Remembering who we are in Christ empowers our ability to live faithfully. If we are to be killing sin, we must remember our status in Christ. We belong to the Lord, body and soul, as the Heidelberg Catechism reminds us. Therefore, we are sanctified as we are being sanctified and, as a result, can trust the Lord in all things, worship him alone, thwart the schemes of the enemy, and do so with the ordinary means God has provided. 

John Owen famously once said, “Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.” That is, we must actively, aggressively, and intentionally seek to kill our sin because sin is actively, aggressively, and intentionally trying to kill us. Since our beginnings, in fact, God has warned us about the ways sin seeks to destroy us, reminding us that “sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you…” (Genesis 4:7).

What, then, does killing sin mean? And, more importantly, what are the tools at our disposal to mortify or subdue our sin?

To answer that question, we first need to understand what is going on when we talk about killing sin, which goes by the theological name “sanctification.” Among the many benefits of his redemptive work, Christ accomplishes our sanctification, and no pursuit of mortifying sin is possible without a proper view of our sanctification. How, then, should we think about sanctification?

This aspect of sanctification is known as definitive sanctification and speaks of sin losing its power over us. We are already sanctified, pure, clean, and righteous in Jesus. When speaking to the Corinthian church—a church ravaged by the ongoing presence of some wild sin—Paul says, “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). That is, even with ongoing sin present, they were nonetheless termed “sanctified.”

However, though sanctification can be understood as definitive, there are also progressive or ongoing aspects of sanctification. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (WSC) question 35 notes that sanctification is a work of God’s free grace, that we are now “…enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.” In other words, our status as those who are sanctified empowers us to be a people being sanctified through the ongoing death of our sin and an ongoing commitment to righteousness. This is typically called progressive sanctification.

Remembering our status with Christ and understanding the power he gives us to pursue faithfulness is a fundamental dynamic to living the Christian life. We see this dynamic with Israel, when God gives them the Ten Commandments. Before giving Israel the law they were to obey, God first reminds them, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery…” Therefore, “obey these commands.” Their status established their ability and motivation to obey. As a side note, most other world religions invert this structure. Many would assume God to say, “obey these commands, and then I will set you free.” The Christian God, however, says, “Because I have set you free, here are the commands I desire you obey.”

We see this in the New Testament as well. One of my favorite presentations of this dynamic is from Ephesians and the powerful word “therefore” in 4:1. I remember my preacher grandfather saying, “Whenever you see a therefore, you better find out what it’s there for.” What is it there for? Well, in the first three chapters, Paul has reminded the Ephesians of all that God has accomplished for them in Christ. He makes abundantly clear their status. But then, after presenting the beauty of the gospel, he says, “Therefore,” remembering all that Christ has done, “I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Only after the gospel message is firmly in place does he then go on to address numerous aspects of a faithful Christian life. Ultimately, if we do not remember the definitive sanctification accomplished in Jesus for us, we will lack the foundation for progressive sanctification.

Theologians often talk about the work of God in our lives as either synergistic or monergistic. In monergistic works, God does everything; we are completely passive. In synergistic works, on the other hand, we cooperate with him in the work of grace in our lives. The ongoing work of progressive sanctification is most definitely synergistic. That is, the Christian life is empowered by the ongoing work of the Spirit and achieved through our commitment to joining that ongoing work.

In his Reformed Dogmatics, Herman Bavinck helpfully summarizes this work of sanctification this way,

God’s people are holy and called to be holy, set apart by God to be conformed to his Son and to live to his glory. The gift is also a call to active continued repentance on the part of the Christian. We are to die to sin and “present our members as instruments of righteousness.” We are grafted into Christ the vine and also told that we must bear fruit. This duality has been misunderstood by nomists and antinomians alike. The former insist that good works are necessary conditions for salvation; the latter are indifferent to repentance, prayer for forgiveness, and good works, since Christ’s perfect sacrifice made them superfluous…The presence of good works is a sign of God’s work of grace in a believer.

