Some Reformed will concede agreement with Lutherans on justification. But they draw the line at sanctification. Supposedly, the Lutheran doctrine of salvation is so justification-centric that Lutheranism neglects the other benefits of salvation.
A piece by David P. Scaer, professor of systematic theology at Concordia, Ft. Wayne, suggests that Lutherans are closer to Reformed than many think. He wrote:
Lutherans recognize that Christians as sinners are never immune to the Law’s moral demands and its threats against sin, but in the strictest sense these warnings do not belong to Christian sanctification, the life believers live in Christ and in which Christ lives in them. In Roman Catholic and some Protestant systems, the Gospel brings the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, but is replaced by the Law which sets down directives for Christian life and warns and threatens the Christian as Christian. Law, and not the Gospel, becomes God’s last and real word for the believer. So Christianity deteriorates into an implicit and eventually coarse legalism and abject moralism. Jesus faced this understanding of an ethically determined concept of sanctification among the Pharisees. Holiness was defined in terms of fulfilling ritual requirements. Sixteen centuries later for similar reasons, Luther raised his protest against medieval Catholicism. At times, the New Testament uses the words sanctify and sanctification of God’s entire activity of God in bringing about man’s salvation. More specifically it refers to the work of the Holy Spirit to bring people to salvation, to keep them in the true faith and finally to raise them from the dead and give them eternal life (Small Catechism). All these works are also performed by the Father and the Son. Since God is not morally neutral and does not choose to be holy, but He is holy, all His works necessarily share in His holiness. The connection between the Holy Spirit and sanctification is seen in the Latin for the Third Person of the Trinity, Spiritus Sanctus. The Spirit who is holy in Himself makes believers holy, sanctifies them, by working faith in Christ in them and He becomes the sources of all their good works.
Sanctification means that the Spirit permeates everything the Christian thinks, says and does. The Christian’s personal holiness is as much a monergistic activity of the Holy Spirit as is his justification and conversion. The Spirit who alone creates faith is no less active after conversion than He was before.
Old Life 
In “The Confessional Presbyterian,†Volume 3, 2007 J.V. Fesko does a fairly nice job of helping to put to bed the Lutheran epithet.
Under “Lutherans on the Third Use of the Law,â€
“…we must explore the question of whether the Lutheran commitment to sola fide is such that they make absolutely no place for the necessity of good works…In other words, is Lutheran soteriology antinomian? There have been those…who have argued that Luther and Lutheranism only hold to two uses of the law: the political or civil…and the elenctic or pedagogic…Yet, at the same time a perusal of primary sources, including Luther’s writings, Lutheran confessions, and other Lutheran theologians evidences that Luther and Lutheranism hold to the third use of the law in some form, the didactic or normative use, regulating the life of the regenerate.â€
Luther on the Law:
“…as long as we live in a flesh that is not free of sin, so long as the Law keeps coming back and performing its function, more on one person and less in another, not to harm but to save. This discipline of the Law is the daily mortification of the flesh, the reason, an dour powers and the renewal of our mind (2 Cor 4:16)…There is still need for a custodian to discipline and torment the flesh, that powerful jackass, so that by this discipline sins may be diminished and the way prepared for Christ…Thus, we have the Ten Commandments, a compend of divine doctrine, as to what we are to do in order that our whole life may be pleasing to God, and the true fountain and channel from and in which everything must arise and flow that is to be a good work, so that outside the Ten Commandments, no work or thing can be good or pleasing to God, however great or precious it be in the yes of the world…The matter of the Law must be considered carefully, both as to what and as how we ought to think about the Law; otherwise we shall either reject it altogether, after the fashion of the fanatical spirits who prompted the peasant’s revolt a decade ago by saying that the freedom of the Gospel absolves men from all laws, or we shall attribute to the law the power to justify. Both groups sin against the Law: those on the right, who want to be justified through the Law, and those on the left, who want to be altogether free of the Law. Therefore we must travel the royal road, so that we neither reject the law altogether not attribute more to it than we should.â€
Fesko thus says, “Luther saw a place for the law in the life of the believer. When he was explaining the doctrine of justification he said that there was no place for works or the law. In relationship, though, to one’s sanctification and the knowledge of what is pleasing to God, the Decalogue served as guide as well as a tool in the hand of God to confront the remaining sin in the believer. This careful fencing of justification from works, yet at the same time connecting justification to sanctification, is especially evident in the Lutheran confessions.†The Confessional Presbyterian, Volume 3, 2007, 23-24.
