Devotional 69: The Extent of Sanctification: Imperfect in This Life

The Confession Read

This sanctification is throughout, in the whole man; yet imperfect in this life, there abiding still some remnants of corruption in every part; whence ariseth a continual and irreconcilable war, the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 13, Section 2

Introduction

"Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." So wrote the Apostle Paul, a man caught up into the third heaven, who had seen things unlawful for a man to utter, who had planted churches and written letters that would shape the faith of every generation since. And yet this same apostle, near the close of his earthly pilgrimage, confessed that he had not yet apprehended. He had not arrived. The race was not finished. The prize was not yet in his hand. The Christian who has walked with Christ for any length of time learns this truth not from a book but from experience, and the lesson is often painful. He believed, when first the light of the gospel broke upon his soul, that the battle was substantially over, that the old man had been left at the bottom of the baptismal waters, never to surface again. And for a season, the newness of regeneration seemed to confirm his hope. The coarse sins fell away. Prayer became sweet. The Scriptures opened as a sealed book unlocked. He was alive to God in a way he had never known. But the weeks became months, and the months became years, and a darker discovery pressed itself upon his attention: the old man had not drowned. He was swimming strongly beneath the surface, and every so often he broke through with a violence that startled the soul. A flash of temper where patience should have reigned. A drift toward the old indulgence when vigilance slept. A whispered suggestion of pride in the very moment of spiritual triumph. The believer who thought he had left the battlefield discovered that the battlefield had moved inside him, and that the war was fiercer than he had ever imagined it could be in a heart that truly loved the Lord. This is the pastoral realism of Section 2. The Divines have told us in Section 1 what sanctification is, where it comes from, and by what means it advances. But now, in Section 2, they tell us what sanctification feels like: what it means to live as a sanctified soul in a body of death. And the answer is sober, bracing, and comforting: the sanctification that the Spirit works is comprehensive, touching every part of the man, yet it remains imperfect in this life, and its imperfection is the occasion of a war that will not end until glory. This is not the description of a failing Christian. It is the description of every true Christian, the Apostle Paul not excepted. And if you have known the sorrow of that war, if you have wept over its reverses and wondered whether anyone who fights so poorly can truly belong to Christ, then this section of the Confession is written for you.

