What is the Dif­fer­ence between Trans­for­ma­tion vs. Sanctification

What is the big deal with Trans­for­ma­tion? Are words chang­ing their mean­ing slightly?

The Greek word for “sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion” used in the New Tes­ta­ment also means “holiness.”(1) The verb “to sanc­tify” means “to make holy.”(2) When God sanc­ti­fies believ­ers, He does not only set them apart for a holy use, He makes them holy. Obvi­ously believ­ers can­not be set apart for holy uses unless they are first made holy peo­ple. Jesus was “sanc­ti­fied and sent into the world” (John 10:36John 10:36
Eng­lish: King James Ver­sion (1611) — KJV
36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanc­ti­fied, and sent into the world, Thou blas­phemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?  

WP-Bible plu­gin)(3) in the sense that, because He was per­fectly holy, He could be set apart for a spe­cial holy work, the work of sav­ing the world from sin. When Jesus prayed, “Sanc­tify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17John 17:17
Eng­lish: King James Ver­sion (1611) — KJV
17 Sanc­tify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.  

WP-Bible plu­gin), He was ask­ing that His fol­low­ers should be made holy and, there­fore, be use­ful for the holy work for which He had cho­sen them. First He made them holy, and then He “sent them into the world” (verse 18).

The Bib­li­cal Mean­ing of Transformation

The true mean­ing of Trans­for­ma­tion is The Greek word for bib­li­cal “trans­for­ma­tion” is meta­mor­phoo, from which we get the Eng­lish word meta­mor­pho­sis: i.e., a com­plete change, such as a cater­pil­lar turn­ing into a but­ter­fly. Bib­li­cal trans­for­ma­tion, then, applies to an indi­vid­ual believer’s progress in sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. In Romans 12:2Romans 12:2
Eng­lish: King James Ver­sion (1611) — KJV
2 And be not con­formed to this world: but be ye trans­formed by the renew­ing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and accept­able, and per­fect, will of God.  

WP-Bible plu­gin we are being trans­formed by the renew­ing of your mind. How, through his word! His word is alive and wash­ing our mind.

What’s the big deal? When we renew our minds, we are trans­form­ing our minds to the mind of Christ ( 1 Cor. 2:161 Cor. 2:16
Eng­lish: King James Ver­sion (1611) — KJV
16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. may: Gr. shall  

WP-Bible plu­gin).

The new mean­ings for the word “trans­for­ma­tion” entered the mod­ern lex­i­con in the early 1980s. New Age author Mar­i­lyn Fer­gu­son, who is cred­ited with launch­ing the “com­ing out party” for Lucifer­ian Theosophists, exten­sively used the term. She defined it as “trans­for­ma­tion of con­scious­ness,” “a new see­ing,” “con­scious evo­lu­tion,” and a “par­a­digm change.” Trans­for­ma­tion was an essen­tial part of the Teil­hardian leap from “indi­vid­ual evo­lu­tion” to “col­lec­tive evolution.“3 Chris­t­ian dis­cern­ment author Con­stance Cum­bey bluntly remarked that Ferguson’s type of “trans­for­ma­tion” was “a euphemism for pro­gres­sively deeper lev­els of demonic influ­ence and has now infil­trate the church using the word transformation.”

Has the Bib­li­cal Mean­ing “Trans­for­ma­tion” Be Dif­fer­ent in Some Aspects in The Church Today?

The church mean today is “Trans­for­ma­tion” is the end-goal of a process that moves from TRADITION through TRANSITION to TRANSFORMATION. This is some­times called a “Par­a­digm Shift,” which means that Trans­for­ma­tion shifts one’s world­view (par­a­digm) from the old to a new. This is a dialec­ti­cally unfold­ing PROCESS in which the THESIS is con­tin­u­ally chal­lenged by ANTITHESIS, evolv­ing into ever-unfolding SYNTHESES. Trans­for­ma­tion is engi­neered, orches­trated and/or manip­u­lated. Trans­for­ma­tion involves chang­ing over a person’s val­ues, opin­ions, beliefs, atti­tudes, and even their behav­iors to that of the new paradigm/worldview.

