Imperishable Inheritance

(I asked Nathan Pitch­ford, a fel­low laborer for the Gospel, to write a response to an arti­cle from a Catholic site enti­tled: “Grace: What It Is and What It Does”. This was prompted by a dis­cus­sion on an old arti­cle I wrote on prob­lem­atic Catholic theology.)

From the out­set, I must can­didly con­fess that a thor­ough­go­ing, point-by-point rebut­tal of the posi­tions argued for in the arti­cle above is beyond the scope of my brief response. The posi­tions espoused were hun­dreds of years in the mak­ing, and to unravel every­thing assumed or explic­itly stated would take a rather lengthy vol­ume. And besides, there are already many good, exegetically-sound expla­na­tions of the Reformed views on jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, an excel­lent exam­ple of the for­mer being Oba­diah Grew’s The Lord Our Right­eous­ness; and of the lat­ter, Wal­ter Marshall’s The Gospel Mys­tery of Sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. If any­one is seri­ously want­ing to under­stand the his­toric Protes­tant teach­ing on these impor­tant top­ics, I would point him to these works.

Instead, I only desire two things: first, to point out, in brief, how the arti­cle mis­rep­re­sents the Protes­tant view­point, for the ben­e­fit of any­one want­ing a more accu­rate descrip­tion to con­sider. And sec­ond, to give a brief expla­na­tion of why this view­point is so vital and non-negotiable to us.

Clar­i­fy­ing the Protes­tant Understanding

The arti­cle in ques­tion con­tains such descrip­tions of the Protes­tant teach­ing on jus­ti­fi­ca­tion as the following:

“Sanc­ti­fy­ing grace implies a real trans­for­ma­tion of the soul. Recall that most of the Protes­tant Reform­ers denied that a real trans­for­ma­tion takes place. They said God doesn’t actu­ally wipe away our sins. Our souls don’t become spot­less and holy in them­selves. Instead, they remain cor­rupted, sin­ful, full of sin. God merely throws a cloak over them and treats them as if they were spot­less, know­ing all the while that they’re not.”

“But that isn’t the Catholic view. We believe souls really are cleansed by an infu­sion of the super­nat­ural life. Paul speaks of us as “a new cre­ation” (2 Cor. 5:17), “cre­ated after the like­ness of God in true right­eous­ness and holi­ness” (Eph. 4:24). Of course, we’re still sub­ject to temp­ta­tions to sin; we still suf­fer the effects of Adam’s Fall in that sense (what the­olo­gians call “con­cu­pis­cence”); but God removes the guilt from our souls. We may still have a ten­dency to sin, but God has removed the sins we have, much like a mother might wash the dirt off of a child who has a ten­dency to get dirty again.”

This descrip­tion is sim­ply not accu­rate: the fact is, all respon­si­ble Protes­tant the­olo­gians believe that, at the moment of regen­er­a­tion, God cleanses a sinner’s soul, remov­ing all the guilt and stain of sin. He also trans­forms the sin­ner quite thor­oughly, so that he may be called a new cre­ation, some­one cre­ated anew in the image of Christ, some­one whose day-to-day life will begin to reflect this mon­u­men­tal change by degrees. The prob­lem (from the Catholic point of view) is that these real­i­ties are not prop­erly called ‘jus­ti­fi­ca­tion’ in the Protes­tant sys­tem (or in the scrip­tures, for that mat­ter). They are referred to in such terms as ‘wash­ing,’ ‘regen­er­a­tion,’ and so on. To say that Protestants don't believe in a real transformation of the soul just because this transformation is not called 'justification' is similar to saying they don't believe in bananas simply because they do not call them 'oranges'. Trans­for­ma­tion, cleans­ing, and so on take place in the life of every believer, but those processes are called ‘trans­for­ma­tion’ and ‘cleans­ing,’ not ‘jus­ti­fi­ca­tion,’ which sim­ply does not carry that range of meanings.

