Doctrine · The Life of Grace
Made Holy
The New Testament says three things about holiness that sound like they cannot all be true at once — that you already are holy, that you are being made holy, and that you must chase holiness. This page shows how the same word is doing all three jobs.
Three Tenses, One Word
— start with the observation that makes the whole debate intelligibleTHE ARTWORKWilliam Blake drew the ladder of Genesis 28 as a spiral staircase, and the traffic on it goes both ways. The painting at the top of this page pictures ascent without claiming anything about how the ascent works — which is exactly what this page will not adjudicate. The one thing every stream below agrees on is that the stairs go somewhere.
Read the New Testament straight through and you will hit three statements about your holiness that seem to fight each other. Paul tells the Corinthians they were sanctified — past tense, finished. He tells the Romans their holiness is a harvest still coming in. And Hebrews tells everyone to pursue it, as if it were out ahead. Before anyone takes a side, it is worth seeing that all three are simply there.
Already holy
1 Corinthians 6:11→Past tense. Done. Paul tells the messiest church he wrote to that they were washed, they were sanctified, they were justified — and he says it about people he is in the middle of correcting.
Who leans hereLeaned on hardest by the Reformed stream — R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, John Piper — and held by everyone here.
What the others watch forStand only here and the life can be excused: the Bible says I am holy, so what I do next hardly matters.
Being made holy
Romans 6:22→Present tense, ongoing. Freed from sin, the fruit is holiness — a harvest that grows, which means it is not the same size in year one and year forty.
Who leans hereJ.C. Ryle wrote the classic on this lane (Holiness, 1877): sanctification is a growth and an increase, and it admits of degrees. Albert Barnes says the same thing in one line below.
What the others watch forStand only here and assurance can drain away: if I am measured by my progress, a bad month becomes a verdict.
Chase holiness
Hebrews 12:14→A command, aimed at the will. Pursue it. 1 Thessalonians 4:3 says plainly that this is the will of God for you — which means it is something you are asked to do on purpose.
Who leans hereThe Wesleyan and deeper-life streams press hardest here — John Wesley, A.W. Tozer, Leonard Ravenhill — and, again, everyone here holds it.
What the others watch forStand only here and the pursuit can turn into striving, and the grace that started it drops out of view.
All three are in the same New Testament, written by the same men, often in the same letter — and one Greek word (hagiasmos) is doing all three jobs. Nobody has to lose a lane to keep the others.
And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.Washed, sanctified, justified — and Paul says it to people he is in the middle of correcting.
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the fruit you reap leads to holiness, and the outcome is eternal life.Freed from sin, the fruit is holiness — a harvest, which means growth.
Pursue peace with everyone, as well as holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.Pursue it. The same noun the King James renders 'sanctification' elsewhere is 'holiness' here.
Paul’s own bridge between the first two is a verb of accounting. Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God: not pretend, and not achieve — count as true the thing that is already true, and then live out of it. Every stream on this page agrees that Romans 6:11 is where the standing becomes a walk.
So you too must count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.Count yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus — the hinge between the fact and the life.
Origen, in the third century, read the harvest language of Romans 6 exactly as a harvest: two crops, two ends, and the one that runs to holiness runs on into life that does not stop. It is the oldest statement on this page of the growth reading.
"But now, having been freed from sin and made slaves to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life." He compares fruits with fruits: and the fruits of sin, for which the saints are now — that is, after they have been freed from sin and made slaves to God — ashamed, he declares to be ended in death; but the fruits of righteousness, which are unto sanctification, he says receive as their end eternal life.
Origen of Alexandria· Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 253Church Father
Romans 6:22
Be Holy, For I Am Holy
— the command is older than the church, and the vocabulary is smaller than the argumentThe command comes out of Leviticus, and Peter quotes it back word for word — which is his way of saying the Old Testament call to holiness did not lapse when the church began. Leviticus 19:2 uses the same Hebrew word twice in one short verse: the command and the reason are the same word. Be holy, because I am.
“Speak to the whole congregation of Israel and tell them: Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.One word, twice: the standard and the reason are identical.
But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”Peter quotes Leviticus at a church of Gentiles and does not soften it.
And this is now the law of Christ (the Lord bring every thought within us into obedience to it!) You shall be holy, for I am holy, 1 Pet. i. We are the followers of the holy Jesus, and therefore must be, according to our capacity, consecrated to God's honour, and conformed to his nature and will.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Reformed
Leviticus 19:2
As I am the fountain of holiness, being holy in My essence, be ye therefore zealous to be partakers of holiness, that ye may be as I also am [DIDYMUS]. God is essentially holy: the creature is holy in so far as it is sanctified by God. God, in giving the command, is willing to give also the power to obey it, namely, through the sanctifying of the Spirit (1Pe 1:2).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
1 Peter 1:16
That last line is the answer to the fear this doctrine usually raises. The God who gives the command is willing to give the power to keep it — so the pursuit is never a man walking uphill on his own strength.
