Have you ever been so busy trying to be holy that you forgot you already were? Have you ever found yourself on the spiritual treadmill, running as hard as you can, sweating through your prayers, perhaps forcing yourself through your Bible reading, trying to generate enough zeal, enough passion, and enough effort to make yourself more acceptable to God? Then you pause for a moment, catch your breath, and realize you are in exactly the same place you were when you began running.

That is a distressing feeling, and I believe many believers know exactly what I am describing tonight. Welcome to the Pristine Grace Podcast. I am your host, Brandon Kraft, and I am grateful you are here with me tonight. This is a show where I discuss various gospel topics, Christian living, theology, and other subjects that interest me at the time. If you are new here or would like to see more of my content, I encourage you to subscribe and visit my website at pristinegrace.org. A bit about myself: I am a web developer, a software developer, and a Christian writer and speaker. I have been maintaining pristinegrace.org for many years, since the late 1990s, and it is one of the largest resources on sovereign grace on the internet. If you love the doctrines of grace, as I do, you will feel at home there. Please visit. Tonight, however, we are going to do something a little different.

I wrote a song. Imagine that. I will not sing it for you here. It is one of my artificial intelligence-generated songs. I write the lyrics, and then I input them into software that creates music that sounds good. But anyway, I wrote a song called Pepper in the Wind.

And if you are wondering what that means, we will explore it tonight. That is also the title of this podcast. Therefore, I wanted to use the song I wrote as the foundation of tonight’s podcast, because the themes in it are matters I have been reflecting on in my heart for a long time.

The song addresses something I believe quietly harms many sincere believers: the idea of progressive sanctification. This is the belief that you, by your own effort, your own passion, your own religious performance, can gradually become more holy over time. It suggests that the old self, the sinful nature, improves a little each year. It implies that if you simply try hard enough, pray hard enough, or fight hard enough, you can move closer to righteousness.

I am here to tell you tonight, based on Scripture and my own experience, that trying to sanctify yourself by your own effort is like tossing pepper in the wind. The pepper scatters and dissolves. It goes nowhere and everywhere. In the end, you are left with an empty hand and burning eyes. So let us walk through this together tonight. I want to begin with something I believe many of us have experienced.

There was a season in my life, and I am not proud of it, when I was convinced that my spiritual growth depended almost entirely on me. I had sound doctrine in my mind. I could explain the sovereignty of God, and I could discuss election and predestination and all the advanced Reformed teachings. I could tell you about the finished work of Christ. But in my daily life, I was living as a person who believed that sanctification was a project that God had begun.

And then handed it off to me to finish. God laid the foundation and then gave me the hammer, saying, "All right, Brandon, you take it from here." I ran with that. I ran with it. I read more. I prayed more. I even, for a period, abstained from watching television. Angie could tell you about that. We were newlyweds.

I tried to remove every sin I could find within myself. I examined myself constantly. Do you know what happened? I did not become more holy. I did not become more holy. I became more exhausted. I became exhausted. I became frustrated. And honestly, I became more prideful too, because in my mind, every small spiritual discipline I added was another gold star on a chart I was keeping track of.

I began to look sideways at other believers who did not seem to be trying as hard as I was. This is what happens when you believe that your sanctification is progressive in the sense that you are the one progressing it. You end up either crushed under the weight of it or puffed up by the illusion of it. And in either case, you are not looking at Christ; you are looking at yourself.

Now, let me be clear about something tonight, because I do not want anyone to misunderstand me. When I say I reject progressive sanctification, I am not saying that Christians do not grow. I am not saying that believers do not mature in knowledge and understanding. They absolutely do. The Spirit of God teaches His people. He opens their eyes to the truth. He deepens their understanding of the gospel over time.

But here is the distinction, and this is critical. There is a difference between growing in knowledge of Christ and growing in personal holiness through your own effort. The first is the work of the Spirit, and the second is the work of the flesh dressed up in religious clothing. I have written about this distinction before using different language.

I believe in continuous sanctification, not progressive sanctification. In my understanding, there is a significant difference between these two terms. First, what does sanctification mean? If you are new to this message or if the language feels unfamiliar, I apologize, but I will briefly explain what sanctification means.

