Editor’s Note: The following is the complete chapter as it appeared in R. Scott Clark, ed., Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry: Essays by the Faculty of Westminster Seminary California (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 285–306. In 2021, the publisher returned the publication rights to the copyright holder and the chapter is presented here as a service to the public by the Heidelberg Reformation Association. The material is copyrighted. All Rights Reserved. You are welcome to link to this chapter but you are not entitled to reproduce it in any way without permission of the copyright holder.
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Introduction
Whenever the doctrines of justification and sanctification are to be considered, the instinctive reaction of a Protestant ought to be to draw a distinction between them. This is because the great good news of salvation that is about Jesus Christ and what he has done and the terms on which God will receive sinners who approach him lies at the very point where these two doctrines are to be differentiated. There is but one Savior and one way for a sinner to obtain salvation from him. That way is “through faith alone,” which means not only “simply to thy cross I cling” but also “nothing in my hand I bring”—and that applies to every occasion when God’s mercy is sought through Jesus Christ.
The distinction between justification and sanctification is therefore absolutely crucial. The Christian needs to be reminded of it every bit as much as the non-Christian needs to know of it. And Satan strives
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to make the one forget it and to keep the other in ignorance of it! Its truth should therefore be made clear repeatedly in preaching and pastoral work and especially when it is being blurred—as it is at the present time in both pedobaptist and Baptist circles.1
The object of this essay, however, is to consider how justification and sanctification are to be connected with each other—and that is important too. The distinction between them touches the vitals of how a person becomes a Christian; the connection between them goes to the heart of what is involved in being a Christian, which is another name for living the Christian life. These are core matters in Christianity, and they are hand in glove with each other.
Even so, a notion has been current for some time that they are incompatible. It has been expressed in terms of an emphasis on a free and final justification in this life inevitably cutting the nerve of pursuing Christian holiness with a view to the life to come. This goes back at least to the Roman Catholic and Arminian objections to sola fide (by faith alone) voiced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.2 But the idea has a longer pedigree than that. We may hear an echo of it in the words of the apostle Paul: “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” (Rom 6:1 AV). The idea is therefore almost as old as sola fide itself, but that is not something to trumpet proudly, because both Paul and the Reformers rejected it.3 It is the standard reaction of those who do not understand the truth and power of sola fide. But it survives from generation to generation because, as was said in the seventeenth century, “there is an Arminian scheme of salvation in every unrenewed human heart.”4 For professing Christians therefore to be thinking it or voicing it still is an indication of a powerful misunderstanding and even of a potential defection from orthodox belief.
1. See Norman Shepherd, The Call of Grace (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2000); John Armstrong, “The Obedience of Faith,” in Trust and Obey: Obedience and the Christian (ed. R. C. Sproul and D. Kistler; Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1996), 79–117; and Don B. Garlington, Faith, Obedience, and Perseverance (Tübingen: Mohr, 1994), 96.
2. See John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels, vol. 3 and the Epistles of James and Jude (trans. A. W. Morrison; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 324–26 (on Jude 4). See also Robert Traill, Justification Vindicated (repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2002), 6.
3. Sola fide is explicitly as old as Abraham (Gen 15:6), and an anticipation of it is present in Adam’s renaming of Eve (3:20).
4. Traill, Justification Vindicated, 60.
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As has been hinted, the charge that sola fide (rightly understood) is an obstacle to holiness has been denied, and what follows will demonstrate that at least on the conceptual level. As far as its outworking on the personal and practical level is concerned, two things need to be borne in mind. First, everyone had better be cautious when the matter of personal holiness is under consideration because there is no one, irrespective of his views on this matter, who could not have done better. Second, sinning is not traceable in principle to the truth of sola fide. As Paul said to Peter in Galatians 2:18, “If I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor” (ESV). Sinning is not traceable to any biblical truth but to a misuse or a neglect of it. The fault is always to be laid at one’s own door and not God’s.
The testimony of the Protestant doctrinal standards of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shows an integral connection between justification and sanctification, and they describe it conceptually and experientially. To take just one example, the Westminster Confession of Faith contains the following statement: “Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love” (11.2).
This essay will concentrate more on how these truths connect on the personal than on the doctrinal level because of the terms in which the objection to a strong emphasis on sola fide is cast. It will seek to show that far from its being the case that an emphasis on sola fide is inimical to the pursuit of holiness, the truth is rather the opposite. The truth of sola fide plays no less significant a role in sanctification than it does in a sinner’s acceptance by a holy God. The question to be considered therefore is the following: What role does justification play in sanctification? The answer can be summarized in advance as follows: The realization that one is pardoned and accepted by God on the basis of Christ’s righteousness, without any works of one’s own, motivates and supports one in doing the will of God—as nothing else does or can do.
