Sanctification and the Sacraments: Encountering the Transforming Presence of God
Sanctification and the Sacraments: Encountering the Transforming Presence of God
By Jonathan A. Powers
This article is the fourth in a four-week series on sanctification drawn from the webinar sponsored by the John Wesley Institute, exploring the biblical and Wesleyan vision of a life made holy by the power of God.
One of the great challenges facing the modern Church is that many Christians have come to think about holiness or sanctification primarily in moral terms. Sanctification becomes reduced to “being a good person,” avoiding certain sins, or trying harder to live the Christian life faithfully. While morality certainly matters, the biblical, theological, and historic vision of sanctification is much richer and deeper than mere rule-keeping.
At its heart, sanctification is about communion with God and transformation into the likeness of Jesus Christ. When we look at the word “holy” in Scripture, we find that it refers first and foremost to God Himself. God is holy because He is perfect in love and utterly good (which are two central characteristics of holiness). Holiness is therefore not simply one attribute of God among many. Rather, it is the beauty and fullness of God’s own life.
The astonishing message of Christianity is that God desires to share His holiness with us humans. What that means for us, then, is that the story of salvation is not merely about forgiveness; it is about transformation. God is not simply interested in pardoning sinners. He is committed to restoring humanity into the image of Christ. And he does this by continually pouring out His grace, drawing us to Himself. Sanctification, therefore, is the gracious work of the Holy Spirit in making us holy, reordering our loves, desires, habits, and lives toward God. It is learning to love what God loves and growing in the way that God loves. It is about becoming fully alive in Christ.
John Wesley understood this deeply. For Wesley, sanctification was not optional for the Christian life. Instead, it was the very goal of salvation. He believed God’s grace not only forgives us but transforms us. Wesley often described sanctification as being renewed in the image of God and filled with holy love. When Wesley spoke of “entire sanctification” or “Christian perfection,” he did not mean flawlessness or spiritual superiority. What he meant was that the entirely sanctified person was one with a heart fully surrendered to God and filled with love. Entire sanctification is the work of God cleansing the heart from inward sin and reordering our desires so that love for God and neighbor becomes the governing principle of life.
For Wesley, sanctification is always relational before it is moral. Holiness is not to be some kind of cold perfectionism, but it is to be perfect love. And this is where the sacraments become so important. The sacraments remind us that Christianity is not merely mental or spiritual affirmations but an embodied, lived out reality.
In a world that often separates the spiritual from the physical, the sacraments declare that God is deeply involved in both, and they remind us that He meets us in the ordinary realities of life. The God who became flesh in Jesus Christ continues to use created things to draw us into communion with Himself. He offers these means of grace through which He nourishes, strengthens, and sanctifies His people. He works through ordinary things like water, bread, wine to communicate extraordinary grace. He is in the business of making physical things holy. If he can do it to bread, wine, and water, then He can do it in us.
This sacramental vision begins with the Incarnation itself. Christianity proclaims that God did not save humanity apart from our world but entered into it. He took on flesh. He touched lepers, washed feet, broke bread, and suffered on a cross. The material world became the arena of redemption because Christ Himself entered it. This means sanctification is not an escape from embodied life. Rather, sanctification is the redemption and transformation of embodied life.
Christians often can imagine holiness as withdrawing from ordinary existence. But biblical sanctification touches every part of life: our speech, our relationships, our worship, our suffering, our work, our habits, and our communities. The sacraments train us to see all of life through the lens of grace.
Baptism, for example, is far more than a religious ceremony marking a public profession of faith or church membership. Baptism is the Church’s participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul writes in Romans 6 that through baptism we are buried with Christ so that we may also rise with Him into newness of life. Baptism therefore reveals something profound about sanctification: sanctification always begins with dying. Something within us must die. In particular, sin must be put to death. And to understand what this means, we first have to understand that sin is not merely bad behavior; it is disordered love. It is the heart curved inward upon itself. Therefore, sanctification requires the crucifixion of the false self so that the life of Christ may emerge within us.
In baptism, the Church proclaims that our identity is no longer rooted in our failures, fears, ambitions, addictions, politics, or achievements. Our identity is now rooted in Christ. This is why the early Church often connected baptism with new creation imagery. Christians emerged from the waters as people entering a new way of life. Baptism is not merely about a moment in the past. It becomes a continual pattern of dying and rising with Christ every day.
Martin Luther famously said that the Christian life is a daily return to baptism. Every act of repentance is a return to baptism. Every confession of sin is a return to baptism. Every surrender to grace is a return to baptism. Holiness is not perfectionism. Holiness is continual surrender.
And the Church must remember this because many Christians carry exhausting burdens of shame and spiritual anxiety. They believe holiness means never struggling, never failing, never wrestling with temptation. But the saints throughout Christian history remind us that holiness is not the absence of struggle. It is learning to continually turn toward Christ within the struggle. The sacraments continually reorient us toward grace.
