"Exhortations" in the Bible (Santamaria)

Modern evangelical talk about “exhortations” often smuggles in a whole theory of the Christian life: God saves you by grace, and then (so the story goes) He progressively sanctifies you by piling up commands, spiritual disciplines, and “steps of obedience,” until you slowly become holier in the same way a rock becomes a statue—chip, chip, chip—assuming you keep cooperating.

Old School Baptists have usually looked at that story and said: That isn’t how the Bible talks. The Bible certainly exhorts—fiercely, tenderly, repeatedly. But it does not treat exhortation as a sanctifying machine. The exhortations of Scripture are not God’s ladder for climbing into holiness. They are God’s voice to people who have been set apart already—people whom He has made His own—calling them to live as what they are, warning them away from self-destruction, and teaching them to walk in the peace and order that fits the household of God.

That difference matters because a “progressive sanctification by exhortation” model tends to do two things to real human souls: it either manufactures pride (“I’m doing the steps; look how far I’ve come”), or it grinds the tender conscience into dust (“I’m not changing fast enough; maybe I’m not His”). Scripture’s exhortations were not given to produce either of those fruits. They were given to point saints to Christ, to guard the churches, and to press the life of faith down into the ordinary ground where we actually live.

Let’s talk about exhortation itself first—what it is in the Bible, in the languages God gave it.

In the New Testament, “exhort” is commonly the verb παρακαλέω (parakaléō), meaning to call alongside, to urge, to encourage, to plead. It can sound like a command, or it can sound like comfort, because the word has both shades: strong urging and tender encouragement. The noun παράκλησις (paráklēsis) is “exhortation/encouragement/comfort.” Hebrews even calls the whole epistle a “word of exhortation” (λόγος τῆς παρακλήσεως, Heb. 13:22). That’s important: exhortation is not only scolding. It is the speech of one who comes alongside—sometimes to warn, sometimes to strengthen trembling knees.

Then there are sterner “command” words: παραγγέλλω (parangéllō, “I command/charge”), ἐπιτάσσω (epitássō, “I order”), νουθετέω (nouthetéō, “I admonish/warn,” literally putting something into the mind). Paul says he writes “to admonish” (νουθετῶ) as a father does his children (1 Cor. 4:14). That fatherly frame is pure gold: biblical exhortations are often parental. Not courtroom language, trying to earn adoption, but household language given because adoption is already real.

In the Old Testament, exhortation shows up through verbs of strengthening and urging: חָזַק (ḥāzaq, “be strong / strengthen”), אַמֵּץ (’ammēṣ, “be courageous”), עוּד / עוֹדֵד (‘ûd / ‘ōdēd, “encourage”), and also through the whole category of מוּסָר (mûsār, “discipline/instruction”), the fatherly training emphasized in Proverbs. None of this is presented as a mechanism to slowly manufacture holiness so that you finally qualify for God. It is presented as the way God shepherds His people in time—correcting, warning, restoring, keeping.

Now here is the pivot: Scripture absolutely contains many imperatives—commands. But grammar alone does not tell you the theological job description of a command. An imperative mood (“Do this!”) does not automatically mean “You have the moral ability in the flesh to do this,” nor does it mean “This is the tool by which God incrementally improves your standing before Him.” It means obligation is being expressed. That’s it. In fact, one of the Bible’s major uses of command is to expose inability and drive the sinner to the mercy of God. The law says, “You shall not covet,” and the fallen heart discovers it is a coveting factory (Rom. 7). The command was true; the inability was real; the exposure was purposeful.

So we need a better question than “Are there exhortations?” Of course there are. The better question is: what do biblical exhortations do, in God’s design? And do they exist to progressively sanctify us in the modern sense—an ongoing internal moral improvement that becomes part of what makes us acceptable to God?

Old School Baptist theology has usually answered: no. And Scripture itself is the strongest witness.