Two biblical subjects have to be considered in this essay, and care must therefore be taken to ensure that neither is minimized in the interests of the other. That being so, the natural thing to do is to turn
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for help and guidance to a place in the New Testament where both are dealt with. The epistle to the Romans would of course be suitable, but Paul’s epistle to the Galatians will be more helpful because Paul’s burden in writing it was to emphasize sola fide: “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith and not by the works of the law; since by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (2:16).
Given such statements it can therefore be said that if the message of sanctification is going to be shortchanged anywhere in the New Testament because of an emphasis on justification, then Galatians is most likely to be that place. But if, on the other hand, sanctification is also emphasized there—and it is—then the way in which the apostle deals with both justification and sanctification sets a pattern that all who uphold sola scriptura should follow—and a benchmark for all their attempts. This essay will therefore look at how Paul deals with justification and sanctification in Galatians, beginning with the distinction between them and moving on to their correlation.
Distinction between Justification and Sanctification
In 1575 Luther’s Sermons on Galatians appeared in English. In the foreword, the translators gave their readers a useful piece of advice. They urged them to note:
How and in what sence he [Luther] excludeth good works, and how not; how he neglecteth the law & how he magnifieth the law. For as in the case of justifying before God the free promise of the Gospell admitteth no condition but faith onely in Christ Jesu: so in the case of dutifull obedience, Luther here excludeth no good workes, but rather exhorteth thereunto, and that in many places. Thus times and cases discreetly must be distincted.5
5. Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians (trans. Philip S. Watson; repr. London: Clarke, 1961), 11.
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This advice about distinguishing between “times and places” is important for understanding not only Luther but also Paul—and therefore for understanding the mind of God, the Holy Spirit, in Scripture. If only this advice had been followed with a humble spirit, much of the confusion that arose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and that has continued until the present time could have been avoided.
Luther himself cannot be completely exonerated on this account, of course, given his typical broadside against the epistle of James, but his dismissive swat at the “right strawy epistle” should not be made so much of, seeing that he presents and commends its teaching so well in his summary of Paul’s argument in Romans. What his well-known remark was intended to highlight was the difference between the “chief books” of the New Testament (that included Romans and Galatians) and James, and if we are going to err that is by far the safer side to err on. It maintains the distinction between justification and sanctification with which we began, and doing that is basic to correlating them properly.
Over the years, however, a proper balance between James and Paul has not been maintained, with both a contradiction between them and a conflation of them being posited—and sola fide has suffered on both counts. Douglas Moo identifies what is said about the noun faith and the verb justify as causing “the appearance of . . . conflict,” with “their arguments [being] advanced against different errors.”6 These terms provide a focus for considering the distinction between justification and sanctification.
The Noun Faith
It is well known that what James says in the second chapter of his letter about faith and its relationship to works has been set in opposition to what Paul affirms in Romans and Galatians. This has been done so loudly and for so long that any one who is not familiar with the New Testament might well be pardoned for thinking that those men never had the opportunity of talking to each other. That of course
6. Douglas J. Moo, James (Tyndale New Testament Commentary; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988), 100 (emphasis original).
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is not the case. According to the opening chapters of Galatians, they were in each other’s company on two occasions before the Council of Jerusalem, although whether James had written his letter before the first of these is a moot point. What is clear is that they did not disagree with each other.
Both meetings took place in Jerusalem. The first was semiprivate, and we do not know what they spoke about. At the second, the leaders of the Jerusalem church were present and the question of faith and works was discussed. Paul had gone there because “false brothers” from Jerusalem had arrived at the church in Syrian Antioch requiring Gentiles who believed in Jesus to be circumcised—that is, to become Jews or else they would not be saved (Acts 15:2, 5). They required them to keep other laws as well, such as those related to “days and months and seasons and years” (Gal 4:10 ESV), and they falsely claimed to have James’s authorization (2:9). That was openly repudiated later in the council’s letter: “Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions” (Acts 15:24 ESV).
Paul acquainted James, Peter, and John with the message that he had been preaching (Gal 2:2), and Barnabas, a former Levite, and Titus, a Gentile, whom he had taken with him provided the evidence of divine attestation of it. Having heard Paul, they “added nothing” to him (2:6 ESV), that is, they did not ask him to supplement his message of faith in Christ with a requirement to submit to the law. In addition, they made their position crystal clear by not requiring Titus to be circumcised (2:3) and by giving Paul “the right hand of fellowship” (2:9 ESV) in the one-gospel ministry. They were all in agreement that acceptance with God was by means of faith alone in Christ alone, and this was confirmed later at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). Given this history, the idea that Paul and James were at loggerheads should never have arisen.
