SANCTIFICATION-JUSTIFICATION-CONTRASTED
Justification
is being declared righteous. Sanctification is being made
righteous – being conformed to the image of Christ. Justification is our position
before God. Sanctification is our practice. You don’t practice
justification! It happens once for all,
upon conversion. Justification is objective – Christ’s work for us.
Sanctification is subjective – Christ’s work within us. Justification is
immediate and complete upon conversion. You will never be more justified
than you are the first moment you trust in the Person and finished work of
Christ. Sanctification is a process. You will be more sanctified as you
continue in grace-motivated obedience.
The Cross Centered Life, 2002, Sovereign
Grace Ministries, p. 32-22. Used by permission of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.
Excerpts may not be reproduced without prior written consent of Multnomah
Publishers, Inc.
Justification
is being declared righteous. Sanctification is being made righteous.
Justification is objective and a unilateral act of God; it relates to
our position before God. Sanctification is subjective and a process in
which we are daily involved; it relates to our practice before God.
Justification is complete, total, and immediate at the moment of
conversion. Sanctification is progressive, beginning at the moment we
are converted and continuing until the moment we go to be with the Lord. These
two doctrines are distinct, yet inseparable, for God never justifies without
also sanctifying.
C.J Mahaney
Pastoral Leadership for Manhood and
Womanhood, ed. Wayne Grudem and Dennis Rainey, Crossway, 2002, p. 193-194.
Sanctification
and justification are both gifts from God and expressions of His grace. Though
they are each distinct aspects of salvation, they can never be separated. God
never grants justification without also giving sanctification at the same time.
Jerry Bridges
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p.
106. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights
reserved.
Do we realize
that if we truly understand the doctrine of justification by faith we have
already grasped the essence and the nerve of the New Testament teaching about
holiness and sanctification? Have we realized that to be justified by faith
guarantees our sanctification, and that therefore we must never think of sanctification as a separate and subsequent
experience?
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Romans: The New Man, Zondervan, www.zondervan.com, 1974, p. 190.
Sanctification
is costly (Lk. 14:25-33)
Justification
is instantaneous (Jn. 3:8)
Sanctification
is a life-long process (Jn. 8:31)
Justification
is by faith (Eph. 2:8)
Sanctification
is by faithfulness (1 Cor. 4:2)
Justification
is not of works (Eph. 2:9)
Sanctification
is of works (Eph. 2:10)
Justification
involves Christ’s love for me (Jn. 3:16)
Sanctification
involves my love for Christ (1 Jn. 4:19)
Justification
concerns Christ’s righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21)
Sanctification
concerns my righteousness (Lk. 14:25-33)
Justification
involves my position in Christ (Col. 2:11-14)
Sanctification
involves my practice (Col. 3:1-11)
Justification
considers what God has done (1 Cor. 15:3-4)
Sanctification
considers what I am doing (Lk. 14:25-33)
Justification
is God’s commitment to me (1 Jn. 5:9-13)
Sanctification
is my commitment to God (Jn. 14:15)
Justification
requires obedience to one command: to believe the Gospel (Ac. 6:7)
Sanctification
requires obedience to all of Christ’s commands (Matt. 28:19-20)
Justification
focuses on the cross which Jesus took up once and for all (1 Cor. 1:18)
Sanctification
focuses on the cross which I am to take up daily (Lk. 9:53)
Justification
is finished at the moment of faith (Jn. 5:24)
Sanctification
is not finished until I go to be with the Lord (1 Cor. 9:24-27)
Author Unknown
What is
sanctification?... Regeneration is the new birth, sanctification is the growth that necessarily results
from it. Justification is God’s declaration that a believing sinner is righteous
because of the merits of Christ imputed to him. Sanctification is the believer
leaving the courtroom where God has once and for all time declared him
righteous, and immediately beginning the process whereby God’s Spirit enables
him to increasingly conform to Christ’s righteousness, both inwardly and
outwardly... We may say that sanctification has nothing to do with regeneration
or justification, and yet it has everything to do with demonstrating that one
has experienced them.
