Tag: sanctification

Forensic Friday: Calvin on Osiander

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Osiander objects that is would be insulting to God and contrary to this nature that he should justify those who actually remain wicked. Yet we must bear in mind what I have already said, that the grace of justification is not separated from regeneration, although they are things distinct. But because it is very well known by experience that the traces of sin always remain in the righteous, their justification must be very different from reformation into newness of life (cf.. Rom. 6:4). For God so begins this second point in his elect, and progresses in it gradually, and sometimes slowly, throughout life, that they are always liable to the judgment of death before his tribunal. But he does not justify in part but liberally, so that they may appear in heaven as if endowed with the purity of Christ. No portion of righteousness sets our consciences at peace until it has been determined that we are pleasing to God, because we are entirely righteous before him. From this it follows that the doctrine of justification is perverted and utterly overthrown when doubt is thrust into men’s minds, when the assurance of salvation is shaken and the free and fearless calling upon God suffers hindrance – nay, when peace and tranquility with spiritual joy are not established. Thence Paul argues from contraries that the inheritance does not come from the law (Gal. 3:18), for this way “faith would be nullified” (Rom. 4:14, cf. Vg.). For faith totters if it pays attention to works, since no one, even of the most holy, will find there anything on which to rely. (Institutes, III.xi.11)

Looks like Calvin also teaches the priority of justification (i.e. first grace) to sanctification (i.e., “second”). And for that matter, if union is drawing attention to good works because it is always calling attention to the simultaneity of legal and moral benefits, why would you want to emphasize the importance or controlling perspective of union on soteriology? In other words, Calvin sure seems to be saying that justification needs to be the controlling paradigm for understanding salvation. Otherwise, faith totters.

Where's Waldo Wednesday

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It is often said that union is key to connecting justification and sanctification, the forensic and the renovative. In that light, Calvin’s discussion of the motivation for good works is surprising for the way that he counts union one among several other biblical grounds for sanctification.

[Philosophers], while they wish particularly to exhort us to virtue, announce merely that we should live in accordance with nature. But Scripture draws its exhortation from the true fountain. It not only enjoins us to refer our life to God, its author, to whom it is bound; but after it has taught that we have degenerated from the true origin and condition of our creation, it also adds that Christ, through whom we return into favor with God, has been set before us as an example, whose pattern we ought to express in our life. . . .

Then the Scripture finds occasion for exhortation in all the benefits of God that it lists for us, and in the individual parts of our salvation. Ever since God revealed himself faith to us, we must prove our ungratefulness to him if we did not in turn show ourselves his sons [Mal. 1:6; Eph 5:1; I John 3:1]. Ever since Christ cleansed us with the washing of his blood, and imparted this cleansing through baptism, it would be unfitting to befoul ourselves with new pollutions (Eph. 5:26; Heb. 10:10; I Cor. 6:11; I Peter 1:15, 19]. Ever since he engrafted us into his body, we must take especial care not to disfigure ourselves, who are his members, with any spot or blemish [Eph. 5:23-33; I Cor. 6:15; John 15: 3-6]. Ever since Christ himself, who is our Head, ascended into heaven, it behooves us, having laid aside love of earthly things, wholeheartedly to aspire heavenward (Col 3:1ff]. Ever since the Holy Spirit dedicates us as temples to God, we must take care that God’s glory shine through us, and must not commit anything to defile ourselves with the filthiness of sin [I Cor. 3:16; 6:19; II Cor. 6:16]. Ever since both our souls and bodies were destined for heavenly incorruption and an unfading crown [I Peter 5:4], we ought to strive manfully to keep them pure and uncorrupted until the Day of the Lord [I Thess. 5:23; cf. Phil 1:10]. These, I say, are the most auspicious foundations upon which to establish one’s life. One would look in vain for the like of these among the philosophers, who, in their commendation of virtue, never rise above the natural dignity of man. (Calvin, The Institutes, III.vi. 3)