There is one more thing worth seeing before the positions, and it explains most of the confusion in English. The King James renders the same Greek noun as sanctification at Romans 6:19 and as holiness at Hebrews 12:14. One word, two English words — and readers have been treating them as two subjects ever since. Set the three verses side by side and the single vocabulary is obvious.
For it is God’s will that you should be holy: You must abstain from sexual immorality;Paul does not hedge: this is the will of God for you, stated as plainly as it is ever stated.
For God has not called us to impurity, but to holiness.Not called to impurity, but to live in holiness — the same noun again, three verses later.
I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to escalating wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.Offer your members to righteousness, leading to holiness — the same noun the King James calls 'sanctification' here.
The whole vocabulary — 10 uses in the Bible
Six of the ten sit in the four chapters this page is built on. The New Testament’s entire vocabulary for this doctrine fits on one line — which is worth knowing before anyone tells you the debate is enormous.
What the Word Actually Means
— two senses, and both are in Jesus' prayerHalf of the confusion around this doctrine is a vocabulary problem, and Adam Clarke cleared it up in 1832 before anyone argued about it. The word means two things: set apart for God, and made pure. Jesus prays both over His disciples in John 17 — and then says something startling about Himself in the very next breath. He sanctifies Himself. There is no impurity in Him to remove, so only the first sense can be in view: He sets Himself apart, as the victim.
Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.Sanctify them by the truth — the request Jesus makes for everyone who will believe.
For them I sanctify Myself, so that they too may be sanctified by the truth.And for their sakes He sanctifies Himself — the cross, named in the language of holiness.
Sanctify them - Ἁγιασον, from α, negative, and γη, the earth. This word has two meanings: 1. It signifies to consecrate, to separate from earth and common use, and to devote or dedicate to God and his service. 2. It signifies to make holy or pure. The prayer of Christ may be understood in both these senses. He prayed - 1. That they might be fully consecrated to the work of the ministry, and separated from all worldly concerns. 2. That they might be holy, and patterns of all holiness to those to whom they announced the salvation of God.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
John 17:17
Sanctify - Consecrate them by the anointing of thy Spirit to their office, and perfect them in holiness, by means of thy word.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
John 17:17
I sanctify myself - I devote myself as a victim, to be sacrificed.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
John 17:19
Sanctify them - This word means to render pure, or to cleanse from sins, 1Th 5:23; 1Co 6:11. Sanctification in the heart of a Christian is progressive. It consists in his becoming more like God and less attached to the world; in his getting the ascendency over evil thoughts, and passions, and impure desires; and in his becoming more and more weaned from earthly objects, and attached to those things which are unseen and eternal.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1832-1869Reformed
John 17:17
Wesley and Barnes are commenting on the same four words, and the difference between them is the whole of the next section in miniature. Wesley hears a consecration and a perfecting; Barnes hears a cleansing that is under way and not finished. Neither man is straining the verse, and the verse does not settle between them.
Three Streams, Honoured Equally
— where faithful readers differ — and MannaFest's own heritage, named as heritageThe live question is not whether a Christian should be holy. It is whether the New Testament promises a further, definite work of grace in this life — one a believer can ask for and receive — or whether the whole thing is steady growth from the day of the new birth to the day of glory. Three streams answer it differently, all of them out of the same Bible, and this site owes something to more than one of them.
Steady growth, with the finished work held alongside
Sanctification is the lifelong outworking of the new birth, by the Spirit, through the ordinary means God gave — Scripture, prayer, the table, the church, obedience. On this reading the positional and the progressive are not in tension at all: one is your standing, the other is your walk. J.C. Ryle wrote the classic statement of it in Holiness (1877) — sanctification is a growth and an increase, and it admits of degrees. R.C. Sproul put the pastoral guard-rails on it: holiness without grace becomes legalism, and grace without holiness becomes an excuse. John Piper and J.I. Packer stand here too, and Dallas Willard (The Spirit of the Disciplines) works out the means-of-grace side of it in detail. In the public domain the lane’s clearest voice is Albert Barnes, quoted above: sanctification in the heart of a Christian is progressive.
Entire sanctification — a definite work of grace
John Wesley taught that God does something further in a believer after conversion: a real work of grace in which love fills the heart and the settled bent toward sin is broken. He called it Christian perfection, and he was careful about what he meant by it — not freedom from mistakes, ignorance or temptation, but a heart whose governing motive is love. His full treatment is A Plain Account of Christian Perfection(1766), and a reader who wants his actual position should go read it rather than take anyone’s summary, including this one. This is the stream MannaFest itself came out of — Wesleyan-Pentecostal, by way of the holiness movement — and that is stated here as heritage, not as a ruling on the question.
