How Are We Sanctified?

Editor’s note: This excerpt is taken from From Glorty to Glory: An Unatural History of Sanctification © Copyright 2025 by Abraham Kuruvilla. Published by Apollos, Baldwin’s Gardens, London. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved

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Peter Benjamin Parker, aka Spider-Man, is, in his daily life, Everyman, perhaps even ‘Every Christian.’ Parker is common born and becomes a superhero not because of anything he has done or aspired to, but because of something that happened to him supernaturally: he was bitten by a radioactive spider. In one issue of the comic series, Spider-Man confesses: ‘For whatever I am – whatever I’ve become – the good – whatever good I’ve done [is] with the powers fate gave me.’

But he is a flawed individual, afflicted with all kinds of problems: he has trouble paying his bills, he struggles to maintain stable relationships with loved ones and he is plagued by lust and self-aggrandisement. Parker is also cowardly. Despite having superpowers, he did nothing to prevent the murder of his Uncle Ben by a criminal, a tragedy that has haunted this hero with shame all his life. But that event dramatically changed (cured?) him. It was after that calamity that Spider-Man decided to use his superpowers to fight crime (his version of ‘good works’?). That only provoked his enemies, with one particular demonic killer, the Green Goblin, tormenting Spider-Man and his family on personal and psychological levels. All this angst makes the arachnid hero’s identity crisis constant and intense: ‘All my life I’ve had trouble knowing myself – always wondering who – or what – Spider-Man really is! I’ve been fighting myself ever since the day I first became Spider-Man.’

This is all not very different from the experience of a saved human. Having been born in, and having lived in,‘transgressions and sins’ since the fall of humanity, ‘Every Christian’ once was, in deviance, incapable of living up to thedemand of divine design to glorify God, afflicted with the curse of sin. But the grace and mercy and love and kindness of God worked deliverance, uniting the believer to Christ in baptism – an act entirely of divine initiative, nothing whatsoeverto do with the exertions of the baptisand: a divine cure. ‘Every Christian’ now has a destiny to be sanctified doing good works, and thereby the original creation design was potentially restored: the capacity to glorify God. But the fact is that ‘Every Christian’ still falls victim to the evil authority, sin, that still has its hooks in that individual who continues to produce sins. This, as we shall see from Romans 7, is the conflicted experience of all believers of all times and in all places.

How does one comport this continuing malignant detriment with the magnificent deliverance that God has already effected? Is there something more that those united with Christ in baptism need in order to do good works that glorify God (rather than the evil works of sin that fail to do so)? Does not the Bible say that ‘[God’s] divine power has given us all things [necessary] for life and godliness’ (2 Pet. 1:3)? Whence this power? What is its effect? How will it keep ‘Every Christian’ from falling prey to the tyranny of sin and sinning?

First, we return to Romans to address the discordant issue of believers in union with Christ, baptized unto him, but continuing to sin.

As was seen in Chapter 2, the entirety of Romans 6:1–7:6 concerns the issue that Paul introduced with a question in 6:1–2a: ‘What then shall we say? Do we remain in sin, in order that grace may increase? May it never be!’ Believers cannot remain in sin, Paul emphatically asserted, and then he proceeded to explain why not, giving two reasons, both relating tobelievers’ union with Christ. The first reason, in 6:3–14, began with ‘or are you unknowing …?’ (6:3a). There the apostle explained that believers could/should not remain in sin because they had been united with Christ – baptized unto him (employing the picture of baptism). The second reason, in 7:1–6, begins with a verbatim repeat of 6:3a: ‘Or are you unknowing …?’ (7:1a), signalling that this section provides another reason why believers ought not to remain in sin: because they are in union with Christ – bound to him (employing the picture of marriage). These two explanatory sections parallel each other, as is evident in the structure, questions, illustrative pictures and the common vocabulary employed in6:3–14 and 7:2–6. And in between these two reasons for not remaining in sin comes 6:15–23, a strong exhortation to believers to, instead, lead new lives of faithful obedience to God.

Bound to Christ (Rom. 7:1–6)

Let’s dive in:

Or are you unknowing, brothers [and sisters] (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law lords over a person as long a time as he lives?

(Rom. 7:1)

And with that, Paul commences to provide the second reason why believers ought to be living new lives of holiness, commensurate with their cured status in Christ. He starts by returning to a discussion about the sway of the law, something he had already mentioned in 6:14, 15: believers are ‘not under law’. We had noted that this meant that believers were nolonger under the condemnation of the law. The apostle continues with this notion here; in fact, a comparison between 6:1–22 and 7:1–6 confirms our assessment of ‘law’ as being shorthand for ‘law’s condemnation.’

The correspondence between ‘sin’ and ‘law[’s condemnation]’ depicts them as quite equivalent, at least in outcome: ‘sin’describes the authority that causes the production of sins; ‘law’ describes the condemnation incurred as a result of suchproduction of sins. To both ‘sin’ and to ‘law[’s condemnation]’ believers have died. Both ‘sin’ and ‘law[’s condemnation]’have lost their control over the objects upon which they act. Both have been deposed from their ruling thrones. From both, believers are now freed, united as they are with Christ in baptism. Allthat to say, the law’s condemnation of sin-produced sins has been declawed and defanged, for Christ took on that condemnation of the law – death.