Sanctification is not a work of nature, but a work of grace. It is a transformation of character effected not by moral influences, but supernaturally by the Holy Spirit.
Interpretation
Sanctification is a spiritual transformation that occurs through divine grace rather than human efforts.
The quote emphasizes that sanctification, or the process of becoming holy, is not something that can be achieved through natural or moral means alone. Instead, it is fundamentally a work of grace, initiated and completed through the action of the Holy Spirit, highlighting the importance of divine influence in personal transformation.
In practice
In a sermon about spiritual growth, one might quote this to emphasize the role of grace.
It is because God is infinitely great and good that his glory is the end of all things; and his good pleasure the highest reason for whatever comes to pass. What is man that he should contend with God, or presume that his interests rather than God's glory should be made the final end?
The doctrines of grace humble man without degrading him and exalt him without inflating him.
Faith is not a blind, irrational conviction. In order to believe, we must know what we believe, and the grounds on which our faith rests.
To be in Christ is the source of the Christian life; to be like Christ is the sum of his excellence; to be with Christ is the fullness of his joy.
Commanded by God dozens of times in the Hebrew Bible to remember their past, Jews historically obeyed not by recording events but by ritually re-enacting them: by understanding the present through the lens of the past.
In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
The purpose of prayer is emphatically not to bend God's will to ours, but rather to align our will to his.
Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
And so was Luria, whose words now came back to me: βA man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibility, moral being ... It is here ... you may touch him, and see a profound change.β Memory, mental activity, mind alone, could not hold him; but moral attention and action could hold him completely.
If 'god' is a metaphysical term, then it cannot be even probable that a god exists. For to say that 'God exists' is to make a metaphysical utterance which cannot be either true or false. And by the same criterion, no sentence which purports to describe the nature of a transcendent god can possess any literal significance.
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