The Reformed understanding of Scripture is that believers are as justified and saved now as we will be at the judgment. There are not two stages of justification, initial and final. Rather, we distinguish between justification and vindication. At the judgment it will be manifest to all that those to whom Christ freely imputed his righteousness, who received that righteousness with true faith, really were justified and saved.

For the Reformed, justification is a once-for-all act; it is definitive.

Sanctification is progressive and the necessary consequence of justification. Rome does not distinguish justification and sanctification. They are the same thing. According to Rome, we are only as justified now as we are sanctified, and we are only as sanctified by grace and cooperation with grace.

R. Scott Clark, The Heidelberg Catechism: A Historical Theological & Pastoral Commentary (Lexham Academic, 2025), 405.

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Post authored by:

• Inwoo Lee

  

  Inwoo Lee (BA, UCSD) earned his MA (Historical Theology) in 2020 from Westminster Seminary California and is author of “Righteous Before God: William Perkins’ Doctrine of Justification in Elizabethan England” (MA Thesis, Westminster Seminary California, 2020). He lives in the Great Seoul area, in South Korea with his wife Holly.

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