Sanctification is a work of grace as surely as justification is a work of grace.

The April 1997 issue of Adventist Review featured an article by Elder Robert S. Folkenberg entitled "Will the Real Evangelical Adventist Please Stand Up?" The article clearly demonstrated how the doctrines of the great controversy, the Sabbath, the Sanctuary, and the pre-advent judgment do not distort but rather illuminate the evangel, the gospel of Jesus Christ. How refreshing and reassuring, in this day of chameleon-like, swivel-headed theology, when the chief pastor of our church models for us such a perceptive understanding!

Every born-again Seventh-day Adventist knows, on the basis of both Bible truth and personal spiritual experience, that Jesus is the very heart of the message that Seventh-day Adventists preach to the world. He is the great center of our theology, of our life-style, of our proclamation. He is our message! He always has been. We stand together with the great apostle Paul, who said, "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the twelve" (1 Cor 15:3-5 NIV).

It is our understanding that both God's law and His grace are united in the gospel of salvation received through faith in the atoning, substitutionary blood of Jesus Christ. The cross symbolizes what Jesus has done FOR us. We speak of the doctrine of justification by grace through faith. It is our conviction that the claims of Christ confront the age in which we live and each one of us. We believe that when we look at both God's law and His grace, we do so from the perspective of the Word of God, the center of which is the evangel, the good news of salvation from sin, offered freely to those who have faith in Jesus Christ.

Salvation Involves More Than Forgiveness

However, we also understand that to be saved FROM sin means more than to be free of the condemnation and guilt that sin produces. It means to be free from sin's power. By means of the grace offered to us in the message of the gospel, those who have faith have been set free from bondage to sin's control, free from precisely that which prevents a person from living an obedient Christ-like life.

By the grace of God the believer has been set free from something and free for something. Free for what? The Bible, as always, gives the answer: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good" (Titus 2:11-14).

We call this truth the doctrine of sanctification by grace through faith. It is meant to be experienced, not just believed. Grace includes functional salvation.

It is dangerous to theology, and to Christian living as well, to separate justification and sanctification as though they were mutually exclusive. We perform such a separation when we accuse a preacher of legalism when he calls for obedient discipleship on the part of God's redeemed people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood the importance for doctrine, preaching, and discipleship of the interconnectedness of justification and sanctification. Said he, "The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ."1

It is immediately obvious that Titus 2:11-14, quoted above, places the whole matter of Christian sanctification, holiness, or growth into Christlikeness, into the context of the second advent. This passage tells us in no uncertain terms that "while we wait for the blessed hope" we are not to be idle or indolent. God's people are to be busy. We are not to indulge in ease or resistance to exertion. Although we are justified by grace and sanctified by grace, there is still something which all this grace is meant to accomplish in us, something that grace teaches us and that we must learn by grace to do.

What is the nature of this sanctified exertion? God's people are to be involved in the mission of His church, giving of their time and means to the spreading of the gospel throughout the world, but such worthwhile and important external activities are not the thrust of this particular Word from the Lord. The thrust of Titus 2:11-14 is not outward but inward. The focus is not primarily on what Jesus did for us or on what we should be doing for Him, but on what He wants to do IN us. We must be careful that our primary focus in preparing for the return of the Lord is not just the ministry in which we all must be engaged but that it is also the internal work of the Holy Spirit, producing holiness and Christlikeness.

Our Questions, the Bible's Answers

Now let's ask some very practical questions. If grace is a teaching agent, as Paul says, does it not follow that we must learn something? If grace teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, God's intention must be that we learn to say "No," and not only "learn" to say it, but actually say it!

While "No" is a negative response to ungodliness and worldly passions, the saying of that "No" constitutes a most positive response to God's will regarding ungodliness and worldly passions. To say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions is to say a resounding "Yes" to living self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.

If grace can deliver us from the power of sin and empower us to live godly lives, God intends that we be actively involved. He doesn't just whittle on us as though we were pieces of wood. He works for us, on us, and IN us. "Christ in you" is our "hope of glory," says Paul (Col 1:27). Knowledge of the truth "leads to godliness" (Titus 1:1).

Why does God teach us, and why must we learn, to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions? Because we live in an atmosphere of ungodliness and worldly passions, and because we are by nature ungodly.

If grace teaches us and we learn thereby to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions and "Yes" to godliness and self-controlled living, how does this learning take place? In order for us to learn to say that "No" and that "Yes," what must happen internally as the Holy Spirit brings us to the point where we are empowered to say "No" and "Yes"?