In the Bible, sanctification means to be set apart, to be separate, to be holy. Holy means separate. There is a common belief in Christianity that over time, a person becomes increasingly separate from the world as they grow in faith. This is known as progressive sanctification. That is the concept I am addressing tonight. I propose that we do not progress in our sanctification, but we continue in it. What does it mean to be set apart?

In my view, every believer has already been set apart in Christ. Christ is our sanctification, and He remains our sanctification every day. It is His holiness, not ours. It is His righteousness that has been credited to us, not our own righteousness being gradually improved. Progressive sanctification, as it is commonly taught, places the burden on the believer to grow, to become better, to become more holy by doing more, by being more, by trying harder. In my opinion, this is a burden that Christ never placed on His people.

Paul understood this. In 1 Corinthians 1, verse 30, he writes: "But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption." Did you hear that? Christ has made sanctification for us. Not that Christ gives us a beginning in sanctification and then we complete the journey on our own. No, no, no. He is our sanctification. It is finished in Him. It is complete in Him. It is securely held by Him. And this changes everything.

You know, the song I wrote includes an image that has been in my mind a lot lately, and that is the image of chasing the wind. I believe this is what many believers do when they are told that their sanctification depends on their own effort.

They are chasing the wind. They are running after something they can never catch, because what they are trying to grasp was never something human hands could hold. Consider this: have you ever tried to catch the wind? I mean, truly tried to grab it? You feel the wind on your face. You know it is there.

But the moment you close your fist, the moment you try to close your hand, there is nothing in your hand. This came to mind recently. My cat could tell you about this kind of frustration when he chases the little laser pointer. He can never catch it. And that is what it is like when you try to create your own holiness. You feel the desire. You sense the pull. But every time you think you have grasped it, it slips through your hands.

Then there is pepper. All right, pepper. I have been using food analogies lately—sugar, now pepper. Stay with me, because I want you to imagine standing outside on a breezy day, holding a handful of pepper, and tossing it into the wind. What happens? It scatters in every direction. It gets in your eyes. It stings your eyes. It accomplishes nothing. The wind does not change direction. The air is not seasoned. You have only made a mess with pepper.

And that is what our religious effort looks like when we try to add it to what Christ has already accomplished. It scatters and it stings and it changes nothing. Isaiah chapter 64, verse 6, puts it as plainly as it can be put: "But we are all as an unclean thing. Unclean. And all our righteousness, all our righteousness, are as filthy rags." All right, not our sins, our righteousnesses. The very best things we bring to the table, the very best efforts of our flesh, are filthy rags in the sight of a holy God.

Now, let us stay here for a moment, because I think some of you listening tonight may be feeling the weight of what I am describing. You may be in a season right now where you have been trying so hard. You have been trying so hard. God loves you. Perhaps you have been in a Sovereign Grace group and you have heard the doctrines and you love them, but somewhere along the way, someone taught you or you absorbed the idea that now it is up to you. It is your job now to live up to them.

That your daily performance is the measure of your sanctification. And if that is where you are tonight, I want you to hear this: You are not any more sanctified if you do more good works in a day. And you are not any less sanctified if you fail to keep your good works for the day.

Your sanctification is in Christ. I mean, it is His perfect holiness, His perfect obedience. That is the surety every elect child of God needs. Not your righteousness, not your holiness, not your sanctification—His. Now, and let me say that again, because I think it needs to sink in: Your standing, your standing before God, your holiness, your set-apart status, does not fluctuate based on your performance. It is fixed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. He does not sanctify you more when you have a good day or less when you have a bad one. He is your sanctification, period.

And Paul understood this, and he understood the struggle that takes place within the believer. In Romans 7, verse 18, he writes, "For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For the will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good, I find not." Here is a man, Paul. He had every reason to boast in his spiritual accomplishments. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees, trained under Gamaliel, zealous for the law. Yet what does he say about his flesh?

There is no good thing in it, none. And this did not change over time for Paul. It did not improve as the years passed. He did not write this as a young believer and later say, "Oh, I have figured it out now. I have figured it all out. My flesh has improved." No, if anything, Paul grew in his awareness of how wretched his flesh was. And that is exactly what genuine sanctification looks like. Not the old self becoming better, but the believer gaining a clearer understanding of how bankrupt the old self truly is, and clinging more tightly to Christ because of it.