So the first prob­lem of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion is sim­ply caused by a con­fu­sion of ter­mi­nol­ogy; but a fur­ther, more sub­stan­tial mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion is also implicit in the descrip­tion under con­sid­er­a­tion. The charge is made that, in the Protes­tant under­stand­ing of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, ‘God merely throws a cloak over them and treats them as if they were spot­less, know­ing all the while that they’re not.’ This is a decep­tive state­ment, because it com­bines ele­ments of the truth with utter false­hood. The fact is, that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is a legal term, used in the tech­ni­cal sense of pass­ing a ver­dict in the court­room. It is also a fact that the image of being cov­ered with Christ’s right­eous­ness, as with a cloak, is a fond metaphor for the New Tes­ta­ment authors. But we must not for­get that it is a metaphor, and we must not make the mis­take of con­fus­ing two dif­fer­ent word pic­tures, with dis­as­trous results. The metaphor of being cov­ered with Christ’s right­eous­ness does not mean that our own guilt is not taken away. It does not mean that we always stay just as dirty under­neath. That is sim­ply not the point of the metaphor. The fact is, that our guilt is really taken away, we are really washed and cleansed under­neath â?? but that’s not all that hap­pens! Not only is our guilt removed, but a pos­i­tive right­eous­ness is given to us. The image of a cloak speaks to this sec­ond part of the twofold exchange that took place on the cross; and to use its nar­row per­spec­tive to deny the first part, that our guilt is actu­ally removed, is a big problem.

And then, it also brings up another prob­lem when we get to the mat­ter of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. If we actu­ally are guilty, then when God passes the ver­dict ‘Not guilty,’ it must just be a ‘pre­tend­ing’. This car­i­ca­ture of Protes­tant the­ol­ogy comes again from a mis­use of nuanced ter­mi­nol­ogy. That we have been cov­ered with Christ’s right­eous­ness does not mean that we have not been cleansed. If it did, God’s ver­dict would be unjust. As it is, he is both just and the jus­ti­fier of the one who believes in Christ.

Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is a court­room ver­dict, indeed; but the all-just Judge is cer­tainly pass­ing the cor­rect ver­dict! He has taken all the steps to ensure that, when a believer stands before him in the court­room, the only right deci­sion that could be made is ‘not guilty!’. He has really taken away all guilt; and he has really pro­vided all nec­es­sary right­eous­ness. He has done both of these things through the cross of Christ. But to say that, because ‘jus­ti­fi­ca­tion’ does not refer to the process of cleans­ing, it there­fore just gives a ver­dict which only pre­tends that the process was car­ried out, is com­pletely unwar­ranted. It is as if a per­son asked if we believed we owned an entire car, and we said, ‘Yes, I believe that.’ ‘But you say that the steer­ing wheel does not con­tain four tires and a motor! A real car has four tires and a motor. You must not believe you own the entire car after all!’ Yes, I own the entire car, but the sim­ple fact is, the steer­ing wheel only speaks to one par­tic­u­lar part of that car. That I refuse to use the term ‘steer­ing wheel’ to refer to four tires and a motor does not mean that I deny the exis­tence of four tires and a motor. In the same way, because I refuse to use the foren­sic term jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to mean ‘trans­for­ma­tion,’ ‘cleans­ing,’ etc., does not mean that I deny the exis­tence of those things. I just pre­fer to call them by their cor­rect names â?? because if I don’t tremen­dous and poten­tially harm­ful con­fu­sion may result.

Pro­ceed­ing on, the arti­cle makes the fur­ther statement:

“The Protes­tant mis­un­der­stand­ing of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion lies in its claim that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is merely a foren­sic (i.e., purely declara­tory) legal dec­la­ra­tion by God that the sin­ner is now “jus­ti­fied.” If you “accept Christ as your per­sonal Lord and Sav­ior,” he declares you jus­ti­fied, though he doesn’t really make you jus­ti­fied or sanc­ti­fied; your soul is in the same state as it was before; but you’re eli­gi­ble for heaven.”

“A per­son is expected there­after to undergo sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion (don’t make the mis­take of think­ing Protes­tants say sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is unim­por­tant), but the degree of sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion achieved is, ulti­mately, imma­te­r­ial to the ques­tion of whether you’ll get to heaven. You will, since you’re jus­ti­fied; and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion as a purely legal dec­la­ra­tion is what counts. Unfor­tu­nately, this scheme is a legal fic­tion. It amounts to God telling an untruth by say­ing the sin­ner has been jus­ti­fied, while all along he knows that the sin­ner is not really jus­ti­fied, but is only cov­ered under the “cloak” of Christ’s right­eous­ness. But, what God declares, he does. “[S]o shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accom­plish that which I pur­pose, and pros­per in the thing for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11). So, when God declares you jus­ti­fied, he makes you jus­ti­fied. Any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that is not woven together with sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion at all.”