The misconstruction referred to was corrected in the sixteenth century by Calvin, who writes in his summary of the argument of James that “what seems in the second chapter to be inconsistent with the doctrine of a free justification we shall easily explain in its
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place.”7 John Owen and others did the same in the following century, but the fiction rumbled on and was greatly fueled by higher critics in the nineteenth century.8 It is now claimed that recent New Testament scholarship shows that “properly interpreted, Paul and James are united in their understanding of faith and works and their relationship to justification.”9
When James speaks about “faith alone” (2:24), he is not thinking of Paul’s emphasis at all. What he has in view he identifies as “faith by itself” (2:17 ESV), and he describes it as being akin to the demons’ apprehensive knowledge that there is only one God (2:19). Such faith has knowledge and even some assent (or inability to dissent), but it is a faith destitute of trust. It is not true faith. Over against this, he depicts a faith that is genuine, that has works to manifest its reality. James and Paul are addressing different pastoral situations, and that means that each should be allowed to make his point in a way independent of but complementary to the other.
But that is what has not been happening for many a long day. We have already referred to the way in which James was used to contradict Paul and to cancel out his teaching. Although it would be too bold to declare that this view is no longer being held, it is not the pitch that is being made. Instead a quiet conflation is proceeding in which proper weight is not being given to sola fide when James 2 is being considered, and then that has a knock-on effect with regard to an understanding of both Romans and Galatians. Two examples of this tendency can be offered.
First, in The Call of Grace, Norman Shepherd describes the faith credited to Abraham as “a living and obedient faith.”10 He then uses this definition to explain James 2:21, where Abraham is said to have been “justified by works” in offering Isaac, concluding that justification is by faith plus works. He then carries this over to 2:23 and to the quotation from Genesis 15:6—“Abraham believed God, and it
7. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles (trans. John Owen; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 276.
8. John Owen, The Works of John Owen (repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1966), 5.384–400.
9. Moo, James, 100.
10. Shepherd, Call of Grace, 16.
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was counted to him as righteousness” (ESV)—but Paul interprets this in Romans 4:1–5 as referring to righteousness being reckoned without works being done! By using “living and obedient faith” (or being faithful) as a working definition of faith, Shepherd prevents any distinction between made between faith and works in relation to justification, and that failure impacts justification adversely. It is a distinction that simply must be made.
Second, John Armstrong provides another example of this tendency in an essay that examines Paul’s terse expression the obedience of faith (Rom 1:5).11 He presents but (respectfully) sets aside two interpretations of this succinct (better than “ambiguous”) phrase, which he describes as (a) “the obedience which comes from faith” and (b) “the obedience which is directed towards faith or the faith, or which is faith.”12 Each of these is exegetically possible and in addition has the advantage of leaving room for the distinction between sola fide and works of faith that Paul subsequently makes in Romans on the basis that the first has the moment of conversion in view whereas the second looks to the postconversion life. Armstrong, however, advocates an interpretation that he describes as “a richer and more contextually accurate understanding of the phrase and its use.”13 Quoting Don Garlington, he says that “the obedience of faith” is “both the obedience which consists in faith” and “the obedience which is the product of faith.”14
As has been said, Paul includes more in this letter about the gospel than an account of justification. Consequently, his use of the term faith in Romans has more scope than how it relates to justification. For example, the terse expression with arguably the same intent—namely,
11. Armstrong, “Obedience of Faith.”
12. Armstrong refers to several commentators as advocating one or other of these views: William Hendriksen, Romans 1–8 (New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980); F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963); C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (International Critical Commentary; 2 vols.; Edinburgh: Clark, 1979); idem, Romans: A Shorter Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985); and John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968). He also includes references to Charles Hodge and D. M. Lloyd-Jones.
13. Armstrong, “Obedience of Faith,” 85–86.
14. Garlington, Faith, Obedience, and Perseverance, 96 (emphasis original).
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“from faith to faith” (1:17 AV)—also reminds his addressees that they “bec[a]me obedient from the heart . . . to which [they] were committed” (6:17 ESV), that is, “handed over” by God. The whole of the Christian life is indeed one of “trusting and obeying,” but that does not mean that the term faith means both whenever it is used. Each context must be examined because, as every schoolboy knows, Paul sets them in opposition to each other sometimes. For example, he writes: “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom 4:4–5 ESV). Armstrong’s “richer” interpretation therefore contains the built-in potential of destroying justification by faith without works unless some distinctions are clearly made in relation to God’s justifying declaration.