William Gadsby. All right. I admire William Gadsby. He was an old Baptist minister from the 1800s, a longtime preacher who wrote many hymns. He was a man I greatly respect. He wrote about this very matter. This is nothing new. Believers have been discussing this for decades, even centuries. He asked the question: How does the old self of sin grow better and better? And you know what his answer was? No. His answer was no. Absolutely not.

The flesh remains the same. It lusts against the Spirit. That conflict, he said, will never end while we are in the body. And what Gadsby called the idea that the old self improves over time, he referred to as the doctrine of fools. That may sound harsh, and I understand that. But I believe Gadsby was correct, because the teaching that says your sinful nature gradually improves is a teaching that will eventually lead you to one of two outcomes. Either you will fall into despair, because you clearly see that your flesh has not improved, no matter how hard you have tried. Or it will lead to self-deception, because you have convinced yourself that it has improved, when it has not. Galatians chapter five, verse seventeen, makes this point: For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

There are two armies within a believer, and they never call for a truce with each other. They never negotiate a peace treaty. The flesh does not gradually surrender territory. It fights you. It fights until the day you die. But here is where the gospel comes rushing in like a flood. The flesh fights, yes, but Christ has already won. The victory is not pending. It is not dependent on your performance in the battle.

Christ accomplished it at Calvary. When He bore the sins of His people on the cross, when He took the full weight of divine justice upon Himself as their substitute, He did not leave sanctification as unfinished business. He said, It is finished. And He meant it. 2 Corinthians five, verse twenty-one. And where have we heard this verse before?

For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. And we all know this as the great exchange. Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin for His people so that they might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

Not that they gradually become righteous, not that they might work their way toward righteousness, but that they might be made, right now, already, completely, the righteousness of God in Christ. And if that does not remove the motivation for religious performance, I do not know what will. You see, when Christ died for his elect, he did not die to give them a partial salvation. He did not die to get them started on the road, then leave them to find their own way. 1 Peter 3, verse 18 says, For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. He brings us, not halfway, not to the threshold, all the way home.

And His righteousness, that perfect spotless righteousness that He lived out every day of His earthly life, that righteousness is credited to the account of every person the Father gave Him. Not because they earned it, not because they progressed into it, but because God in His sovereign grace chose to impute it to them. Philippians chapter 3, verse 9 is one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture, and I often come back to it.

Paul says, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. Not having my own righteousness, Paul wanted nothing to do with his own righteousness. He wanted to be found in Christ, clothed in a righteousness that was not his, wrapped in a holiness he could never manufacture. And that is what real sanctification looks like. Not you becoming more holy by your effort, but you being found in Him, clothed in His holiness, resting in His finished work.

Now I want to pause here for a moment and talk to someone specific tonight. Perhaps you are a young believer who has just come to understand the doctrines of grace. You have just come to believe the gospel, and you are excited, and you are eager, and someone in your group—perhaps a well-meaning teacher—has told you that now your responsibility is to work out your sanctification. They have given you a list: read your Bible every day, pray for an hour each day, memorize one verse each week. You have been doing these things faithfully and diligently.

Yet something feels wrong, and you cannot name it. There is a growing sense that the harder you try, the further away God seems. Can I tell you something? That feeling is not a sign of spiritual failure. That feeling is the Holy Spirit revealing to you that you are looking in the wrong direction.

You are focusing on your own performance. But the Spirit is gently and lovingly turning your attention back to Christ, because He is the author and finisher of your faith, not you. Hebrews 12:2 says, "Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." He began it. He will complete it. You are not the author. You are not the finisher. You are the beloved.

And perhaps you are not a young believer at all. Maybe you have been walking this path for decades and you are deeply weary, truly weary. You have been in communities of sovereign grace for many years, and somewhere along the way, the joy has faded and been replaced with duty. The wonder of the gospel has been buried under a burden of should, ought, and must. And you are sitting here tonight feeling like a fraud, because although you know the gospel and understand all five points of Calvinism, you do not feel the freedom.

That is not your fault. This is what happens when progressive sanctification enters through the back door of even the most sound churches and groups. It disguises itself as discipline. It masquerades as faithfulness. But beneath the surface, it is the same old works religion that Paul dedicated his entire ministry to opposing.

Now, I know someone will hear this and say, "Well, Brandon, does this not give people a license to sin? If our sanctification is entirely in Christ and our effort does not matter, then why bother living a godly life at all?" I have heard this objection many times. Each time I hear it, I recognize that the person asking it has not fully understood the depth of grace.

