Let's begin this session, before we get started, with a prayer asking for the Lord's blessing. Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, we thank and praise you for your grace and your amazing mercy and kindness toward us in our Lord Jesus Christ, of which we have heard a great deal already at this conference. We praise you, O Father, for the way in which, through your servant John Calvin in the 16th century, With others, you made known again in the church and restored to the church a faithful preaching and teaching of the gospel of your grace toward your people in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray your blessing now on this session as we reflect upon the teaching of the scriptures regarding the double benefit of the saving work of Christ that becomes ours through faith, in the way in which Calvin, as a teacher of the church, understood the teaching of your word, and we pray that it may be a profitable study and reflection for each of us. Your blessing, we pray, on this conference and all of its activities. May it also prove to be a benefit to each one of us and also to the churches of which we are members. Hear our prayer, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Now I'm not going to do what Dr. Thomas did, and that is change the character of my presentation. And so I have to tell you the bad news at the outset is we come down from the mountaintop of a magnificent and glorious exposition of a well-known and beautiful passage in the Word of God in Romans 8 to something that in the program is called a scholarly address. I don't know who it was among the speakers yesterday, I think it perhaps was Dr. Ligon Duncan who referred to something on the order of a professorial academic nature, and that wasn't a commendation, it wasn't a a word spoken in praise of such things. Well, I hope my presentation is not unduly professorial or unduly academic, but it is going to be, I hope, in the proper sense of the word, scholarly. And I'm not going to try to preach a sermon. I'm not going to try to do an exposition of a particular passage of Scripture. This is a conference where we're focusing on John Calvin, and my assignment is to call your attention to the way in which Calvin I think in a masterful way addresses a question that really has been of perennial interest in the Christian church generally, but certainly to the churches of the Reformation since the 16th century, and that is how to understand the relation of the two great, as Calvin understands them, benefits or gifts of God's grace toward the people who belong to Jesus Christ through faith, as faith is worked in our hearts by the Holy Spirit through the gospel. And those benefits are what Calvin often terms the duplex gratia dei, or the two-fold grace of God. Now I have to be very careful when I address a topic like this because I wrote my dissertation on this topic. I recently had a book published on this topic and I've written some other things relating to this topic and so time can very quickly get away from me and I often say to my students, Calvin's goal in his writing was lucid brevity. He often achieved it. In my case, sometimes occasionally I'm lucid, seldom am I brief. So the clock, the watch has to come out and we have to make sure we get done what we need to do. But what I'm focusing on then is how does Calvin, particularly in his institutes as well as in his commentaries and sermons, how does he address the question specifically of how the two-fold grace, the grace of our God and Jesus Christ for justification, relates to the grace of sanctification. Now I have to make a little note here, and if you recall something in Dr. From Greenville Piper's address, you may remember that Calvin uses a little unusual language, at least by the later tradition of Calvinists in terms of the ordo salutis. He doesn't speak commonly of justification as one of the two benefits of our union with Christ through faith. and sanctification, which is the more traditional language of later Calvinism. He'll often use, rather than the terminology of sanctification, the terminology of regeneration. Sometimes he uses it very broadly. sometimes more narrowly, but he'll often use that term in a way that seems odd to us as a kind of synonym for repentance, another term he frequently uses, or conversion, and also sanctification. Now in my presentation, I'm going to, for the sake of shorthand, use the more traditional language justification and sanctification, though we'll have reason to look again at why Calvin uses the kind of language that he does in just a moment. But I'm not going to deal with this entire subject that's too big for us to do in just a session of an hour. And incidentally, I take scholarly address and workshop to include the possibility, if we finish before 4.30, if you have questions, that we can engage in a little bit of a discussion after I've presented my prepared remarks. But I'm not going to deal with the subject in toto. I'm going to deal more narrowly with the specific question of how Calvin understands the interrelation or the connection between what he terms justification and what we'll just term for the sake of discussion sanctification. And in particular zero in on something that many readers of Calvin have observed and that is rather strikingly or oddly Though Calvin