Justification and Sanctification
Two words for two different works of God on one person. Being made right with Him, and being made clean by Him. The Restoration teaches both, and teaches that both come by grace.
Most arguments about grace and works turn out to be arguments about these two words. A man is told he is saved the moment he believes, and then he wonders why he is still the same man on Tuesday morning that he was on Sunday night. Another is told to work out his own salvation, and spends years wondering how much work would ever be enough. Both of them are asking a real question. And the answer is that God does TWO things here, not one: He sets a man right with Himself, and then He makes that man over into something else entirely. Confuse the two and nothing about salvation reads clearly.
Scripture Names Both, in One Breath
Paul does not treat these as rival ideas. He lists them together, in order, as three things that happened to the same people.
“And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
Washed. Sanctified. Justified. One sentence, one people, three works, and every one of them accomplished in the name of Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God rather than by the men being described. Did Paul see a conflict here? He did not. Neither should we.
Justification — Set Right With God
To be justified is to be brought into a right standing before God, so that the demands of justice against you are answered and the record against you is cleared. And who clears it? Not you. No man ever generated enough righteousness to stand on his own account, and the Restoration says so as plainly as anyone has ever said it.
This is why the word grace belongs at the front of the sentence and not tacked on at the back of it. Justification is not WAGES. It is not a total reached, or a threshold cleared by a man who finally did enough. It is the gift of a Savior who paid what we could never have paid ourselves, and it was offered to us long before we had done a single thing to deserve the offer.
But notice what justification does not claim to do. It never claims to have changed the man himself, and a debt can be paid in full while the debtor stays exactly the person he always was. That is precisely why scripture does not stop here, and neither can we.
Sanctification — Made Clean, Not Just Called Clean
Sanctification is God making a person holy. Not DECLARING it over him. Doing it to him, and in him, until the very thing he wants has changed. Mormon records exactly how it came to a people who were living it.
“Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God.”
Read the last clause again, because it settles a great deal. Whose work is the sanctification? God’s. What occasions it? Their yielding. The verse does not say sanctification came because they earned it, and it does not say it fell on them while they were indifferent. It came because they gave Him their hearts, and He did the purifying.
The Savior named the same order when He gave the commandment to a whole hemisphere.
“And no unclean thing can enter into his kingdom; therefore nothing entereth into his rest save it be those who have washed their garments in my blood… Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day.”
Washed in His blood, not in ours. Sanctified by the Holy Ghost, not by our own effort. And yet the sentence has commandments in it — repent, come, be baptized. Grace and obedience are not competing here. One is the power and the other is the path.
Both Are Gifts, and the Revelation Says So Twice
If there were one verse to hang this whole subject on, it is this one. It takes both words, gives both the same source, and names who receives them.
Doctrine and Covenants 20:30–31
“And we know that justification through the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is just and true; and we know also, that sanctification through the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is just and true, to all those who love and serve God with all their mights, minds, and strength.”
Both through the grace of Christ. Not one by grace and the other by sweat. The revelation refuses that division outright, and it refuses it in the very same sentence where it names the people who receive the second one: those who love and serve God with all their mights, minds and strength. That is not a small qualifier tucked on the end. It is BOTH a condition and a description of the same person.
A man who will not yield is not being denied a gift. He is refusing one.
Why the Two Got Pulled Apart
The reformers faced a hard problem. They had rejected a church that sold salvation, and they were right to reject that. But they knew themselves to be sinful men, no better than the priests they were correcting. So where did that leave them?
Their answer was to separate the two works entirely. Justification became a finished verdict, complete at the moment of belief and untouchable ever afterward, whatever the man went on to do with the rest of his life. Sanctification became God’s slow project instead — His business rather than theirs, something to be patiently waited on rather than actively sought. It solved their problem. It also left a man fully saved and entirely unchanged, with nothing whatsoever required of him in between those two points.
The Restoration keeps them joined. Justification comes to the penitent because they are penitent. Sanctification comes to the same people, for the same reason, by the same grace. Neither is earned and neither is automatic. For the argument against imputed righteousness set out in full, see Imputed Righteousness — Declared Clean, or Made Clean?
“You Are Adding Works to Grace”
This is the concern almost every Protestant reader brings to this subject, and it deserves a direct answer rather than a deflection. The worry is real. If sanctification requires my yielding, and yielding is something I do, then have we not smuggled human effort back into a salvation that Paul insists is a gift? Paul himself seems to close the door: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).
Take that seriously, because it is exactly right as far as it goes. No amount of effort purchases salvation. Nobody earns a place. If our obedience were a payment, grace would be a wage and the cross would be a formality.
But read one verse further, which is where the passage is almost never quoted. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Paul rules out boasting. He never rules out walking.
So what is obedience, if it is not payment? It is the yielding. It is how a person opens the door to a work only God can perform, and it purchases nothing. A patient who takes the medicine has not cured himself, and no honest man would say he did. But the man who refuses it stays sick, and that is not the physician’s doing.
Why It Has to Be Both
Consider what heaven is. It is not a reward handed to whoever holds the right paperwork. It is the presence of God, and a man has to be able to bear it.
What the Revelations Add
- D&C 88:21 — they who are not sanctified through the law of Christ “must inherit another kingdom.” Sanctification decides WHERE a soul can live, not just how it is regarded.
- Moroni 10:32–33 — come unto Christ and be perfected in him, and “then is his grace sufficient for you… then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God.”
- Titus 3:5 — saved “by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” Washing and renewing, named together.
A pardon on its own would leave a man forgiven and still entirely unfit for the company he had just been pardoned into. God intends better than that for us. He forgives the past, and then He goes to work on the person, so that the place He is bringing us to turns out to be a place we could actually be happy living in.
What This Means for You
If you have repented and come to Christ, you are not waiting outside a door hoping to be let in. You are already justified through His grace, and that standing is real today.
And if you are still fighting the same weakness you were fighting a year ago, that is not proof the first thing never happened. Sanctification takes a life. It comes as we yield, again and again, and the yielding itself is something we choose. God will not force a clean heart on a man who will not open the door.
So do not measure yourself against perfection today. Measure the direction. Are you yielding more of yourself to Him than you were? That is sanctification happening, and it is His work in you, not yours alone.
See also What is Grace?, What is Repentance?, Faith, and Salvation.