Scripture Foundation

The Divines embed the proof text for this section directly in its closing clause. In Galatians 5:17 the Apostle writes: "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." Every word in the Confession's final phrase is drawn from this text. The "continual and irreconcilable war" is the warfare Paul names. The "flesh" is the sarx, not the physical body but the entire fallen human nature, the principle of corruption that remains even in the regenerate. The "Spirit" is the Pneuma, the Holy Ghost who indwells every believer. And the verb "lusteth," epithumei, means to set one's desire against, to wage a campaign of longing in opposition to another. The flesh does not simply resist the Spirit; it desires against Him. It is not a passive obstacle but an active combatant, possessed of a will that is set in opposition to the will of God. The word Paul chooses for "contrary" is antikeitai, literally "lie opposite to," the posture of armies arrayed against one another on a field of battle. He is describing a state of settled, structural opposition. The two principles cannot be reconciled; they cannot negotiate a truce; they cannot share territory. And the result is that the believer "cannot do the things that ye would." The regenerate will, renewed by grace, desires holiness. But the flesh opposes that desire, and the result is not the annihilation of the desire but the frustration of its perfect execution. The believer wills the good; he does not accomplish it perfectly. He wills to avoid evil; the flesh presents evil as desirable. This is the "war" the Confession names: a war that proves the believer lives even as it grieves his soul. If Galatians is the battlefield map drawn in miniature, the seventh chapter of Romans is the soldier's memoir, the most extended autobiographical account of the Christian's inner war in all of Scripture. In Romans 7:14-25 Paul writes with an intensity that has convinced some commentators he must be describing his pre-conversion state. But the verbs are present tense, and the longing after holiness is unmistakably the cry of a regenerate heart. "For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I." The man who speaks is a man who hates sin — not just its consequences but its nature. He "delights in the law of God after the inward man." This is not the language of an unregenerate soul, for the natural man does not delight in God's law. And yet this same man cries out: "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." The Greek word for "warring" is antistrateuomenon, a compound word that sharpens the military metaphor. It is not a skirmish but an organized campaign, not a raiding party but an occupying army. The law of sin in Paul's members does not merely exist; it actively campaigns against the renewed mind. And the result is a captivity that Paul experiences in the very moment of his deepest delight in God's law. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" The word talaiporos — "wretched" — is a cry of exhaustion, the gasp of a man worn down by a conflict he cannot end by his own strength. Yet the cry is immediately followed by thanksgiving: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." The deliverance is certain, but it comes through Another. The man who cannot win the war by his own effort has a Champion who will win it for him. The war rages; the victory is assured. This is precisely the two-sided truth the Confession holds before us: the conflict is real, but the outcome is not in doubt. The Apostle Peter adds a further dimension to this warfare. In 1 Peter 2:11 he addresses believers as "strangers and pilgrims" and urges them: "abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." The verb strateuontai, "war", is the root of our English word "strategy." Peter personifies fleshly lusts as soldiers conducting a military campaign against the soul. The battlefield is not external but internal. The enemy is not the Roman Empire, not hostile neighbors, not the devil alone — though he stands behind them — but the desires that arise from within. And the command is "abstain": apechesthai, to hold oneself back, to keep distance, to refuse engagement on the enemy's terms. The believer is called to active resistance, but the resistance is not a matter of external discipline alone; it is the refusal to let the inner enemy dictate the terms of life. These three passages — the strategic map of Galatians, the anguished memoir of Romans 7, and the pilgrim's exhortation of 1 Peter — form a threefold cord that secures the Confession's teaching. The war is real (Galatians 5:17), it is internal and exhausting (Romans 7:23), and it calls for deliberate, lifelong resistance (1 Peter 2:11). No single text exhausts the reality; together they show us the full shape of the sanctified life this side of glory. One further passage illuminates the Confession's teaching that sanctification is "throughout, in the whole man." In 1 Thessalonians 5:23 Paul prays: "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." The Greek holoteleis, "wholly" or "completely," and the tripartite description, spirit, soul, body, emphasize that sanctification leaves no faculty untouched. The mind is renewed, the affections reordered, the will redirected, the body consecrated as a temple of the Holy Ghost. And yet the prayer is for a preservation that looks forward to "the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" — the completion of what is only begun in this life. The whole man is sanctified, but the whole man awaits the final perfection that only glory will bring. This is the paradox the Confession articulates: sanctification is comprehensive but incomplete, thorough but unfinished, real but not yet final.