says that justification is the main hinge of the Christian religion, Though he follows Luther in many respects in his understanding that at the heart and core of the gospel of God's grace in our Lord Jesus Christ is the promise of acceptance with God, of free forgiveness or justification, he nonetheless, though he calls it the first in regeneration or sanctification, the second of these graces, in his institutes, He does something rather surprising. He treats, unlike the later Calvinist tradition, he treats the second benefit, sanctification, before he treats the first, justification. And that has led students of Calvin to a whole variety of very different answers as to what's going on here. They range from, well Calvin is really fundamentally differing here from Luther. Calvin's the theologian of sanctification. Luther's the theologian of justification. Or Calvin at this point is suggesting that the grace of justification is not ours, not only apart from the reality of our being sanctified by the Spirit, but he's actually guilty by virtue of this reversal of the sequence of implying that justifying faith, which is a working faith, justifies by virtue. what it produces or by virtue of the fact that it's a working faith and that would compromise in a very radical way the Reformation insistence that the scriptures teach that were justified by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of the work of Christ alone. And I could give you a whole variety of other interpretations as well. It's been a for a long time throughout the history of the study of Calvin's theology, something of a puzzle, something of a question. How are we to understand and what is the significance of the fact that Calvin takes up sanctification, the second of the benefits of God's grace toward us in Christ before he treats justification the first. So that's going to be our focus, and I'm going to proceed with my presentation in three steps. I'd like to start with just a quick review of what Calvin means, say a little more about this twofold grace of God, and of how Calvin in a very general way understands the distinction between justification on the one hand, sanctification on the other, as well as their interrelation. And then the second step that I'm going to take is I'm going to use a debate that has taken place on the pages of a journal, the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, between two scholars whom I don't really know personally, and that's not so important, I'm just using them as a sort of foil. One of them has the name of Thomas Winger, and the other the name Marcus Johnson. I know Marcus Johnson teaches at Moody, of all places, in Chicago. But they've rather vigorously engaged each other on the question why this odd order and sequence recently on the pages of Jets. And I'll use them as a way into what I'll suggest to you is the best way of of answering this question. How does Calvin understand the interrelation of justification and sanctification? First of all, just a quick review of what Calvin means by the twofold grace of God. And here you need to remember a little bit of what might be called the architecture or the structure of Calvin's institutes. You know that Calvin's Institutes is broken into, at least in its later editions, four books. It follows broadly the outline of the Apostles' Creed. Book one deals with God the Father as the Creator, the Almighty Maker of all things. He deals with the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of Revelation. general, special, and a number of other issues are creation, after God's image, and the like. It sets a basic creational framework under the first article of the Creed, against which the remainder of Calvin's theology in the Institutes is set out. Book two deals with God the Son and his work as the mediator of our redemption. There he deals with the fall into sin, our human inability, our condition as wholly depraved, to use the language of later Calvinism, sinners. He deals with the fact that we are in Adam, all of us, not only guilty but sinfully corrupted and incapable and incompetent of doing anything to save ourselves. and that God has in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the comprehensive work of Christ as our mediator done all that is necessary to restore us to favor and fellowship with God and ultimately intends through Christ to bring us to glory. So that's book two, God, the Son, and our redemption. Book three introduces what really is preoccupying Calvin in by far the largest section of his institutes. Dr. Pipe is exactly right. It's not accidental. I think it was Warfield who said, well, Calvin is the theologian of the Holy Spirit because all of books three and book four are a broad description based on scripture in the light of Christian tradition and in conformity to the creedal symbols of the church. Calvin articulates the way in which the Holy Spirit, whom he terms in a nice, lovely phrase, the minister the servant of Christ's liberality. I always say to my students, there you have a description of the office of the Spirit better than any I've read in, I think, the history of Christian theology, though I've obviously not read all Christian theologians, but maybe someone's done better than that. But it's the work of the Spirit to take all that is Christ's, and through