We’ve already dis­cussed the prob­lem with call­ing God’s ver­dict a ‘legal fic­tion’ â?? God has made a real­ity, through Christ, what he then declares to be a real­ity. It is not a fic­tion, but a truth­ful ver­dict. But another prob­lem that arises is the non sequitur this arti­cle makes, that since jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is a final and irrev­o­ca­ble ver­dict, there­fore the degree of sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is irrel­e­vant as to whether or not one ‘makes it to heaven’. Again, the truth is to be found, not in deny­ing one or the other truth, but in giv­ing each one its proper place and relationship.

The fact is, that God always sanctifies those whom he justifies. Those who show no sanctification cannot claim justification. Habit­ual sin­ners will not inherit the King­dom, no mat­ter how many aisles they’ve walked down in their lives. The prob­lem comes when one mis­un­der­stands the nature of the neces­sity. Sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is nec­es­sary not as a means to an end, but as part of the end itself. Heaven is heaven because there will be no sin there; and there­fore, peo­ple will be able to fel­low­ship with the God who is too holy to look upon sin. Per­fect sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is the goal, and so it is nec­es­sary for sal­va­tion. But it is not the means of get­ting there. Sup­pose I wanted to go on vaca­tion in Hawaii: a jet would be a nec­es­sary means of get­ting there; but Hawaii itself would be a nec­es­sary ele­ment for the com­ple­tion of my goal. In the work of sal­va­tion, sin­less­ness is a part of ‘Hawaii’. Heaven would not be heaven if sin were there.

Another (more bib­li­cal) illus­tra­tion would be a vine. The goal is grapes; and so, by def­i­n­i­tion, the pres­ence of grapes is nec­es­sary for the goal. But the means is the vital con­nec­tion of the branches to the liv­ing vine. That is how the grapes come about. You could water a branch all day long, but it wouldn’t give you grapes unless there were some nec­es­sary means involved â?? and those means include a con­nec­tion with the vine.

Holi­ness is a nec­es­sary part of sal­va­tion. The pro­duc­tion of the holi­ness is a nec­es­sary part of the jour­ney to heaven. But there is also a neces­sity of means, and these means include regen­er­a­tion, for­give­ness, trans­for­ma­tion, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and in brief, the way in which all of these nec­es­sary things come about â?? union with Christ. If I want to arrive in Hawaii, it’s nec­es­sary that I go there. The going is nec­es­sary for my goal. And if I want to get to heaven, it’s nec­es­sary that I go in the path of holi­ness. The far­ther I go toward Hawaii, the closer I get to it. The far­ther I go toward the land of holi­ness, the closer I get to being prac­ti­cally holy. But I can no more make myself holy with­out the man­i­fold means that God has pro­vided in Christ than I could fly to Hawaii with­out wings, jet engines, fuel, and so on.

Here is one more quotation:

“Most Fun­da­men­tal­ists go on to say that los­ing ground in the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion bat­tle won’t jeop­ar­dize your jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. You might sin worse than you did before “get­ting saved,” but you’ll enter heaven any­way, because you can’t undo your jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, which has noth­ing to do with whether you have super­nat­ural life in your soul”

Again, this is a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion along the lines of say­ing that, if one refuses to call a tire a steer­ing wheel, he must not believe that tires exist. Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is not the impar­ta­tion of spir­i­tual life, but it is a ver­dict which truth­fully pre­sup­poses that spir­i­tual life was in fact imparted. It is impos­si­ble for jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to exist apart from spir­i­tual life or sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion pre­cisely because it is impos­si­ble for God to lie. If one has no sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, then he has not been justified.

The Impor­tance of a Cor­rect Understanding

The error of con­fus­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion with sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is an error that sub­verts the entire gospel. Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion speaks of an actual right­eous­ness that is per­fect and accept­able to God. Sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion speaks of a prac­ti­cal right­eous­ness that nec­es­sar­ily fol­lows the impu­ta­tion of an actual right­eous­ness, and will one day dis­play that actual right­eous­ness fully (in heaven). Justification renders the verdict that Christ's righteousness has been given to us. Sanctification proves the reality of that verdict by working out this freely given righteousness in our own lives. So then, in a fun­da­men­tal sense, the right­eous­ness spo­ken of in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is an exter­nal right­eous­ness. It is some­thing that is given to us. But the right­eous­ness spo­ken of in sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion is an inter­nal right­eous­ness. It is some­thing that is worked in us.