Perhaps there is a significant clue in the encounter of Jesus with some Greeks shortly after His triumphant entry into Jerusalem. They approached Philip with a request to see Jesus (Jn 12:20-28). Philip consulted with Andrew, and the two men told Jesus. Read today, the Lord's response seems startling. He began to talk about His glorification—which the context indicates was obviously a reference to His coming crucifixion. His focus was on the cross in verses 23-24 and 27-28, but it shifted significantly in the in-between verses, 25-26. In these two verses He said, "The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be."

Was Jesus saying to those Greeks, to His disciples, and to anyone else who heard Him—to us as well—that if we really want to see and know Him, we are to look at the cross? Can it be that He was also saying that if we want to BE like Him, we must also look to the cross? Jesus did say that anyone who wants to serve Him must follow Him. Follow Him where? The context clearly indicates that it is to His glorification—which was first the internal wrestling with God's will in Gethsemane and then the external suffering and agony of Calvary.

Sanctification and Divine Discipline

If sanctification is becoming like Christ, then we must walk the way Jesus walked, by the way of Gethsemane and Calvary. Sanctification involves death, death to self, death to the ego. The Bible identifies sanctification as the "struggle against sin" (Heb 12:4), but the believer does not engage in this struggle alone. God the Father is actively involved by exercising His divine discipline. This is one way we are taught to say "No" and learn to say "Yes."

The Bible says, "Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it" (Heb 12:7-11).

Here is grace operating in the form of divine discipline. Christlikeness, holiness, godly living, are produced in us by the Holy Spirit as we submit in faith to the Father's discipline. This is sanctification by grace through faith! Legitimate children of God are under His loving discipline, for His goal is not just to restore us to fellowship with Him (justification) but also to remake us from the inside out (sanctification).

Jesus gave Himself for us, remember, not only to "redeem us from all wickedness" but also "to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good" (Titus 2:14).

Ellen G. White wrote once, "God would have His servants become acquainted with the moral machinery of their own hearts. In order to bring this about, He often permits the fire of affliction to assail them that they may become purified... The purification of the people of God cannot be accomplished without their suffering... God takes men upon trial; He proves them on the right hand and on the left, and thus they are educated, trained, disciplined. Jesus, our Redeemer, man's representative and head, endured this testing process. He suffered more than we can be called upon to suffer. He bore our infirmities and was in all points tempted as we are. He did not suffer thus on His own account, but because of our sins; and now, relying on the merits of our Overcomer, we may become victors in His name. God's work of refining and purifying must go on until His servants are so humbled, so dead to self, that, when called into active service, their eye will be single to His glory" (Testimonies for the Church, 4:85-86).

Mrs. White wrote also, "From the chosen twelve who had followed Jesus, one [Judas] as a withered branch was about to be taken away, the rest were to pass under the pruning knife of bitter trial. Jesus with solemn tenderness explained the purpose of the husbandman. The pruning would cause pain, but it would be the Father who would apply the knife. He works with no wanton hand or indifferent heart. There are branches trailing upon the ground; these must be cut loose from the earthly supports to which their tendrils are fastening. They are to reach heavenward, and find their support in God. The excessive foliage that draws away the life current from the fruit must be pruned off. The overgrowth must be cut out, to give room for the healing beams of the Sun of Righteousness. The husbandman prunes away the harmful growth, that the fruit may be richer and more abundant" (The Desire of Ages, pp. 676-677).

Sanctification and Repentance

The Father's discipline produces "godly sorrow" in the believer (2 Cor 7:10). As God exercises His loving, gracious, and divine discipline, we "become sorrowful as God intended" because "godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death" (verses 9-10). Worldly sorrow is devoid of repentance. "Those whom I love," says Jesus, "I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent" (Rev 3:19). Why? Because "unless you repent, you too will all perish" (Lk 13:3). Evidently repentance is an ongoing part of the sanctification process. Martin Luther understood this, which is why the first of his famous Ninety-five Theses declares, "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said 'Repent,' he willed that the whole life of believers should be one of repentance."

While the Lord teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness, learning to say "No" involves repentance, and repentance must be learned and practiced on a daily basis. We must repent daily of our ungodliness and worldly passions, if we are to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives while we wait in faith and obedience for the return of our Lord. This daily repentance is one of the fruits of saving faith and is a gift of God.

In response to a sermon by Peter on repentance in preparation for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, some people declared with joy that God had "even granted the Gentiles repentance unto life" (Acts 11:18). There has to be a daily death of the old ungodly person so that Christ can rule and direct the new life.