On Justification and Sanctification

This is an exam essay I wrote for a class at Covenant Seminary, Christ and Salvation. It was written in about 2hrs and without sources, so please forgive any typos or other minor errors. 

I. What is justification/sanctification?

Justification

One of the primary issues in Scripture is the asymmetry between the transcendence of God and the finitude of human beings – exacerbated by humans’ willful rebellion against and disobedience towards God with respect to not only his laws but also his covenantal relationship with us. God does not respond to this problem by utterly destroying humanity; in his grace he makes a way for salvation through Christ our Lord. 

            Justification is defined in the Westminster Shorter Catechism as an act of God’s free grace wherein he pardons our sin and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, received by faith alone (WSC 33). This is no mere dogmatic formulation – it has real Scriptural warrant. Paul speaks at length about the issue of justification in two of his letters, Galatians and Romans. In Romans, Paul makes clear that all people are in need of justification: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3.23). He follows this up immediately with the incredible news that human beings are “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Rom 3.24-25). Here we see that the language of the Shorter Catechism is directly lifted from Scripture; justification is accomplished in Christ, and applied to believers as a gift, received by faith. Justification is thoroughly extra nos– it comes from outside of us – and this is the only way we could be reconciled to God. This is a scandalous gift; as Paul later points out in Romans 4.5, this gift is not fitting, it goes to the ungodly, apart from any work on our part. 

            Galatians is a tightly-woven explanation of these themes under different circumstances, but Paul’s words in chapter 3 are particularly trenchant for our purposes: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Gal 3.13). Christ is the one who justifies by taking on the punishment of the law in our place. This comes on the heels of Paul’s earlier argument that all who rely on works of the law – deeds done in presumption upon God’s favor, with the expectation that eternal life can be earned – are under a curse (Gal 3.10). In Galatians Paul makes it abundantly clear that justification is an external accomplishment of Christ that is applied to believers by the Spirit.

Sanctification

            What Paul also makes abundantly clear in Galatians is that this free gift of grace that redeems us from the curse of the law is not a gift that can be received and subsequently presumed upon. Rather, we respond in thankfulness to God for the gift of justification by walking in the Spirit: “If we live by the Spirit” – if we have been made alive by the Spirit in Christ’s death and resurrection on our behalf – “let us also walk by the Spirit” – continuing to live in humble reliance upon and faith in the one who has justified the ungodly and who enables us to live unto God (cf. Gal 5.25-6.10). 

The Westminster Shorter Catechism explains that sanctification is the work of God’s free grace whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness (WSC 35). The Heidelberg Catechism also helpfully articulates this definition in its very format; the first part is titled “Sin and Misery”; the second, “Deliverance”; the third, “Gratitude”. Sanctification is what occurs in this third section; believers who have been justified freely by God’s gift of grace now live out of gratitude to God in the power of the Spirit. This is not, as some have argued, “scratching God’s back” since he “scratched” ours; justification is not dependent on our nascent ability to live righteously. Rather, sanctification is, as the Shorter Catechism makes clear in the use of “work” in its definition, a progressive development in which we are more and more enabled to live according to the purpose for which we were created as image bearers of God.

II. What are the primary differences and key similarities between justification and sanctification?

The wording of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is helpful in distinguishing the ways in which justification and sanctification are both different and similar. The first difference has already been alluded to; the first word defining each doctrine exhibits an important chronological difference. Justification is an act; a once-for-all action performed by God. Sanctification is a work; a gradual process by which believers are enabled by the Spirit to mortify sin and vivify righteousness. Justification can be recognized as occurring for all people at a specific point in history: Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. Sanctification has a more subjective flavor to it – C.S. Lewis notes this somewhere when he discusses the difference of two people’s moral maturities: the one might seem more righteous but has actually only progressed little; the other seems comparatively wicked but has in fact been radically transformed by the sanctifying work of Christ. Of justification it can be said “it is finished”; of sanctification we can only note the starting point.  

Yet both are free gifts of grace. The Catechism makes it clear that neither justification nor sanctification is anything accomplished by human beings, but both are fully the work and act of God. Both come from outside of us, as utter gift. It cannot be said that justification is something God does while sanctification is what we do – to do so would be to contradict Paul’s words in Galatian 5 and 6. Indeed, the pattern of many of Paul’s letters suggests that he does not think of justification and sanctification as “God’s work” and “our work”; even in his distinctions between so-called indicatives and imperatives, he assumes the full sovereignty and goodness of God to command what he wills and give what he commands.

III. Response to Common Objections

            A common objection to the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone as it relates to sanctification is that making an organic connection between the two (as I have just done) is logically incoherent. The argument goes that if one is freely justified apart from one’s merit, there is no reason or impetus to do anything other than become a total moral monster. If justification has been accomplished for me, and I have eternal “fire insurance”, then what is to keep me from acting in wanton wickedness? Is justification by faith alone inextricably linked to antinomianism?

            A helpful paradigm in response to this objection is the exodus. In the book of Exodus, particularly in chapter 15’s Song of the Sea and chapter 20’s Ten Commandments, but also earlier in chapters 7-12, God is shown to deliver the people of Israel for the purpose of worship: “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness” (Ex 7.16). The deliverance of the people was not merely so that they could go about their business as free people (in the libertarian sense), but so that they could worship YHWH. Freedom was achieved for the sake of worship, deliverance for devotion. It would be unthinkable that the Israelites would be rescued from slavery in Egypt only to each wander off on her/his own without any instruction or purpose whatsoever.

            Paul echoes this sentiment in Galatians 5.1: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” And again, in 5.13: “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.” For Paul, slavery to sin, to the flesh, is what we have been rescued from in Christ, and we need not go back, as the Israelites often wanted to return to Egypt. This line of thinking pervades Paul’s thought: “[Christ] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col 1.13). Because of this deliverance – justification by grace through faith – we are freed fromslavery to sin and forlove and service. We imitate Christ, who emptied himself and took the form of a slave (Phil 2), and we do so for the sake of our brother or sister. They are, as John Webster says, God’s vocation for us. Justification is the kind of gift that cannot but result in endless thanksgiving; by the Spirit that thanksgiving is multiplied and begins to transform us more and more into the likeness of Christ.

            An opposite problem some have is that justification and sanctification are fused together – sanctification becomes an extension of justification, and justification only becomes possible once one has been sufficiently sanctified. This is what Luther was at pains to refute in The Freedom of a Christian; one is not justified by faith formed by love(faith which has as its source an infused grace which makes the believer worthy of justification and his/her works righteous), but by faith working through love – that is, faith which expresses itself in love for neighbor. 

            This conflation of justification and sanctification is fundamentally a misunderstanding of the biblical categories of act and work, as discussed above. Justification sola fideis a one-time act of God, not a process by which believers are able to justify themselves. Sanctification is a gracious work of God, an organically related but necessarily distinguished process which has as its goal not the final vindication of the believer (“they were truly worthy after all”) but their glorification. At the end of our lives, we will not be as holy as we should be, but in the world to come we will be made holier than we ever could be.