and most agonising moment imaginable what genuine surrender looks like. He did not pretend the cup was not bitter. He did not perform a religious display of emotionless compliance. He sweat drops of blood in the wrestling. And then He surrendered completely. Not my will but thine.

That is the path of sanctification. Not the absence of struggle but the consistent choice in the midst of struggle to lay your own will down and take up His. Every single day. Just as He said:

If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23 KJV)

Daily. The word daily tells you everything about what sanctification actually is. It is not a one time experience. It is not a crisis moment at an altar that settles everything forever. It is a daily, moment by moment, choice by choice surrender of your own will to the Father. Jesus modeled this every day of His earthly life. And He calls us to the same path.

He Was Saturated in the Word of God
When the enemy came to tempt Jesus in the wilderness after forty days of fasting at His most physically vulnerable and humanly depleted moment Jesus did not rely on His own wisdom, His own strength or His own ingenuity to resist. He went directly to the word of God. Every single time. Three temptations. Three times the same response:

It is written. (Matthew 4:4, 4:7, 4:10 KJV)

It is written. That is how the Son of God who had all power in heaven and earth chose to resist the enemy. Not by displaying His divine authority. Not by calling down angels. By going to Scripture. By standing on the written word of the Father. And in doing so He showed every human being who would ever face temptation exactly where their strength lies.

Sanctification is impossible without deep and consistent immersion in the word of God. Not occasional reading. Not verses pulled out for comfort in difficult moments. The kind of deep saturation that Jesus demonstrated where the word of God is so thoroughly part of who you are that it becomes your instinctive response to every attack the enemy launches. The psalmist understood this centuries before Jesus demonstrated it:

Thy word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against thee. (Psalm 119:11 KJV)

Hidden in the heart. Not sitting on a shelf. Not read occasionally. Hidden in the heart so deeply that it comes out naturally when the pressure comes. That is what Jesus modeled in the wilderness. And that is what sanctification requires of every believer who wants to walk in genuine holiness.

Part 2 follows

Jesus and Sanctification — The God Who Showed Us How To Be Holy (part 2 of 2)​

He Loved Without Condition or Calculation
Sanctification is never primarily about what you do not do. It is about what you become. And what Jesus became, what He demonstrated in every human encounter throughout His entire ministry, was the most complete and unconditional love any human being has ever witnessed in action. He touched lepers when nobody else would come near them. He spoke to women in public when culture said it was shameful. He sat at tables with tax collectors and sinners when the religious world considered it contaminating. He wept with Mary and Martha at the tomb of Lazarus. He noticed the woman who touched the hem of His garment in a crushing crowd. He saw Zacchaeus hiding in a tree and called him by name. He forgave from the cross the very people who were killing Him.

Every one of these moments is a picture of what genuine sanctification produces in a human life. Not a religion of careful self protection, of maintaining your own purity by keeping your distance from the messy and broken people around you. But a love so genuine and so rooted in God that it flows outward naturally toward whoever is in front of you regardless of what the world thinks of them or what it costs you to love them.

Jesus described the standard of this love with words that are both beautiful and searching:

A new commandment I give unto you that ye love one another as I have loved you that ye also love one another.
(John 13:34 KJV)

As I have loved you. That is the standard. Not love one another as seems reasonable. Not love one another as long as it is comfortable. As I have loved you. With the same completeness. The same sacrifice. The same willingness to be inconvenienced, misunderstood, rejected and ultimately given completely for the sake of the one being loved. That kind of love is not produced by human effort or religious discipline. It is the fruit of genuine sanctification. The natural overflow of a heart that has been genuinely transformed by living in close daily communion with the God who is love.

He Was Completely Honest and Without Pretense
One of the most quietly remarkable aspects of Jesus' holiness was His absolute and unwavering honesty. He never performed. He never managed His public image. He never said what people wanted to hear to protect His reputation or maintain His popularity. When the Pharisees needed to be confronted He confronted them publicly and without softening the truth. When His disciples were wrong He told them directly. When the crowds wanted to make Him king by force because they liked the miracle of the loaves He withdrew from them entirely. (John 6:15). He was not interested in being popular. He was interested in being true.

Sanctification produces this same quality in a human life. A growing freedom from the exhausting performance of managing what others think of you. A growing willingness to be exactly who you are before God and before people. Because a person whose identity is fully rooted in God does not need the approval of anyone else. They are free to be honest, free to be vulnerable, free to say the true thing even when the true thing is uncomfortable because their security comes from the Father not from human opinion.

Jesus described this freedom with perfect simplicity when He said:
And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32 KJV)
Free. Genuinely, deeply, internally free. That is what sanctification ultimately produces. Not a life of careful religious rule keeping but a life of genuine inner freedom rooted in truth, in love, in surrender and in unbroken relationship with the God who made you and knows you completely and loves you anyway.

He Finished What He Was Given To Do
Perhaps the most complete and final picture of what sanctification in Jesus looked like is found in the prayer He prayed just before His arrest. Standing on the edge of the cross, knowing everything that was coming, He looked up to the Father and said:

I have glorified thee on the earth I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. (John 17:4 KJV)

I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. Not some of it. Not most of it. The work. Complete. Every day of His earthly life lived in full surrender to the Father's will. Every moment of His ministry spent doing exactly what the Father sent Him to do. Not distracted. Not diverted. Not deterred by opposition, by misunderstanding, by rejection or by the immense personal cost of the path He walked. He finished it. Completely. And then He went to the cross.
That is the ultimate picture of sanctification. A life so completely given to God that when it is over you can look up and say I have finished the work you gave me to do. Not perfectly in the sense of sinless human performance for none of us will ever match what Jesus accomplished in His own person. But genuinely. Faithfully. With a heart that was fully surrendered, fully committed and fully given to the Father from beginning to end.

What This Means For Us
And now here is the extraordinary and humbling and glorious thing about all of this. Jesus did not live this life of complete holiness simply to show us what was possible for God in human flesh. He lived it to show us the path that every human being transformed by His Spirit is invited to walk. He showed us surrender in Gethsemane so we would know what to do with our own will. He showed us the word of God in the wilderness so we would know where our strength lies. He showed us the solitary place of prayer so we would know where our fruitfulness comes from. He showed us unconditional love in every human encounter so we would know what the transformed heart looks like in action. He showed us honesty and freedom from performance so we would know what genuine inner liberty feels like. And He showed us the finished work so we would know what it looks like to live a life completely given to God from beginning to end.

And then He promised that the same Holy Spirit who sustained Him through every moment of His earthly life would be given to every believer who genuinely follows Him:

And I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you for ever. (John 14:16 KJV)

The same Spirit. Abiding in you. Producing the same fruit. Writing the same law of love on your heart. Causing you to walk in the same ways that Jesus walked. That is sanctification. Not human effort straining toward an impossible standard. But the Holy Spirit of the living God working in a surrendered heart to produce the character of Christ from the inside out.

Justification declares you righteous before God through the finished work of Christ on the cross. Sanctification is the lifelong beautiful and sometimes costly process of becoming in daily reality what justification has already declared you to be. And Jesus is not just the author of your justification. He is the model, the power, the companion and the goal of your sanctification. He is the vine you abide in. He is the shepherd you follow. He is the word you hide in your heart. He is the example you look to when you do not know what love or surrender or honesty or faithfulness looks like in a specific moment of your specific life.

He is everything. From the first breath of new life to the final moment when by His grace you can look up and say as He did: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. (John 17:4 KJV)

That is the goal. That is the journey. And He is walking every step of it with you