Forensic Friday: Warfield (the Lutheran?) On Lutheran Theology

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There is no evidence presented here that the New Testament represents sanctification as received immediately by faith. In point of fact there is no direct statement to that effect in the New Testament. It is to Jellinghaus’* credit that he does not adduce for it either Acts xv.9 or xxvi.18, which are often made to do duty in this sense. His strong conviction that sanctification is obtained directly and immediately by faith is a product not of his Scriptural studies, but of his “mediating theology.” According to that theology, when we receive Christ by faith we receive in Him all that He is to us at once; all the benefits which we receive in Him are conceived as received immediately and directly by the faith through which we are united with Him and become sharers in all that He is. Justification and sanctification, for example, are thought of as parallel products of faith. This is not, however, the New Testament representation. According to its teaching, sanctification is not related to faith directly and immediately, so that in believing in Jesus we receive both justification and sanctification as parallel products of our faith; or either the one or the other, according as our faith is directed to the one or the other. Sanctification is related directly not to faith but to justification; and as faith is the instrumental cause of justification, so is justification the instrumental cause of sanctification. The vinculum which binds justification and sanctification together is not that they are both effects of faith – so that he who believes must have both – because faith is the prius of both alike. Nor is it even that both are obtained in Christ, so that he who has Christ, who is made to us both righteousness and sanctification, must have both because Christ is the common source of both. It is true that he who has faith has and must have both; and it is true that he who has Christ has and must have both. But they do not come out of faith or from Christ in the same way. Justification comes through faith; sanctification through justification, and only mediately, through justification, through faith. So that the order is invariable, faith, justification, sanctification; not arbitrarily, but in the nature of the case. (B. B. Warfield, “The German Higher Life Movement,” in Perfectionism, vol. 1, pp. 362-363)

As one friend said after reading this, “Wow”!

*Theodore Jellinghaus was a German Lutheran missionary to India, and later a Lutheran pastor in the vicinity of Potsdam.

Where's Waldo Wednesday: Priorities

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The objection to the priority of justification rests partly on the idea that justification and sanctification come simultaneously (though distinctly) through union with Christ – prioritization prohibited. And yet, the problem of prioritizing one benefit before another doesn’t seem to bother the advocates of union when it comes to the rest of the benefits purchased by Christ.

The duplex gratia apparently teaches a double or two-fold benefit that comes through faith in Christ, one being forensic and the other being renovative. And yet, the Standards teach that believers receive not simply justification and sanctification, but also adoption and the other benefits that accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification.

Q. 36. What are the benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption and sanctification?

A. The benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption and sanctification, are, assurance of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the end. (Shorter Catechism)

Q. 82. What is the communion in glory which the members of the invisible church have with Christ?

A. The communion in glory which the members of the invisible church have with Christ, is in this life, immediately after death, and at last perfected at the resurrection and day of judgment.

Q. 83. What is the communion in glory with Christ which the members of the invisible church enjoy in this life?

A. The members of the invisible church have communicated to them in this life the firstfruits of glory with Christ, as they are members of him their head, and so in him are interested in that glory which he is fully possessed of; and, as an earnest thereof, enjoy the sense of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, and hope of glory; as, on the contrary, sense of God’s revenging wrath, horror of conscience, and a fearful expectation of judgment, are to the wicked the beginning of their torments which they shall endure after death.(Larger Catechism)

So, aside from the question of how these other benefits – such as adoption – fit in the duplex scheme, it looks like the advocates of union prioritize just as much as the advocates of justification priority. One group prioritizes justification and sanctification among the benefits. The other prioritizes justification. Rather than being illegitimate, prioritizing is basic to both sides. (It could even be that union advocates prioritize union.)

Where’s Waldo Wednesday: Did He Say “Impetration”?