This is especially true in the Eucharist (also known as Communion or the Lord’s Supper). Throughout Christian history, believers have understood the Eucharist as a central place of encounter with Christ. Christians have differed in how they explain Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, but the Church has consistently affirmed that something holy happens. In the Eucharist, we remember Christ, we proclaim Christ, we receive Christ, and we are united to one another through Christ. The Eucharist reveals that sanctification is fundamentally relational. Jesus did not say, “Think about this in remembrance of me.” He said, “Take, eat.” Christianity is not merely intellectual assent to theological ideas. It is participation in the very life of the living God.
For Wesley, the Lord’s Supper was one of the chief means of grace through which God sanctifies His people. Wesley thus encouraged frequent Communion because he believed Christ truly meets believers in the Eucharist and strengthens them in holy love.
One of the tragedies of modern life is that people are spiritually starving while being endlessly distracted. We consume information constantly yet remain deeply malnourished in soul. The Eucharist stands as a counter-formation to this fragmented existence.
As we regularly partake in the Eucharist, it forms us over time. Week after week, Christians gather to confess sin, hear Scripture, pray together, exchange peace, receive bread and wine, and be sent back into the world. Over time, these rhythms shape the heart. The sacraments work patiently.
Modern culture is obsessed with instant transformation and visible success. But God often works gradually, and through ordinary faithfulness over long periods of time, such as a prayer prayed daily, confession honestly spoken, bread received with humility, Scripture heard week after week, a community carrying one another through suffering. This slow work of grace is deeply countercultural.
The sacraments teach us to pay attention again. They train us to recognize that God is present in ordinary things. Water becomes the sign of new life. Bread becomes the sign of divine nourishment. Wine becomes the sign of joy and covenantal love.
Therefore, when we gather for corporate worship we do not simply come for inspiration or religious education. Rather, we come to worship understanding that we are participating in the very life of God. In worship, the Church learns to see reality truthfully again. We confess our sins because we need hope. We hear Scripture because we need truth. We pray because we must learn dependence. We receive Communion because we need grace.
Worship invites us into the ongoing process of sanctification because worship, when done faithfully, forms and orients our love. What we repeatedly give ourselves to eventually shapes us. Every culture has liturgies—patterns and practices that train desire. Social media has liturgies. Consumer culture has liturgies. Politics has liturgies. These practices shape what we love and long for. Christian worship exists to retrain our love toward God. It is work we do together as the church, because, importantly, sanctification is never merely individualistic.
One of the dangers in modern spirituality is reducing faith to “my personal relationship with God.” While personal faith matters deeply, Christianity is profoundly communal.
John Wesley captured this beautifully when he said, “There is no holiness but social holiness.” Wesley did not simply mean social activism. He meant that sanctification cannot happen in isolation. Love requires other people. It needs a community. The Church, therefore, is where we learn patience, forgiveness, humility, compassion, and reconciliation. Community exposes our selfishness, but it also becomes the place where grace transforms us.
The sacraments reinforce this truth. No one baptizes themselves. No one serves themselves Communion in isolation from the Body of Christ. The sacraments remind us that salvation incorporates us into a people. This communal vision of sanctification is especially important in a fragmented and lonely age. Many people today are spiritually hungry for belonging, rootedness, and authentic community.
Which is why the Church has something profound to offer here. When the Church lives faithfully, it becomes a visible sign of God’s kingdom: a community shaped not by outrage, competition, or tribalism, but by grace, truth, forgiveness, and love. And this leads us to one final point: sanctification is always missional.
We must remember that the purpose of entire sanctification is not spiritual self-improvement. Rather, the end of entire sanctification is love. As we are transformed by God’s presence, we become witnesses to His presence in the world. The movement of worship itself is always outward. We gather to encounter Christ, we are fed by Word and sacrament, and then we are sent into the world as ambassadors of Christ’s love. Sanctification should therefore make Christians more compassionate, not less. More patient. More merciful. More joyful. More attentive to suffering. More willing to serve.
True sanctification does not withdraw from the world but moves toward the suffering of the world with the love of Christ. This is ultimately the goal of sanctification: union with Christ and being transformed into His likeness. The sacraments continually draw us into this mystery. Through water, bread, wine, worship, prayer, and community, God forms ordinary people into saints. And perhaps this is the greatest reminder we need today: sanctification is not about becoming less human. It is about becoming fully human in Christ.
The God who sanctifies us continues to meet us through Word and sacrament. He continues to form us through the life of the Church. And every time we come to the waters of baptism, every time we gather at the table, every time we worship together, we are invited again into the beautiful mystery of dying and rising with Jesus Christ.
That is the gift offered to us in the sacraments, and that is the heart of sanctification.
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