Okay, this is part one of, I called it sanctification and counseling part one. As I mentioned earlier, this is the theological background of sanctification. It's the doctrine of sanctification, per se. And we'll talk about the means of sanctification. How do we actually participate in this process of sanctification, and we'll do that when we're all together. I call it sanctification and counseling for two reasons. One, because this is a series on counseling, but ultimately the goal for any counseling is sanctification. The goal for any process of counseling is conformity to Christ, and the battles that we face vary from one person to the next, and in varying degrees, and yet all of us are in a process of being conformed to the image of Christ. And so I thought it'd be helpful to at least approach it from that perspective. But this applies to all of us. So we've addressed a number of topics dealing with various areas of difficulty and trials and challenges in our lives. And yet the one thing we share in common, regardless of what our circumstances are, is that we are in the process of being sanctified. If we're in Christ, if we truly are born again, we are in the process of being sanctified. So I've got excerpts scattered throughout the notes, but I thought it was helpful to begin with some information by Joel Beeke on cultivating holiness. He made a statement, or quoted William Ames, the Puritan William Ames, that theology is the doctrine or teaching of living to God. And I introduce our talk in that way because this is the theological background of sanctification, and sometimes people will look at theology as if it were an academic discipline. And it can be approached in that way, but that's not the right way to approach it. The right way to approach it is to say, how does this enable me to understand God? How does this enable me to understand my relationship to God? and my process of becoming more in communion with God and living in obedience to Him and living toward God. And so the exhortation in Scripture throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament is that we are to be holy. And we'll talk about what that means. 1 Peter 1.16, we're summoned to be holy. And the reason for that is that we are to be holy because God is holy. That statement is not limited to the New Testament. It's also, of course, in the Old Testament. If you were to look at Leviticus 11, 44 and Leviticus 19, 2, you would find parallel passages that also address the people of God as to be holy because God is holy. And if we are his people, we are to be conformed to his image. 1 Thessalonians 4, there's a passage that often is quoted, and appropriately so, because it deals with issues of sexual immorality. That's 1 Thessalonians 4, 3 and following. We are summoned to be holy. that the immediate passage deals with battling with sexual temptation and dealing with sexual immorality. But the statement is made in 1 Thessalonians 4, 3, that we're called to that purpose, that God has designed us to be holy. That's why he has redeemed us, to be holy. And it's the purpose for our election is that ultimately we would be holy. And so even though Paul in that immediate passage is dealing with one area of sin and our obligation to battle against that area of sin, the larger context that runs throughout all of scripture is that the people of God are to be conformed to God himself. And Hebrews tells us in chapter 12 that we are to pursue sanctification or to pursue holiness, depending upon which translation you happen to be reading. But the author of Hebrews goes on to say, without which no one will see the Lord. And that's a daunting statement if you think about it, that if I'm not pursuing sanctification, then as the paragraph goes on to read, we will lack assurance. Because sometimes people will say, how do I know that I have a relationship with Christ? How do I know that I really am born again? How do I know that I exercised saving faith? And part of assurance, an integral part of assurance, is seeing fruit in our lives, seeing evidence that we are born again, seeing the fact that Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old things passed away, new things will come. Romans 6 tells us that we've been identified with Christ. Romans 8 tells us that sin is not to have dominion over us, that we're to be battling sin. And so one integral part of how we have assurance that we truly are the children of God is that we're battling sin, that we're actually mortifying sin, that we're growing in the likeness of Christ. Of course all of us would say that I have very far to go and many of us would say I've had episodes in my life and maybe you're in one of those now where you're battling in a more acute way than otherwise or maybe You've been in a sustained pattern of battling with a particular area of sin. But all of us would say that we battle with sin, but if we're in Christ, we would say that we see evidence that the grace of God is operative in our life and that we are being conformed to the image of Christ. The scripture goes on to describe holiness first and foremost in its relationship to God. God is the definition of holiness. Isaiah 57, 15, a wonderful passage describes the Lord as the high and lofty one. whose name is holy. And when the scripture talks about the name of the Lord, for instance, Proverbs 18, the name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run to it and are safe. There's many names of God, Yahweh, Adonai, and