Christ Our Sanctifier

One of the distinctives of the Christian & Missionary Alliance (our “tribe”), is honor Christ as our sanctifier. “Sanctifier” is a big word for the one who makes us holy. So let’s consider one practical aspect of what that means.

When we think about growing in our relationship with God and personal holiness, we can look one of two directions. We can look inward and chart the progress of our souls. Or we can look outward at Christ. A preoccupation with the inward gaze can lead to frustration, guilt, and spiritual paralysis. The outward gaze leads to something absolutely paradoxical. Listen to how A.W. Tozer (a C&MA pastor of the last century) puts it:

“While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves - blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ, the very thing he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him.”

- A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, Inc., 1993), 85.

As we look away from ourselves and look to Christ – who he is and what he has done, we discover that the Spirit is busy at work forming Christ within us! As we trust in him, his perfect righteousness is imputed to our account even as our sins are taken by him on the cross. That’s what followers of Christ can be called “perfect” even though we have a long way to go on the journey! As the writer of the book of Hebrews puts it:

“For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.”

(Hebrews 10:14)

That’s where justification (declared righteous in Christ) meets sanctification (having a heart set apart to delight in doing God’s will). Because Christ does this work, we honor him as our “Sanctifier”. The Scottish pastor, Robert Murray M’Cheyne give us some insight in this proper perspective:

“I must not only wash in Christ’s blood, but clothe me in Christ’s obedience. For every sin of omission in self, I may find a divinely perfect obedience ready for me in Christ. For every sin of commission in self, I may find not only a stripe or a wound in Christ, but also a perfect rendering of the opposite obedience in my place, so that the law is magnified, its curse more than carried, its demand more than answered.”

—Robert Murray M’Cheyne, quoted by Andrew Bonar, Robert Murray M’Cheyne (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1960), 176

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

p.s. Do yourself a big favor and check out the blog “Of First Importance”, your soul will thank you for it and you’ll see where I get all my cool quotes!