Here is the truth: when the Spirit of God regenerates a person, when He gives them new life, new eyes, and new affections, that person does not need a license to sin. They have been set free from the dominion of sin. They do not desire to return to it. The new nature hates sin—not because a preacher told them to hate it, not because a preacher commanded it, not because a list of rules demands it, but because the Spirit of God dwelling within them produces the fruit of righteousness. Romans 6:14 says, "For sin shall not have dominion over you. For you are not under the law, but under grace." Oh, not under the law, but under grace. And it is grace, not law, that produces genuine obedience. Grace does not produce lawlessness. Grace produces love. Grace produces gratitude. Grace produces a heart that runs toward holiness, not because it must, but because it wants to.

And that difference is everything. The progressive sanctification model says you must do more to be more. The gospel says Christ has done it all, and because He has, you are free to live in the overflow of what He has accomplished. One is slavery, and the other is liberty. Let me give you an illustration. Imagine two men standing at the foot of a mountain. The first man is told, "You need to climb this mountain to prove you belong up there." All right.

So the man begins. He climbs, grabbing at the rocks, scraping his knees, and falling. He gets back up and makes it 100 feet, then slides back 50. He is bleeding, exhausted, and discouraged because he has made little progress. Yet he continues climbing because he has been told this is what a true believer does. The second man, however, is told, "You have already been carried to the top. Now rest and enjoy the view." He looks around and sees the valley below, the sunrise over the peaks. From that place of rest, of security, of having arrived not by his own effort but by the grace of the one who carried him, he begins to walk. Not to prove anything, not to earn his position, but because he is free. And that is the difference between progressive sanctification and the gospel. One puts you at the bottom of a mountain with a burden on your back, and the other places you at the summit in the arms of Christ.

And I think this is where the song I wrote truly comes together for me. The image of tossing pepper into the wind—this effort, this striving, this passion and zeal and fervor—none of it changes anything. You cannot sanctify yourself any more than you can grasp the wind. You cannot dress the old self in new clothes and call it righteous. What you clothe in white remains the same within. Nothing is made pure by what you bring.

But then my song has a bridge. This is where my heart breaks open every time. In the quiet, truth remains. This is from the song. Not by fervor, not by claims, only mercy, only grace, drops like rain in a broken place. That is the gospel.

Not by fervor, not by claims, not by your effort or your zeal or your impressive spiritual achievements. Only mercy, only grace, and it drops like rain. Not on the proud, not on the strong, not on those who have everything together. It drops in broken places. It falls on the shattered, on the exhausted, on those who have finally stopped running and admitted they cannot do this on their own.

Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9, say: For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. That not of yourselves. Even the faith by which you believe is not something you generated. It is a gift. God does the saving and God does the calling. John chapter 6, verse 44, says: No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him. No man can. Not that no man should. Not that no man usually does. No man can.

And if you have ever heard the story, if you have ever had a mother who corrected your grammar like mine did, she made sure you knew the difference between may and can. And apart from the sovereign drawing of the Father, no one comes to Christ. Nobody comes, no one can. And if the Father must draw you to salvation, do you really think he hands you the reins for sanctification and says, good luck? No, that is not how God works.

Romans chapter 8, verses 29 and 30 say, "For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called. And whom he called, them he also justified. And whom he justified, them he also glorified." There is no gap in that chain. Predestinated, called, justified, glorified. He does not say that after justification, a person is left to figure out sanctification on their own. No, the entire chain is the work of God from eternity to eternity.

And if you are one of God's elect tonight, and God has given you faith to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, then your sanctification is as secure as your justification, because both rest on the same foundation—not on your effort, but on His. You know, Don Fortner is a preacher I have long appreciated, and he wrote that the principle motivating the legalist is fear and works. He hopes to gain acceptance with God, either for justification or for sanctification, based on obedience to the law. But the only ground for our acceptance with God, whether for justification or for sanctification, is in the righteousness and shed blood of Christ. The same blood that justified you also sanctifies you. The same righteousness that covers your guilt also clothes you in holiness. And Thomas Wilcox, writing centuries ago, said something you should never forget: Labor after sanctification to your utmost, but do not make it a substitute for Christ to save yourself.