so on. Elohim, Christ, and so on, but that's not the way in which the name is being used. When the scripture talks about the name of the Lord, it really is a shorthand expression for all that is said about God. It's all wrapped up in who God is, all of his attributes. in all their summation, that's the name of the Lord. And so it is, he goes on to say that everything God does and everything God is, is holy. So his justice is holy justice. His wisdom is holy wisdom. His power is holy power. His grace is holy grace. And all the other things about God that we know as they're revealed to us in scripture, are holy. Isaiah 6, there's a passage, and many if not most of you have read this and perhaps you've studied it, where there is a theophany, a pre-incarnate manifestation of Christ in Isaiah 6. And Isaiah, who is a a righteous man, humanly speaking, a prophet of God, and at least by our standards, we would say, man, he's a very holy guy, and he is. But when he saw God, he was facedown, and he was undone, and he was just at the end of himself. And so you have the angels proclaiming that God is holy, holy, holy. And Isaiah says, I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips. The significance of that passage, and if you've heard R.C. Sproul teaching this passage, it was one of his classic messages. If you've never heard the message on the holiness of God by Sproul, you really need to access that and give it a listen. But he makes the point, and others have made this observation too, that when the scriptures The Old Testament, in particular, attaches a threefold description to something. It's a point, it's a reason, it's making a strong statement. And the reason it does that is because the authors want you to know God, working through the authors of Scripture, inspiring the Holy Scriptures, is saying, I want you to know that holiness is the ultimate aspect of God himself. That holy, holy, holy is the Lord God. Almighty. And in the book of Isaiah alone, holiness is attributed to God more than 20 times. One of the saints of old, John Howe, describes holiness as a transcendental attribute. We don't use that term too much, but talking about an overarching attribute, a summarizing attribute, one thing that could be said about God and all that he does, is an attribute of attributes and so everything that he does, his works, Isaiah, pardon me, Psalm 145, 17 says that God is holy in all his works. And his law is described in Psalm 19, the fear of the Lord is clean and the judgments of the Lord are true and they are righteous altogether. And perhaps you've never thought of it this way, but the cross of Christ is a very poignant and ultimate expression of the holiness of God. And there you have the Son of God saying to the Father, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And in that time, the Lord Jesus was bearing the sins of his people and the Father was pouring out the wrath that we deserve upon his son. The father can't look upon sin, he can't be in proximity to sin, he must judge sin. And so if ever there was an expression of the holiness of God and the concomitant result of that, which would be wrath towards sin, the holiness of God, then you have that in the cross where our sin is being judged. Jonathan Edwards describes holiness as the sum of all of the attributes of God. So what is holiness? And a couple of things about the holiness of God. First, it speaks to the fact that God is separate. He's other than his creation. He's not to be confused with his creation. He's apart from everything that is unclean, everything that is unholy, everything that is evil, and stated positively the holiness of God would be his moral perfection, his absolute unblemished purity in all of its perfections. But the complete absence from sin and defilement in every way. Habakkuk chapter 1 verse 13 says that God is of purer eyes than to behold evil. and he cannot look on iniquity. And so we have a very strong statement in Habakkuk about the fact that God is very separate from any form of defilement. The second aspect of holiness is not only is he set apart from defilement, but that he is unapproachable by sinners apart from sacrifice. And that is an inviolable concept. can approach God apart from sacrifice. And all of us would have to acknowledge that we are sinful and we are full of sin. And we are defiled before a holy God. And so the only way that God can and will be approached is through sacrifice. He has to punish sin. And so a number of passages, Hebrews 9.22 is one of them, that without the shedding of blood, that there is no remission of sins. And we know that the sacrifices under the old covenant were never sufficient to ultimately expiate sin or satisfy the wrath of God towards sin. We know that there's nothing about the blood of bulls and goats that would satisfy the perfect justice of God. But what it did was to establish in obedience to the program that God had established, the pathway that he had established, the severity of sin, the solemnity of sin, the wrath of God, the judgment of God towards sin, and the fact that God can only be approached through sacrifice. And of course the ultimate expression of that we all know is the cross. That's the sacrifice whereby Paul could later say in the book of Romans that God is just and justifier, that he exercised forbearance before the cross and did not judge immediately every sinner and condemn every sinner immediately into hell, although that would have been an