What the Divines Meant

When the Westminster Divines took up the doctrine of sanctification, they were navigating between familiar perils. On one side lay the Antinomian error: if believers are justified by grace through faith apart from works, then holiness of life is indifferent. On the other lay perfectionist claims of various stripes — Anabaptist, Quaker, and the lingering influence of medieval mysticism — which taught that the believer could, in this life, attain a state of sinless perfection. Section 2 drives a stake through both errors, not by rhetorical denunciation but by sober description of the actual Christian life as Scripture portrays it. The phrase "throughout, in the whole man" insists that sanctification is not a surface renovation. It does not merely restrain outward behavior while leaving the heart untouched. It does not teach a man to control his tongue while leaving his thoughts to wander in the bazaars of Babylon. It does not produce a public piety that conceals private corruption. The Divines knew that the Pharisees had mastered the art of outward conformity to the law while their inward parts were full of dead men's bones. True sanctification, by contrast, reaches into the understanding, renewing it to know the will of God. It reaches into the affections, reordering them so that the soul loves what God loves and hates what God hates. It reaches into the will, strengthening it to choose the good that it now desires. It reaches into the conscience, making it tender and responsive to the least deviation from the path of righteousness. It reaches into the memory, consecrating it as a storehouse of promises and providences. It reaches into the body itself, making its members instruments of righteousness rather than weapons of unrighteousness. No faculty is left outside the Spirit's renewing work. Yet the Divines immediately qualify this comprehensiveness with a sober counterpoint: "yet imperfect in this life." The holiness of the best saint on earth is a holiness begun, not a holiness completed. It is a holiness of parts, not of degrees, to borrow the language of the older theologians. True holiness is present in the believer — really, substantially, recognizably present — yet it is not present in perfection. The love of the holiest Christian is mixed with self-love. The faith of the strongest believer is mixed with unbelief; hence the cry, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." The patience of the most long-suffering saint has its limits and its lapses. The humility of the most self-effacing servant of Christ is shadowed by pride, and often by a pride that wears the garments of humility. Every grace has its corresponding defect, every virtue its accompanying vice. And this is not the exception but the rule. The Divines are not describing a subclass of weak or backslidden Christians; they are describing every Christian who has ever drawn breath this side of the resurrection. The phrase "some remnants of corruption in every part" intensifies the point. It is not simply that the believer is imperfect in the sense that his graces have not yet reached their full maturity — that would be true even of Adam in his innocence, whose obedience could have grown in degree while remaining perfect in quality. The imperfection the Divines name is graver: the believer's graces are not merely incomplete; they are corrupted. There remains, in the mind, darkness: a slowness to apprehend spiritual truth, a tendency to misapply Scripture, a vulnerability to error. There remains, in the affections, disorder: a love for the world that competes with love for God, a coldness toward Christ that alternates with warmth, a susceptibility to the charms of sin. There remains, in the will, resistance: a reluctance to obey fully and immediately, a disposition to delay, a preference for the easier path when the harder path is the path of duty. The old man is dying, but he dies hard, and his death throes are felt in every chamber of the soul. This is not an excuse for sin; it is an explanation of the Christian's ongoing struggle, and it is meant to drive the believer not to complacency but to watchfulness. The final clause names the consequence of this comprehensive-but-imperfect sanctification: "whence ariseth a continual and irreconcilable war, the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." The Divines do not present the Christian life as a placid ascent to moral improvement. They present it as warfare: not occasional, not seasonal, but "continual." It does not cease when the believer is engaged in public worship, though grace may gain the upper hand there. It does not cease when the believer is on his knees in private prayer, though the Spirit may grant a season of peace. It rages in the marketplace and in the study, in the marriage bed and at the family table, in the hour of success and in the hour of defeat. The war is "irreconcilable"; it cannot be resolved by negotiation. There is no treaty to be signed, no territory to be ceded in exchange for peace. The flesh will never agree to coexist with the Spirit, and the Spirit will never agree to tolerate the flesh. One must die, and the other must live. Every moment of the believer's life is lived on contested ground, and the contest will not be settled until the believer lays down his earthly body and enters his Lord's presence.

