In a much beloved work now receiving some additional notoriety, William H.T. Dau, who served as a parish pastor, president of Concordia College in Conover, NC, professor of dogmatics at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, editor of the Lutheran Witness, and the first Lutheran president of Valparaiso University, had this to say about sanctification. The work? C.F.W. Walther’s The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel.
The good and gracious will of God, then, had to embrace this kindness, that, after His Son had completed His work of redemption in the sinner’s place on earth, God sent His Holy Spirit to men by means of His Word. The Holy Spirit was to lead men to a true knowledge of their wretched and hopeless condition as lawbreakers and lead them to genuine spiritual sorrow over their sins, crush their natural conceit and stubbornness, and make them contrite. Next He was to make them understand the wonderful kindness of God in sending His Son to be their Savior; He was to make them accept by an act of faith the work of Christ as performed in their place, and then teach them to lead holy and righteous lives from gratitude to God and after the pattern of Christ’s life, until God would advance them after a life of progressive sanctification to be coheirs of Christ in everlasting glory.
Lutheran Orthodoxy 