Sanctification is not a passive transformation on our part, it is an active transformation of choosing to say “yes” and “no” to some things and so in the words of J.I. Packer, “let us not “let go and let God,” but rather “let us trust God and get going.”

If we believe what Paul has already told us that we have peace with God, that we are standing in the grace of God, that sanctification is rooted in God’s love and secured because of the work of Christ, then we should also believe God’s word when he tells us the power of sin has been defeated in our lives as a result.

If you try to bridge the gap between you and God, sanctification is always going to seem impossible, but when we stop trying to bridge the gap and remind ourselves of the truth that Jesus already has, it not only becomes possible in our minds and hearts, it becomes what was promised.

Because we are justified by faith, one day you and I will stand before God complete, whole, perfect, righteous, fully experiencing the glory of God for all of eternity, and God is going to use everything in your life to accomplish that. Sin and Suffering. Good and Evil. Your failures and your successes. Nothing is going to prevent God from accomplishing his plan of sanctification for your life.

We cannot overcome sin by doing good, but only by believing in the only one who is good. We can never earn our way to God; God isn’t looking for us to make promises to him he knows we can’t keep, but to believe the promises God has made and kept for us.

The bad news is we are unrighteous, the good news is Jesus is righteous. The bad news is we are all sinners, the good news is Jesus has come to save sinners. The bad news is we deserve the consequences of our sin, but the good news is God in his mercy, has provided forgiveness of sin and as a gift of his grace promised to give us his righteousness through his son, and all that is left now is for us to receive it.

Our good works will never reconcile us to God, because then we would be able to take credit and we can’t. Salvation is only, entirely and exclusively the work of God and God alone in order that God alone, entirely and exclusively gets all the glory for it.

The gap between our sinfulness and God’s holiness is massive. The law showed people they could never bridge that gap; they could never do everything God required, and so they needed God to do for them what they could not do for themselves. God’s word shows us our sinfulness, but it also points us to the hope that we have despite it, but what is this hope?