Regeneration is on God, but sanctification, that is on your shoulders.

That's sometimes how we hear sanctification, which means growth and godliness, presented

in evangelical circles.

But as I have talked about before and want to talk about again today on this podcast, actually, when you go to the Bible, you see that growth and godliness, sanctification is all of grace.

Welcome to grace and truth. My name is Owen Strand. I will be your host. Please subscribe to this

podcast on every platform you can find and even give us a review. Reviews are very important on

these online platforms. It helps people find the podcast, which is again called Grace and Truth

after John 117. Today on Grace and truth, I want to talk about

sanctification with you. I want to challenge a line of thought that I sometimes hear promoted

in the Christian church, no doubt by well-intentioned, good meaning, good-hearted Christians. But I want

to challenge this line of thinking because I

actually think if you frame sanctification, growth, and godliness wrongly, you don't end up

stimulating genuine pursuit of holiness as you want to. No doubt, that's what folks want. You actually

end up breeding discouragement in people. Growth and

godliness is a sensitive, fragile thing. The way a lot of us have handled growth and godliness,

zeal for holiness, purity, all such concepts, which are very much related, is we tend as Christians to sort of go football coach on one another

in the fourth quarter and, you know, get really intense and like when you see a sin in someone

else's life, you just got to stop doing it. You just got to wake up every morning and not do it.

Just don't do it.

And there's, of course, a serious dose of truth in that kind of approach to sin because sin is horrible.

Sin is any lack of conformity to the moral character of God.

And so anywhere you're seeing sin, you're seeing something that is not good.

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