The continuing journey

All traditions affirm that conversion and baptism are just the start of the Christian journey which will continue into eternity and lead to union with God. While different traditions describe this process in varying ways, all agree that the Christian life involves being forgiven, renewed, and gradually conformed to the image of Christ.

Across all Christian traditions, sanctification expresses the same conviction: that salvation is not only forgiveness for the past but also the ongoing renewal of the whole person — mind, body, and spirit — so that we may share in the holiness of God.

Across East and West, Catholic and Protestant, everyone agrees:

• God is holy, loving, and good.
• To be sanctified is to become holy — not in the sense of moral superiority, but of belonging more fully to God and to share in God’s holiness, to reflect the divine character.. Christians believe this is both God’s work done with our cooperation.
• Thus, any genuine communion with God must manifest in virtues: love, humility, mercy, truth, patience, justice, purity, etc. Grace is always the source; yet human response, the virtues, allows that grace to take root and bear fruit.

“He who abides in Him ought himself to walk as He walked.” (1 John 2:6)

Different Christian traditions express this mystery in slightly different ways. Some focus on growth through virtue and discipline, sometimes called the “Ascent model” others on how we are changed through abiding and communion sometimes called the “Overflow model”. These are not opposites but two sides of one reality.

There is more detail on these views on how we receive Sanctification here.

If either taken to excess this leads either to Quietism or passivity — neglecting moral formation or Legalism or moralism — mistaking steps for the goal

Mature spirituality usually brings the two together:

• Though these models emphasise different movements — training and receiving — they are complementary rather than contradictory.
• Most Christians experience both rhythms: moments of active striving and times of peaceful receptivity.
• In both, sanctification means cooperation with grace: God works in us, and we freely respond.

• The Catholic mystics (e.g., John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila) combine ascetic formation with deep contemplative union.
• The Orthodox monastics (e.g., St. Maximus, St. Gregory Palamas) speak of virtues as the “natural radiance” of the deified soul.
• The Wesleyan “means of grace” include both moral and contemplative disciplines — acts of mercy and works of piety.

“Pray as though everything depends on God; work as though everything depends on you.”
— Often attributed to Augustine or Ignatius, and bridging the two worlds.

“We fast not to gain favour, but to regain freedom.” — St. Basil the Great
“Prayer is not asking, but being in God.” — St. Silouan the Athonite

Although these disciplines have some natural moral benefit even outside sacramental grace – virtue ethics is open to pagans and philosophers – but in Christian life they are animated and crowned by infused grace, which orients them toward eternal life, not just moral excellence.