“Sanctified by God the Father” (Jude 1), “Sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:2), “In sanctification of the Spirit” (1 Peter 1:2)

The process of making saints holy is accomplished through all three Persons of the Trinity. It’s not logical to think of Jesus as the embodiment of everything lovely and gracious, while thinking of the Father as harsh, without mercy. It’s also wrong to magnify the decrees of the Father, and the atonement of the Son, so as to depreciate the work of the Holy Spirit.

In the beginning God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Even before that, the Father and the Son had a plan to redeem the saints. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (Ephesians 1:3-5).

It’s by the Holy Spirit that saints are made one Spirit with God and the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17-19). In fact, the Holy Spirit is the way Christ dwells IN saints. “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His” (Romans 8:9). The sanctification process continues with the Holy Spirit. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

For more on the Trinity, click here.