There is cur­rently a bait and switch going on in neo-evangelical cir­cles. When evan­gel­i­cals hear the word “trans­for­ma­tion” bandied about, they assume it is a bib­li­cal word from Romans 12:2Romans 12:2
Eng­lish: King James Ver­sion (1611) — KJV
2 And be not con­formed to this world: but be ye trans­formed by the renew­ing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and accept­able, and per­fect, will of God.  

WP-Bible plu­gin: “And be not con­formed to this world: but be ye trans­formed by the renew­ing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and accept­able, and per­fect, will of God.” In fact, the tra­di­tional mean­ing of the word can be found in Matthew Poole’s Com­men­tary from the 1600s, which exhorts: “Be you regen­er­ated, and changed in your whole man; begin­ning at the mind, by which the Spirit of God wor­keth upon the infe­rior fac­ul­ties of the soul….”5 Matthew Henry’s Com­men­tary fur­ther expounds, “The progress of sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, dying to sin more and more, and liv­ing to right­eous­ness more and more.”
When evan­gel­i­cals hear the phrase “church trans­for­ma­tion” they may think of the par­a­digm shift in liturgy, wor­ship styles, music, mega-churches, etc. In real­ity, “trans­for­ma­tion” is sub­stan­tial and deep, intent on re-forging the very foun­da­tions of Protes­tantism, west­ern civ­i­liza­tion, and ulti­mately the gov­er­nance of the entire earth. While lip ser­vice is being paid to the tra­di­tional def­i­n­i­tions you read about above, in real­ity the word “trans­for­ma­tion” now indi­cates a soci­etal, cul­tural and global rev­o­lu­tion. Here is one new def­i­n­i­tion which hints at the larger scale:
“Transformation–the mea­sur­able super­nat­ural impact of the pres­ence and power of God on human soci­ety, sacred and sec­u­lar. In the church, this is char­ac­ter­ized by increased holi­ness of life, accel­er­ated con­ver­sion growth, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in rela­tion­ships, mobi­liza­tion of gifts and call­ings, and an increased rel­e­vance to and par­tic­i­pa­tion in greater soci­ety. In the cul­ture, this may be char­ac­ter­ized by per­va­sive aware­ness of the real­ity of God, a rad­i­cal cor­rec­tion of social ills, a com­men­su­rate decrease in crime rates (evi­dence of authen­tic bib­li­cal jus­tice, as described in Isa­iah 58), super­nat­ural bless­ing on local com­merce, heal­ing of the bro­ken­hearted (the alien­ated and dis­en­fran­chised), and an export­ing of king­dom right­eous­ness. To this end, a cat­alytic core of saints typ­i­cally embrace a lifestyle of per­sis­tent repen­tance, humil­ity, prayer and sac­ri­fi­cial ser­vant­hood that attracts the favor and pres­ence of God, and breaks the pre­dom­i­nat­ing influ­ences of the rul­ing power struc­tures of human flesh and the devil.”

If this new def­i­n­i­tion of “trans­for­ma­tion” sounds com­plex and obscure, it is. Unless you have been steeped in neo-evangelical doc­trines, this will sound like mish-mash. To aid the reader, below is a nut­shell syn­op­sis of the new doc­trines of “trans­for­ma­tion.”
1. The term “trans­for­ma­tion” is used to describe a planned, inten­tional “Sec­ond Ref­or­ma­tion” (also called “New Apos­tolic Ref­or­ma­tion”). An early pro­posal for a “sec­ond Protes­tant ref­or­ma­tion” appeared in The Emerg­ing Order (1979) by New Ager Jeremy Rifkin, who called for a re-definition of Gen­e­sis 1 to cre­ate a stew­ard­ship man­date for a domin­ion over the earth.8 Rick War­ren, of purpose-driven fame, pos­i­tively ref­er­enced Rifkin’s pro­posal for this new Reformation.9 Just this year was launched what he calls the “Sec­ond Reformation.”10 Other evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers call­ing for this new ref­or­ma­tion…. (Names left out pur­posely).
2) This “trans­for­ma­tion” is not per­sonal but is applied cor­po­rately to groups and enti­ties. One exam­ple is: “Social trans­for­ma­tion was defined as seek­ing pos­i­tive change in the whole of human life mate­ri­ally, socially and spir­i­tu­ally, by recov­er­ing our true iden­tity as human beings cre­ated in the image of God and dis­cov­er­ing our true voca­tion as pro­duc­tive stew­ards, faith­fully car­ing for our world and its people.”

