"Conditional thinking is wedded to the schemes of law and progress characteristics of this age. Sin is understood primarily as misdeed or transgression of such a scheme...The logic would then be that with the help of grace one progressively gains more and more righteousness and thus sins less and less. One strives toward perfection until, theoretically, one would need less and less grace or perhaps finally no more grace at all."
"Whose fault is it if the scheme doesn't work?...Either I have not properly responded to or cooperated with the free divine grace, or most frightening of all, the God of election who presides over such grace has decided, in my case, not to give it."
Again we hear in the above statements the visceral groaning of pastoral concern…to which I most certainly can relate. However, the total relegation of one’s progress in sanctification or growth in Christ to the “scheme of law and progress characteristic only of this age” is far too simple a distinction. Protestants of all shapes and sizes are jealous to separate Law & Gospel in some degree. The idea behind the Reformed view of sanctification through the mortification of sin is not one of conditionality: if I mortify sin, then God gives me more righteousness, but one of imputation as with justification: Christ lived in perfect obedience to the Law, meriting my righteous standing before God and died to pay the debt I merit with sins I commit even after I’ve been justified. So I am at war within myself to do real good, good that is a result of a holy standing before a holy God, not to retroactively merit what God has already done for me in justification but because God has predestined those whom He has justified, to actually do good works.
The term “conditional thinking” can be defined contextually as the idea that, if believers obey God’s Law, then they will be sanctified, thus considered holy. Forde goes on to define sin according to those who promote such a scheme, as the transgression of that if/then system. In my own mind, I agree that if one is lead to believe that they are left to perform in this scenario without the gracious provision of God, then he has been misled. But, like God’s use of means in the regeneration of individuals (Rom. 10) and the means of atonement
Assuming the correctness of the particular view of sanctification which Forde is fighting (which I don’t believe Reformed theology does), that the regenerated person “gains more and more righteousness” thus striving toward a theoretical perfection, I believe Forde is right to surmises that that individual might need less and less grace because of his performance. But this exposes Forde’s presupposition, at least at this point, that free divine grace isn’t the driving factor of the mortification of sin and calls to mind Paul’s words in Romans 6 that we should not sin more and more so that grace may abound more and more, God forbid. The fact is that grace abounds really in the life of a believer whether (in the eyes of man or his own eyes) he is conformed or lacked to be conformed to the Law of God. Grace abounds over a sinner saved by it regardless of the degree of fruit he produces. The most outwardly and inwardly obedient child of God has no more righteousness before Him that the technically worst sinner among the Kingdom. If he is a true convert of Christ, fruit will be produced by the same grace it took to regenerate him, yet the same grace shades him from the wrath of God when he commits sin and the righteousness of Christ that was once imputed to him neither waxes nor wanes but, like light in the universe, is constant—never changing but ever presenting us as sons and daughters, spotless as Christ. Furthermore, certain that Forde would agree that we are not made more and more righteous before God even if we do sin less and less by being more and more conformed to the image of Christ. Our righteousness is really gained at our justification (1 Cor. 6:11), otherwise how could God call us just, and what more righteousness needs to be involved except that of Christ’s which He merited for us in His life? Not withstanding, when we do sin it really does grieve the Spirit in us, thus the picture of war in our members, but there is no war in the unbeliever, just submission and slavery to sin.
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