Start with what the New Testament says sanctification is—and notice the grammar.

Paul tells the Corinthians, after listing some of the darkest sins, “and such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified” (1 Cor. 6:11). In Greek, “you were sanctified” is ἡγιάσθητε (hēgiásthēte), an aorist passive form. Aorist, in its basic use, treats the action as a whole; passive means it was done to them. Paul does not say, “you are being gradually sanctified as you cooperate.” He says, “You were sanctified.” And he pairs it with “you were justified.” Whatever else sanctification includes in experience, Paul grounds these believers in an accomplished divine act.

He addresses the church “to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:2). The Greek there is ἡγιασμένοις (hēgiasménois), a perfect passive participle—sanctified with abiding result. Perfect tense, in Greek, commonly emphasizes a completed action with a continuing state. Again: the church is not being told, “You’re on the sanctification escalator; keep climbing.” They are named as a sanctified people.

Hebrews is even more blunt: “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:10). The phrase “once for all” is ἐφάπαξ (ephápax). That word is designed to kill the idea of sanctification as an unfinished sacrificial project. If sanctification here is tied to Christ’s offering “once for all,” then its foundation cannot be your incremental improvement. It is blood-rooted, covenant-rooted, finished-work-rooted.

Hebrews 10:14 adds a line that makes people nervous (because it refuses to fit into simplistic boxes): “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” In Greek, “he has perfected” is τετελείωκεν (teteleíōken), perfect tense—completed with abiding effect; “forever” is εἰς τὸ διηνεκές (“unto the continuous/forever”). Then “them that are sanctified” is τοὺς ἁγιαζομένους (tous hagiazoménous), a present participle—literally “those being sanctified.”

People often pounce: “See—present participle! Progressive sanctification!” But slow down. The same verse says they are “perfected forever” by one offering. So whatever “being sanctified” means here, it cannot mean “becoming acceptable to God by gradual moral change,” because their acceptance is already grounded in a once-for-all offering that perfects forever.

A present participle can describe an ongoing process, yes, but it can also describe a people characterized by an action in time: “the ones being sanctified” as the group God is setting apart to Himself in history, gathering them, separating them from the world, bringing them into the confession and life of the church, preserving them, dealing with them. In other words, it is entirely possible—and very natural—to read Hebrews 10:14 like this: Christ’s offering has perfected forever the very people God is (in the course of history) setting apart as His holy ones. Their perfection before God is settled; their being set apart in time is the outworking of God’s purpose, not their self-upgrading project.

This is exactly where exhortations come in. Exhortations are not “how you become sanctified in the Hebrews 10:10 sense.” They are how God addresses those who are sanctified—how He keeps, warns, instructs, and comforts them in the wilderness.

Now, notice something else the apostles love to do: they build exhortations on finished mercies. That’s not a small stylistic feature. It’s theology in the bones.

Romans spends eleven chapters describing sin, wrath, justification, union with Christ, election, and the triumph of grace. Then comes the hinge: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God…” (Rom. 12:1). “I beseech” is παρακαλῶ (parakalō)—I exhort. And the ground is “the mercies of God” already revealed, not “the chance to become merciful enough to qualify.” Paul does not say, “I exhort you so that you may be sanctified into God’s favor.” He says, “In light of mercies—live like mercy-shaped people.”

Ephesians does the same: three chapters of grace, predestination, redemption, sealing, quickening from death, being seated with Christ, salvation “not of works” (Eph. 2:8–9). Then: “I therefore… beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Eph. 4:1). Worthy walk is not the way into calling; it is the fitting life that follows calling. Exhortation rests on divine action already accomplished.

Colossians sings Christ’s supremacy, then says: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above” (Col. 3:1). That “if” is not “maybe you can become risen if you try.” It is the logic of identity: since this is true of you in union with Christ, pursue what fits.