The Verb Justify
Moving over into the realm of ecclesiastical dogma, mention must be made of the Council of Trent, where the Roman Catholic response to sola fide was formulated. Trent spoke of two justifications, namely “initial” and “continuing,” which it connected with Paul and James respectively. The first was related to faith as assent and to a contrition that is meritorious, and it consisted in a removal of original corruption and the implanting of a principle of love. The second was connected with works wrought (formed) in love, which establishes a righteousness before God.15 This twofold justification was something that the Reformers and Puritans rejected, even though Calvin does have a chapter in his Institutes of the Christian Religion entitled “The Beginning of Justification and Its Continual Progress” (Institutes 3.14). What is in view there is a continuing to believe that one has been justified, and not anything ongoing about the justifying declaration of God or increasing in the state it inaugurates.16
Owen responds to this Roman Catholic construction in a most pointed and effective manner: “This distinction was coined unto no
15. This way of thinking is found in Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd ed.; Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), §2010.
16. We are indebted to W. R. Godfrey for this observation.
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other end but to bring in confusion into the whole doctrine of the gospel. Justification, through the free grace of God, by faith in the blood of Christ, is evacuated by it. Sanctification is turned into a justification and corrupted by making the fruits of it meritorious.”17 He then goes on to record that some Protestants “embraced this distinction . . . although not absolutely.” He accuses them of “sophistical cavills [word games],” and although he acknowledged that they put justification before good works he notes that they spoke of “a continuation of . . . justification . . . an increase of it as to degrees.” He objects strongly whenever and wherever he saw an “inherent righteousness” being regarded as “the cause of or [having] any influence into our justification before God”: “And if they may be allowed to turn sanctification into justification, and to make progress therein, or an increase thereof, either in the root or the fruit, to be a new justification, they may make twenty justifications as well as two for aught I know” (emphasis original). Owen is therefore asserting that there is only one justification. This is an emphasis that needs to be made today because a trend is developing of using the adjectives initial and final with regard to it. This two-part way of speaking about justification is quite alien to the classic Protestant tradition. On what grounds is this done with regard to James and Paul?
In a guarded way Moo presents a case for “initial-final” justification and refers to John Wesley’s doing so.18 He bases his view on an understanding of the verb justify in James 2, which he acknowledges can have one of two senses, both of which are attested in Jewish literature and in the New Testament: the demonstrative sense points to something being validated as just and right, and the declarative sense points to someone being declared by God to be just in his sight. Moo opts for the declarative sense mainly because he regards James as addressing the question “What kind of faith secures righteousness?” and not “How can righteousness be demonstrated?” In answer to his preferred question, works have to be included, but because Moo understands James to be referring to the last judgment and not to a response to the gospel message, any collision with Paul’s teaching
17. Owen, Works, 5.138 (emphasis original).
18. Moo cites Minutes of 1744 in J. Wesley, Works 8.277, as supplying the source of his remark, but the details of his reference are not sufficient to confirm this claim.
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in Romans and Galatians on justification in the present is avoided. Whether this exegesis succeeds in keeping safe and clear all that is important is open to question; in our view it is exegetically unnecessary and potentially dangerous. It also diminishes justification as the final verdict announced ahead of time!
We prefer the demonstrative sense for two reasons. First, nowhere in James 2:14–26 is the verb justify in the active mood. It therefore never has the noun God for a subject; there is nothing here like “God justifies the ungodly” in Romans 4:5, which is plainly declarative. But that of course does not mean that God may not be the unidentified agent of any or all of those passive verbs. Whether he is or is not has to be shown. In our view, in only one place in James 2 must a divine passive be understood and that is in 2:23, where James quotes from Genesis 15:6—the monumental verse that says, “[Abraham] believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (ESV). This establishes a divine imputation of righteousness through believing God’s word about a promised seed and not from doing anything that God says.
Second, and as we have already mentioned, the question James is concerned about is “How can faith be demonstrated?” and not “How can righteousness be demonstrated?”—pace Moo. That is what James begins with in 2:14, and he concentrates on it throughout the passage. When he refers to works he does so by way of demonstrating faith’s reality, whether in time or at the last day. That seems to be the integrative focus of this section. Works “justify” faith just like “wisdom is justified [by] her children” (Matt 11:19 AV). In the same way, Jesus said, “By your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (12:37 ESV).