entirely just thing to do because he knew that the complete satisfactory work would be accomplished at the cross. And so God is just and justifier because he never compromised his holiness, he never compromised his justice, because he satisfied everything that he required at the cross. And it's interesting in that second paragraph, the last statement, the Dutch reformers said this, that the wrath of God against sin is so great that rather than it should go unpunished and of course that's we can't even imagine that God in his justice would ever leave sin unpunished but that he punished that sin in the same in his beloved son the Lord Jesus Christ with the bitter and shameful death of the cross. So we start with God when we're talking about holiness and then we're talking about sanctification now. So then what's the human aspect of holiness and how does that play itself out in our lives because we are not holy in and of ourselves. But holiness speaks of being separated from and separated unto or being removed from and being dedicated to, to be separated from defilement and to be dedicated unto God. And so you would have the priests of old, they would be separated from sin, they would wear a particular clothing, they would do the things that would identify them as priests, identifying themselves as being dedicated for the purpose of making sacrifices and interceding for the people of God. And so there was a picture. of what that meant. They were not intrinsically holy, but a picture in the Old Testament. Sometimes we struggle. in our understanding of holiness in the Old Testament and the New Testament, the difference is one of emphasis. It's not a difference of definition, it's a difference in emphasis. There is no disparity between them. As one has said, the Old Testament stressed moral and ceremonial holiness, or ritual and moral holiness. And the New Testament and the New Covenant talks about inward and transforming holiness. And so you have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, you have the new creation in Christ, we're identified in Christ. So it begins, sanctification begins with our position in Christ. It's not strictly a human work, and that's a very important thing that we understand that. Sometimes I will be talking with people, and they will say, I'm struggling with my sanctification, and in the language that they use, it's almost as if they are viewing sanctification as a work, or something that they themselves have to do in their own ability, and that is not what the Bible teaches, so we're going to talk about that, but I'll give you The Westminster standards are helpful, 1600s, but here's a definition of sanctification, and it begins in the right place. They who are once effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, by His Word and Spirit dwelling in them, the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, the dominion, not sin, but the dominion of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified or killed off, and they more and more are quickened and strengthened in all the saving graces to the practice of true holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. And so we have to begin with the reality that sanctification begins with regeneration. It begins with our identification in Christ. If we are not in Christ, there is no sanctification. And so the fact that we are identified with Christ, that we are made new, that we have a new nature, that we are regenerated, God is working in us, all of that is critical that we understand these things. So that's where sanctification really begins. Page 3, to distinguish, and this is an important point, I believe, between justification and sanctification. Justification is the declaration of God that we are righteous in His sight. We are righteous in His sight because we are identified with Christ, we are in Christ. Christ assumed human nature, took on human flesh, and lived a life of perfect obedience to the law, absolute perfect obedience. Theologians sometimes will call that active obedience. But the point being that all of that righteousness, his perfect righteousness, is attributed to the saint, is attributed to the one who was in Christ. And so we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ. I'm reminded of Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, who struggled with, am I right before God? And finally, it dawned on him, by God's grace, he says, my righteousness is in heaven. He had no intrinsic righteousness. We don't have any intrinsic righteousness of our own. It's what some theologians call an alien righteousness. It's a righteousness of another. And that other is the Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, you know, second Corinthians 521, he, the father made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And our righteousness is in Christ. So justification is the declaration of God that we are right before him, that he has no judgment against us. Not only does he no longer attribute wrath to us because we deserve it, But far more than that, sometimes you hear the expression, it's just as if I'd never sinned. I was taught that when I was a brand new believer. And people mean well, they really do, but that's a woefully lacking definition of justification, because it only covers part of the definition of justification. is, in fact, forgiveness of sin, complete satisfaction of the wrath of God towards sin. But it's more than that. It's the fact that God sees us