That is biblical exhortation: identity first, then instruction. Gospel indicatives (“you are,” “you have been,” “God did”) give birth to gospel imperatives (“walk,” “put off,” “put on”). That pattern is the opposite of progressive-sanctification-by-exhortation, where imperatives are treated as a spiritual technology to gradually obtain what is not yet yours.

So what are exhortations designed to do, if not progressively sanctify in the “ladder” sense?

First, exhortations expose and name what holiness looks like in time, without pretending that holiness is produced by human flesh.

Holiness in Scripture is not mainly a mood. It is not a spiritual aesthetic. It is not “religious intensity.” In Hebrew, “holy” is built on the root קדש (q-d-sh). קָדוֹשׁ (qādōsh) means holy—set apart, consecrated, belonging to God. Sanctify is קִדֵּשׁ (qiddēsh, Piel: to set apart as holy). And God repeatedly names Himself as the sanctifier: “I am the LORD which sanctify you” (Lev. 20:8). The verb “sanctify you” is from קדש, and the point is clear: holiness is not something Israel manufactures so God will accept them; it is something God claims and commands because He has taken them as His people.

In the famous command, “Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2), the Hebrew is קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ (qedōshím tihyû). Literally, “holy ones you shall be.” The verb תִּהְיוּ (tihyû) is an imperfect form of “to be.” It functions as a command: “you shall be.” That style matters, because it isn’t only “do holy things,” it is “be a holy people”—an identity statement expressed as an obligation.

When Peter quotes that command (1 Pet. 1:16), the Greek is ἅγιοι ἔσεσθε (hágioi esesthe), which is future indicative in form (“you will be holy”) but used with imperative force, echoing the Hebrew “you shall.” This is one of those places where the Bible’s grammar laughs at rigid modern categories. In Greek, the “future” can function like a command, especially in Scripture’s Semitic-influenced style. And that makes the point sharper: God’s exhortation is not “try hard to progressively become acceptable.” It is “you shall be holy”—because God is holy, and because His people, set apart by Him, must not live like the world He judged.

In other words, exhortations define what holiness looks like in the realm of conduct, but they do not announce that holiness is a human construction project.

Second, exhortations function as fatherly discipline and protection—what many Old School Baptists have called “time salvation.”

Scripture speaks of “salvation” in more than one sense. There is eternal salvation in Christ—full, finished, unchangeable—grounded in election, redemption, and effectual calling. And there are temporal deliverances: being saved from the misery that sin produces in our lives, saved from church disorder, saved from needless shipwreck, saved from chastening’s severity, saved from error’s poison. This is why Paul can tell Timothy that by taking heed to doctrine and continuing in it, “thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee” (1 Tim. 4:16). Nobody honest thinks Timothy’s careful teaching eternally regenerated himself. The “save” there is practical deliverance—preservation from ruin.

Exhortations live heavily in that realm. They are God’s appointed warnings on cliff edges. Not to keep His children from falling out of His family, but to keep them from breaking their bones in time.

Hebrews 12 frames chastening exactly like this: “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” The aim is that we might be “partakers of his holiness,” and that chastening yields “the peaceable fruit of righteousness” to those exercised by it. That is real experiential shaping. Old School Baptists do not need to deny that God corrects His children and that obedience matters. What they deny is the theological packaging that turns that fatherly correction into a cooperative ladder of progressive sanctification that becomes part of one’s standing in grace.

Chastening is not God finishing what Christ only started. It is the Father training sons because they already are sons.

Third, exhortations are addressed to the regenerate as regenerate—assuming life, not imparting life.

This is a crucial Old School Baptist instinct: the gospel is not a tool to create spiritual life in the dead; it is food and light to those whom the Spirit has made alive. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God… neither can he know them” (1 Cor. 2:14). “No man can come to me, except the Father… draw him” (John 6:44). If that is true, then exhortations that call for spiritual acts—faith, repentance, love to God, mortification of sin—are not given as raw commands to the dead as though dead men can perform them by moral pressure. They are spoken into the ears of those whom God quickens, and they function as part of God’s shepherding of that living flock.