It is highly significant that our confessional documents do not use the word justification concerning the final judgment. Instead, they speak of “perfection” or of “open acknowledgment and acquittal” (WLC 90). This choice of language makes clear that justification—full, free, and final—takes place in the present world. Spiritual realities cannot last much longer than those terms that express and safeguard them. For all the reasons given, any and every attempt to speak of justification in two stages should be given up.
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Armstrong goes further in connection with his views on “the obedience of faith” when he acknowledges that his “thought about the biblical language of redemption” has changed.19 He wants to use the term vindication rather than justification and to speak of two related “vindications.” In addition, he wishes to dispense with the doctrinal category of “merit”—and not merely with it as a term but also with the idea of a covenant that man has broken and that Christ must keep in order for man to be saved. This strikes a blow not only at the necessity of obedience but also at required righteousness as the condition of salvation. It means revising the terms and concepts that have been used throughout the history of the church in order to speak of redemption—and now is not a good time to be doing that. If this new terminology were to be adopted, the result will be the loss of the finality of justification in the here and now, and with it all the glorious blessings of peace of conscience and assurance of salvation, in spite of Armstrong’s protestations to maintain them. Justification is as “once for all” as atonement is—and it is the launchpad for sanctification.
Correlation of Justification and Sanctification
Given that the distinction between justification and sanctification is vital for a proper interconnection, how should they be properly associated? The apostle Paul makes the statement that bears most relevantly and decisively on our subject: “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal 5:13–14 ESV). In these words he declares that the Christian life is a life of freedom from the law and also a life of “fulfillment of the law.” There is of course no contradiction between those two statements; they are complementary and provide an example of those fine distinctions that are important to make. Each part of this statement is an essential component of genuine Christian living, set out in proper order. Freedom is clearly prior to fulfillment. Legalism is the consequence
19. John Armstrong, “Weekly Messenger,” Reformation and Revival (April 5, 2004).
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of forgetting the first; Antinomianism follows upon the second—and neither is what the Christian life is about.
Each part must therefore be given its proper place and weight. And what is that? The words of the middle portion of 5:13—“only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh”—help in that regard. There is no verb in this clause in the original text. One has to be supplied to convey the sense of the whole, and “use” is the word commonly employed. But that apart, what needs to be noted is that this clause indicates what Christians should not do with the freedom that they have; the clause that follows indicates what they should do with or by means of it. Living the Christian life therefore consists of using gospel liberty appropriately.20 The basic fact—the glorious fact—is that the Christian has freedom from the law and is able to live a life that seeks to fulfil the law. Freedom connects with justification, fulfillment with sanctification.
Freedom from the Law
Before inquiring into the sense in which Christians are free from the law, attention ought first to be given to the stupendous reality of the fact. Paul does this in the opening words of Galatians 5 by using both the noun freedom and the verb set free.21 In addition, he is at such pains to be specific as well as emphatic that he uses the noun bondage, which conceivably might have been left unmentioned, seeing that it is the necessary alternative to freedom. What is more, he follows his ringing assertion with “Now I, Paul say” and then “I testify again.” Strong stuff!
Freedom from what? It is freedom from the law, and although he does not specify this in the opening of Galatians 5, it is borne out by what he has been saying in the preceding chapter (and by the verses that follow 5:1). Paul’s allegory of Abraham’s two wives is constructed around freedom and slavery language, and it is addressed specifically
20. By way of parallel, reference could be made to Eph 4:17–32; 5:8, 15–21, where Paul reminds Christians that they are to live wisely because they have been enlightened. Similarly, the apostle Peter writes: “Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God” (1 Pet 2:16).
21. This is a Hebraism comparable to “dying you will die” (Gen 2:17) and “blessing I will bless” (22:17). It describes fullness as well as certainty.
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to those “who desire to be under law” (4:18 and 5:18). In 5:1 (which is generally read as if it were the last verse of Galatians 4 rather than the opening verse of a new chapter), he describes the slavery as being connected with “a yoke,” which was a synonym for law to so many Jews. In the Council of Jerusalem, Peter referred to the yoke that neither those present nor their forefathers “have been able to bear”—and described an attempt to impose it on believing Gentiles as “putting God to the test” (Acts 15:10 ESV). That matches and explains Paul’s determination in Galatians 2:4 to resist the Judaizers’ demands for circumcision as maintenance of a newfound freedom or as a refusal to be enslaved again in 5:1.
