What is the difference between positional and practical sanctification?

Question 7073.

Positional sanctification describes where you stand before God; practical sanctification describes how you are getting on. Both are scriptural, both matter, and a great many discouraged Christians are discouraged precisely because they have been measuring the first by the second. If you have ever wondered how Paul could call the Corinthians saints with a straight face, this distinction is the answer.

Let me take the two apart, put them back together in the right order, and show what changes when you get the order right.

Positional sanctification: what God has declared

Positional sanctification is the believer’s standing as one set apart for God, established the moment faith unites us to Jesus and unchanged thereafter. Paul opens his first letter to Corinth by addressing those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, in 1 Corinthians 1:2. He then spends sixteen chapters correcting incest, drunkenness at the Lord’s Table, litigation between members and doctrinal chaos.

That combination is deliberately instructive. The word translated saints is hagios, holy ones, and Paul applies it as a description of who they are rather than a report on how they behave. Positional sanctification is God’s classification of us, based on what Jesus did rather than on what we manage.

It sits alongside justification as a declared reality. Justification answers the question of guilt. Positional sanctification answers the question of belonging. Neither fluctuates with performance, and neither can be improved upon.

Practical sanctification: what God is doing

Practical sanctification is the actual transformation of character, habit and desire over the course of a life. It is uneven, it is often slow, and it is genuinely real. Paul tells the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6:11 that they were washed and sanctified, and then in 2 Corinthians 7:1 urges them to cleanse themselves and bring holiness to completion. Same author, same readers, two different aspects.

This is where commands live. Put to death what is earthly. Put away falsehood. Be renewed in the spirit of your minds. None of those instructions makes sense if sanctification were only positional, and all of them assume a work in progress.

I have treated the mechanics of this in more detail under definitive and progressive sanctification, which uses slightly different terminology for a closely overlapping distinction.

The relationship between the two

Positional sanctification is the ground; practical sanctification is the building. Romans 6 sets it out with unusual clarity. Verses 1 to 10 tell us what has happened to us in Jesus, and verse 11 draws the conclusion: so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God. The word consider is an accounting term. Reckon as true what is already true.

That means practical sanctification is not an attempt to achieve a position. It is the working out of a position already held. The Christian does not fight sin in order to become God’s. The Christian fights sin because he is God’s, and sin no longer fits.

Reverse the two and everything sours. If daily performance determines standing, then every honest look at my own heart becomes a threat, and the natural response is to stop looking honestly. Legalism and self deception grow on the same root.

Why confusing them wrecks assurance

Most of the assurance problems I encounter in pastoral work come down to this confusion. Somebody has had a bad month, or discovered a sin they thought they had left behind, and concludes that their standing before God has slipped. They are reading their practical condition as though it were their position.

Positional sanctification is the medicine for that, and it needs applying deliberately rather than felt into existence. Your position did not come from your obedience, so it cannot be dismantled by your disobedience. If it could, Corinth would have lost its sainthood in chapter five.

This is not a licence for indifference, and I will say so plainly. The person who hears this and relaxes about sin has misunderstood the doctrine badly. Sin still grieves the Spirit, damages fellowship, harms other people and invites the Father’s discipline. What it cannot do is unmake a son.

How the two show up in one verse

Hebrews 10:14 puts both aspects in a single sentence: by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Perfected for all time is positional. Being sanctified is practical. The writer saw no tension whatsoever, and neither should we.

Once you notice this pattern you will find it everywhere. You are light in the Lord, therefore walk as children of light. You have been raised with Christ, therefore seek the things above. Every therefore in the New Testament epistles is standing on positional sanctification and pointing towards practical holiness.

It also explains a puzzle about the word saint. Rome canonises a handful after death on the basis of demonstrated holiness. Scripture applies the term to every believer in Colossae, Ephesus and Philippi while they were still alive and still failing. The difference is not modesty. It is doctrine.

Practical holiness and the pursuit

None of this makes effort optional. Hebrews 12:14 tells us to strive for holiness, and the verb is energetic. God’s method is not to change us while we sleep but to change us as we obey, using Scripture, prayer, the fellowship of the local church and the ordinary discipline of saying no. I have said more about this in why we pursue holiness if we are already sanctified.

What positional sanctification supplies is the motive and the safety. I pursue holiness out of gratitude rather than fear, and I can afford to fail in the attempt because the attempt is not what holds me. That is the difference between a servant on probation and a son learning the family trade.

And the pursuit is aimed at a person, not a standard. God’s own character is the measure, as He tells Israel and as Peter repeats to the church. See the article on God’s holiness for that side of it.

A case study in how this works

Let me make this concrete with a situation I have met many times. A believer discovers that a sin they thought they had left behind years ago has returned. The shame is enormous, and the first conclusion is nearly always that they cannot really be a Christian, or that God has withdrawn.

Positional sanctification is the first thing I want them to hear. Nothing about your standing has changed. You are as much God’s possession this morning as you were before, because that possession was established by the cross and not by your record since. The relationship is not under review.

Then, and only then, comes the practical work. What happened? What preceded it? What has to change about the circumstances, the company, the habits of the evening? That conversation is possible because the first one settled the ground, and it is nearly impossible for a person who believes their salvation is at stake in the answer.

Why the New Testament writes to churches this way

Notice the way the epistles are addressed. To the saints in Ephesus. To the church of God in Corinth, called to be saints. To all the saints in Philippi. Every letter begins by telling a mixed and struggling congregation who they are, and only then tells them what to do.

I try to preach in that order for the same reason. A congregation told repeatedly what to do without being told who they are will become either proud or exhausted, and usually both in rotation. Positional sanctification is the ground the imperatives stand on, and if the ground is not laid the imperatives crush people.

It also explains why the New Testament uses the word saint so freely. Corinth had a man sleeping with his father’s wife and members getting drunk at the Lord’s Table, and Paul still opened with the title. He was not flattering them. He was reminding them of a status they were contradicting, which is the most powerful motive for change there is.

That is the pastoral genius of the distinction. Tell a person they are dirty and they will either despair or defend themselves. Tell a person they belong to God and are behaving unlike themselves, and you have given them something to live up to rather than something to live down.

Two words worth keeping

If you take nothing else from this, keep the two words and keep them in order. Position first, practice second. Standing first, walking second. That order is the difference between a Christian life lived out of gratitude and one lived out of fear, and I have never met anybody who got the order wrong and stayed joyful for long. The gospel puts the foundation underneath us before it asks us to build.

So, now what?

Take a moment and identify which of the two you habitually forget. If you are anxious, you have forgotten your position, and the cure is not more effort but more attention to what God has already said about you in Jesus. Read Romans 6 and Colossians 3 with a pen and mark every past tense.

If you are casual, you have forgotten the practical side, and the cure is one concrete act of obedience this week rather than a general resolution. Pick the sin you have been negotiating with and stop negotiating. Which of the two do you need tonight?

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10:14)