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This is very helpful, thank you Dr. Hart and Zrim. I’ve been puzzled by the supposed distinction between Lutheran and Reformed on sanctification as boiling down to synergism vs. monergism. This seems to be an easy caricature of something that is a little more complex.
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I believe Rev. Scaer overstates the doctrine of progressive sanctification. Is it truly a monergistic activity? While we don’t complete the process, we certainly are called to cooperate. (mortify and vivify). A cursory reading of the Apostles (and Owen) would conclude that we have a role to play. While the Lutheran confession may confirm a 3rd use of the law, its application in the life of the Christian seems to be subverted.
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So, there really is very little critical difference when you look at both confessions- correct? GAS brought Van Til into the argument and claimed that Lutherans were synergists. He did not make it clear, I don’t think, in what regard he meant this. Was it in how Lutherans view regeneration and repentance (if this is what he meant then he is definitely wrong), sanctification (the above would prove him wrong in this regard also) or in the perennial predestination debate? It was all pretty unclear to me. Am I missing something here?
He also claimed that Lutherans held to a mechanical view of the sacraments? I am unclear what he meant by this also. I probably will not get an answer to these questions but I will eventually reach a conclusion I hope one day. I will try to stick with the primary sources.
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Here are two quotes from the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, pertinent to the discussion:
Paragraph 39
And although the regenerate even in this life advance so far that they will what is good, and love it, and even do good and grow in it, nevertheless this (as above stated) is not of our will and ability, but the Holy Ghost, as Paul himself speaks concerning this, works such willing and doing, Phil. 2, 13. As also in Eph. 2, 10 he ascribes this work to God alone, when he says: For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk therein.
Paragraphs 63 & 64
But when man has been converted, and is thus enlightened, and his will is renewed, it is then that man wills what is good (so far as he is regenerate or a new man), and delights in the Law of God after the inward man, Rom. 7, 22, and henceforth does good to such an extent and as long as he is impelled by God’s Spirit, as Paul says, Rom. 8, 14: For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. 64] And this impulse of the Holy Ghost is not a coactio, or coercion, but the converted man does good spontaneously, as David says, Ps. 110, 4: Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power. And nevertheless that also [the strife of the flesh and spirit] remains in the regenerate of which St. Paul wrote, Rom. 7, 22f : For I delight in the Law of God after the inward man; but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Also, v. 25: So, then, with my mind I myself serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. Also, Gal. 5, 17: For the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
The third use of the Law is emphatically not subverted but rather affirmed.
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[quote]At times, the New Testament uses the words sanctify and sanctification of God’s entire activity of God in bringing about man’s salvation. More specifically it refers to the work of the Holy Spirit to bring people to salvation, to keep them in the true faith and finally to raise them from the dead and give them eternal life (Small Catechism).[/quote]
I find it interesting that this is just what Murray seems to be wrestling with in his articles on “definitive sanctification.”
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While this 3rd use of the law may be on paper very little if any of it sees the light of day in a confessional Lutheran church(at least the few I have been associated with, along with many dialogues on the wittenberg trail). I used to be Lutheran and the distinctions between justification and sanctification were constantly blurred. I asked once about the passage in Romans 8 stating all who were called were justified, then glorified. The confessional LCMS pastor stated you can lose your justification(so there is enough synergism that our justification is not all monergistically in His hands for Lutherans-at least not enough to close the and overcome our sinful choices)He also said not to try and get so detailed about breaking up the parts of salvation:justification, sanctification,etc. To which I scratched my head. The law gospel hermenuetic also virtually nueters all gospel imperatives of mortification and vivification(basic self denial, gospel obedience that doesnt merit but evidences sonship) as law and thus is ignored as such. The emphasis is on the sacrament of the altar and confession and absolution as the means of sanctification. Very little is ever said in the 15 minute sermons I heard at divine service about application or sanctification other than absolution and the supper. Even when salvation is spoken of 99% of the time it was very rarely spoken of as “Look to Christ by faith” I kid you not it was always “Look to your baptism. Remember your baptism. Baptism, baptism, baptism. Iam not trying to be cantankerous or rude but it is a very sacerdotal system somehow hung together with justification by faith. But very little was said other than to have faith in your baptism, obviously what they mean by that is have faith in Christ and baptism to them is not gospel obedience but is a grace of God, a justifying grace of God by faith. But a visitor or newbie would not know that by the language used in the pulpit. My family came to a Christmas service with us and he told the backsliders in the congregation to look to their baptism for the assurance of their salvation. I left LCMS because I dont believe the regenerated child of God can lose his justification and I realized the passages referring to baptism saving are using sacramental language to associate the sign with the reality. But as far as the 3rd use of the law I think you will have to suffice with reading the Bk of Concord and the catechisms to learn about it. This is not a universal statement on all Lutheran churches but I went to two very prominent confessional churches.
