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.