the Word and by the Spirit's use of the Word together with the sacraments, the means of grace, within the communio, or the communion of the Church, bring us into life communion with Christ and to impart to us all the benefits of God's grace and his saving purpose in Christ such that they become ours. This is very important to our topic. At the outset of book three Calvin says if all that Christ had done In the words of Dr. Thomas on that little preposition, hupere, in our stead and in our place, if everything Christ has done as mediator, described in book two of the Institutes, based on scripture, if all of that were to remain outside of us, extra nobis, and we had no part in it, That is, we were not so joined to Christ as to participate in Him and enjoy saving communion with Him and become beneficiaries of His work as mediator. It would be well nigh, to use the English rendering of Calvin's language, it would be well nigh useless. It would be of no benefit to us. So the entirety of books three and four of the Institutes are an extended description of the person and the office of the Holy Spirit as the one who, from the Father and the Son, imparts to us by the means of grace that are given to the church. That's book four, which incidentally, Dr. Duncan's quite right. One of the important contributions Calvinism can make to the evangelical church is a restoration of a comprehensive understanding and appreciation for Christ is pleased to dwell and to give himself and communicate his benefits to his people through the ministry of the church. and not apart from the church. But for our purpose, what's particularly significant is at the outset of Book 3, Calvin describes the work of the Spirit then as the one who ministers Christ's mediatorial work on our behalf, imparts the benefits of that work to us. He describes that in terms of the theme of union with Christ. The Spirit is, and I think Dr. Piper put that quote on the board this morning from the first chapter in Book 3, where Calvin takes this up directly, he describes the Spirit as the bond or the one through whom and by whom we are united to Christ and become partaker of all his benefits. By the way, I like Dr. Piper's method there, showing some of the echoes in Reformed confessions of the influence of Calvin's teaching. You'll see that in the Heidelberg Catechism, for example, in Lord's Day 21. What do you believe concerning the Holy Spirit? Well, he's true and eternal God, and he makes me partaker of Christ and all his benefits. That's a very biblical, but also Calvinian way of putting things. And at this point, Calvin says, Those benefits are principally two. And let me just quote for your benefit where he says this in Book 3, Chapter 3, Section 1. He said, let me sum these up. Christ was given to us by God's generosity to be grasped and possessed by us in faith. By the way, the principal work of the Spirit is through the Word together with the sacrament to bring us to faith, trust, and confidence in the gospel promise and a knowledge of God's saving work toward us in Jesus Christ. By partaking of Him, that is Christ, Calvin goes on, we principally receive a double grace, a duplicum gratia, Namely, that being reconciled to God through Christ's blamelessness, we may have in heaven, instead of a judge, a gracious Father. He's talking there about the benefit of free, as he terms it, justification. And secondly, that sanctified by Christ's Spirit, we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life. So what Calvin is telling us at this point is the work of Christ becomes ours. We come to have part in it as the Holy Spirit through the gospel brings us to faith and we by faith are on the one hand justified And on the other, sanctified. Those are the two principal graces. Incidentally, I've read people on Calvin who make quite a point of the fact that the word is two-fold grace, singular. not two graces. That's a little bit of an exaggerated reading of the point since Calvin will use terms like gifts or benefits. He will use plural forms of the noun to refer to the two benefits, the double grace of justification and sanctification. And I'll come back to that, it might seem to you a sort of a small point at this juncture, but it is of some significance in terms of appreciating Calvin's position. But now let me just say something very quickly about each of these graces, we'll use the plural noun. Now this is sort of Catechism 101, so I shouldn't spend too much time here, but I hope you all understand what Calvin regards to be the biblical grace in our Lord Jesus Christ of what he loves to term, he always puts the word free in front of it, free justification. It has to do with, and you can't really do better than his definition at chapter 11, section 1 in book 3. This is the way he puts it. He is said to be justified in God's sight, who is reckoned righteous in God's judgment. and has been accepted on account of his righteousness, that is, Christ's righteousness. On the contrary, justified by faith is he who excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it appears in God's sight, not as a sinner, but as a righteous man. Therefore, we explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us in his favor as righteous men, and we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ's righteousness. Now if