Personal Holiness

Jonathan Parnell posted on the Desiring God blog today about how our holiness is dependent upon the Lord's holiness. He quotes an excerpt from John Webster's book Holiness, explaining that sanctification is not acquired sufficiency, but always referential to the triune work of grace.

The Christian’s sanctity is in Christ, in the Spirit, not in se [in itself]; it is always and only an alien sanctity. Sanctification does not signal birth of self-sufficiency, rather it indicates a 'perpetual and inherent lack of self-sufficiency'.

Sanctification 'in' the Spirit is not the Spirit's immanence in the saint. Quite the opposite: it is a matter of the externality of sanctitas christiana [Christian holiness], the saint being and acting in another.

'Sanctification in the Spirit' means: it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And 'Christ lives in me' means: by the Spirit's power I am separated from my self-caused self destruction, and given a new holy self, enclosed by, and wholly referred to, the new Adam in whom I am and in whom I act (84).