because we are righteous, because we're in Christ. So it's more than just forgiveness. So that doesn't mean, though, that this call to holiness is to merit acceptance. That would be a work. That would be some form of performance-based standing with God. And none of us could ever have a right relationship with God were that the case. So our status before God is that we're in Christ, we're counted holy in Him. And so you read the New Testament letters and Paul frequently begins, Paul to the saints who are at Ephesus or Colossae or Thessalonica, whatever. And the word that he uses for saints is haggias, it's holy ones. And you say, well, I'm not holy. Well, if you're in Christ, you're a holy one. And the program of God for the believer the sure and certain program which will be consummated in glorification is that we are being conformed to the image of Christ. And so sanctification does not imply that we've arrived in a stretch, and there are certain strands of Christianity that talk about sort of a second blessing or some form of sanctification whereby someone no longer is struggling with sin and And that simply isn't consistent with the teaching of the scripture. It's unfortunate that people have come to that conclusion because that's not the teaching of scripture. It's an ongoing battle. If I were to read the rest of the Westminster Standards to you on sanctification, it would talk about a constant and irreconcilable battle, a war that the believer has. When it talks about irreconcilable, The believer can make no peace with sin, cannot just give in to sin. There is no reconciliation with sin. It's a perpetual battle as long as we have life and breath until God calls us home. But the sanctification that is being worked out in us ultimately is to affect the entirety of our being. 1 Thessalonians 5.23, Paul talks about being sanctified in body and soul and spirit. That doesn't mean that we have three parts, it just means that we're in the wholeness of our being. that God is working out our sanctification, so it's the entirety. And that's not just in the future, that's now. Every aspect of our being is to be affected by sanctification. There's a number of points here, and I'm just going to touch on them briefly because of the time. Joel Beeky makes a number of comments. Justification is extrinsic, and that's because it's outside of us, because it's satisfied in Christ, and sanctification is intrinsic. It's being worked out in us. Justification declares the sinner righteous and holy in Christ. Sanctification makes the sinner righteous and holy as a fruit from Christ. And the Catholic doctrine is most unfortunate and unbiblical at this point. There is no infusion of righteousness to us in justification. Justification is a judicial declaration of God. Sanctification does, in fact, though, make us righteous. We're not just declared righteous, we're being made righteous. So justification removes the guilt of sin, has to do with our standing before God. Sanctification deals with our love for sin, which is being killed off, and the power of sin, the dominion of sin in our life. That is broken. That doesn't mean that sin is eradicated. No, that's not true at all. Romans 7 would clearly testify to that. I do believe Paul is dealing with a believer in Romans 7. But the dominion of sin, the believer has the ability not to sin. And that's a very important thing that we recognize that. Justification restores us to God's favor. Sanctification restores us to his image. And that's a very helpful description if you think about the image of God being restored in our lives through the process of sanctification. We bear the image of God, but it is marred. But through God's grace working in our lives and sanctification, we are being restored to that image. And you can read the rest of these. We'll go on over to page four just to move along a bit. But the thrust of the New Testament is that we are to be cultivating and aggressively pursuing. We're to be laboring. We're to be striving for sanctification. This was the passage that we saw earlier in Hebrews 12. And so growth and holiness will inevitably follow regeneration. We all know Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one should boast. You know that. That's verses 8 and 9 of chapter 2. Verse 10 goes on to talk about that God has prepared good works beforehand that we should walk in them. And so that's, the good works that God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them is describing the work of grace in our lives through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God taking root in our lives, where those good works are being played out in our lives, where we're being conformed to the image of Christ. And sanctification is an expression of gratitude, if you think of it. You know the passage, Romans 12, I urge you, I beseech you by the mercies of God, what, to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you might prove that which is good and perfect will of God. And so it's an expression of our thanks to God for his redeeming us from the judgment of sin, that we are obedient to him. John 14, the one who loves Christ will obey his commandments. No, we don't do that perfectly. We certainly do not. But someone who is truly born again will, because the seed of God indwells him, the spirit of God indwells him, will seek to obey the words of Christ, the law of Christ. And that will always happen. 