I were to paraphrase Calvin's point in defining justification, I would put it something like this. Calvin is telling us that the act, and notice this too is language I overheard in Dr. Piper's address that I think is useful and appropriate, the grace of justification is a distinct act of God's grace where he granting and imputing to us the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. which I think Dr. Thomas was correct when he alluded to some debates in recent discussion. I'd like to get into those. Maybe you want to ask a question after my presentation. Whether Calvin thought that the righteousness of Christ imputed for our justification includes what later theologians called both the active and the passive obedience of Jesus Christ. The short answer to that question is read the next issue of the Reformed or the Mid-America Journal of Theology. I have a lengthy essay on that question. I think the answer is yes. though he doesn't use the terminology of the later tradition. What's important to recognize here is that justification is an act of God as our judge. It occurs, to use Calvin's language, in foro divino, which is technical language, for in the divine court, you know, there's something we call popularly the court of public opinion. Some of us, if we're married, have the court of our spouse's opinion to contend with. And we oftentimes think that what in foro humano, that is, what in the court of human opinion is being said about me, really matters. Well, the doctrine of justification is a doctrine that tells us that so far as sinners in Adam are concerned, there are no other kinds of human beings, The one court where what is said about us that ultimately matters is the court of heaven. What does God, the Creator and Lord of all creation and of all men to whom we must give an account and before whom, quorum Deo, we all ultimately stand, not only now but in the day of judgment, will stand. What is my reputation? What happens in a court of law? The judge renders a verdict. He pronounces sentence. Innocent. Guilty. In the glory of the Reformation and Calvin could not praise Luther enough in God's providence as one who had restored this good news to the church. The good news of the doctrine of free justification is that I am in and on account of the perfection of the righteousness of another, our Lord Jesus Christ, I am reputed by God to be righteous. One of the things I always say to my students is that the doctrine of justification is typically understated. to mean merely that my sins are remitted. God does not hold me accountable as guilty for the things I've done or left undone, done amiss or left undone. That's not the fullness of the grace of justification. If you listen to Calvin's definition, he's very emphatic. It's not only the remission of sins, but also the imputation of Christ's righteousness such that I appear in God's sight not only as not a sinner, But did you notice the language? He uses it twice in that paragraph. But as a righteous man, I am reputed in free justification, received by faith alone, on account of the work of Christ alone, which is completely sufficient to its purpose. I am by God regarded as not only innocent, in the sense of not having committed any sin, but as clothed with the righteousness of Christ, as acceptable to God, and as pleasing to God, as is God's own Son, in whom I have a part, with whose righteousness I am party." So the grace of free justification is a definitive act that declares that I have God no longer as righteous judge who condemns, but he's become, for the sake of Christ's work and righteousness, a merciful father who pardons my sins and reckons me, regards me, to be acceptable in his sight, righteous. That's the grace of free justification. Now Calvin argues that together with that grace, there is another grace. That's not the whole of the gospel. Incidentally, if I don't have a chance to say it anywhere else, I can throw it in here. I do think there's a difference between Calvin and Luther. I think there's greater biblical balance in Calvin than Luther on this point. A Lutheran is not entirely displeased if you say the whole of the gospel and the good news of God's grace toward and in us is that we are acceptable and forgiven, justified. Calvinists can't say that because the same God who for the sake of Christ justifies by the Spirit of Christ also sanctifies. There is, in addition to the grace of justification in the instance of all who are united to Christ by faith, by the working of the Holy Spirit, who gives us a part in all that is ours in Christ. Incidentally, one of Calvin's great and favorite texts is 1 Corinthians 1.30. Christ is not only given to us for righteousness, he's also given to us for sanctification. So the grace of justification is always accompanied, invariably, necessarily, joined, linked, connected, inseparable from the grace of sanctification. You can't, if I may allude to a more recent discussion among some evangelicals in North America, some of you may be familiar with a debate a decade or so ago, it sort of arose within a dispensational context of what was called non-lordship salvation teaching. which amounted in theological terms to the notion that a person could be genuinely through faith united to Christ, forgiven, justified, but not yet have Christ as their or his or her