Sanctification is a subject that is rarely brought up in any of the churches I have attended. I do remember one sermon on it, which basically boiled down to “Jesus/Holy Spirit will work on you”. While there is some truth to this, this is very vague and ambiguous. God is not a God of confusion and things that are vague and ambiguous are confusing. If we look to the Bible for answers, they are there in black and white if we don’t try to spiritualize them or split it up into different time periods.
God tells us to be Holy because He is Holy, then goes onto explain what we have to do to be Holy. James talks about just believing and how without works, we are no better than the demons. In fact, he implies we are worse because the demons at least shudder.
I wanted to make this comic to explain a common objection to when a Christian wants to follow Torah. Torah was never meant for Salvation. Torah is for Sanctification. It is how we are supposed to live. Yeshua/Jesus and only Yeshua/Jesus is our Salvation. However, we have to do our part, too.
To go back to the car metaphor from before: You have the car and have it started. That’s great! To get to your destination you have to drive the car, you have to do something, works as James puts it. Those works are not our own works, but His and its His righteousness, because anything we come up with on our own, is just filthy rags.