What Do You Mean By Justification and Sanctification?

10 October 2026  Galatians 3:22-29

“For through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus.” 

(Galatians 3:26)

Thomas Erskine, a 19th century lay theologian from Scotland, famously said, “In the New Testament, religion is grace, and ethics is gratitude.” A pithy saying, and quite true, but it needs a little unpacking.

In our time, Sanctification is what divides many Protestants and Catholics. Catholics are very good at worship, liturgy, prayer and the sacramental life (often grouped together under the banner of “Spirituality”). Protestants are better at music and study of the Bible. Both groups have a lot to learn about the ministry of witness.

What Lord Erskine was trying to do was capture the difference between the doctrines of Justification and Sanctification. Justification refers to how we get right with God. It was the great contention that caused the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, but since then Protestants and Catholics have come around to be in general agreement with each other.

To wit, Justification is entirely accomplished by Jesus, not us. We owe God a perfect life, which nobody has. So, in an act of Divine Grace (i.e. receiving something of infinite value, like the Divine Life of Jesus), and Divine Mercy (i.e. not receiving the infinite punishment we do deserve), God has wrapped us in the life of Jesus Himself, and made us fit for heaven. Faith is how we say Yes to that. In fact, Faith is how we bet our lives on it.

OK, terrific. So, then what? How do we live into an arrangement like that?

That’s where the doctrine of Sanctification comes in. Sanctification refers to the way that people ought to live who are the beneficiaries of a Grace that big. Sanctification involves things like liturgy and worship, music and prayer, the sacramental life and the ministry of witness, all of it driven by gratitude for so great a salvation. Sanctification is not a problem to be solved as much as it is a mystery to be entered, a mystery so deep that at a level far more profound than the merely molecular, we become something other than just our genetic code, and become descendants and relatives of Jesus:

For through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26-28)

This is what the Scribes and Pharisees had gotten backward. They thought they were Justified, made right with God, by liturgy and worship, music and prayer, the sacramental life (which for them was things like kosher regulations and punctilious observance of the Law) and the ministry of witness; grace, faith and thanksgiving didn’t enter into it much. In short, they thought Justification was their work, not God’s. Some of them recognized their error and became followers of Jesus. Most of them didn’t, and sought ways to kill Him.

In our time, Sanctification is what divides many Protestants and Catholics. Catholics are very good at worship, liturgy, prayer and the sacramental life (often grouped together under the banner of “Spirituality”). Protestants are better at music and study of the Bible. Both groups have a lot to learn about the ministry of witness. Maybe we could start healing the wounds caused by the Reformation if we could appreciate the gifts both groups have a little more, and working together on strengthening our witness.

Maybe it could start with both groups endorsing what Lord Erskine said: “In the New Testament, religion is grace, and ethics is gratitude.”