THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HOLINESS AND SANCTIFICATION

De: Guillermo Santamaria

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

This book is trying to rescue two overused words—“holiness” and “sanctification”—from becoming religious fog. Its method is stubbornly biblical: don’t start with slogans, start with the words themselves (and how they function in sentences), because a lot of theological confusion is really just grammatical carelessness dressed up as “depth.”

In the Old Testament, the argument is that holiness and sanctification belong to the same Hebrew family built on the root קדשׁ (q-d-š), but they wear different “grammatical clothing.” Holiness shows up mainly as adjective/noun forms (what something is: holy / holiness / holy realm). Sanctification shows up mainly as verb forms (what is done: to consecrate, set apart, treat as holy). That difference maps onto meaning: holiness is the category of belonging to God; sanctification is the consecrating action that establishes and guards that belonging. The book also insists on keeping Leviticus’ distinctions straight: “holy vs common” is not the same axis as “clean vs unclean,” and collapsing them creates both theological and pastoral distortion.

In the New Testament, the same logic is traced through the Greek ἁγ- word-family: ἅγιος (holy), ἁγιάζω (sanctify), ἁγιασμός (sanctification), plus related “holiness” nouns. English splits these into separate drawers (holy/saint/sanctify), but Greek keeps them together. A key payoff is the “saints” point: οἱ ἅγιοι literally means “the holy ones,” so holiness isn’t first presented as a self-improvement project; it’s an identity rooted in God’s claim—then the commands demand a life consistent with that identity.

A major theme is that “sanctify” does not always mean “make morally better.” The book points to contexts where ἁγιάζω means consecrate, dedicate, or revere as holy (e.g., “sanctify the Lord in your hearts,” Jesus “sanctifying” himself in the sense of devotion to his mission). That guards readers from turning sanctification into moralism. At the same time, it refuses the opposite error: because belonging to God is real, holiness necessarily has a moral shape—especially where sanctification language is tied to abstaining from defilement and pursuing purity.

Then comes the “two big ways” the New Testament speaks without contradicting itself: (1) definitive/decisive sanctification (God’s act of setting apart in Christ, often signaled by passive forms and status language), and (2) practical holiness (the lived pursuit expressed in imperatives and exhortations). The warning is pastoral and blunt: if you confuse these, you either make holiness a second gospel (“Christ begins, you complete”), or you turn grace into permission to drift. The book argues context—not theological fashion—must decide which sense is in view.

Finally, it sketches how Reformed and Reformed Baptist traditions typically frame the same distinction: sanctification as Spirit-wrought renovation flowing from union with Christ, and holiness as the lived “practice” and goal-direction of that work—real yet imperfect in this life, never the ground of acceptance, always the fruit of grace. Reformed Baptists add an explicitly church-shaped emphasis: “holiness” has public edges (credible profession, guarded ordinances, discipline), because the church is a community of “visible saints,” not merely private spirituality.