Justification and Sanctification (revised 11.02.2010)

We believe in justification by faith only, and therefore distinguish the judicial process of being declared righteous in the Court of God (justification) from that process by which we begin to be made righteous (sanctification).  This is different from the medieval and pre-Reformational conception that justification is sanctification.  In that medieval concept, justification and sanctification could never be separated, but the assurance of final justification was not possible, because sanctification appears to be so variable and imperfect.

Now, the danger for those making a distinction between justification and sanctification is that the two ideas may "wander off from one another," so that justification and sanctification are achieved by radically different methods, with radically different philosophies of life lying behind them.  To put it crassly, one can begin to think that justification is achieved by faith only in the Gospel -- not by doing anything at all --  but that sanctification is achieved by an arduous process of self-improvement under the Law.  I express this crassly because one will hardly ever see it put so blatantly.  I say it in this extreme fashion, in order to show what I mean by saying that justification -- resting in Christ -- can be made to differ so much from sanctification -- a life of labor, that theological and practical confusion is brought into the Christian life.  How can you rest and labor at the same time?  These things must be reconciled.

Advocating a reconciliation is not a new idea.  The history of theology since the Reformation is littered with attempts to do this, but no consensus has been achieved.  As a starting point, however, it's clear that we need to keep justification and sanctification in union with one another, but distinguished.  As a familiar example, we speak of the union of the two natures of Christ in one Person, the divine Second Person who has taken on the attributes of manhood.  As such, the two natures are tightly unified under a single Person, but at the same time the natures (not the Person) are distinguished, so that Christ remains a single Person, yet fully God and fully Man.  So, in our doctrine of justification and sanctification, we need to keep these two elements tightly unified under the heading of salvation by grace, even though we continue to distinguish the judicial acceptation of our persons from the infusion of grace into our persons.

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Why is it that in the medieval scheme the variability and poverty of our faith and works implies that we cannot have assurance in this life concerning our justification or final perseverance unto acceptance by God, whereas in some Reformed (actually, Puritan) versions of the doctrine of assurance our mortification of sin and our good works are precisely supposed to be the major evidence to us that our position in Christ is secure, and that we have been truly justified (by faith only)?

Put another way, how could it ever be that those who believe sin indwells believers ineradicably in this life (Protestants) could ever receive assurance of justification from the quality of their combined faith and works, when those who believe in perfectibility in this life (Romanists) cannot have any assurance on the same basis?  How can those who see themselves as "worse" believers than Romanists have any assurance based on performance, when even Romanists confess that they cannot?

I'm reading the great Puritan theologian John Owen's treatise On the Mortification of Sin in Believers.1  The treatise is full of many valuable bits of teaching concerning sin and repentance.  However, these bits are gerrymandered together with other material to enforce a virtually unendurable demand for perfection in repentance and holy walking.  It is "spiritually" Arminian,* triumphalistic and perfectionistic.  As a result I cannot tell that anyone who takes really, really seriously what Owen describes as the truly sanctified life could ever consider himself to be anything but a "second class" Christian at best, if indeed he considered himself to be a Christian at all.  Owen's perfectionism is often fit only to produce despair in poor saints.

Then, shall it be well with men, when they have an equal respect to all God's commandments.  God will justify us from our sins, but he will not justify the least sin in us (p. 125).

I can't fathom what Owen thinks of himself.  He never speaks in the first person about his own depravity.

On the other hand, I see John Calvin speaking quite otherwise in the Institutes 2:

Therefore, God does not, as many stupidly believe, once for all reckon to us as righteousness that forgiveness of sins concerning which we have spoken, in order that, having obtained pardon for our past life, we may afterward seek righteousness in the law;  this would be only to lead us into false hope, to laugh at us, and mock us.  For since no perfection can come to us so long as we are clothed in this flesh, and the law moreover announces death and judgment to all who do not maintain perfect righteousness in the works, it will always have grounds for accusing and condemning us unless, on the contrary, God's mercy counters it, and by continual forgiveness of sins repeatedly acquits us (Vol 1, p 777).