What role does
sanctification play in salvation? © 9Marks.
Website: www.9Marks.org.
Email: info@9marks.org.
Toll Free: (888) 543-1030. Used by Permission.
Just as our
justification is from God, so our sanctification is from God, but unlike our
justification, which is monergistic work, in sanctification God calls us to
work together with Him to mature as Christians. As Christians we can never say
to God: “The reason I still sin, or the reason I am not maturing as quickly as
I would like, is because you have not given me enough grace.”
Burk Parsons
Assured by God, P&R, 2006, p. 29. Used by Permission.
You
cannot take Christ for justification unless you take Him for sanctification.
Think of the sinner coming to Christ and saying, “I do not want to be holy;” “I
do not want to be saved from sin;” “I would like to be saved in my sins;” “Do
not sanctify me now, but justify me now.” What would be the answer? Could he be
accepted by God? You can no more separate justification from sanctification
than you can separate the circulation of the blood from the inhalation of the
air. Breathing and circulation are two different things, but you cannot have
the one without the other; they go together, and they constitute one life. So
you have justification and sanctification; they go together, and they
constitute one life. If there was ever one who attempted to receive Christ with
justification and not with sanctification, he missed it, thank God! He was no
more justified than he was sanctified.
A.A. Hodge
Evangelical Theology.
The steamship
whose machinery is broken may be brought into port and made fast to the dock.
She is safe, but not sound. Repairs may last a long time. Christ designs to
make us both safe and sound. Justification gives the first – safety;
sanctification gives the second – soundness.
A.H. Strong
Systematic
Theology, 1886, p. 869.
It is absurd
to imagine that God should justify a people and not sanctify them,
He should justify a people whom He could not glorify.
Thomas Watson
A Puritan Golden Treasury,
compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 141.
If you do not
put a difference between justification wrought by the Man Christ without, and
sanctification wrought by the Spirit of Christ within…you are not able to
divide the word aright; but contrariwise, you corrupt the word of God.
John Bunyan
A Puritan Golden Treasury,
compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 162.
It is crucial…that we not confuse or combine justification and
sanctification. Confusing them will, in the end, undermine the gospel, and turn
justification by faith into justification by performance.
John Piper
Faith Alone and the Fight for Joy
taken from When the Darkness Will Not Lift by John Piper, 2006, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton
Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. p.
18.
Those who have been justified are now being sanctified; those who have no
experience of present sanctification have no reason to suppose they have been
justified.
F.F.
Bruce
Romans – Tyndale New Testament Commentaries,
Eerdmans, www.eerdmans.com, 1998, p.
135.
Christ “for us” is our justification
(2Co 5:21). “Christ in us, and we in Christ,” is our holiness. The former is
the external substitution; the latter, the internal energy or operation, taking
its rise from the former, yet not to be confounded with it or substituted for
it.
Horatius Bonar
The Everlasting Righteousness, 1873.
Moreover,
the Scriptures nowhere teach us that faith sanctifies us in the same sense and
in the same manner that faith justifies us! Justifying faith is a grace that “worketh not,” but simply trusts, rests, and leans on Christ
(Rom. 4:5). Sanctifying faith is a grace of which the very life is action: it “worketh by love,” and, like a mainspring, moves the whole
inward man (Gal. 5:6).
J.C. Ryle
Holiness.
Sanctification
is a gift just as justification is (a double grace, or duplex gratia, as Calvin
called it). Both are the gift of God, ours by virtue of union with Christ. Both
are found in Christ alone. Both are necessary for salvation – justification
being the root and sanctification being the fruit. As is
often said: faith alone justifies, but the faith that justifies is never alone.
So we must never separate justification and sanctification. The former can’t
help but produce the latter, and the latter must flow from the former. And yet
we should not be afraid to talk about justification in a different way than we
talk about sanctification. One calls us to rest; the other to fight. One
reckons us righteous; the other makes us righteous. One allows for no increase
or degrees; the other expects progress and growth. One is a declaration of God
about us, the other a work of God in us.
Kevin DeYoung
The
Gospel Coalition – The full series of posts can be found here: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/.