1 Peter 1, verse 14, is obedient children. Don't be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but be holy in all your conduct. So set aside your different, you're different. You're not what you once were. You're not what you will be, but you certainly are not what you once were. So don't be conformed to that, but be holy in all your conduct. Be set apart from, be set apart to God himself. 1 Peter 2, 5 talks about the fact that we are living stones being built up into a holy temple. Why? To offer sacrifices unto God. Romans 8, 29, Paul is talking, we all know Romans 8, 28, But we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. And Romans 8, 29 speaks to the fact that we have been predestined. Predestined to what? To be conformed to the image of Christ. We literally have been elected from eternity past. God has set his saving love upon us. by a decree in eternity past that the Son of God accomplished that work in His life and His death and His resurrection. The Holy Spirit applies that work in our lives through regeneration and His continued work in our lives. And all of that is that we would fulfill, and we ultimately will fulfill, the fact that we are predestined to be conformed to the very image of Christ. So when we talk about justification, or, pardon me, sanctification, restoring the image of God, that would be rooted in Romans 8.29, among other passages, but certainly being conformed to the image of Christ. In every way, 1 Thessalonians 5.23, we looked at that a little earlier. So moving over to page five, the aspect of sanctification literally permeates all of our being. There is no crevice in our life or little hidden room in our life that is to be sheltered from the sanctifying work of God. We all have areas of our life where we I'll use the secular term struggle, but the biblical term is sin. So sometimes we use words like struggle, but we should use the biblical word where we sin, where we disobey. I have to catch myself on that. But where we sin, where we do not obey. What is sin? Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. That's with the Westminster standard. So any failure to conform to the standard of God or transgression of the law of God, either acts of omission or acts of commission, either intentional or unintentional. All of it, you know, is areas of sin in our lives. But every aspect of our life, Deuteronomy 6, 5, love the Lord your God with what? All of your heart and all of your soul, all of your mind, all of your strength. The New Testament, the Lord Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment. Do you remember his answer to that question? What was his answer to that question? Mind and strength. It's never been different. It's always been the same. to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your strength and all of your mind. Everything about you is to love God. And holiness of heart, it's always a matter of the heart in every aspect of our lives. In our private communion with God, in the privacy of our own homes, in the competitiveness of our occupation, whatever that looks like, in our social interactions, whatever that looks like, in our interactions with our unsaved neighbors, in Sunday worship, every dimension of life. Horatius Bonner, a wonderful saint, 1800s as I recall, but he said, Holiness extends to every part of our persons. It fills up our being. It spreads over our life. It influences everything we are or do or think or speak or plan, small or great, outward or inward, negative or positive, our loving, our hating, our sorrowing, our rejoicing. our recreations, our business, our friendships, our relationships, our silence, our speech, our reading, our writing, our going out or going in, coming in, our whole man and every movement of spirit, soul, and body. So sanctification affects every aspect of who we are. And it's a daily task. So it's a whole life commitment to God. Colossians 1, page 6, Paul tells us that we are to walk worthy of the Lord. And that's really the goal of sanctification. And he echoes that in Ephesians 4.1. In the first three chapters, he's established the doctrinal basis of our walk in Christ, and in Ephesians 4, he pivots to the outworking of that, and he says, walk worthy of your calling, and to be aggressive in the outworking of your sanctification. So, sometimes people will say, sometimes you hear the term synergistic and monergistic. Synergistic comes from, it's a compound term. Ergos, work, soon is together, so working together. Monergistic, mono, one person acting by himself. So is this something that God does? Is it something that He just does all by Himself? Or is this some type of partnership that we have? I'm going to talk about this next week, but synergistic is really not the best way to describe it, or monergistic. It's a grace of God where we are called to participate. That's probably a better way to put it. Do we participate in our sanctification? Absolutely. We are called to put to death sin. We are called to put off sin and to put on Christ. We talked about that early on in the counseling series. Putting off, putting on. That's really a good definition for sanctification. And it's outworking, from a human standpoint, is putting off, putting on. mortification, vivification, killing off sin, newness of life, availing oneself of the means of grace that God has provided. Jude talks about keep yourself in the love of God. That doesn't mean that we're ever out of the love of God. It just means to put yourself in the place where you're enjoying all the