To say that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion depends on the lat­ter kind of right­eous­ness (the kind that is worked in us) puts us in an impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion. Either God is not 100% just, and so he can take an imper­fect right­eous­ness and say, ‘Ok, that’s good enough â?? you weren’t always fully right­eous, but you showed right­eous­ness a good bit of the time, so you’re good enough to fel­low­ship with me.’ Or else, if God is 100% just, then our prac­ti­cal right­eous­ness must be flaw­less and com­plete for him to accept us. If we’ve ever sinned, then we will never be able to stand in God’s pres­ence. So which is it? If we’re trust­ing in the right­eous­ness that God imparts to us, or works out in our daily lives, for our jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, that is for the ver­dict that we are accept­able to him, then are we hop­ing that God is will­ing to over­look our flaws because he’s not that holy after all? Or are we really think­ing that we have no flaws?

You see, our imparted, prac­ti­cal right­eous­ness is nec­es­sary, because God is tak­ing us back to a state of per­fect holi­ness. That’s how we were cre­ated, and that’s where God is tak­ing us again. That’s what sal­va­tion is all about. But before we get there, we’ve all com­mit­ted some ter­ri­ble sins. And guess what â?? God is too holy just to over­look them! He is a right­eous judge, and if the right­eous­ness we hold up to him on judg­ment day is flawed, then we won’t arrive at that des­ti­na­tion of per­fect holi­ness. We’ll be cast into hell, where the flawed right­eous­ness we hoped in receives its just reward. The only way to get to a place of per­fect prac­ti­cal right­eous­ness is to be given a per­fect exter­nal right­eous­ness on judg­ment day. And the only per­son that can give that per­fect right­eous­ness is Jesus â?? because he’s the only per­son who has ever won a per­fect right­eous­ness. If our hope in the court­room is any right­eous­ness that God is work­ing in our daily lives, we will be dis­ap­pointed, because it isn’t per­fect. Our only hope is the right­eous­ness of Christ.

The arti­cle under exam­i­na­tion has the fol­low­ing tragic admission:

“Catholics see it dif­fer­ently. If you sin griev­ously, the super­nat­ural life in your soul dis­ap­pears, since it can’t co-exist with seri­ous sin. You then cease to be jus­ti­fied. If you were to die while unjus­ti­fied, you’d go to hell. But you can become re-justified by hav­ing the super­nat­ural life renewed in your soul, and you can do that by respond­ing to the actual graces God sends you.”

If your jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is indeed con­di­tioned upon the holi­ness being worked out in your daily life, then of course it can dis­ap­pear. In fact, it is an entirely impos­si­ble hope, if God is still com­pletely right­eous and our daily lives are not.

But what a cer­tain hope we have when we trust in Jesus’ right­eous­ness alone for our jus­ti­fi­ca­tion! What a solid rock that can never be moved! We can know that we are accept­able in God’s sight because his right­eous­ness is now ours, and we can know that one day our prac­ti­cal holi­ness will reflect Jesus’ per­fect holi­ness com­pletely. We can know that our final des­ti­na­tion â?? per­fect holi­ness in the pres­ence of God â?? is cer­tain, because we are not the ones get­ting us there â?? the One who has already accom­plished a per­fect right­eous­ness has under­taken to get us there. Jesus said, ‘Every­one who comes unto me, I will not cast out…this is the will of the One who sent me, that of every­one whom he has given to me I should lose noth­ing, but should raise it up in the last day’ (John 6:37–40). If Jesus has promised to lose no one who has truly come to him in faith, who are we to call him a liar, or sug­gest that he is not able to do what he had said? If we are trusting in Jesus' power and righteousness alone, then we have an immovable hope, and a certain future. If we are trusting in any righteousness that God is working in our own souls for a final verdict, then not only is our condemnation possible, it is certain. A wholly right­eous God demands a per­fect right­eous­ness in his court; and that kind of right­eous­ness can only come as a free gift from Christ. Trust in any­thing less’do that dis­honor to the Son of God who freely offers his own per­fect righteousness’and your con­dem­na­tion is certain.