If so, it must come down one way or the other. Then he added, it is the hardest thing in the world to take Christ alone for righteousness. Join anything to him from your own efforts, and you unchrist him. Unchrist him. Unchrist. What a powerful phrase that is. Unchrist. When you add your own efforts to his finished work, when you try to supplement his righteousness with your own performance, you are not honoring him. You are unchristing him. You are saying what he did was not enough. This is a very subtle danger of progressive sanctification. It begins with good intentions and ends with you standing in the place that belongs to Christ alone. I think about Job. Here is a man who lost everything—his children, his wealth, his health, his friends. They turned into theologians overnight and sat around explaining why it was all Job’s fault. What did Job do?

He wrestled. He wrestled and he questioned. He poured out his anguish before God. At the end of it all, in Job chapter 42, verses five and six, he says, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. Pay attention to what happened right there. Job did not say, I finally achieved a higher level of sanctification. No, he said, I am nothing. The closer Job got to God, the smaller he felt. The more clearly he saw the Lord, the more clearly he saw his own nothingness.

And if that is sanctification—not climbing higher—then it is seen more clearly, and what you see is that Christ is everything, and you are nothing. You are nothing apart from Him. I believe this is the testimony of every saint who has ever lived on earth. The more the Spirit works in your life, the less impressed you are with yourself, and the more amazed you are at Christ. You do not stand taller as the years go by. You bow yourself lower, not because God is crushing you, but because His glory is so overwhelming that the only reasonable response is worship and wonder.

I often think about the thief on the cross. Consider this man: he had no time for progressive sanctification. He had only hours, if that, to live. He had no baptism, no church membership, no years of spiritual disciplines to rely on. He had nothing but a dying breath and a plea: Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.

What did Jesus say to him? Luke chapter 23, verse 43, says: "Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." Today—not after you have completed your sanctification, not after you have proven yourself, but today—because salvation, from justification to glorification, is all of grace. It is all of Christ. It is all finished. If that thief was perfectly sanctified in Christ, without works, without effort, without any visible progress in holiness, then what does this tell us about the basis of our own sanctification? It tells us that it was never about us. It was always about Him. And that is the quiet truth that my psalm lands on. In the quiet, truth remains.

After all the noise, after all the striving, there is this still, steady, unshakable truth: only mercy, only grace. It comes like rain in broken places, not in proud places, not in places that have been cleaned up and polished by human effort, but in broken places. Because that is where God does his finest work, in the rubble of human inability. The mercy of God comes like gentle rain and makes everything new.

So where does that leave us tonight? Let me tell you where it leaves me. It leaves me. First, it makes me very happy, but it also makes me relieved. Oh, relieved. I can rest. I can rest. And not resting from effort in the sense that I am lazy or indifferent. No, resting from the frantic, desperate, self-powered striving that I once thought was godliness.

I no longer get up in the morning and measure my holiness by how well I performed the day before. I get up and I look to Christ. I look to the one who bore my sins in his own body on the tree, and I look to the one whose perfect righteousness is credited to my account. I look to the one who loved me before the foundation of the world and set me apart, sanctified me in himself.

And from that place of rest, I live, not perfectly, not without struggle, not without sin, not without my flesh warring against the Spirit every single day of my life. But I live in freedom. I live in the freedom of knowing that my standing before God does not depend upon me. It does not depend on me. It depends on Him.

And He is faithful. Romans chapter 8, verses 38 and 39, closes out beautifully: For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can separate those whom God has called from His love.

Not your bad days. Not your failures. Not your inability to grow in holiness by your own effort. Nothing. Because the love of God is in Christ Jesus, and if you are in Him, you are secure. So stop trying to achieve what cannot be achieved. Stop chasing what you cannot catch. Stop trying to clothe the old self with garments of righteousness. Let Christ be your sanctification.

Because the truth is, He already is. And rest in that. The wind you have been chasing was never meant to be caught. The holiness you have been striving for was already yours the moment God placed you in Christ. You are not running toward something; you are resting in Someone.

And He is enough. And He has always been enough. And I would say that is about all I have for tonight. I hope it has brought you comfort, and I hope it has taken some of the weight from your shoulders, because the gospel is not a burden. It is the lightest, the freest, and the most liberating news in all the world.

Christ has done it, and it is finished. You can rest. So if you have any questions, if you are struggling with any of this, or if you simply need someone to talk to, please reach out to me. You can visit my website. There is a contact form, and I would be happy to hear from you. Grace and peace to you, and good night.