What does sanctification look like in the life of a believer?

Marcus Serven explains in this video that sanctification can occur in two different ways. One way can be through discipleship, where we're encouraging and supporting and helping other Christians to go further in the Gospel. Additionally, sanctification can mean that we’re speaking into each other’s lives and challenging one another when a brother or sister is going astray.

In our culture, we have the idea that “every man is an island” and that we make all of our decisions on our own. Yet, in Scripture, we see multiple “one another” commandments in the Bible. This implies that we are all connected to one another. Instead of the idea of “every man is an island,” there must be accountability. No one person should be completely autonomous from other Christians. Rather, we should view ourselves as a part of a body of believers. Not only should we be willing to confess our sins to each other, but we also ought to be willing to confront a fellow believer who is living in sin.

Romans 12:4-5 (NKJV) – “For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another.”

Sanctification can cut two different ways and one way can be discipleship, where we're encouraging and supporting and helping other Christians to grow further or go further in the gospel and to grow in a deeper way. On the other hand, sanctification can mean that we're speaking into one another's lives and, as it were, challenging one another when a brother or sister is going astray. So in our culture, we have the idea, and it's deeply ingrained in our democratic idealism that's so much part and parcel of our way of thinking. We hardly have to even think too hard about it. It's such an assumption in our life that every man's an island and stay out of my life and I'm going to do what I want to do.

I'm going to make all my own decisions. But scripture portrays it very differently. Think, for example, of all the one another commands in the Bible, in the New Testament in particular, I've counted up roughly about 25 to 30 of them. Every once in a while I find a new one, I keep adding it to my list of all the one anothers, and that implies that we're all connected to one another. It's not this every man's an island approach.

It's not this, well, I'm fulfilling my own destiny, stay out of my life, I'm going to do what I want with no accountability, and I'm going to be completely autonomous from the rest of all Christians. That's a false view, but instead we have the idea that we're part of a body of believers and we're connected. And that implies that we're going to be involved in the nitty-gritty parts of our life where We're actually getting our hands a little bit dirty sometimes in being willing to say to our brother or our sister that there's an area that I'm concerned about in your life and I'd like to talk to you about it.