Theological Depth

The pastoral genius of Section 2 lies in its refusal to simplify the Christian experience. It holds two truths that the natural mind wants to pull apart: sanctification is real, and sanctification is imperfect. The Christian is truly changed, and the Christian is still a sinner. These truths are not contradictory, but they are painful, and every generation of the church has been tempted to resolve the tension by abandoning one or the other. Herman Bavinck, whose Reformed Dogmatics stands among the enduring achievements of Reformed theology, treats the imperfection of sanctification with characteristic balance. For Bavinck, the continuing presence of sin in the believer is not an argument against the reality of regeneration but a demonstration of its character. Regeneration does not instantly transform the entire man; it plants a new principle of life that must grow and gradually overcome the remaining corruption. The old man is not annihilated at conversion; he is dethroned. The new man is not perfected; he is born. And just as a newborn infant possesses all the parts of a human being but none in their mature form, so the regenerate soul possesses all the graces of the new creation but none in their perfected form. Bavinck insists that this gradual character of sanctification is not a defect in God's work but a feature of His wisdom. The Lord could perfect the believer in an instant. But He chooses to perfect him by degrees, through struggle, through the Word and prayer and sacrament, through the fellowship of the saints and the discipline of providence — because this glorifies His grace, humbles the believer, and conforms him to the pattern of a Saviour who learned obedience through suffering. J.C. Ryle, whose Holiness has served generations of Christians with its bracing pastoral realism, wrote as a pastor unimpressed by theories of sinless perfection. Ryle observes that the holiest saints are always the most keenly aware of their remaining sin. It is not the novice who cries "O wretched man that I am" but the seasoned apostle. It is not the new convert who says "I am the chief of sinners" but the man who has walked with Christ for thirty years. Growth in grace, Ryle argues, does not diminish the believer's sense of indwelling sin; it sharpens it. The same increase of light that reveals more of Christ's beauty reveals more of the soul's deformity. The man who is most sanctified feels his lack of sanctification most acutely. And this is precisely the mark by which the true work of the Spirit may be distinguished from its counterfeits. The hypocrite is satisfied with his progress; the saint mourns over its slowness. The hypocrite thinks he has arrived; the saint knows he has barely begun. If you are distressed by the imperfection of your holiness, Ryle would say, that distress is itself evidence that the Spirit is at work within you. Robert Shaw, in his Exposition of the Confession of Faith, draws attention to the word "remnants." The Divines do not say that corruption remains in full strength; they say that remnants remain: fragments, vestiges, the ruins of a defeated power. The dominion is broken; what remains is the residue. And Shaw insists that this distinction is of the first pastoral importance. The believer who mistakes the remnants of corruption for the reign of corruption will fall into despair. The believer who mistakes the remnants for nothing will fall into complacency. The truth lies between: sin remains, but it remains as a vanquished enemy, not a reigning king. The war continues, but the war is waged by a liberated prisoner against his former captor, not by a captive against his master. The believer fights from victory, not for victory — and yet the fight is real, and every inch of ground is contested. Thomas Boston pressed the doctrine of remaining corruption to one of its most searching conclusions. If sin remains in every part, then the believer must be suspicious of every part. There is no faculty so sanctified that it is beyond the reach of corruption. The understanding that grasps the deepest mysteries of the faith may yet be darkened by prejudice. The affections that have been kindled by the love of Christ may yet cool toward Him and warm toward the world. The will that has chosen the narrow way may yet hesitate at the next fork in the road. Boston's counsel was not to produce a morbid introspection but a holy vigilance. The man who knows that every room in his house contains an enemy will not leave any door unguarded. The man who knows that every faculty of his soul harbors remnants of corruption will not trust any faculty to its own keeping. He will watch, and he will pray, and he will lean on the arm of Another, knowing that he who trusts his own heart is a fool. This brings us to the deepest theological anchor of the whole section: the irreconcilable war itself is a work of the Spirit. The flesh does not war against the Spirit; the Spirit wars against the flesh. The initiative in this battle is divine, not human. The very presence of the conflict is evidence of the Spirit's indwelling, for where there is no Spirit, there is no war — only the peace of the grave, the stillness of spiritual death. When a soul that once slumbered peacefully in sin begins to feel the sword thrust of conscience, when habits that once gave pleasure begin to cause pain, when the old companions in folly begin to seem foreign and the company of the godly begins to seem desirable — these are not natural developments. They are the opening engagements of a war that the Holy Ghost has declared against the remaining corruption in that soul. And the Spirit does not begin wars He does not intend to finish. Every skirmish, every repulse, every hard-won inch of ground is the Spirit advancing His campaign toward the final victory that is certain because it is promised. The war is the sign of life. The peace of the unregenerate is the peace of a corpse. The turbulence of the regenerate is the turbulence of a battlefield on which the living God has taken the field, and He has never yet lost a battle He undertook to win.