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We are told that God saves us in His mere mercy, by a renovating work of the Holy Spirit, founded on the redeeming work of Christ; and we are told that this renovating work of the Holy Spirit was in order that we might be justified and so become heirs. Here the purchase by the death of Christ is made the condition precedent of the regeneration of the Holy Spirit; but the action of the Holy Spirt is made the condition precedent to justification and adoption. We are brought unto God by Christ in order that we may be brought to God by the Holy Spirit. And in bringing us to God, the Holy Spirit proceeds by regenerating us in order that we may be justified so as to be made heirs. In theological language, this is expressed by saying that the impetration* of salvation precedes its application: the whole of the impetration, the whole of the application. And in the application, the Spirit works first by regenerating the soul, next justifying it, next adopting it into the family of God, and next sanctifying it. In the more vital and less analytical language of our present passage [Titus 3:4-7], this is asserted by founding the gift of the Holy Ghost upon the work of Christ: “which He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our saviour”; by including in the work of the Holy Ghost, regeneration, justification, adoption, and a few verses lower down, sanctification; and by declaring that the regeneration of the Holy Spirit is “in order that being justified we might be made heirs.”

. . . . This is encouraging teaching for believers! Shall they, then, because they are saved out of God’s mercy and not out of works in righteousness which they have done themselves, be careless to maintain good works? I trow** not;; and the Apostle troweth not. Because of this, they will now be careful “to maintain good works.” Let us see to it then that by so doing we approve ourselves as true believers, saved by God’s grace, not out of works but unto good works, which He hath afore prepared that we should walk in them! This is what the Apostle would have us do. (B. B. Warfield, “The Way of Life,” in Faith and Life, pp., 399-400)

*Impetration: 1. The act of impetrating, or obtaining by petition or entreaty.

** Trow: Archaic to think, believe, or trust.

Where’s Waldo Wednesday: No Getting Around Antinomianism (if you are monergistic)

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Some union advocates don’t like the theological approach of asking what problem a specific doctrine solves (sorry Matt). But since we are in the arena of salvation, which is supposed to be a remedy for sin, inquiries about effects of certain doctrines, whether doctrinal or personal, seems fair.

So as near as I can tell, one of union’s greatest benefits is that it solves the Roman Catholic charge against Protestants of antinomianism, with added benefit of leaving Lutherans alone to bear the charge. (Why we don’t want to stand by our Lutheran brothers and offer aid and encouragement in a time of need is perhaps an indication of the failed Calvinist battle with spitefulness.) With union we receive justification and sanctification simultaneously, distinctly, without confusion or sequence. This means that we receive both the imputed righteousness and the infused righteousness of Christ. Which also means that we are both legally righteous and personally holy. It’s a win-win, again with the added benefit of leaving Lutherans in the dust of antinomianism since they allegedly don’t configure union this way, don’t receive sanctification at the same time, and so really are antinomian.

The added appeal of the union scheme has to do with the synecdoches of justification and sanctification, namely, faith and works (sorry cnh, whoever you are). If justification is used interchangeably with faith and sanctification with good works, which is a common usage both in the creeds and in the experience of believers, then union would appear to solve the antinomian problem, again by insuring that good works accompany justification and faith. In other words, via union, voila, I can look a Roman Catholic in the eye and tell him, when he accuses me of lacking virtue, “pound sand.” I mean to say, warm and fuzzy Calvinist that I am, “Listen fellow, I’m united to Christ. I’m both righteous in God’s sight and I have good works steaming off my body. Go find a Lutheran.”

Where this scheme breaks down, of course, is that justification and sanctification are both by faith alone. We are not justified by faith and sanctified by good works. In point of fact, justification and sanctification are acts, works of God. He is the one who declares a believer righteous. He is the one who quickens so that the believer lives to Christ.

Instead of solving the antinomian problem, then, union only makes the matter worse. By saying that I am both justified and sanctified simultaneously through union with Christ, the incentives for living a holy life virtually disappear. With the justification priority scheme, good works were a fruit and evidence of saving faith, in which case the believer would examine himself to see if he showed signs of grace. But with union, it’s all good – I am both righteous in God’s sight and I am infused with Christ’s righteousness, so conceivably I don’t need to lift a good works finger.

