There’s no serious disagreement among Christians that full sanctification is necessary to enter Heaven. Where people often hesitate is on when that kind of purity can actually be reached. Many assume that as long as soul and body are joined together, the body must inevitably contaminate the spirit. According to this view, complete purity is impossible before death.
But this assumption rests on a very old mistake.
The idea that matter itself is inherently evil comes not from Scripture, but from ancient pagan philosophy—specifically from Gnosticism and Platonism. These systems taught that matter is eternal, un-created, and irreversibly corrupt. God, they claimed, merely shaped this flawed substance as best he could, but could never fully cleanse it. As a result, the soul was thought to remain defiled as long as it was trapped in the body, only to be purified later — after death — by some kind of fiery process.
