Sanctification is inevitable ... but how is it experienced?

This is a follow-up to this post, made this past Sunday.

When the theological statement is made that the truly justified are being sanctified, it's fairly common for people to react in one of the two following ways:

(1) I continually fall into sin "X", therefore I'm not being sanctified, therefore I must not be justified.
(2) I'm a Christian, therefore I'm justified, and if it's inevitable that I'll be sanctified, then I won't make any effort - I'll just wait until it happens.

Both of these reactions have in common that they reason invalidly from a true theological statement to untrue experiential conclusions. Let's unpack that more slowly:

For reaction (1) above, the person is looking at their present state of imperfection and trying to conclude something about their state of justification on the basis of that state of imperfection. But this reasoning is invalid, because justification is by faith in Christ alone, independent of works (Romans 3:28). In this life we will always be in a state of imperfection, so if we were to reason solely from the fact that we still see ourselves sinning we could conclude that no-one is justified. We do need to be a little careful here, though, because we're told in many places (e.g., 1 John 2:3-6, 3:3-6) that the one who is born of God does not continue to sin. Doesn't this mean that we should use our works to assess our state of salvation? Well, yes and no. When we sin (which we will do often - some might say continually), we will have one of two reactions: either to excuse ourselves or to judge ourselves, repent, and to cling to Jesus in faith that His sacrifice covers all sin. The process of sanctification is principally the process of becoming increasingly dependent on Jesus in faith and love.

Reaction (2) above makes the invalid assumption that because sanctification is inevitable that it therefore requires no effort. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are to make every effort (2 Peter 1:5-10) to "make our calling and election sure". But to what end should we be directing our effort? Is our sanctification a matter of works but our justification a matter of faith? God forbid! Our salvation is a matter of faith in Christ from beginning to end. We must look to Jesus and away from our radical self-dependency and our addiction to self-justification. As we place Jesus always before our eyes in faith and love (this is where our effort should be spent -- but paradoxically, true faith and love can only be produced by God!) and renounce ourselves and our desires, the Holy Spirit will bring forth the fruit of holiness and obedience to God.

May the Lord sanctify our hearts to pursue Him and His righteousness alone, forgetting what lies behind and pressing on for the prize of the upward call.