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Michial,
You were there for the debate on Pilgrim People last week, so I’m not going to respond to your imposition of Reformed systematics on the Biblical data on apostasy just here, except to ask again what it means that Peter describes the fallen as having become “again entangled.” If they weren’t really ever unentangled, if they were merely professing faith without possessing it, how did they become entangled again?
But your experience of Lutheranism is not mine, so we cancel each other out. Many modern Lutheran pastors do not draw Law and Gospel from their sermon text but rather impose the hermeneutic on the text, so that the third use of the Law is neutered. I would connect this to the decline during the later twentieth century of expository preaching in confessional Lutheranism, so don’t mistake my comments for Lutheran triumphalism. We have much to learn from the Reformed in this regard (or Luther, Walther, & Pieper for that matter!). On the other hand, this evasion of the third use is not germane to Lutheranism, and each of the two pastors that I’ve had as a Lutheran preaches the Law when the text demands he do so. The Law must be preached from the text, and some will hear it as curb, some will use it as a mirror, and some as a guide for their life in Christ.
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Michial,
Couldn’t it be that your Lutherans just weren’t being very good Lutherans? My Reformed speak like evangelicals all the time. But I still think Reformed and Lutheran have way more in common with each other than either do to anything else.
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Adam,
Yes, the 3UL is confirmed in the FoC. However, if you read the entire article by Rev Scaer, his analysis is not the Reformed understanding of sanctification. We don’t speak of faith in sanctification as monergistic. By grace, yes; by faith alone, no.
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True my experience may not be representative. But it was the same feedback I received from the God Whsiperers, and just about everyone on the Wittenberg Trail-so Iam not sure. As far as being entangled again that does not imply a loss of an alien imputed righteousness and forensic justification. I can fall into gross sin as a christian and still be a christian. I wonder how many churches would have thought David wasnt a believer that full year he committed adultery and killed someone without repenting. Faith is a gift. The Spirit is a deposit, guaranteeing said gift , sealing us until the day of redemption. All who are justified are glorified according to Romans 8
30And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also(A) justified, and those whom he justified he also(B) glorified.
Nobody apostatizes in between that justification and glorification-nobody.
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I dont think so. Both have been guests on Issues Etc and esteemed for their confessionalism. I do think Lutherans and Reformed are similar in their zeal for reverence and awe God and for defending the gospel and solas of the reformation. But I believe the crux is the issue of baptism. period. And it is huge with massive ramifications. The main ramification believing you can give away a monergistic gift and lose the forensic imputation of Christs alien righteousness. To minimize it is not honest. We are still brothers in the Lord and have that unity no doubt. But i believe the Lutheran position on baptism is a gross error, as do they feel about our view. The Lord’s supper is obviously a difference but not as serious I do not think. I think evangelicals are in their own world and different than both of us. However I locate just as much free will and decision theology at the back door of Lutheranism than is found at the front door of evangelicalism. The latter use their mightier than Gods will to decide to accept Christ, while the Lutherans believe you can will away the mightily imputed alien righteousness of Christ. Both are guilty of a similar deed of adding a decision to the gift-one in the giving of it the other the ungifting of it-but both are contributing and thus taking away from it -one is helping God accomplish it and the other is overpowering and rending asunder what He has done. Both are errors and implicitely deny monergism in its fullness. Otherwise what is the point and what comfort is it for God to say you are too dead and depraved to receive me and believe me so here is my justification for you-here is the gospel and here is faith. But now its up to you to tow the line and cooperate with that gift inasmuch as you dont someday decide to walk away and reject me. You must be faithful to the sacraments and keep believing. All the while knowing that Paul said wretched we are and nothing good dwells in us. and we continually fall short of the glory of God. Lutherans claim a difference with Arminians teaching while Arminians can loose their salvation by sinning it away, that Lutherans do not believe you can loose it by falling into sin, but by rejecting Christ. Well last time I looked rejecting Christ is a sin-not believing is a sin. It is an action by our wills to make void a gift he called “eternal” and until glorification. We are prone to sin and wander-and yet we are given a gift we are unable to receive were so sinful yet expected not to give it up knowing how wicked and evil we are? A denial of the perseverance of the saints is a gross error regarding the grace of God and the full implications of biblical justification and imputation of Christs alien righteousness.
