Replies

Once you accept Jesus as your Savior, YOU ARE SANCTIFIED BY HIS SANCTIFICATION. Years ago, they used to call it a “quickening” .. it meant that in an instant of time, you were re-created and made a new creature - in-Christ. As a new Christian, we have to renew our mind with the Word of God.

Catholics agree. We are made pure at Baptism and also through the sacrament of Confession, where we ask the Lord to forgive us our sins with all sincerity and He does!

We are forgiven all sins by the Lord, when we ask Him for forgiveness. It is a wonderful wonderful thing. Yet, we continue to have the free will to reject the Lord and we do continue to sin, and so we require constant vigilance and faith in the Lord to stay sanctified by His grace -- for it is only through His grace that we can be sanctified at all.

Even though we are forgiven for our sins, however, there are temporal punishments for sin -- what I think of as natural consequences of sin, by which we suffer. For example, addiction to pornography can alter a person's ability to have normal sexual relationships with the opposite sex, and, even though the Lord may forgive the sin, it make take a long time before a person is able to be with someone without objectifying that person and using him or her as a sexual object. And this perversion of love will cause suffering in that person's life, until he or she allows the Lord to help him or her "purge" that habit through a process of sanctification over time -- sometimes a struggle but one that builds character -- and then eventually, with the Lord's help, that person may be able to have normal relationships. Just one example.