“Though clearly distinguished, sanctification is not separated from the new birth and justification but utterly dependent on both. Too often, we assume that the gospel of free salvation in Jesus Christ, apart from our own efforts, is good news for unbelievers but that believers no longer need it. They “got saved,” after all, and now what they need are exhortations to live for Jesus. Sanctification, then, becomes unhinged from justification and the new birth, so that we easily confuse our performance in the Christian life with the gospel. Instead, sanctification must be seen as the outworking of our justification and union with Christ. Obedience is often difficult and demanding – it doesn’t just happen to us but is something that we work out with fear and trembling. As essential as this new obedience is to Christian identity, if our acceptance before God were founded on it there could be absolutely no hope” (Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship, 71).

John Piper dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s on the doctrine of justification:

If Paul had just spent three chapters teaching that justification means God’s powerful salvific activity in liberating people from the mastery of sin, why would the question arise: So shall we sin that grace may abound? . . . what gives some measure of plausibility to these rhetorical questions in Romans 6:1 and 6:15 is the doctrine of Romans 3 – 5 that justification is emphatically not liberation from the mastery of sin. It does not include sanctification. That is precisely what creates the need for Paul to write in Romans 6 – 8: to show why God’s imputing his own righteousness to us by faith apart from works does not result in lawlessness, but in fact necessarily leads to righteous living. Therefore we are not at all encouraged to blur the relationship between sanctification and justification that Paul preserves in Romans 6:6-7: Justification is the necessary and prior basis of sanctification (“for,” v. 7) (John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness?, 77-78).

“That we make mistakes and give in to our imaginations is only human; anyone who wants to live in perfection ought to look for a desert. Every man’s virtues have to be weighed alongside his vices, and we must take his measure according to which side of his character is stronger” (Petrus Canaeus, The Hebrew Republic, 180).