The tendency of the human heart will take the posture of the nomist who forgets the status we possess in Christ or the antinomian who forgets the demands of the law. But for the Christian, it is our status as one who is sanctified that empowers us to repent and obey and allows us to do so with great joy.

As we are reminded of the ugliness of sin, we are at the same time reminded of the beauty of Christ, a reminder that comes by the work of the Spirit. This reminder and its effects lead to what is often called vivification—a life-giving, joy-filled life before the Lord. Thus, sanctification, through repentance and faith, is simultaneously a sobering and confrontational experience and a joyous and energizing experience.

With these fundamental theological ideas in place, I want to suggest three opportunities for confrontations that I think we often do not take seriously enough in the ongoing work of sanctification. By confrontations, I mean experiences or practices that reveal the areas of our lives that we need to address. While there are likely many things I could add to this list, I find our lack of lament, our comfort with idolatry, and our misunderstanding spiritual warfare, at times, undermine our ability to mortify our sin rightly. Let’s consider each briefly.

Lament is too often lacking in many Western Christian contexts, yet it is a powerful practice that helps us take seriously the effects of sin within and around us. In his book Prophetic Lament, Soong Chan Rah defines lament as “the language of suffering” (22). Lament is a language that gives voice to suffering and injustice. In lament, we do not necessarily seek answers or even the removal of that suffering. Instead, we come with cries of “How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1) or ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1) while nonetheless trusting in the goodness of God. Yet, again, we often do not know this language.

Rah highlights the extent to which lament was a foundational element of Israel’s prayer life yet is often missing from our prayer lives. He highlights the work of Glen Pemberton, who shows that upwards of 40% of the Psalms, Israel’s hymnal, was lament. Yet, when we consider contemporary “hymnals,” lament is far less often seen. When looking at historic hymnals, Pemberton found that only 13% of the Church of Christ and Baptist hymnals and 19% of the Presbyterian hymnals included lament. However, even more telling, Rah examined the top 100 contemporary worship songs and found only 5% could be classified as lament. He also notes that he is very generous in defining lament and that the contemporary percentage is likely even less. The point is that Western Christians, particularly in the U.S., have lost the rhythm of lament (Rah, 22).

While there is much to say about why that is the case, all of which is beyond the scope of this article, briefly, one reason is the influence of Western culture, which too often equates faithfulness with victory and success. The consequence plays out in different ways.

First, some inherited a faith that emphasizes a works-righteousness that assumes that if I can do good things and if I just pray fervently enough, God will bring me victory over my suffering. Too often, that kind of faith devolves into what looks a lot like the pagan priests of Baal on Mount Carmel trying to get their god’s attention so that he might intervene on their behalf. Second, some inherited a faith like that of the disciples in John 9 who, after seeing a blind man, asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (v.2), assuming the affliction was the result of sin. Third, others flatten suffering to the extent of believing a good God could never allow suffering, and therefore, God, or at least a good God, does not exist. However, every one of these postures is fundamentally anti-Christian and does not take the posture of biblical lament seriously. Lament gives us language for our suffering, points our cries to God, and even questions God amid that suffering, all while recognizing that God is nonetheless sovereign over that suffering and remains good and just in the midst of it.

Embracing the language of lament provides a depth of clarity to our sanctification process. Lament is necessary for sanctification for two reasons: first, at minimum, we ought to be concerned that a central practice of prayer amongst God’s historic people is often completely lacking in many of our rhythms of prayer. Second, lament helps us make distinctions between our sin and the effects of sin. When inevitable suffering comes—and it will come—if we have no theology and language for suffering, we are susceptible to the assumption that suffering is some kind of punishment for our sin or that God must not be a good God. However, when we have rhythms of lament, our faith and trust in the goodness of God, regardless of what might come, deepen our faith and trust that his promises remain. Ironically, vivification flows from a healthy practice of lament.

Idolatry, though, is sadly hardly lacking in many Western (and Eastern) churches. John Calvin just as famously, said, “The human heart is a perpetual idol factory” (Institutes 1.11.8). How do we understand this assertion, especially in modern society? Tim Keller puts it this way,

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