graces that he has that are operative in our life, where we will continue to grow in conformity to Christ. So put yourself in the best possible place you can be, where the grace of God is sort of a wind at your back, sort of propelling you towards your destiny. So what do we cultivate? Three things. We cultivate the character of the Father. We saw this passage earlier, you should be holy because I am holy. We are to be like Him in our thoughts. We are to strive to emulate Him. Stephen Charnock, this is a good thing to remember. If you want to know how to please God, it's not in how excited you are in worship or how expressive you are in your worship, whatever the case. It's your sanctification, the prime way of honoring God. We do not so glorify God by elevated admirations. We don't use that kind of language, but, you know, you've seen it. I mean, you're just kind of an outward display of affection. That's not ultimately what it is that pleases God. Or eloquent expressions or pompous services. It's when we aspire to a conversing with Him, a living with Him, a communion with Him, with unstained spirits to live to Him, in living like Him, to live to Him in living like Him. So it's being conformed to the image of the Father. And secondly, the mind of the Holy Spirit. We are indwelt by the Spirit. We're to be filled by the Holy Spirit. We know, 1 Corinthians 2, page 7, that the natural man does not apprehend the things of God because they are strange to him, they're foreign to him, and praise God that when the Holy Spirit indwells us, He gives us a new heart, a new mind, a new capacity to obey God, that suddenly the Word of God becomes alive to us, we begin to think God's thoughts after Him. The work of the Spirit in our lives is a key part of sanctification. But we are to be showing the evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit, perhaps you might think of it as even the fruit of the Spirit, would be a tangible expression, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, those are all That doesn't exhaust, of course, every aspect of sanctification, but it's illustrative of the many ways in which sanctification manifests itself in our life. many ways that the Holy Spirit works in us. He shows us our need for sin, conviction of sin, very helpful in our sanctification, showing us where we have wronged God. He gives us a desire for holiness. That does not come naturally to us. That is a grace of God. That is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives that we would even desire to be holy, is something that shows we're new. We're not what we once were. He grants Christ-likeness and character. This would be the operation of the fruit of the Spirit. He provides strength to live a holy life. We don't perfect ourselves by the works of the flesh. The Holy Spirit works in us and we avail ourselves of the means of grace. We'll talk more about that next week. But it's not a bootstrap religion. We're not simply trying to pull ourselves up and gut our way into righteousness. And I ran into that a lot. I don't know about the rest of you, but there's been times in my life where I've approached sanctification in that way. And all that does is engender frustration and disappointment and a sense of failure, because we do fail. And we're never going to be conformed to Christ by our own works. And then by the humble feeding of Scripture, the exercise of prayer, The Spirit teaches us, and the doctrine of illumination, the fact that God would write his word upon our hearts, that he would allow us to understand, enable us to understand his word, that is a gift of God. Thomas Watson said, the Spirit stamps the impression of his own sanctity or his own holiness upon our heart as the seal prints its likeness upon the wax. The Spirit of God in a man perfumes him with holiness and makes his heart a map of heaven. And then ultimately, conformity to the image of Christ. So our triune God, Philippians 2, have this attitude in yourselves, you know this passage, the humility of Christ and the abasement of Christ. We know from Scripture God is opposed to the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. And if ever you wanted a perfect expression of humility, it would certainly be the Lord Jesus Christ. And our heart attitude is to be that very attitude, not self-aggrandizement or puffing ourselves up, but to have an attitude of humility. that's becoming like Christ. And by the way, we don't become humble by sort of forcing ourself into this attitude of, oh, woe is me. That's not it at all. But when we consider who God is, and we look at His holiness, and we look at who we are, and we consider how great He has done a work in our lives, and how thankful we should be to Him for His ongoing mercies toward us, that will engender humility. It will not engender pride, if it's rightly understood. So, just in conclusion, we don't aim for conformity to Christ as a way of meriting salvation. It's not a condition of salvation. It's an evidence of salvation. It's a fruit of salvation. It's the outworking of salvation. And Calvin once said, set Christ before you as the mirror of sanctification and seek grace to mirror him in his image. And Luther said, we in Christ justification, Christ in us sanctification. I found that helpful, so I hope that's useful to you as well. So that's sort of the theological backdrop of sanctification. We'll talk about the means of sanctification next week. We've got a few minutes for questions.