Our culture’s continued slide into unbiblical immorality has conditioned many of us to sidestep personal sanctification.  

Quote Source – Jim Denison

Denison isn’t describing a fringe problem. He’s describing most of us. Culture doesn’t have to convince a Christian that evil is good; it only has to lower the bar slowly enough that ordinary compromise stops registering as compromise at all. That’s the quieter, more effective strategy, and it’s working.

Notice what happens once the surrounding culture normalizes something Scripture calls sin. The believer doesn’t usually decide to abandon holiness outright. Instead, the internal measuring stick shifts. “At least I’m not as bad as …” becomes the operative theology, and personal sanctification quietly drops off the to-do list, replaced by the much lower bar of not being the worst person in the room.

The Comparison Trap

Comparison is a terrible ruler because it’s a moving one. Every generation that measures itself against its neighbors instead of against Christ ends up drifting in whatever direction the neighbors are drifting. Paul saw this coming: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). Conformity is the default setting. Transformation has to be pursued.

Sanctification Is Not Optional Furniture

Somewhere along the way, sanctification got filed under “advanced Christianity,” a pursuit for the especially devout rather than the ordinary calling of every believer. That’s not what Scripture teaches. Paul writes plainly, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Not a suggestion. Not an optional add-on for people with extra spiritual energy. The will of God.

Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. [Hebrews 12:14]

That’s a strong word – “strive.” It assumes effort, attention, even discomfort. Holiness doesn’t happen by osmosis, and it certainly doesn’t happen by drifting downstream with everyone else.

A Summons, Not a Suggestion

Philippians 2:12-13 puts the responsibility and the power in the same breath: believers are told to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” precisely because “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Sanctification isn’t self-improvement by willpower alone, and it isn’t passive waiting for God to do everything while we watch. It’s cooperation – real effort, fueled by grace that was never our own to begin with.

Staying Awake in a Sleepwalking Culture

Here’s the uncomfortable question worth sitting with: what have you quietly stopped calling sin, simply because everyone around you stopped calling it that first? Personal sanctification starts with an honest answer, not a comfortable one. Peter’s charge still stands – “as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15) – and it was written to Christians living under a culture at least as morally adrift as ours.

The culture will keep sliding. That’s not new information, and honestly, it’s not really our job to stop the slide by force of argument alone. Our job is smaller and harder: refuse to let the world’s descending bar become our own. Sanctification was never meant to track the culture. It was meant to track Christ.