Up to the coming of Christ, Jews had been “held captive under the law” (3:23 ESV) or under its disciplinary function (3:24). Something similar was also true of Gentiles because they were “enslaved to the elementary principles of the world” (4:3 ESV) and to “those that were by nature no gods,” that is, to idols (4:8). Life before Christ was therefore life “under law” for Gentile as well as Jew. There was a universal obligation to obey however much of God’s law that had been made known, by whatever means it had been disclosed, and on pain of awful penalty if it was not fully kept (Rom 1:18–32; 2:14–16; 3:9–20). It was also life without Christ for all who did not believe in the promised deliverer (Gen 3:15). That bondage comprising law, sin, and guilt shapes the freedom that Christ gives all those who believe.
The basis on which this freedom rests, together with believing appreciation of it, is expressed so harmoniously and movingly by Paul: “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:19–20 ESV). Although he uses the first-person singular, Paul intends all Galatians to echo his words, and especially Peter whom he had opposed on account of his inconsistency and insincerity. Galatians 2:19 implies that it is not possible “to live to the law” and “to live to God.” “To live to the law” means having the law front and center, and always as the rule and guide for one’s life, for one’s own obedience as the way to God and blessing. And it is a hard taskmaster (3:24) because it demands total obedience.
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One must therefore die to the law before one can live to God, but how can anyone “die to the law”? Paul tells us that it was “through the law” and by being “co-crucified with Christ.” It was therefore by law and gospel. The law’s shackle was struck off by a believing sight of the one who was thrust through with the Lord’s sword (Zech 13:7)—and that pierced Saul’s heart too. He became Paul, willingly bound to Jesus Christ, who had kept the law and borne the curse for each one of his people. Rejecting himself as no more than “death warmed up” and entrusting himself to the Christ who died, Paul lives by the power of the resurrected Christ who now lives in him, in his flesh. So he lives for the one who loved him and gave himself for him.
This is what becomes actual and personal by the effectual call of the gospel. That is what Galatians 5:13 says: “You were called to freedom, brothers” (ESV). This does not mean that freedom lies in the future as something that it is yet to be possessed. Rather, the cell door swings open by virtue of the call, and the prisoner steps out—and there is no longer any punishment to be faced. He is a “dead man walking” to freedom not execution.
There are three references to this call in Galatians. The first says that it is a call “into the grace of Christ” (1:6 AV), and the second refers to its actualization in the case of Paul (1:15). It therefore joins to the grace that is in Christ and in him alone. The first step a former condemned sinner takes is therefore a step “into Christ.” It is not a step into no-man’s-land. The third refers to the one who does the calling and to its power, its persuasive effect (5:8), namely, God himself. This is what has been designated the effectual call—the Spirit of God takes the word of law and gospel and makes it invincible in the conscience, producing a most willing reception of it. He justifies the ungodly, that is, he pardons the guilty, absolves the condemned, and graciously joins them as they are to Christ in all the fullness of his merit and might (Rom 4:5, 17; 1 Cor 1:9, 26–30; 2 Thess 2:13–14).
Now the all-important question is this: What does this freedom mean for the believer as he thinks about living as a Christian, that is, about sanctification? In what sense is a believer in Jesus Christ free from the law? Because Christ has honored it (Isa 42:21), restoring what he did not take away (Ps 69:4 [MT 69:5]), the believer should
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realize that no obedience is required of him for acceptance with God and that he has no liability to penalty for his disobedience. He is therefore to be free in conscience before God’s law, refusing its right to require any obedience of him or threaten him with damnation if he does not comply—and only because the life of Jesus offered up in death to God is his obedience and curse. This should be so well known that the believer “stands fast” on it (Gal 5:1).
Luther puts this so well, clearly and often, as in this memorable example:
If the law shall presume to creep into thy conscience, see thou play the cunning logician, and make the true division. Give no more to the law than belongeth unto it and say thou: O law, thou wouldest climb up into the kingdom of my conscience, and there reign and reprove it of sin, and wouldest take from me the joy of my heart, which I have by faith in Christ, and drive me to desperation, that I might be without all hope, and utterly perish. This thou dost besides [outside] thine office; keep thyself within thy bounds. . . . I will not suffer thee, so intolerable a tyrant and cruel tormentor to reign in my conscience, for it is the seat and temple of Christ, the Son of God, who is the king of righteousness and peace, and my most sweet saviour and mediator; he shall keep my conscience joyful and quiet in the sound and pure doctrine of the gospel, and in the knowledge of this passive and heavenly righteousness.22
Luther then goes on immediately to say: “When I have this righteousness reigning in my heart, I descend from heaven as the rain making fruitful the earth: that is to say, I come forth into another kingdom, and I do good works, how and whensoever occasion is offered.” And after listing various stations and professions in life he says: “To conclude: whosoever he be that is assuredly that Christ is his righteousness, doth not only cheerfully and gladly work well in his vocation, but also submitteth himself in love.” This means that God’s verdict of “not guilty” echoes in the sinner’s conscience. Believing in Christ, he hears it and is as good as in heaven as a result of it. A legal fiction? Preposterous!