3) This “trans­for­ma­tion” is to be accom­plished by a “mis­sion” strat­egy of doing “what­ever it takes” to launch polit­i­cal, social, and cul­tural reforms on a global scale. A phi­los­o­phy of “the end jus­ti­fies the means” has been embraced to accom­plish these colos­sal goals.
4) Extremely sophis­ti­cated psycho-social mar­ket­ing tech­niques are employed to facil­i­tate this “trans­for­ma­tion.”
5) State-of-the-art sta­tis­ti­cal mea­sure­ment and assess­ment meth­ods eval­u­ate this “trans­for­ma­tion,” judg­ing “effec­tive­ness” by pre-set, man-made cri­te­ria.
6) A plethora of intri­cate spir­i­tual activ­i­ties with new names, new tech­niques, new method­olo­gies, and new doc­trines pur­port­edly cause “trans­for­ma­tion” to take place in the heav­en­lies and then on earth.16 These include strategic-level spir­i­tual war­fare, iden­ti­fi­ca­tional repen­tance, prayer evan­ge­lism, on-site pray­ing, spir­i­tual map­ping, prayer walks, labyrinths, spir­i­tual for­ma­tion, and a host of other newly-concocted doc­trines with cor­re­spond­ing activ­i­ties. (The reader is chal­lenged to find any of these in the Bible.)
7) A re-alignment of church hier­ar­chi­cal struc­tures, not unlike net­work mar­ket­ing, is said to be essen­tial for “trans­for­ma­tion” to take place.
8) These new author­ity and account­abil­ity struc­tures must be super­im­posed between believ­ers and God. The model is touted as a return to the early New Tes­ta­ment model, in which churches met in homes. In real­ity it is a data-driven model with a top-down hier­ar­chy of author­ity and con­trol. It is var­i­ously called cell church, G12, shep­herd­ing, House2House, etc.
9) This “trans­for­ma­tion” dialec­ti­cally thrives on a diet of con­stant change which is accel­er­at­ing rapidly.19 Con­tin­u­ous change in the church is pointed to as “revival,” despite the fact that it uti­lizes busi­ness mar­ket­ing meth­ods such as Total Qual­ity Man­age­ment.
10) The claim is made that sub­mit­ting to and par­tic­i­pat­ing in this rad­i­cal and com­pre­hen­sive “trans­for­ma­tion” is nec­es­sary to ful­fill the Great Com­mis­sion. Thus “trans­for­ma­tion” has been inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the mod­ern mis­sions move­ment.
11) This “trans­for­ma­tion” is said to be incom­plete until the Bride of Christ is per­fected on earth and “God’s king­dom is seen on earth as it is in heaven.”
12) There­fore, believ­ers are told they are co-creators and co-redeemers, renew­ing the earth through their var­i­ous “trans­for­ma­tive” activ­i­ties.
Neo-evangelical “trans­for­ma­tion” doc­trines inte­grate Theos­o­phy with Chris­tian­ity for a hybrid new ortho­doxy, some­times termed the “emer­gent” church. There­fore, this “trans­for­ma­tion” is fer­tile ground for all new forms of ecu­menism, eas­ily find­ing com­mon ground with both cults and the occult. Pop­u­lar neo-evangelical leader Leonard Sweet laid out this broader con­cept of trans­for­ma­tional ecu­menism in his 1991 book Quan­tum Spirituality

Key­words: trans­for­ma­tion, sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, holi­ness, right­eous­ness, sanc­ti­fied, san­ti­fy­ing grace, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, repen­tance, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith, reformed, god’s grace, saved by grace