Holiness
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ἁγιασμός is the noun form of hagiazo (to sanctify, to set apart as holy). It names the process and state of being set apart for God — becoming increasingly conformed to the character of the Holy One to whom one belongs.
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Full entry for ἁγιασμός (G38) · Open the biblical lexicon
ἁγιασμός is the noun form of hagiazo (to sanctify, to set apart as holy). It names the process and state of being set apart for God — becoming increasingly conformed to the character of the Holy One to whom one belongs.
The BSB source-word alignment has 10 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include holiness (7), [and] sanctified (1), [the] sanctification (1), should be holy (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Romans 6:19. Its strongest book concentrations include 1 Thessalonians (3), Romans (2), 1 Corinthians (1), 1 Peter (1).
ἁγιασμός is the noun form of hagiazo (to sanctify, to set apart as holy). It names the process and state of being set apart for God — becoming increasingly conformed to the character of the Holy One to whom one belongs. The -mos suffix in Greek indicates a process or result: hagiasmos is both the act of sanctifying and the resulting state of holiness. The local NT index currently counts about 10 occurrences, concentrated in Paul's ethical exhortations and in Hebrews 12.
First Thessalonians 4:3 provides the clearest NT statement of hagiasmos as God's will: 'For this is the will of God, your sanctification (hagiasmos): that you abstain from sexual immorality.' God's will is not first a specific vocational direction for your life — it is your hagiasmos. The person asking 'what is God's will for my life?' is already given the answer in the area that matters most: God's will is that you become holy. The specific directions follow from that basic orientation.
Romans 6:19-22 provides the logic of hagiasmos in Paul's wider argument. Having been freed from sin and made slaves to God, the result (karpos — fruit) is hagiasmos, and its end is eternal life. Paul's 'once / now' contrast: once you gave yourselves over to impurity and lawlessness, now give yourselves over to righteousness 'for hagiasmos.' Sanctification is the direction of the new life — not a new form of bondage but the organic fruit of belonging to God.
First Corinthians 1:30 gives hagiasmos its Christological anchor: Christ was made for us 'wisdom, righteousness, sanctification (hagiasmos), and redemption.' Sanctification, like righteousness, is received in Christ before it is worked out in practice. This is the NT's distinctive contribution: hagiasmos is not first a human achievement but a status given in Christ and a process worked in those who belong to Him.
Hebrews 12:14 issues the most direct call: 'Pursue peace with all men, and the hagiasmos without which no one will see the Lord.' The radical claim: seeing God is conditioned on hagiasmos. This is not a salvation-by-works claim; it is a description of the direction the genuinely saved person moves. The one who belongs to God moves toward holiness because God is holy, and seeing God is the orientation of one who is being conformed to His character.
For the preacher, ἁγιασμός is the word that names the goal of the Christian life in the NT. Not merely forgiveness at the start, not merely glory at the end, but the transformation that happens between those two points — the becoming-holy of people who belong to a holy God.
The local NT index currently counts about 10 occurrences of ἁγιασμός in Paul's letters, Hebrews, and 1 Peter. It functions both as the God-given status of the believer in Christ (positional sanctification) and as the ongoing process of becoming what one is in Christ (progressive sanctification).
For it is God’s will that you should be holy: You must abstain from sexual immorality;
The direct identification of God's will with hagiasmos. The Greek is emphatic: touto gar estin thelema tou theou (this is the will of God) — and what follows is not a mystery but an ethical imperative. The call to abstain from porneia is not the whole content of hagiasmos but its most immediate application in the Thessalonian context. Hagiasmos requires concrete decisions about how the body is used, precisely because the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19) and the instrument of holiness or its opposite.
Pursue peace with everyone, as well as holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.
The most radical claim about hagiasmos in the NT: it is the condition for seeing God. Not merely a desirable quality but the essential trajectory of the person who will one day behold the Lord. The pursuit of hagiasmos is paired with the pursuit of peace — both are directed efforts, not passive gifts. The 'without which no one will see the Lord' is not a threat of damnation but a description of the direction that genuine faith moves.
The person headed toward God is becoming like God; the person becoming like God pursues hagiasmos.
It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God: our righteousness, holiness, and redemption.