Calvin also somewhere says that when a believer compares the righteousness he thinks he has to the ungodliness he knows he has, that he cannot gain any assurance from his works that he knows the Lord at all.  He must only rely on acceptance with God by faith alone, and can only gain his assurance from that knowledge of his acceptance which he has apart from his works.  Seeing God work in our lives, and having assurance from that, says Calvin, is something that we might see in retrospect, and will know it to be something we ourselves are not the cause of.  But, this assurance of God's intervention in our lives to produce righteousness is not the primary evidence of our justification and assurance today.

The spiritual "smell" and teaching of Owen and Calvin could not be further apart.

Here is a quote from the mystical (contemplative, medieval, Romanist) standpoint that is relevant to this:   
My comments in [square brackets] and my underlines

At this point I would return to the reason for the close correspondences between these traditions [he means the Contemplative and the Puritan].  Insofar as I can see, they are due to something deliberate in the Reformed (especially the Puritan) tradition's efforts to reform the church more fully; namely, a return to the medieval contemplative mainstream to recover insight concerning sanctification.  The Puritans differed from the medieval contemplatives chiefly in the ambitiousness of their plans.  Where contemplatives tried to make saints of those in monasteries, the Puritans tried to make saints of everybody.  Here the Puritans forgot one of their basic tenets -- the fallenness of humanity -- which precludes such optimism.  The contemplatives were more realistic.  Only those who really want to and are willing to surrender themselves fully can become saints.  Coercion will never produce the kind of holy obedience God requires.3

It is interesting, in view of the supposed allegiance of the Puritans to a thoroughgoing doctrine of human depravity, that the contemplative in this quotation can accuse the Puritans (so ironically) of not taking the depth of human depravity among the believers very seriously.4

Any believer seriously troubled by sin must have had his very faith called into question by Owen's doctrine, or any like it.  Owen regards most so-called Christians with a jaundiced and disrespectful eye.  Since any mature believer sees his ingrained depravity even more deeply than an immature believer, it is hard to understand how even a mature believer could feel right.  This doctrine of sanctification would likely (and probably has historically) created churches full of sorrowing and doubting believers -- not what is seen in the New Testament.

Owen's doctrine of sanctification strangely overshadows the doctrine of justification, assurance and free unmerited grace found in the Gospel.  It is as if justification and sanctification have separate trajectories, and operate on separate principles:  That is, the work of the Holy Spirit which produces regeneration, repentance, faith and real union with Christ, fully by grace through faith alone, will not sanctify a believer according to substantially these same principles.  It truly must be the case that the work of the Spirit in the Gospel is the foundation of sanctification!  But, to Owen this is not subjectively the case in a believer's life.  The believer must operate by substantially different spiritual principles for justification than he does for sanctification.  This indicates theological and spiritual poverty in Owen's doctrine of justification and its consequences.  He thinks that justification "fixes" your legal problem with God, but does not begin to produce sanctification on the same gracious principles.  Justification and sanctification thus have wandered off on separate courses.  The objective and felt grace of the gospel, producing the love of God (and thereby the hatred of sin), has vanished away as the engine of the spiritual life.

1 This public domain text may be found in Kapic and Taylor, ed., Overcoming Sin and Temptation, Crossway Books, 2006, pp. 41-139.

2 McNeil, ed., Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, Westminster John Knox Press, 1960.

3 Donald Alexander, ed., Christian Spirituality -- Five Views of Sanctification, article by: E. Glenn Hinson, A Contemplative Response to the Reformed View, p. 93.

4 I suggest that Owen's doctrine of the anthropology of believers includes a redefinition of sin to be only those heart or external actions to which the will does not assent.  This would reinterpret his writing on mortification in order to put it into more practical terms.  But, this more "practical" doctrine is just the doctrine of the hated "Papists."  Concupiscence is not sin, etc.  Virtual perfectionism is possible.  This, in turn, could point in the direction of some flavor of Arminianism, or more likely, the Neonomianism of Richard Baxter or the doctrine of Bp. Jeremy Taylor.

* The reason for using the term "armininian" is explained in the post at the following URL: 
http://christocentry.blogspot.com/2010/11/voluntarism-and-irresistible-grace.html.  There is a well-known Arminianism concerning the doctrine of predestination.  But, here I refer to parallels in the doctrine of faith, and of volitional sanctification.