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I am currently a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran, and was previously a Missouri Synod Lutheran, but, for many of the same reasons as Michael, am heading toward “Geneva,†so to speak. One of my main concerns with modern-day confessional Lutheranism is that you hear extremely little about sanctification and the preaching of the Law. They talk a lot about being forgiven, but I very rarely ever hear anything about how our lives of subsequent sanctification should bear fruit that give evidence to the fact that we are indeed saved. Also, I don’t hear the Law of God preached in that we are under God’s wrath and will suffer in Hell for eternity unless we repent and trust in Christ alone for the forgiveness of our sins. Knowing about the wrath of God makes the sweetness of the Gospel that much sweeter and precious. However, I very rarely hear anything about the wrath of God, but usually just hear the Gospel about how God saves us “from our sins and failures†if we just believe in Him. Very little is said about what we are saved from and what the life of the regenerate should look like. They believe that sanctification will happen naturally so long as we continue to trust in Christ alone. I think that’s why they focus so much on justification but very little about sanctification.
The problem with trying to apply passages about all those who are justified will be sanctified and glorified to them is that they will retreat and say those passages apply to the elect and that since there are warning passages about falling away therefore there must be a third class of humanity that are not elect but have been justified and will eventually fall away. Although when I read the Bible I get the distinct impression that there are only two classes of people- the elect and the reprobates, and there are other passages of Scripture that explain that He who began a good work will finish the work.
I think the early American confessional Lutherans didn’t have these problems- well at least with respect to the ardent preaching of the Law. When I read the writings of Dr. Walther, for example, he thunders God’s Law and then also presents the Gospel as the answer. He, from what I remember, also stresses that authentic justification must necessarily result in a changed life due to sanctification.
I think what Dr. Scaer is saying when he says sanctification is monergistic is that ultimately we are sanctified by God’s will, and that it’s God’s will that makes our wills willing- if you will (pardon the pun). But on the other hand, a person can resist the Holy Spirit and lose their salvation (if they’re non-elect) since there are warning passages. A Lutheran will retreat into the concept of “mystery†and leave these two opposing viewpoints standing in tension side by side and accept both simultaneously. Whenever you quote a passage that basically teaches “eternal security†they will say the scope of the passage applies only the elect, e.g., Romans 8:30. The same mystery/paradox is employed by Lutherans in justification as well- the elect will all be saved, the others will successfully resist the Holy Spirit, but yet God sincerely desires that they repent and be saved, even though He knows they can’t without His will that they succeed. Nevertheless God sincerely desires that they be saved and holds them responsible for not being saved. So, a Lutheran has not rational answer as to why some are saved and not others.
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Michael,
Check out Pastor Scott Murray’s segment on Wednesday’s Issues, Etc. (www.issuesetc.org) on Law-Gospel reductionism, a symptom of insufficient devotion to God’s Word in both our synods. God bless you and give his angels charge over you.
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I know this is an old post, but I thought I’d weigh in. Lutherans aren’t really divided on the issue of whether or not Christians ought to grow and pursue holiness in their lives. They’re more divided on the way in which the Law ought to be preached from the pulpit.
Lutherans tend to be sympathetic toward old line, Continental Calvinism, but very critical of Calvinism’s “Puritan” manifestations. Lutherans shutter at the way in which Evangelicals, like John MacArthur, teach that a Christian must be a perennial fruit checker, always investigating the evidence for his salvation in his works, and always judging the status of his brother’s soul based on the evidence of his works.
In reaction to this Puritan/MacArthurite tendency, some Confessional Lutherans preach very little in terms of exhortation. Other Lutherans are more comfortable exhorting from the pulpit, so long as (a) the gospel is the central focus, and (b) Law and Gospel are not confused. I think the latter are more consistent with the Lutheran Confessions and our Lutheran fathers, but the former are also faithful men who often have much good to say.
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