Now to union’s credit, it does help us see more clearly that justification and sanctification are both equally by faith. It also clarifies that sanctification is as gracious as justification because it is all of God through the application of Christ’s redemption by the Holy Spirit.

But I don’t see how it solves the antinomian problem. Justification, sanctification, and union are all about God’s good works. They are not about mine. So how am I, united to Christ, still not standing there next to my Lutheran friend, just as vulnerable to the Roman Catholic kvetch about antinomianism?

Forensic Friday: What Am I Missing?

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I have made this point in the comments on various posts but do not believe I have done so in a post itself. The point is obviously related to the priority of justification to sanctification specifically with regard to the righteousness we possess by faith in Christ.

The doctrine of justification teaches that God accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us and received by faith alone. That would seem to close the case. I no longer fear condemnation – either in this life or the life to come – because by faith in Christ I am now entirely acceptable in God’s sight. With justification comes peace of conscience.

But along comes my unionist friend (I think we’re still friends) and he says that yes, you’re righteous but you still don’t have an infused righteousness. In other words, if I understand correctly, I need to be both justified and sanctified if I am going to avoid condemnation on judgment day.

What I don’t understand is not that sanctification is one of the benefits of the redemption purchased by Christ, or that sanctification is part of salvation, or that those who are justified will also produce fruit and evidence of their saving faith in the form of good works. What I don’t understand is how this construction – you need to be both justified and sanctified – is supposed to be undermine the priority of justification. Here’s why.

In justification I receive all of Christ’s righteousness. In sanctification, I receive only part of his righteousness because in this life, as the Confession of Faith says, sanctification is imperfect and there still abides in me “some remnants of corruption in every part.” (16.2). In other words, sanctification ultimately needs the lift of justification if we are going to cross the threshold of God’s righteous judgment. The righteousness of sanctification being incomplete and imperfect will stand or fall on judgement day depending on whether the righteousness of justification is present – that is, his perfect righteousness is my perfect righteousness.

How this does not make justification prior to sanctification, I cannot fathom. And this intuition is confirmed by chapters on sanctification like Article 24 from the Belgic Confession (“On the Sanctification of Sinners”):

although we do good works we do not base our salvation on them; for we cannot do any work that is not defiled by our flesh and also worthy of punishment. And even if we could point to one, memory of a single sin is enough for God to reject that work.

So we would always be in doubt, tossed back and forth without any certainty, and our poor consciences would be tormented constantly if they did not rest on the merit of the suffering and death of our Savior.

In other words, the pastoral nature of justification and its priority is at the heart of the Reformation. The complete and perfect righteousness of Christ, received by faith alone, is the only reality that will free “the conscience from the fear, dread, and terror of God’s approach, without doing what our first father, Adam, did, who trembled as he tried to cover himself with fig leaves” (Belgic Confession, Art. 23). We don’t look to sanctification in the same way that we do to justification. If we did we would live a life of fear because we know that our personal righteousness is imperfect and incomplete in this life.

Am I clueless?

Where’s Waldo Wednesday: Has WTS Been Liberated from Its Westminster Captivity?

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This post from a professor at Regent University’s School of Divinity deserves more interaction for what it says about evangelicalism. But for now the following excerpt is worth pondering for ongoing considerations about union with Christ. What is particularly noteworthy, from this oldlifer’s perspective, is how much WTS during the era of union hegemony, has actually embraced many of the qualities to which this charismatic blogger calls evangelicals more generally:

So, if the “New Calvinism” becomes a way of recovering the Reformed emphasis on conversion as an experientially-driven encounter and this, in turn, allows for the on-going role of the charismatic, then I am all for it. Such emphases will allow for greater continuity between Reformed and Wesleyan branches of the evangelical movement rather than continually reviving the antagonism of Old Princeton/Westminster. It is time that evangelicalism, and particularly its Reformed wing, freed itself from its Westminster captivity and begin to recover the notion that the gospel is the wonder-working power of God to alter the interior landscape of the heart, to heal diseases, to liberate from all forms of sin, and to usher in the gifts of the kingdom. When juridical models dominate, their emphasis on legal exchanges occurring in a heavenly court obscures the living reality that regeneration, sanctification, and the charismatic life are. Let the renewal begin.