Puritan Application

First, let this doctrine teach you to expect the war rather than be surprised by it. Many believers, especially in the early days of their Christian pilgrimage, are unsettled to discover that sin did not vanish at conversion. They had been told that Christ had set them free, and in a true and decisive sense He had. But they had not been told that the freedom of the Christian in this life is the freedom of a city whose former tyrant has been driven from the palace but still holds strongholds in the outer districts. The war surprises them, and they conclude that something has gone wrong, that their conversion was defective, that their faith was insufficient, that they have not truly received the Spirit. The Confession meets this anxiety with pastoral wisdom. It tells you that the war is not the exception but the rule. It tells you that the very intensity of your struggle is, in a fallen world, a sign of spiritual health. A dead man feels no conflict. The soul that has no war within it is a soul in which the Spirit has not yet taken up residence. Do not mistake the presence of conflict for the absence of grace; the conflict is grace at work. The Spirit has not abandoned you; He is fighting in you. The question is not whether you fight, but on whose side you fight, and in whose strength you take up arms. Second, let the comprehensiveness of remaining corruption make you thorough in self-examination and specific in repentance. The Confession teaches that remnants of corruption abide in every part. This means that no area of your life is so sanctified that it can safely be left unexamined. The preacher who has mastered the art of public prayer may yet harbor secret pride that feeds on the admiration of his hearers. The father who leads his family in daily worship may yet be impatient with his children in the ordinary frictions of the household. The woman who serves the church with tireless devotion may yet nurse a grudge against a sister who slighted her years ago. The corruption that remains in the mind may manifest as a settled prejudice dressed in the language of conviction. The corruption that remains in the affections may manifest as a disordered attachment that has been renamed as legitimate desire. The corruption that remains in the will may manifest as a pattern of procrastination in duties that do not come naturally. General confessions of general sinfulness are easy and cost little. But the Spirit who sanctifies the whole man calls for particular repentance of particular sins. Ask Him to search you, as David did, and to show you not just that you are a sinner but where you are sinning: in what part, through what avenue, by what progression does the old man still make his assaults. The enemy knows your weaknesses; do you? Third, let the irreconcilable character of the war forbid every thought of truce with sin. The fact that sin cannot be fully eradicated in this life is not a license to accommodate it. The war is irreconcilable; there is no middle ground. The flesh will never lay down its arms. Every proposal of the flesh that begins with "just this once" or "no one will know" or "it's a small thing" is an attempt to negotiate a separate peace, and every separate peace is treason against the Spirit. The believer who makes peace with a particular sin — who decides that the battle is too costly and that a little indulgence can be tolerated — has surrendered territory that belongs to Christ. And the history of fallen saints warns us that a single surrendered outpost can become the staging ground for a counter-offensive that overruns the whole city. David's glance from the rooftop was a small beginning, but it ended in adultery, deception, and murder. Peter's fear of a servant girl was a momentary weakness, but it led to a threefold denial of his Lord. Do not underestimate the strategic intelligence of the enemy within. He does not need to win the whole war in a single battle; he only needs to win one battle at a time, and yesterday's small concession is today's entrenched habit and tomorrow's public disgrace. The war is irreconcilable; fight it as though everything depended on the outcome, and fight it in the strength of another. Fourth, let the imperfection of your sanctification keep you humble before God and gentle with your brethren. The believer who understands that corruption remains in every part will not marvel at the sins of others as though they were a strange thing. He will not be quick to condemn, harsh in judgment, or severe in rebuke. He knows his own heart too well for that. He remembers the sins he has committed in thought if not in deed, the falls that grace alone prevented, the temptations that would have mastered him but for the Spirit's restraining hand. And this knowledge breeds not indifference to sin but patience with sinners. It enables him to restore a fallen brother in a spirit of meekness, considering himself lest he also be tempted. The church is not a museum of perfected saints but a hospital of convalescing sinners, and the physician's patience should teach all the patients patience with one another. At the same time, the imperfection of your sanctification should keep you humble before God. Every advance in holiness is His gift, not your achievement. Every victory over sin is won by His power, not your resolve. You have nothing that you did not receive, and you would lose everything you have received if His hand were withdrawn for a moment. Walk softly, then, and give Him the glory for whatever progress you have made, while trusting Him for whatever progress remains to be made. Fifth, let the certainty of final victory fuel your hope and sustain your perseverance. The war is real, but the war has an end. The flesh will not always lust against the Spirit. The law in the members will not always war against the law of the mind. The day is coming when the last remnant of corruption will be purged away, when the whole man, spirit, soul, and body, will be conformed to the likeness of Christ, and the warfare that has exhausted and humbled and sanctified you through all your earthly pilgrimage will give way to the peace that passes understanding. This hope does not make the present struggle less urgent; it makes it more bearable. The soldier who knows the war will end and his side will win can endure wounds that would break a man who fights without hope. You do not fight to earn the victory; the victory is already won in Christ. You fight from the victory, not for it. And the same Lord who won the decisive battle at Calvary, who triumphed over principalities and powers and made a show of them openly, will bring His campaign in your soul to its appointed conclusion. He who began a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. The war is long, the enemy is fierce, and your own strength is small. But your Captain has never lost a soldier, and He will not begin with you. Press on, then, forgetting the things that are behind, reaching forward to the things that are before. The prize is sure, and the hand that holds it is the hand that was pierced for you.