Even when exhortations are preached publicly and indiscriminately, their saving power is not in the bare imperative. Their power is in God, who gives ears to hear. The same sun that melts wax hardens clay; the same exhortation that comforts one soul enrages another. That is not because exhortation is a sanctification mechanism; it is because God is sovereign in mercy and judgment.

Fourth, exhortations are often “gospel-shaped reminders,” not “law-ladders.”

A lot of Bible exhortation is basically this: “Remember who you are in Christ; therefore, don’t live like who you used to be.”

Take Ephesians: “Put off the old man… be renewed… put on the new man” (Eph. 4:22–24). In Greek, “put off” (ἀποθέσθαι) and “put on” (ἐνδύσασθαι) there are infinitives tied to the idea of what they “learned” in Christ, and the whole section assumes a decisive break has happened. Colossians is even clearer: “ye have put off the old man… and have put on the new” (Col. 3:9–10). Those are aorist forms—treated as accomplished realities. Then exhortations follow: “mortify therefore…” (Col. 3:5). The mortification is “therefore”—because the identity change is real.

That “therefore” is the death of progressive-sanctification-by-exhortation as a system. Exhortations are not presented as the instrument by which you slowly become new. They are presented as the call to live consistently with the newness God has already given.

Now let’s tackle the texts people usually draft into “progressive sanctification” arguments and see how they read under an Old School Baptist lens, paying attention to grammar and context.

Consider 1 Thessalonians 4:3: “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification.” The Greek for sanctification is ὁ ἁγιασμὸς ὑμῶν (ho hagiasmòs hymōn). Many assume “sanctification” here must mean a lifelong progressive moral improvement program. But Paul immediately defines what he means in that context: “that ye should abstain from fornication” (v. 3), “that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour” (v. 4). This is not an abstract doctrine of how saints become more acceptable to God. It is a concrete instruction about sexual purity and honorable conduct.

So sanctification here is holiness in behavior—the life that fits a people set apart. And the fact that Paul can call it “the will of God” does not mean it is the cause of their sanctified status. It means it is what God commands for His people’s good. In Old School Baptist language, this is precisely the realm where exhortation belongs: a father instructing children in the family way, not a judge offering a probationary path into the family.

Consider Philippians 2:12–13: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” The command “work out” is κατεργάζεσθε (katergázesthe), a present imperative—ongoing action. People read “ongoing” and instantly think “progressive sanctification.” But Paul immediately anchors the whole thing in God’s operation: “God is the one working” (ὁ Θεὸς ἐστιν ὁ ἐνεργῶν, with ἐνεργῶν a present participle—God continually at work) “both to will and to work” (καὶ τὸ θέλειν καὶ τὸ ἐνεργεῖν). The point is not cooperative self-sanctification. The point is reverent, careful living because the living God is actively at work in His people.

And notice what “salvation” often means in Philippians’ immediate context: practical deliverance and steadfastness in the face of suffering, grumbling, division, and fear (Phil. 1–2). Paul is not telling them to work out the justification. He is telling a redeemed church to live out the implications of God’s saving work among them, precisely because God Himself is producing the willing and the doing.

That is exhortation functioning as shepherding, not as a sanctification assembly line.

Consider 2 Peter 3:18: “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” “Grow” is αὐξάνετε (auxánete), present imperative—keep growing. Again, people hear “keep growing” and imagine “progressive sanctification.” But the text itself joins “grace” with “knowledge” (ἐν χάριτι καὶ γνώσει). The preposition ἐν (“in”) often marks the sphere: grow in the sphere of grace and knowledge. This is not “accumulate grace as a substance by doing exhortations.” It is grow in your understanding of grace—grow in your experiential grasp of Christ—grow into maturity of discernment so you are not carried away by error (the immediate warning in v. 17).