Sanctification - Entire holiness of heart and life: particular branches of it are subjoined. That ye abstain from fornication - A beautiful transition from sanctification to a single branch of the contrary; and this shows that nothing is so seemingly distant, or below our thoughts, but we have need to guard against it.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
1 Thessalonians 4:3
This in a believer is crucified with Christ, mortified, gradually killed, by virtue of our union with him. That the body of sin - All evil tempers, words, and actions, which are the "members" of the "old man," Colossians iii, 5, might be destroyed.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Romans 6:6
Put those two notes side by side and a common caricature dies. The same man who wrote “entire holiness of heart and life” on 1 Thessalonians 4:3 wrote “gradually killed” on Romans 6:6. Wesley held a decisive work and a lifelong process, and said so in the same commentary.
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your entire spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.The verse this stream is built on: may God sanctify you completely — spirit, soul and body kept blameless.
We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.The old self crucified with Him — the text Wesley calls a gradual killing.
The deeper life — holiness received, and abided in
A third stream, downstream of Wesley and shaped by the Keswick conventions, teaches holiness as a present possession received by faith and kept by abiding in Christ rather than by effort. A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God, 1948) is its best-known modern voice: the cross of Christ, he insisted, requires the cross of self. Leonard Ravenhill (Why Revival Tarries, 1959), Corey Russell (Pursuit of the Holy) and Smith Wigglesworth, who carried the holiness inheritance into Pentecost, all belong to it.
Two more voices sit across the streams rather than inside one. John Bevere makes the fear of the LORD the hinge of the whole subject — holiness as the natural posture of someone who has actually reckoned with who God is, rather than a standard imposed from outside. And C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity(Book 4, “Counting the Cost”), took the hardest line any of them takes on how far the work goes: God will not stop at making a person decent, because He is not renovating a cottage.
Where these readings genuinely differ — said plainly, and kindlythe gracious rule
The real point of difference is narrow and worth naming honestly. Ryle thought the Keswick framing — a second blessing received entirely by faith, with effort set aside — gave away too much of what the New Testament says about labour, discipline and the fight. Wesley and the holiness teachers thought the growth-only reading gave away too much of what the New Testament promises God will actually do in a believer now.
Both are reading their Bibles. Both are describing men and women whose lives were manifestly holy. This site does not hand you a verdict on which of them was right, and it does not set one of them against another: they are brothers who differ, and the difference is about how much God does in this life, not about whether He does it.
Read Wesley’s A Plain Account of Christian Perfection free at CCEL →
Where It Is Going
— the destination is a Person, not a standardRomans 8:29 names the end of the whole process, and it is not a score or a standard. It is a likeness: conformed to the image of His Son. That is what all three streams above are describing from different angles, and it is why Philippians can say work out your salvation and God is the one working in you in consecutive breaths without any sense of strain.
Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose.Work it out — because He is the one working in you. Both halves, one sentence.
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.By the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body — the agent is named, and so is the effort.
Translate here "sanctification." His is absolute holiness: our part is to put on His holiness, becoming "holy as He is holy," by sanctification. While "following peace with all men," we are not so to seek to please them, as to make God's will and our sanctification a secondary object; this latter must be our first aim.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Hebrews 12:14
Follow peace with all men - This second branch of the exhortation concerns our neighbours; the third, God. And holiness - The not following after all holiness, is the direct way to fall into sin of every kind.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Hebrews 12:14
Secondly, Peace and holiness are connected together; there can be no true peace without holiness. There may be prudence and discreet forbearance, and a show of friendship and good-will to all; but this true Christian peaceableness is never found separate from holiness.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Reformed
Hebrews 12:14
For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers.The destination, named: conformed to the image of His Son.
The artwork
Ford Madox Brown put Christ on the floor. This is the moment in John 13 when men who had already been called clean still needed their feet washed — this page's whole subject in one picture, and the reason Peter's face is doing what it is doing.
Ford Madox Brown, Jesus Washing Peter's Feet (1852-1856) — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.Lay aside the weight, run with endurance — and do it looking at Jesus, not at your progress.
Read the Great Books
— every stream above, in its own writers' hands — go further than this pageA Plain Account of Christian Perfection
John Wesley · 1766
Wesley's own account of what he did and did not mean by Christian perfection, written partly because he was tired of being misreported. If you want his position, this is the book — not a summary of it, including this page's.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Holiness
J.C. Ryle · 1877
The classic statement of the growth reading, and the single best-aimed book on this exact subject in English. Public domain, and plain enough to read in the evening.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament
John Wesley · 1755
The source of the Wesley notes quoted on this page, including the two that sit awkwardly beside each other and are both his.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →The Pursuit of God
A.W. Tozer · 1948
The deeper-life stream at its most readable. Short chapters, and no interest whatsoever in letting the reader stay where he is.
In print — find it wherever books are sold.
Why Revival Tarries
Leonard Ravenhill · 1959
The same stream aimed at the church rather than the individual. Uncomfortable on purpose, and out of the holiness tradition this site inherited.
In print — find it wherever books are sold.
The Spirit of the Disciplines
Dallas Willard · 1988
The means-of-grace side worked out in detail: what the historic practices are actually for, and why they are not a way of earning anything.
In print — find it wherever books are sold.