Step 1: Realize we’re sinners.

The first step in the 12 steps to sanctification is realizing we’re sinners: We’re powerless over sin when we’re separated from God. We can’t manage our lives.

Now, most Christians will respond, “Well, duh.” Every Christian knows we can’t possibly save ourselves; that’s the whole point of trusting God to do it. That’s why most of us chose to follow Jesus in the first place. That’s also why a lot of us take God for granted—we figure since he does all the work of saving us, we needn’t do anything, including follow his commands.

But when we take God for granted, and don’t follow his commands—in other words, we don’t follow him—we quickly find ourselves back in the same old place we were before we became Christians. Our lives go right back to being messy and sin-filled and powerless and unmanageable. We don’t commit some of the more egregious sins—the sins our churches express the most outrage about—but we commit all the other sins. Life got slightly better, ’cause the more egregious sins have bigger consequences. But all the other sins also have consequences, and life is still pretty awful.

Statistically, Christians in the United States behave no differently from pagans. No differently. We sin just as much. And life sucks just as much: We have just as much debt, just as many divorces and abortions, just as many arrests and convictions and convicts. A Christian is just as likely to be a self-centered jerk as a pagan—just as bigoted, just as manipulative, just as dishonest, just as mean. In my experience, the big difference between Christians and pagans is that we know better than to behave this way—so we hide our misbehavior, and become hypocrites. Pagans can be hypocrites too, but far more of them are unapologetic jerks—which is far more honest than Christians who are pretending to be better than they are.

“We can’t stop sinning. That’s legalism.”

A common attitude I find among Christians is despair. Not in the sense that they’ve given up on life, but that they’ve given up on sanctification. They don’t believe it’s possible in this life to go without sinning. They’ve tried to stop, but they find they can’t stop. So they stopped trying.

In some churches, they actually teach we shouldn’t try. They take the ideas behind Galatians out of context. In that book, Paul lectured the Galatians about how they had fallen for the idea that working the Law—obeying God’s commands which he spelled out in the Old Testament—was how they stayed in right standing with God. This was what the Pharisees taught. It wasn’t true; never has been. Yet lots of people still think God will save us if we’re good—if we make the effort.

Certain Christian Pharisees were wrongly teaching that before you could become a Christian, you had to become a Pharisee: If you were a man, you had to be circumcised; and everyone had to follow the commands God gave to Moses. If you didn’t, they claimed, Jesus wouldn’t save you. (Putting the cart before the horse, but I’ll get to that.) We call this thinking legalism—trusting in rules, not God, to save us.

So when Paul was working at the church in Antioch, Syria, certain Pharisees had come to visit… and suddenly all the Jewish Christians got weird, and began treating the Syrian Christians like second-class citizens. Paul was forced to say something about that. Even in the presence of the great Simon Peter (whom here Paul calls Kefa, his Aramaic nickname.)

When Kefa came to Antioch, I had to personally oppose him, because he was bigoted: He ate with the locals before certain men came from James, but after they came, he went away and segregated himself, afraid of those who advocated for circumcision. And the other Jews began to go along with him! Even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw they weren’t consistent with the truth of the gospel, I told Kefa, in front of everyone: “If you Jews are beginning to act like the locals, and not live like Jews, how can you demand the locals act like Jews? We were born Jews. We’re not pagan sinners. We’ve known that people, when they don’t trust in Messiah Jesus, aren’t made right by working the Law. We trusted in Messiah Jesus so that we’d be made right by trusting Messiah, not by working the Law. Because nobody will be made right by working the Law.”

—Paul, Galatians 2.11-16 KWL

Paul’s entirely right: We’re not saved by working the Law. We’re not saved by trying to live sinless lives. We’re saved by trusting Jesus, and nothing else.

Now, in context, this passage is about salvation. It’s not about the lifestyle we, as forgiven and saved Christians, ought to have, now that we’re following Jesus. Paul was writing about getting right with God, not living right with God. Sanctification is about our lifestyle after we’re saved, not before.

Aha, say the anti-sanctification folks, what about this?—

I don’t toss aside God’s grace: If I were made right by Law, then Messiah died for no good reason.