Prayer

O Lord God Almighty, who alone art holy and who alone canst make sinners holy, we come before Thee with hearts that are at once grateful and grieving. We bless Thee that Thou hast not left us in the corruption of our fallen nature but hast begun a work of renewing grace in every part of our being: enlightening our minds, warming our affections, redirecting our wills, and consecrating our bodies as temples of Thy Spirit. We thank Thee for every evidence, however small, that Thou art at work within us, for every sin that has lost its power to command our consent, for every grace that has taken root and begun to bear fruit, for every desire after holiness that rises from a heart that once desired only sin. And yet, O Father, we come before Thee as those who know the grief of the Confession's second clause: our sanctification is imperfect. The remnants of corruption that abide in every part of our nature are a daily burden to our souls. Our minds are still darkened by prejudice and error; our affections still cleave to the world when they should rise to Thee; our wills still hesitate where they should spring to obey. We have loved Thee with a divided heart, served Thee with a slack hand, and repented of sins to which we have returned as a dog to its vomit. The war within us is continual, and we are weary of it. We have lost battles we should have won, yielded ground we should have held, and given the enemy occasion to blaspheme Thy name. Forgive us, we pray, for the sake of Thy Son in whom we trust. Let not our failures become occasions for despair but for renewed dependence upon Thee. Remind us that the war itself is a sign of Thy Spirit's presence, for the dead feel no conflict and the unregenerate wage no war against their sin. Remind us that the Captain of our salvation has never lost a campaign, and the battle in our souls is one He has pledged Himself to win. Grant us, we beseech Thee, the grace of holy vigilance. Let us not be ignorant of the enemy's devices, nor complacent about the corruption that remains. Make us thorough in self-examination, specific in repentance, and swift to return to the cross when we have fallen. Strengthen our hands for the fight. When the flesh promises pleasure, give us eyes to see the poison beneath the honey. When the world beckons, give us ears to hear the still, small voice that speaks of a better country. When the devil accuses, give us the shield of faith to quench his fiery darts, and the sword of the Spirit to answer him with the promises of the gospel. We pray for all Thy saints who are weary in this war. Comfort those who have fought long and seen little progress. Restore those who have fallen and are tempted to stay down. Strengthen those whose hands hang down and whose knees are feeble. Let the hope of final victory sustain them in the present conflict, and let the foretaste of glory sweeten the bitterness of the way. Bring us at last, O Lord, to that blessed state where the warfare shall be ended and the victory complete, where no remnants of corruption shall remain, where the whole man, spirit and soul and body, shall be perfectly conformed to the image of Thy Son. Until that day, keep us fighting the good fight, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. In His name we pray, who ever liveth to make intercession for us. Amen.