Biblical counseling at WTS has the concern for the “interior landscape of the heart” covered, the word and deed model of ministry promoted by Tim Keller suggests ways in which Presbyterians pursue the wonder-working power of God in liberating people “from all forms of sin,” and the elevation of union in WTS soteriology has put regeneration and sanctification on a par with the forensic element in salvation. In fact, the emphasis on union, with its concomitant stress on the resurrection and the work of the Holy Spirit in the renovation of the human heart, should warm the spirit-filled soul of this Regent professor. Still, I wonder if he needs to replace his Rolodex on neo-evangelicalism with the Blackberry on contemporary Presbyterianism.

Forensic Friday: How Sinful Women become Righteous

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Briefly put, then, one key problem with denying a priority of justification to sanctification is that it makes sanctification something other than what it is. The very character and identity of the Christian life are at stake. As Calvin has stated, when discussing the importance of justification, “For unless you first of all grasp what your relationship to God is, and the nature of his judgment concerning you, you have neither a foundation on which to establish your salvation nor one on which to build piety toward God.” There is such a thing as the moral life for the non-justified, non-Christian person. He is constantly confronted by God’s law (whether in nature or in Scripture) and everything he does is in anticipation of a judgment to come. His moral life can be nothing other than a striving by his own efforts to be right with God. For the Christian, the moral life is radically different. In his justification, the Christian has already passed through the judgment of God. He pursues holiness not in order to be right with God, but as a response to God’s gracious declaration that he already is right with him.

Justification is thus decisive for sanctification and Christian ethics. All the work of the Holy Spirit’s sanctification in a person presupposes that he has been justified once and for all and that he exists as one who is right before God. Hence, it is only a justified person, never a condemned person, who is sanctified. People progress in their Christian lives as those who are justified. But the reverse is not the case. People are not justified as those who are sanctified—instead, Scripture is clear that it is the ungodly who are justified (e.g., Rom. 4:5). There is a relationship between the blessings of justification and sanctification. This relationship cannot be reversed. Justification has priority to sanctification in this sense. Again, as the OPC justification report states: “While justification is the necessary prerequisite of the process of sanctification, that process is not the necessary prerequisite of justification. It is true to say that one must be justified in order to be sanctified; but it is untrue to say that one must be sanctified in order to be justified.”

Consider the sorts of evidence drawn from Luke 7:47 and Galatians 5:13 presented in the OPC justification report. In Luke 7:47, Jesus says about the sinful woman: “Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” The very character of her love, that sanctified expression of the Christian life, was shaped by her identity as a forgiven, justified person. Her love was proof that she had been forgiven. If such love was possible apart from the reality of forgiveness, then Jesus’ words do not make sense. In Galatians 5:13, Paul writes: “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” Paul’s appeal to the Christian’s freedom here is crucial. In the previous chapters of Galatians, Paul has argued that through justification (and adoption) by faith a person is no longer imprisoned under the law, no longer a slave, no longer a child of the slave woman, no longer seeking to be justified by law. Thanks to our justification in Christ there is freedom. It is this freedom, according to Paul, that is the foundation for our love. We love as those who have been freed through our justification. Both Calvin and Luther spoke eloquently on this point. Thus, Paul and Jesus make the same point: the reality of justification is the foundation for the sanctified Christian life.