Lord. So you could, in theological terms, be justified, but not yet begun the process of saying that's not possible in terms of Calvin, at least, understanding of the gospel. Christ is given to us as an entire and full and complete Redeemer. One of the ways Calvin expresses that is in terms of the doctrine of Christ's threefold office. Christ is not only our prophet, He's not only the priest who makes sacrifice and intercedes on our behalf, but he's also the king who, by the scepter of his word through the Spirit, writes his law upon our hearts and subdues our hearts to new obedience. So you can no more sever sanctification from justification than you could separate or sever the offices of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. Nor could you separate sanctification from justification. Any more, says Calvin, than you could separate Christ from his spirit, who is the spirit of sanctification. But the important thing to notice in terms of his understanding of sanctification, if justification is a distinct act that definitively declares the good news and the happy verdict that we are before God's judgment regarded as innocent, sanctification, just in theological shorthand for Calvin, is that work of the Spirit that commences more narrowly as Dr. Piper suggested with what in later theological terms was called regeneration or the giving of the new life to an otherwise dead sinner, whence from that fountain springs the fullness of the life of the Christian. Calvin doesn't use the language with that kind of later careful theological distinction. He, as I say, will much more commonly simply use these terms as synonyms. And I think, incidentally, there's something very significant in that. By the way, those of you who are familiar with Belgic Confession, Article 24, know that it speaks of our being regenerated by faith. And that causes some later Reformed theologians some consternation. It's really speaking the way Calvin is speaking, in the comprehensive sense of the word, work of the Spirit in the renewal of our lives as we are being subdued by the Spirit and Word of Christ to new obedience in accordance with God's commandments. It's not talking about regeneration in the later sense of an ordo salutis in the narrow sense of the giving of the principle of new life to believers. But one of the things that I think is an advantage of this language is it reminds us of something that we easily forget, though theoretically we know it. And that is, it sort of comes into our thinking that, well, the grace of justification, that's all about what Christ has done, and I need only receive it by the empty hand of faith alone. Sanctification, that's where I come in. God's done his work for us in Christ, for our justification, but sanctification, that's something that calls upon the sinner, the justified sinner, to be now sanctifying themselves. Well, that's not quite the way we should understand it. It is true that we are engaged and our hearts being subdued, willingly respond to God, our wills being renewed, embrace God's law, and so on. We're not treated like stocks or blocks. We understand that. But for Calvin, the importance of reminding ourselves of the language of regeneration as a synonym for repentance and for, as well, sanctification is that it tells us the author of our sanctification is also Christ. This too is grace and belongs to the gospel. We are saved by grace. And what is it to be saved? It's to be not only justified, it's also to be sanctified. He puts it this way, Christ imparts the spirit of regeneration to us in order that he may renew us within and that a new life may then follow the renewal of mind and heart. For if the function of giving repentance belongs to Christ, it follows that it is not something that has been put in the power of man. And since it is truly something of a wonderful reformation, which makes us new creatures, restores the image of God in us, transfers us from the slavery of sin to the obedience of righteousness, men will no more convert themselves than to create themselves. There too you have an echo in the confessions. Think of Lord's Day 31. I hope I have the right Lord's Day now. It's the transitional Lord's Day in the third part of the Heidelberg Catechism. It's coming to my mind here. Why then must we still... Is it 31? 32. I thought already 31 has to do with the discipline and so on. So 32, it asks the question, well, forsaved by grace and paraphrased, why must we then still do good works? And at the heart of the answer is because Christ also renews us Notice who is doing the renewing? Even the Christian life of gratitude is born of grace. That too is grace. So that what I'm suggesting to you is that when we speak of a two-fold grace, the language is very important. In both cases we're talking about what God gives, grants. for the sake of the work of Christ and by the Spirit of Christ to those who are Christ's, who are united to Christ by faith. Well, I have to draw things to a halt here and move to my second step. What I'm doing is just laying out for you, as quickly as I can, what we mean by the twofold grace of God. Maybe I should add this one additional note, and that is Calvin is often fond of using the formulation of the ancient creed of Chalcedon in 451, that the two natures of the one person of Christ are distinguishable