Old School Baptists have often insisted: growth is real, but it is growth in knowledge, comfort, stability, discernment, and fruit—not growth into a more justified state, not growth into a more sanctified standing before God. The newborn child grows, but he does not grow into being his father’s child. He grows because he already is.

Now consider the most emotionally weaponized exhortations: “Be ye holy.” “Cleanse yourselves.” “Perfect holiness.” “Pursue holiness.” If someone wants to build a “progressive sanctification” program, these are the nails they hammer.

Take 2 Corinthians 7:1: “let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” “Perfecting” is ἐπιτελοῦντες (epitelountes), a present participle: “bringing to completion,” “carrying through.” That sounds like progressive sanctification—until you remember what Paul has already said to the Corinthians: they are God’s temple, God dwells among them, God has received them (2 Cor. 6:16–18). The “therefore” in 7:1 matters. The cleansing is not the way to become God’s people; it is the way God’s people walk in a manner consistent with His indwelling and His promises.

And in the same letter, Paul can speak of them as those for whom Christ died, those reconciled, those who are new creation (2 Cor. 5). So “perfecting holiness” cannot mean “progressing into acceptance.” It means bringing the life of separation and purity into consistency, in the fear of God—especially in the face of corrupting influences and idolatrous fellowship. That is church holiness in time.

Then there is Hebrews 12:14: “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” “Follow” is διώκετε (diōkete), present imperative: pursue. Holiness is necessary. The text is sharp. But again: does it mean “pursue holiness to progressively sanctify yourself into salvation”? Or does it mean “the people who will finally see the Lord are those whom God makes holy, and therefore their lives will be marked by a real pursuit of holiness”?

Old School Baptists read Hebrews as a book that warns professing communities, containing both true believers and false professors, and that God uses warnings to preserve His own while exposing the empty. “Without holiness no one will see the Lord” fits perfectly with the truth that God’s grace produces a holy people. It does not require the idea that holiness is a cooperative ladder that makes the difference between saved and lost. It requires the biblical truth that Christ’s saving work sanctifies a people, and those sanctified people do not remain lovers of filth in the end.

Now, this brings us to the real heart of why exhortations are not designed to progressively sanctify us in the modern sense: Scripture never allows exhortations to compete with Christ as our sanctification.

Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 1:30 is like a sword: “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” Christ is made unto us sanctification. Not “Christ made sanctification possible if you cooperate with exhortations.” Not “Christ started sanctification, and now your discipline completes it.” Christ is our sanctification.

That does not mean exhortations are pointless. It means exhortations can never be treated as the engine of sanctification in the way Christ is. Exhortations are the Shepherd’s voice in the pasture; they are not the blood that bought the sheep or the life that animates them.

So what is progressive sanctification, as commonly taught? Usually, it’s the idea that sanctification is a gradual internal renewal, synergistically worked (God + believer cooperation), by which the believer becomes increasingly holy in nature and practice, and that this increasing holiness is a necessary part of final salvation (not as merit, but as required evidence/means).

Old School Baptists tend to push back at two pressure points.

One, they refuse to blur sanctification with justification. The moment you treat sanctification as a “process toward acceptance,” you have effectively brought works back into the acceptance category, even if you’re careful to call them “fruits.” The conscience does not easily keep those categories clean. Scripture is jealous to keep them clean: justification is by Christ’s righteousness; sanctification, in its covenantal and sacrificial sense, is by Christ’s offering; and the believer’s obedience is the fruit of life, not the cause of life.

Two, they refuse to treat the gospel and its exhortations as “means” that generate divine life by human response. The Spirit quickens. Christ saves. The Father draws. Exhortation teaches, warns, comforts, and orders the life of those already made alive.

Now, someone will object: “But don’t exhortations change people? Don’t believers become more mature? Don’t they learn to obey? Isn’t that progressive sanctification?”

