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 as He is 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 something which God does in us with our cooperation.
• Genuine communion with God must manifest in the virtues: love, humility, mercy, truth, patience, justice, purity, etc. (Galatians 5:22-23)
• Grace is always the source but human response, practising and training in 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. While some focus on training and discipline to live the holy life, others on how we are changed through abiding and communion and being available to God for Him to work in us.

The former is sometimes called the “Ascent model” and the latter is sometimes called the “Overflow model“. These are not opposites but two sides of one reality. (For instance Philippians 2:12-13)

If either of these aspects is taken to excess this can lead to Quietism or passivity which neglects moral formation or to Legalism or moralism which mistakes the path for the destination.

Mature spirituality brings the two together:

• Though these models emphasise different approaches they are complementary rather than contradictory.
• On the Christian journey, there will normally be times of active striving and times of peaceful receptivity. Both are parts of the process of sanctification in which we cooperate with grace: God works in us, and we freely and willingly respond.
• An analogy is that of the tide which is sometimes in and sometimes out.

This two-fold path to sanctification and holiness is found, in one form or another, in saints of all traditions.

• The Catholic mystics (e.g., John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila) combine ascetic formation (training) with deep contemplative union (passivity).
• The Orthodox monastics (e.g., St. Maximus, St. Gregory Palamas) speak of virtues as the “natural radiance” of the deified soul. Inner and outer work are intertwined.
• 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, ie. virtue ethics is open to pagans and philosophers, in Christian life they are empowered by infused grace, which connects them with eternal life, not just moral excellence for its own sake.

For more information of what is involved in both the contemplative and the more active ways to sanctification, click here.