but not separable by virtue of the union of person. And Calvin will say the grace of justification is to be distinguished, necessarily so, do not confuse them, with the grace of sanctification. but they may never be separated. So he uses the Christological language of Chalcedon as a kind of an analogy for getting at the question of how the grace of justification relates to the grace of sanctification. Now my second step has to do with this debate. And I'll simplify the debate since we don't have time for all of the complexities. We don't want to be too scholarly here at this late hour as our wits are slowly seeping into unconsciousness. Here's how the debate goes, just to make it sort of as dramatic as I can. On the one hand, you have those like the writer I mentioned, Thomas Winger. who argue that we have to be very careful not to make too much of the fact that Calvin in the Institutes treats sanctification before justification. Because Calvin actually regards justification as first in order, and sanctification to follow after and upon to be based in some sense or grounded in the grace of justification. You can say it's impossible to be sanctified without prior justification in a way that it's not possible to say it's impossible to be sanctified without or to be justified without a prior sanctification. There's an order between them. One comes before the other. And Calvin's decision to treat sanctification before justification in the Institutes has nothing whatsoever to do with any theological priority. It's what Winger calls, and he's correct in this because Calvin does use this terminology, Calvin decides to follow that order as an order of teaching. not as an ordo salutis in the later sense of Calvinism where you would speak of justification before sanctification. So what Wenger is arguing is don't over play or interpret that order, that peculiar sequence in Calvin's Institutes. It doesn't go to the substance of his position as to the relative order of these two graces, and it certainly doesn't distinguish Calvin as having a different view than the view of later Calvinists. who in their ordo, you know if you take up a book of Reformed theology, typically it'll be conversion, faith and repentance, justification, perhaps adoption, sanctification, perseverance, glorification, something on that order. So you see the sequence, justification, sanctification. Well, Wenger's position is Calvin doesn't, by virtue of starting with union with Christ and then treating sanctification before justification, treat these two graces as though they were indifferent as to their ordering. The other party to the debate, Marcus Johnson, argues that, indeed, that is the significance of Calvin's decision to treat sanctification before just faith. Calvin's position is different. It has a different accent or a little different kind of emphasis from that of the later Calvinists. It's a matter, to use language he uses, of indifference to Calvin, whether we speak of justification before sanctification or sanctification before justification. He uses the word, they're coordinate. So rather than if you had a board and you drew a line which represents the believer's participation in Christ's work, which would, in a linear way, have first justification, then sanctification, Wenger's position is that you should sort of draw the ordo in Calvin, if there is even such a thing, under the broad canopy of union with Christ, you would have a two-threaded, you might say, cord intertwined. sort of in a double helix, would they call that if anyone's a geometry sort of person here, so that there's no relative ordering or significance to the relation. Justification neither grounds sanctification nor does sanctification follow justification. in a more extreme expression of Marcus Johnson's position, and I believe that too was referenced by Dr. Piper when he talked about some go so far as to argue that unlike later Calvinists who have two distinct benefits, Calvin really is suggesting that there's one great reality of redemption, namely union with Christ, and which has distinct facets or aspects, one of which is justification, the other of which is sanctification, but they're really ultimately one reality, not two distinct, plural noun, graces. Now, I don't know whether I've made clear to you what the point of the discussion there is, but let me give you my answer to that question in terms of how I understand Calvin's decision in the Institutes to treat sanctification before justification. In a sense, my response is that both of these fellows, both Thomas Wenger and Marcus Johnson, tend to over-argue their case, or a different way of putting it is they both make good points and that various places they miss each other, and I don't think either one gives us a really satisfactory answer to our question. So let me give you my answer, what I think is the satisfactory answer. I think it's interesting that if you read the two passages in Calvin's Institutes, in Chapter 3 of Book 3, and then again in Chapter 11, when he first takes up sanctification, then he takes up justification. He makes, at both points, an interesting observation. He said, if it were possible, I would deal with both of them at the same time, because they're simultaneous. You're not to think of a person as being justified, and then only very