The Christological anchor: hagiasmos is something Christ was made for us. Before it is a process we engage in, it is a status we receive in Christ. This is the order the NT establishes: first positional (Christ our sanctification), then progressive (the ongoing transformation). The four nouns here — wisdom, righteousness, hagiasmos, redemption — together name what the believer has in Christ: the wisdom the world could not find, the righteousness the law could not produce, the holiness that only God can give, and the redemption that history had been waiting for.
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the fruit you reap leads to holiness, and the outcome is eternal life.
Hagiasmos as the fruit of belonging to God — not the basis of acceptance but the natural outcome of the new relationship. The freed-from-sin and servants-of-God status comes first (justification and new identity); the fruit of hagiasmos grows from that soil. The end (telos) of this fruit is eternal life — the ultimate destination that hagiasmos moves toward. This is the eschatological arc: freedom from sin, service to God, the fruit of growing holiness, and the destination of eternal life.
According to the foreknowledge of God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by His blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
The Trinitarian structure of hagiasmos in 1 Peter: the Father's foreknowledge, the Spirit's sanctification, the Son's blood. Hagiasmos is not a human project with divine assistance — it is a Trinitarian work in which the Spirit sets apart the believer for obedience. The 'sprinkling of the blood' echoes the covenant ratification of Exodus 24:8 and the sacrificial system's purification rites — hagiasmos stands in a covenantal and sacrificial tradition that the NT fulfills.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. The process of becoming holy through sanctification, not merely the state of holiness itself.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
10 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
sanctification, holiness
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 3 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 10 lexical occurrence verses.
ἁγιασμός is built from this root:
Describes the fruit and direction of the believer’s new life in Christ. Hebrews 12:12-17
Indicates necessary evidence of covenant life. Romans 6:15-23
ἁγιασμός is the NT's word for the transformation that happens between conversion and glory. The NT does not present Christian life as a series of disconnected religious experiences; it presents it as a movement — from sin to righteousness, from the old self to the new, from what we were to what we are becoming in Christ. Hagiasmos names that movement. First Thessalonians 4:3 says it plainly: this is God's will for you — your sanctification.
Not primarily your career direction, your relationship status, or your financial decisions (though those matter), but the becoming-holy of a person who belongs to a holy God. Hebrews 12:14 adds the eschatological edge: without hagiasmos, no one will see God. This is not meant to terrify but to orient — the normative direction of saving faith is toward the God who saved us, and that movement is hagiasmos.
The preacher's task is to hold together the two dimensions that Paul holds together in 1 Corinthians 1:30: Christ is our sanctification (positional — what we are in Him) and the call to pursue holiness is real (progressive — what we are becoming through the Spirit). Both are true; neither cancels the other.
1Thess.4.3
ἁγιασμός derives from hagiazo (to sanctify, to set apart) and ultimately from hagios (holy, set apart). The -mos suffix creates a noun of action and result: the act of sanctifying and the state of being sanctified. The hagios word family is rich in the NT: hagios (holy — applied to God, the Spirit, and believers), hagiazein (to sanctify — the verb), hagiasmos (sanctification — the process/state), and hagiotes/hagiosyne (holiness — the quality).
The distinction between hagiasmos and hagiosyne is subtle: hagiasmos tends to name the process (sanctification), while hagiosyne names the resultant quality (holiness of character). Both point to the same reality from different angles. The NT's use of hagiasmos in ethical contexts (1 Thess 4; Rom 6) confirms that it is not merely a positional label but the description of an ongoing transformation that has practical ethical implications.
The OT background for hagiasmos is the qadosh (holy) tradition: God is holy (Lev 19:2; Isa 6:3), and His people are called to be holy because He is holy ('You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy' — Lev 19:2). The Sinai covenant made Israel a 'kingdom of priests and a holy nation' (Exod 19:6) — the hagiasmos of the people was the covenant reality. The Levitical purity laws, the Sabbath observance, the dietary regulations, and the sacrificial system were all forms of Israel's ongoing hagiasmos — the concrete practices through which they maintained the distinction between holy and common.
The prophets critique the breaking of this holiness: Ezekiel's vision of the departure of the glory (Ezek 10-11) is the image of Israel's hagiasmos having been corrupted to the point of God's presence leaving. The NT's hagiasmos inherits this entire tradition but grounds it in Christ rather than Torah observance: the holiness to which believers are called is the holiness of Christ Himself (1 Pet 1:16; Heb 12:10 — 'that we may share in his holiness'), and the Spirit is the agent who produces it.
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