Here’s the careful answer: believers do grow. They do learn. They do bear fruit. They do mature. They do become more stable, more discerning, more self-controlled, more loving in practice. Scripture plainly teaches this kind of growth.

But the Bible does not force you to call that growth “progressive sanctification” in the sense of an ongoing sanctifying status that exhortations are designed to produce. Scripture can speak of renewal, transformation, mortification, fruit, walking in the Spirit, learning obedience, being chastened, and being built up. Those are real. Yet sanctification itself—especially when tied to Christ’s offering and to our standing as holy in Him—is treated as decisive, God-wrought, and already possessed.

So the better way to say it (very Old School Baptist in flavor) is: exhortations are designed to direct and shape the life that God has already given, and to deliver God’s children from the temporal wreckage of sin, but not to progressively sanctify them into being God’s holy ones. They are holy ones already in Christ; exhortations call them to live like it.

That perspective also explains why the apostles can exhort without flattering human ability.

Biblical exhortations are full of commands that the flesh cannot perform: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart.” “Rejoice evermore.” “Pray without ceasing.” “Be anxious for nothing.” “Forgive as God forgave you.” These are not “step programs.” They are descriptions of what is fitting in the Spirit-led life. And when believers fail, Scripture doesn’t say, “Try harder and complete your sanctification.” It says, “Look to Christ. Confess sin. Remember the gospel. Walk in the Spirit. God is faithful.”

Even the grammar of many exhortations hints at this. The New Testament often uses passive or “divine-passive” constructions—commands that assume God’s action.

For example, “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18) uses a passive: πληροῦσθε (plēroûsthe), which can be read as “be being filled.” The form pushes you away from self-generated spirituality. You are commanded, yes, but the command itself points to dependence: you cannot fill yourself with the Spirit the way you fill a cup with water. God must do it.

Or consider Romans 12:2: “be not conformed… but be ye transformed.” “Be transformed” is μεταμορφοῦσθε (metamorphoûsthe), again passive/middle in form—“be transformed.” The agent is implied: God, by His Spirit, through a renewed mind. Exhortation does not enthrone human ability; it calls the believer into the posture where God’s transforming work is enjoyed and obeyed.

Now let’s bring this home to the phrase “so-called exhortations.” Why that phrase? Because in many modern settings, “exhortation” has become a polite word for “moral pressure”—the preacher’s weekly attempt to move the congregation by guilt, fear, ambition, or vague inspirational energy. That is not the Bible’s idea.

True biblical exhortation is covenantal. It speaks to saints as saints. It wounds and heals. It warns and comforts. It commands, and yet it never forgets the fountain: “I am the LORD that sanctifies you.” It does not say, “Become holy so God will be yours.” It says, “God is yours; therefore, do not return to the mud.”

That is why the strongest exhortations are often the most Christ-centered.

When Paul exhorts husbands to love wives, he does not ground it in a generic moral ideal. He grounds it in Christ’s love for the church (Eph. 5). When he exhorts believers to forgive, he grounds it in God forgiving them in Christ (Eph. 4:32). When he exhorts them to give, he grounds it in Christ becoming poor for their sake (2 Cor. 8:9). When he exhorts them to humility, he gives them Christ’s humiliation and exaltation (Phil. 2:5–11). That is not progressive sanctification technology. That is gospel remembrance producing gospel-shaped obedience.

So here is the Old School Baptist conclusion, stated plainly.

The exhortations of Scripture are not God’s mechanism for progressively sanctifying you into acceptance with Him. Your sanctification, in the deepest covenant sense, is in Christ: set apart by God’s will, purchased by Christ’s offering once for all, applied by the Spirit, and possessed as an abiding reality by those in Him. Exhortations do not build that sanctification brick by brick. Exhortations address people who already belong to God and call them to a life consistent with that belonging. They serve time deliverance, church purity, spiritual stability, and fatherly discipline. They expose sin, instruct in wisdom, strengthen faith, and point constantly back to Christ, who is our sanctification.