briefly later, Do they start becoming sanctified? He uses the little adverb simul, simultaneous, repeatedly. So Calvin is saying if it were possible, if I were able to be in two places at one time rhetorically, that were possible, I would talk about both of these graces so as to not in any way suggest that one can have Christ for the one and not for the other. In the second of the two passages, chapter 11, he says, I've really reversed the proper sequence. Because after all, I acknowledge that justification is the main hinge of the Christian religion. This is the first and cardinal tenet of the gospel. This is the true dialectic or logic of the Christian religion, that I have acceptance with God through faith alone on the basis of the work of Christ alone. That's at the core of what the gospel promises. So I really ought to have treated justification first because it is first. and sanctification second because it is the second benefit. He uses that terminology. So why does he do what he does? Well here's something I think many interpreters miss. He does what he does precisely I think it's actually a rhetorical and a pastoral device on Calvin's part. On the one hand, he's trying to answer the Roman Catholic critic who's saying, you Protestants teach this doctrine of free justification, but the life of the believer is not your concern, and so it's a kind of cheap grace. He wants to answer that objection, that you can have Christ for justification without your life being renewed by the working of the Holy Spirit. So it's a kind of a rhetorical device. But what is often missed is that Calvin actually treats sanctification first precisely to make a Reformation point. Because once he says you understand the kind of works that the Spirit produces in the believer joined to Christ by faith who is being sanctified, you will understand that they're not the kind of words such as could justify. because they always fall short of perfection. Calvin is not a perfectionist. He didn't teach a doctrine of Christian perfection. We're perfected in the life which is to come in our glorification. So what he's saying is to rid and to show how it is that no one could possibly be justified on the basis of their progress in holiness. I started there. And he also adds, I also start there, so that no one would think that the faith which alone justifies is ever devoid of and unproductive, fruitful, in the way of works done from true faith. What I'm getting at is it's inappropriate to take the sequence of Calvin's treatment in the Institutes to suggest a theological order. in terms of the two benefits. If Calvin has a theological order, it is actually, I think appropriately, that we're justified through union with Christ, we're justified by faith, and simultaneously sanctified. But that's the order in which you want to say it. As a matter of fact, one of the things Calvin does repeatedly in this section in the Institutes, as well as in his writings elsewhere, is remind us why it's so important that the sanctification of the believer through faith union with Christ flow out of the reality of their having been also freely justified. Because, he says, otherwise the works of believers will become corrupted by a mercenary spirit. They'll begin to think that they need to, in some way, by the degree to which they live obediently before God, contribute something. Or, in some way, attain or obtain God's favor by their good works. And the obedience of the Christian is a free obedience. It's born out of a glad-hearted awareness that for the sake of Christ, I am in right standing with God, acceptable to Him. Therefore, my works are not done to curry favor, not done in order to justify myself, but they're the works performed in a spirit of grateful devotion. for all that God has given to me in Jesus Christ. And one of the things that I found in studying this question, because there's been a lot of debate about it in recent theological disputes, is that Calvin actually does anticipate some of the language of later Calvinists when he talks about the order or the dispensation or the way God administers His grace to us, though it be twofold, justification and sanctification, in Jesus Christ. And he does use the language, actually, of sanctification as an effectus or a fructus, a fruit or a consequence, of our free justification. Now you may not, some people may not like that fact that Calvin does this but he does in fact do it and I think it's very close to and it underscores what I would argue and that is though Calvin treats these two graces as simultaneously given, inseparable, belonging to what results from our faith union with Jesus Christ, he is also sensitive to a statement of their interrelation that doesn't simply coordinate them, but orders them. First justification, then sanctification. And maybe I can make that more clear by referring you again to Belgic Confession, Article 24. If you read Belgic Confession, I won't read it for you this afternoon, but if you read that article, which is dealing with the question of whether we can be justified without being sanctified or by a fruitless and unproductive faith. The answer is definitely not. That's not possible. It does say that the faith that justifies does so, faith alone, before, in the English translation, we do any good works. Now what's the nature of