You stupid Galatians, who put a spell on you? The crucifixion of Messiah Jesus was spelled out and put before your very eyes. If nothing else, I want you to learn this: Did you receive the Spirit because you worked the Law, or because you heard and trusted? That’s why I call you dumb: You started with the Spirit, but you’re finishing with the flesh. You suffered so much—for nothing. (If you’re right, then it’s nothing.) Did God supply you the Spirit, and empower your miracles, because you worked the Law, or because you heard and trusted?

—Paul, Galatians 2.21–3.5 KWL

Here, Paul’s critique of the Galatians is that they began by trusting Jesus to save them, but now they trust the Law to do it. They stopped trusting Jesus. They’re trying to get saved by working the Law. So, say the anti-sanctification folks, we need to avoid the Law, we need to avoid good deeds, lest we fall into the very same sort of thinking, and stop trusting Jesus for our salvation.

That’s right. They even go so far as to claim any good deeds Christians do, any social-gospel actions done in Jesus‘s name, are works-righteousness, and a sign we’re not saved—because we’re trusting our works, not God, to save us. So in order to fully depend on grace—in order to obligate God to use a lot of grace to save us, (Ro 6.1) we needn’t try to stop sinning, but just fall back on God’s amazing grace. Let his safety net become our hammock.

How sad for those people who think evil is good, and good evil. (Is 5.20)

Sinners don’t inherit the Kingdom.

God didn’t save us so that we could continue being slaves to sin. He saved us to free us from sin. And if we’re not free from sin, we’re doing this whole Christianity thing wrong. We actually haven’t surrendered, wholly and entirely, to God. We claimed to—because we’re hoping to get out of hell—but we haven’t really. We’re still trying to be the lords over our own lives… for all the good it does us.

If we actually have a real, solid, committed, growing relationship with Jesus, we shouldn’t act like we’re his enemies—like we’re deliberately violating everything he stands for, just for fun, just to show off how much we can take him for granted, so that God will be obligated to grant us a lot of grace. We should be seeing the Holy Spirit fix our lives. We should see sanctification happen naturally. We should automatically gravitate towards doing good deeds. We oughta see Christians reject sin—not just speak out against all the sins which bug us, but actually stop doing those sins ourselves. God, who empowers us to do miracles, ought to also empower us to—miraculously—stop sinning.

As Paul also said in Galatians.

For you were invited to freedom, fellow Christians. Only it’s not the freedom to start indulging one’s flesh, but to serve one another, in love. The entire Law is fulfilled in one saying: “You will love your neighbor like yourself.” [Lv 19.18] When you bite and devour one another, don’t you see how you’ll consume one another?

I say walk by the Spirit, and don’t fulfill fleshly desires: Flesh desires anti-Spirit things, and the Spirit desires anti-flesh things. They’re the opposite of one another: When you don’t want one, do the other. (And if you’re led by the Spirit, you don’t even need the Law.)

The works of the flesh are obvious in anyone who is the following: Promiscuous. Unclean. Unethical. Idolatrous. Drug-hooked. Hate-filled. Argumentative. Overzealous. Angry. Partisans. Dividers. Heretics. Envious. A stoner. A partier. And other people like these. I warn you of them just like I warned you before: Those who do such things won’t inherit God’s Kingdom.

The Spirit’s fruit is: Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faith. Gentility. Self-control. The Law isn’t contrary to any such thing, and those who belong to Messiah Jesus, crucified the flesh with its disasters and desires.

—Paul, Galatians 5.13-26 KWL

If we’re still knee-deep in works of the flesh, we can’t keep living that way. We ought to be very, very nervous if we are: It’s a sign we aren’t saved. If the Holy Spirit isn’t gradually transforming our lives into something he approves of, it’s a safe bet he’s not there. For people who live that way, as Paul said, won’t inherit the Kingdom. They obviously have no relationship with God.

This has nothing to do with legalism, nothing to do with works-righteousness. Not even anything to do with the Law; as Paul said, if you’re led by the Spirit, you don’t even need the Law. It has to do with people who, because we’re letting the Holy Spirit do his thing, because we’ve stopped resisting him and are letting him be Lord, are getting holier.

We need that. If we don’t have that—regardless of whether we’ve said sinner’s prayers or not—we need to get that.

And so we move on to step 2.