That view does not weaken holiness. It strengthens it—because it relocates holiness from the fragile ego-project of “I’m improving” to the solid ground of “I am the Lord’s.” And once holiness is grounded there, exhortations become what they were meant to be: not a treadmill of anxiety, but the Shepherd’s voice—sometimes stern, sometimes sweet—leading His sanctified people through a dangerous world toward the day when holiness will no longer be a command, but the atmosphere we breathe in the unveiled presence of God.

If you want, upload (or paste) the specific Pocket Beebe and Pocket Trott excerpts you want used, and I’ll weave their exact wording into this same argument with tight quotation and citation.

“Positional sanctification” is one of those phrases that sounds like it must be in the Greek somewhere, but it isn’t. It’s a later label used to protect a true biblical point: believers are “sanctified” in a definite, objective way because of union with Christ and His once-for-all offering. Scripture does teach that reality, but it teaches it with its own vocabulary—“sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:2), “by the which will we are sanctified… once for all” (Heb. 10:10), “by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). In Greek you keep seeing passive, God-acting forms: ἡγιάσθητε (“you were sanctified,” aorist passive, 1 Cor. 6:11) and ἡγιασμένοις (“sanctified,” perfect passive participle, 1 Cor. 1:2). That grammar pushes the emphasis where the apostles put it: sanctification, in its covenantal/Christological sense, is an act done to the people of God, grounded in Christ, not constructed by human progress.

The So-Called "Positional Sanctification Distinction 

The trouble with the term “positional sanctification” is not that it tries to say too much, but that it can end up saying too little. It can make sanctification sound like a purely legal fiction—an address change on paper—rather than a real consecration to God secured by Christ’s blood. Hebrews will not let sanctification be reduced to bookkeeping; it ties sanctification to sacrifice: we are sanctified “through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:10), and those sanctified are the very ones Christ has “perfected for ever” by that one offering (Heb. 10:14). So if someone uses “positional” to mean “merely notional,” they’ve drained the Bible’s language of its weight. The Bible’s sanctification is real, blood-bought setting apart.

“Progressive sanctification,” on the other hand, is often used to describe any growth in holiness, and in that broad sense Scripture certainly teaches growth, chastening, learning, fruit-bearing, and maturing (Heb. 12:5–11; 2 Pet. 3:18; Phil. 1:9–11). Old School Baptists usually don’t deny that believers can grow in knowledge, stability, discernment, and practical obedience. The problem is what the phrase regularly does in systems: it turns exhortations into a sanctifying engine and smuggles sanctification back into the category of acceptance with God. Once sanctification is framed as a cooperative process that in some sense completes what Christ began, tender consciences start measuring their standing by their progress, and proud consciences start congratulating themselves on their trajectory. Both are spiritual poison.

The sharper biblical critique is this: Scripture locates our holiness before God fundamentally in Christ and His offering, not in a sliding scale of moral improvement. That’s why Hebrews can say, in the same breath, that believers have been “perfected for ever” by one offering and are among “those being sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). Whatever ongoing “sanctifying” includes in time, it cannot mean “gradually becoming acceptable,” because acceptance is grounded in the once-for-all work that perfects forever (Heb. 10:10, 14). Exhortations then function as fatherly instruction and preservation—delivering God’s children from the temporal wreckage of sin and keeping churches in order—not as the mechanism by which saints climb into holiness as a status.

So a cleaner Old School Baptist way to talk is: sanctification is primarily God’s decisive setting apart of a people in Christ (objective, accomplished, blood-rooted), and the believer’s growth and obedience belong to the realm of discipleship, chastening, and temporal deliverance—real, necessary, and commanded, but never the ladder into favor. Christ is not merely the starter motor of sanctification; He is “made unto us… sanctification” (1 Cor. 1:30).