Progressive Sanctification & the Assurance of Pardon - 9

     Below is the continued discussion of Forde's article on the Lutheran view of sanctification.

"So it is impossible to put God's unconditional act of justifying sinners for Jesus' sake alone together with our ideas of progress based on conditions. It doesn't work either logically or in the life of faith."

     At least in the reformed camp, sanctification is not a work of man for God, but a work of God for man. Not even the regenerate man who in Christ is, before his glorification, made posse peccatore—who has the possibility to not sin in a given moment—can render to God without grace, the good works for which he has been foreordained. So perhaps it is against another non Reformed theory of sanctification that Forde is arguing, because Reformed theology agrees, “progress [in sanctification] based on conditions” is as improbable as God’s very plan for one’s life coming about by conditions. I believe the correct way to look at the relationship between the transpiring of God’s plan for our lives and our willingness to be guided into that plan by His wisdom is the same as the relationship between prayer and God’s actions, and the relationship between our obedience and the progress of our sanctification. Our “willingness”, prayers, and obedience are means to the ends ordained by God: His plans and our salvation, and He has ordained the means as well.

"So it is always as a totality that unconditional grace attacks sin. That is why total sanctification and justification are in essence the same thing."

     This is where, I guess, my confessionalism shines and my love for historical theology and the weight I think they both should carry for subsequent believers is manifest. I don’t think that there is in any way that we can say that justification and sanctification are “essentially the same thing”. The Protestant Reformers were very careful to distinguish the two: justification as an event in time where the believer is declared righteous before God on the grounds of Christ’s work, and through faith—which is also the gift of God—and sanctification being the process or series of events between justification and glorification. The purpose of Martin Luther pointing this out in the 16^th century was to challenge the Roman Catholic high-sacramentalism and the working out of the doctrine of salvation (specifically justification) to reform from a process wherein the covenant child was baptized, having original sin washed away producing the state of tabula rasa (blank slate), maintaining that state revived in continued cleansing of venial sins through the sacrament of the Eucharist, and finally the believer paying for his remaining sins in Purgatory, to an event which the description thereof was encapsulated in the five “solas”. So for a Lutheran to imply through a confusing statement that justification is perhaps a process is unfortunate. Certainly Forde would consider himself Protestant, even at his description of the differences of justification and sanctification, but denying any difference between justification and sanctification at their essence seems to me to be unhelpful. Even if his motive is altruistic, assuming it is to protect individuals from measuring their progress in grace up against to Law, or using the Law to try to find assurance of their justification by emphasizing the fact that we have been set apart and made holy, acquiring all the righteousness we need to stand before God our Father. But to jettison the idea of any actual warning to the Christian to make sure your calling and election is sure, and to render the New Testament imperatives impotent is not going to protect individuals from legalism, nor does it do justice to the text. Pastor Reggie Kimbro has said that when one finds himself to be a legalist he doesn’t need to remedy the situation by becoming  a little more antinomian, likewise when one finds himself a bit too antinomian the prescription is not to become a little bit more legalistic to balance one’s self. So what is the answer, how do we protect ourselves from falling off the right side of the horse into the error of legalism or falling off the left side into the error of antinomianism? That will be a question to be answered toward the end of the discussion.

     Quotes and comments to be continued...