A couple of other Pauline verses along the same lines are also worth considering briefly. Romans 6:14 appears in the midst of Paul’s discussion of our sanctification, of the reality of our death to sin. He tells us that sin should not reign in our bodies and that we should offer up our members as instruments of righteousness. Then in 6:14 Paul writes: “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” For Paul, being “under the law” means being condemned by the law as a covenant of works (see Rom. 3:19; and also Gal. 4:21 and surrounding context). Because of justification a Christian is no longer condemned and hence is not under the law but under grace. In Romans 6:14, then, Paul makes justification, the state of being no longer under the law, the reason and explanation why sin no longer has dominion over us. Sin has no dominion over us because we are not under the law. Romans 7:6 is similar: “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” Once again we can see the same themes as in Romans 6 and in Galatians 3-5. We have been released from under the law, liberated from captivity—this is the reality of justification. But the purpose or result of this justification (hōoste) is the sanctified Christian life: the new life of the Spirit. These verses in Romans may be especially helpful for the present discussion in light of the fact that Paul has much to say about our union with Christ in Romans 6-7. This raises a point worth emphasizing: union with Christ and the priority of justification to sanctification are not competing doctrines, but complementary doctrines. (W. Robert Godfrey and David VanDrunen, “Response to Mark Garcia’s Review of Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry)

Where's Waldo Wednesday

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Chapter 12 – Faith in the Holy Ghost
Our faith and its assurance do not proceed from flesh and blood, that is to say, from natural powers within us, but are the inspiration of the Holy Ghost; whom we confess to be God, equal with the Father and with his Son, who sanctifies us, and brings us into all truth by his own working, without whom we should remain forever enemies to God and ignorant of his Son, Christ Jesus. For by nature we are so dead, blind, and perverse, that neither can we feel when we are pricked, see the light when it shines, nor assent to the will of God when it is revealed, unless the Spirit of the Lord Jesus quicken that which is dead, remove the darkness from our minds, and bow our stubborn hearts to the obedience of his blessed will. And so, as we confess that God the Father created us when we were not, as his Son our Lord Jesus redeemed us when we were enemies to him, so also do we confess that the Holy Ghost does sanctify and regenerate us, without respect to any merit proceeding from us, be it before or after our regeneration. To put this even more plainly; as we willingly disclaim any honor and glory from our own creation and redemption, so do we willingly also for our regeneration and sanctification; for by ourselves we are not capable of thinking one good thought, but he who has begun the work in us alone continues us in it, to the praise and glory of his undeserved grace.

Chapter 13 – The Cause of Good Works
The cause of good works, we confess, is not our free will, but the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, who dwells in our hearts by true faith, brings forth such works as God has prepared for us to walk in. For we most boldly affirm that it is blasphemy to say that Christ abides in the hearts of those in whom is no spirit of sanctification. Therefore we do not hesitate to affirm that murderers, oppressors, cruel persecutors, adulterers, filthy persons, idolaters, drunkards, thieves, and all workers of iniquity, have neither true faith nor anything of the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, so long as they obstinately continue in wickedness. For as soon as the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, whom God’s chosen children receive by true faith, takes possession of the heart of any man, so soon does he regenerate and renew him, so that he begins to hate what before he loved, and to love what he hated before. Thence comes that continual battle which is between the flesh and Spirit in God’s children, while the flesh and the natural man, being corrupt, lust for things pleasant and delightful to themselves, are envious in adversity and proud in prosperity, and every moment prone and ready to offend the majesty of God. But the Spirit of God, who bears witness to our spirit that we are the sons of God, makes us resist filthy pleasures and groan in God’s presence for deliverance from this bondage of corruption, and finally to triumph over sin so that it does not reign in our mortal bodies. Other men do not share this conflict since they do not have God’s Spirit, but they readily follow and obey sin and feel no regrets, since they act as the devil and their corrupt nature urge. But the sons of God fight against sin; sob and mourn when they find themselves tempted to do evil; and, if they fall, rise again with earnest and unfeigned repentance. They do these things, not by their own power, but by the power of the Lord Jesus, apart from whom they can do nothing. (The Scottish Confession, 1560)