the before there? The nature of the before there is not a temporal before, that is, as I said earlier, you could be justified and only just a bit later begin to be sanctified, but it's a theological before. The free grace of justification frames the Christian life, as I put it, as a life of grateful, thankful devotion for what we've received by God's grace in Christ. Now I have to draw my comments to a close. I made some optimistic comment about questions earlier. So how are we going to get questions in when we have seven minutes and I'm not yet finished? You might be asking, well, what's the significance of even discussing this question in a more practical and pastoral way? And let me just mention, I'll just identify them and not elaborate. That'll get me in two minutes finished, so there's five minutes for questions. The benefits pastorally and theologically, it seems to me, of understanding what Calvin is getting at and the way he relates justification to sanctification are the following. First of all, if you do not clearly distinguish justification and sanctification, Calvin says, you will inevitably diminish God's grace. The doctrine of free justification shall we say, distinguish clearly from the reality of the work of the Spirit in sanctification. is necessary to retain all of the glory. The only basis now and always for my acceptance before God is the work of Christ on my behalf. Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. He puts it this way, why do we attempt to our great harm to filch from the Lord even a particle of the thanks we owe him for his free goodness? And Calvin believes that the doctrine of justification has as one of its principal points of emphasis the preservation of the unimpaired glory of God in the salvation of sinners by grace alone. The second thing is, if you don't properly distinguish these two benefits, You will not only dishonor and diminish God's grace, but you'll at the same time and for the same reason rob yourself of the only sure ground of assurance that a sinner can have in the presence of God, and that is that the work of Christ is sufficient. To have faith, says Calvin, is not to waver, to vary, to be borne up or down, to hesitate, to be held in suspense, finally to despair. Rather, to have faith is to strengthen the mind with constant assurance and perfect confidence to have a place to rest and plant your foot. You see, the point he's making is, if your sanctification in any way insinuates itself into the ground upon which you are acceptable to God, you're going to begin to slip and to slide, to vacillate and eventually fall into despair. As one of the Puritan divines, I think, well puts it, if you look to Christ, peace comes into your heart. If you look to yourself, the dove of peace begins to fly away. The third benefit of the way Calvin handles the relation of these two graces is, I've heard Calvin, or I've heard it said that the downside of the Reformation doctrine of justification is antinomianism. Too much grace leads to too little motivation to do good works. Well, I think Calvin's handling of this subject puts the ax to the root of that tree. It is simply not possible to have Christ in the fullness of His redemptive grace and power by the working of His Spirit without having Him in the way of sanctification. As a speaker I heard recently put it, you may have seen these bumper stickers on cars that say, I'm not perfect, just forgiven. And he suggested that if Calvin were a bumper sticker writer, it would read differently. It would read, I'm not perfect, just forgiven and being renewed. That would be too complicated. It wouldn't be a very good bumper sticker, I realize. But better theology. See, you can't get good theology on bumper stickers. That's the point. The fourth observation or benefit of Calvin's handling of this question is, I think Calvin, and this is a huge question, an issue, I'll just throw it out here, helps us with this whole problem of assurance in the Christian life associated with what sometimes is called the practical syllogism. Calvin's very balanced here. You only have assurance ultimately when you look to Christ by faith and find your rest and confidence in Him and Him alone. But if yours is an unproductive and an unfruitful pretense of the genuine thing, it isn't a faith that works through love, it's a doctrine and practice of free justification and I can live as I please, Assurance of salvation will not flourish in that kind of setting and in that kind of place. So that though we don't found our acceptance with God on our works, we do look and legitimately find confirmation of the genuineness of our faith when we witness the working of the Spirit and in the fruits that faith in our lives produces. And then the last thing that I want to mention, and I alluded to this early and so I'll just throw it out there quickly. If you don't order justification and sanctification the way I've suggested Calvin does, it seems to me the Christian life will always be infected by some measure of self-justification or a mercenary spirit or some kind of an idea that God justifies but it falls to me to finish what God's begun. He's made a good beginning by sanctifying myself. Well I haven't really allowed you much time for any questions. I think it's about down to a minute here. So I'm going to stop there.