22. Luther, Commentary on Galatians, 28.
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Fulfillment of the Law
Proceeding straight to Galatians 5:14, where the fulfillment of the law is referred to, it should be noted that this is summed up by just one word—“love.” So far, what has been said about the law and the gospel might make it appear as if the good gospel has got rid of the bad law but, of course, it is not that the law is bad but that people are. In that situation, the only good that it can do for them is to show them how guilty and helpless they are and to point them to Jesus Christ so that they may turn from self and sin (i.e., repentance) and turn to trust in Christ (i.e., faith). In doing so, not only do they die to their attempts to keep the law as a way to God, but they also begin to live to God through Christ’s law keeping and curse bearing for them.
Wonder of wonders, the effect of this is that a glad and grateful desire to serve God and neighbor to the glory of our Savior and Lord is generated in the heart. And how can that be done? By love fulfilling the law. Not loving instead of law keeping, but loving to keep the law.
From where does that obedient love that is so essential to sanctification come? It is not native to the unregenerate human heart, because self-love and self-will reign there. The whole life of the sinner is, as Luther says, turned in upon himself. Whatever unbelievers may do is therefore with themselves in view. Even if they try to obey by being religious or moral, it is in order to gain merit and to obligate God. This was the case with Saul of Tarsus, as he himself admitted: “If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ” (Phil 3:4–7 ESV).23
So where does such love come from? It can come only from the bosom of the God who is love. How is it transplanted in the human heart? It is done by the action of the regenerating Spirit, and it surfaces in the conscience as a sinner places faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of
23. Jesus taught the same in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9–14).
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God “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20 ESV). It is therefore inseparably bound up with being justified, as Paul goes on to confess:
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Phil 3:8–11 ESV, emphasis added)
The only people who can truly love are therefore those who have been justified. In Galatians this is summed up by these words: “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love” (5:5–6 ESV).24 Faith is described as waiting and also as working. Again there is no contradiction, because it waits for one thing and works for another. It waits for the righteousness that is perfection and vindication at the last day, whereas it works in loving service every day. The first relates to justification and the second to sanctification. With regard to vindication in heaven, it waits expectantly and does not work; with regard to sanctification, it does not wait but works energetically on earth.
The position in which the justified believer now finds himself can be depicted in three interrelated terms mentioned in Galatians 5:13– 14: the “law” of God as summarized by the second great commandment, the believer’s “love,” and the believer’s “flesh.” They relate in the following ways. God’s law and the believer’s love now go together
24. This is a statement of how faith functions and not how it is formed. This distinction was at the heart of Protestant and Roman Catholic debate in the sixteenth century. An indication of how grievous the slippage has become is that in the recent Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue, Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses were evoked and effectively rescinded by a statement entitled “Ninety-Five Reasons Why We Ought to Love One Another”!
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most happily (Ps 119:97; John 15:10; 1 John 5:3). God’s law and the believer’s flesh oppose each other most strongly, as is indicated by the way in which “the works of the flesh” are set over against the reign of God and in that there is no law against the fruit of the Spirit, which is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:23 ESV).
How do the believer’s love and his flesh relate? What is flesh? The term has more than a physical connotation in Scripture. It is more than a body. This can be seen from “the works” that are attributed to it—“sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies” (Gal 5:19–21 ESV). It is therefore associated with deeds and words of the body but also with its “desires,” even strong ones (5:16–17, 24). Flesh is therefore the unrenewed nature of the justified believer. Consequently, flesh and love are not wholly separate in the Christian—nor are they easily separable. They tangle with each other most frustratingly and sometimes even shamefully.
This does not mean, however, that the Christian has not been “crucified with Christ” or that he is no longer free, because all “who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24 ESV). That is something an unbeliever cannot do. It is the conscious, reflex act of having been “crucified with Christ,” namely, nailing one’s own sinful self to the cross that it might die. That is what it means to repent and believe, to turn from sin and trust in Christ. A Christian is therefore a new person with an old lifestyle that refuses to die merely on his say-so. This spells conflict, even all-out war, in the inner life of the believer and not merely his speech and conduct, between what he now loves and what he formerly lived for. Satan has a hand in it too. The pathway to personal holiness is a fight.
This war is unremitting and lifelong, but its issue is not uncertain and there are victories along the way. This is because those who have been justified have not only been absolved from guilt, but they have been adopted into the family of God and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Paul writes:
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under
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indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Paul writes:
the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. (Gal 4:4–7 ESV).
Jesus has died for sin, and a life in the Spirit results for all who have put their trust in him. The life they live “in the flesh” (or the fight they fight) is “by faith in the Son of God” (2:20 ESV). The justified, adopted believer is a conqueror, even though he is sometimes overcome. He stumbles and falls whenever he remembers only that he is free and not why he was freed and uses his liberty in a way that is contrary to both the gospel and the law. That is what is pointed out in 2:13.
Freedom after slavery is a heady thing. A sinner who knows he is freed from the duty to keep the law and from the fear of death (Heb 2:15) can (as Luther said) seem to be “in heaven” already. To know that there is no condemnation now (Rom 8:1), no separation ever (8:35, 38–39), and no opposition worth speaking about in the interval (8:31, 37)—that takes some holding! It is intoxicating stuff. It is eternal life—heavenly as well as everlasting. But every Christian has an Achilles’ heel: his flesh, the sinful nature that still has power but “no dominion” over him (6:14). That is where he must stand guard, for it provides an opportunity that is a vantage point, a position from which an attack may be effectively launched against the Spirit and what he desires to produce in the believer. Walking in the Spirit—that is, doing the law out of gratitude for the gospel—the believer becomes more and more righteous in his character and conduct. The sevenfold fruit of the Spirit will increasingly displace the works of the flesh and will enable the believer to do his last work well, which is to depart this life in confidence in Christ alone through faith alone and to the glory of God alone.
Conclusion
Our aim in preaching and in living is therefore twofold: sanctification must be (a) kept from where it does not belong and (b) given its
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proper place where it does belong. The apostle Paul brackets them memorably in Romans 8:1–4:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (ESV)
With regard to the first aim, a strenuous effort is to be made to exclude any works of any kind from the way in which a guilty sinner is accepted by a holy God, in time and for eternity. Faith is the only instrument by which Christ’s spotless righteousness is received, and it is imputed to everyone who trusts him. Sola fide therefore safeguards solo Christo! The camel’s nose of human merit must be kept out of the tent in the interests of maintaining the Savior’s voluntary and meritorious obedience in life and death as the only ground of a sinner’s acceptance with God.
With regard to the second aim, equally strenuous efforts are to be made to enthrone sanctification as every professing believer’s goal in life. The pursuit of holiness and living the Christian life are synonymous. There is no Christian life if there is no obedience to the will of God, and if there are no good works there is no faith. Every professing believer should be as energetic and extensive in his obedience to all the will of God as Jesus was to his Father’s will, in accomplishing the salvation of his sinful people.
So just as morality is not to be preached as a way to acceptance with God, so moralism is to be rejected as a way to live the Christian life. “Be good” and “do good” is not a summary of Christianity. “Try harder” is even worse. Faith in Christ is the dynamic for “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1 AV), and his precepts are the directive for it. We hold to justification in order to make progress in sanctification. Every Christian should be able to say, “Jesus Christ lived and died for my sake, for my lasting good; I live for his sake, according
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to his precepts and for his eternal glory.” That is the soul of Christianity. What could be simpler? What could be stronger? What could be sweeter? Without it, the life that some professing Christians seek to live is hard drudgery, whereas for others it might even be unperceived bondage. In reality, it is a life of glorious liberty.
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Hywel Jones
Dr Hywel Jones was ordained in the Presbyterian Church of Wales in 1963 and ministered in several pastorates in Wales and England over 25 years. During those years, he was a member of the executive committee of the British Evangelical Council of Churches, editor of its theological journal and chairman of its study conference. In addition he was co-chairman of the Westminster Fellowship of Ministers succeeding Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The London Theological Seminary commenced in 1977 and Dr. Jones became its first principal in 1985, lecturing in Hebrew and Biblical Studies, Hermeneutics, and Homiletics. During that time he also taught in Romania, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, and Italy. In 1995, he was Scholar in Residence at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS, and since 1998 has been a member of the adjunct faculty at Puritan and Reformed Theological Seminary in Michigan. He became Professor of Practical Theology at Westminster Seminary California in 2000. Upon his retirement, the board made him Emeritus Professor of Practical Theology.
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