In Calvin’s theology, there is a concept called a doctrine of double grace. The doctrine of double grace means that justification and sanctification are both one gift of God. The former one is Christ’s imputed righteousness for us in faith; the latter, we are made righteousness gradually from time to time by grace. Justification (right with God) indicates that we are in Christ. Sanctification (living rightly with God) means that we are to be like Christ.
“Christ was given to us by God’s generosity, to be grasped and possessed by us in faith. By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace: namely, that being reconciled to God through Christ’s blamelessness, we may have in heaven instead of a Judge a gracious Father; and secondly, that sanctified by Christ’s spirit we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life” (Institutes, 3.11.1).
We receive Christ’s blamelessness in faith; we cultivate His blamelessness by grace.
“Why, then, are we justified by faith? Because by faith we grasp Christ’s righteousness, by which alone we are reconciled to God. Yet you could not grasp this without at the same time grasping sanctification also…Therefore Christ justifies no one whom he does not at the same time sanctify. These benefits are joined together by an everlasting and indissoluble bond, so that those whom he illumines by his wisdom, he redeems; those whom he redeems, he justifies; those whom he justifies, he sanctifies” (Institutes, 3.16.1).
The gifts of justifying and sanctifying are bonded as one single gift.
William Stacy Johnson, professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, notes, “Although Christ’s righteousness is an external reality that is attributed to us, we are also engrafted into Christ in an authentic spiritual union that grows internally. We not only receive the benefits of Christ but we begin to grow in grace, becoming increasingly like him. Such are the benefits of being united to Christ.”[1]
During the time of Reformation, the doctrine of justification was the center of discussion. Martin Luther, as the first generation reformer, got caught by the righteousness of God in Romans 1:17a. God’s own righteousness, for Luther, meant God’s justice that He always punished sinners for their sins. Luther then found out “The righteous shall live by faith” (1:17b). That concept of earning God’s favor was gone and destroyed by this verse. For Luther, he was then driven by the doctrine of justification. By faith, we are declared righteous in God’s sight.
Calvin, 26 years younger than Luther, was a second generation reformer. He was able to keep a distance from the debate and looked at the whole reformed movement from a distance. In order for the Reformed Movement to go further and deeper, the Reformed understanding of the Christian faith must be organized in a systematic way. He wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion. He did not write this “textbook” to speculate Christian faith. He did it to help reformed Christians to understand their new emerging faith.
In his Institutes, Calvin addressed the doctrine of sanctification first (Book 3: chapters 3-10), then the doctrine of justification (chapters 11-19). Calvin was very careful to tackle a double grace because there was a thin line between working for one’s salvation and working it out. The topic sanctification preceded justification because Calvin might see the reality that cheap grace was so prevalent in Christian life.
As William Johnson comments, “It is interesting that Calvin presents his theology of sanctification, or regeneration, before discussing justification. Given the centrality of justification in the sixteenth-century Protestant movement, this is not what we would expect. By discussing repentance and renewal first, Calvin seemed to want to avoid any implication of ‘cheap grace.’ We can receive the gospel, in Calvin’s view, only by obeying it.”[2] Even though I have a hard time to read through these chapters, I admire Calvin’s theological ability to analyze this single gift in such details.
Calvin paid a lot of attention to explain the importance and necessity of sanctification in Christian life and yet make sure that it’s distinguished from justification. However, they are inseparable. It’s Calvin’s theological effort to respond to his contemporary theological distortion.
In John Calvin’s Stroke of Genius, Paul Helm wrote at the end of his article after analyzing Calvin’s double grace, “This way of thinking preserves the Reformation and biblical teaching of the forensic character of justification, the imputation of an 'alien righteousness'. But it also retains what is the essential truth behind the medieval misunderstanding of justification, that subjective renewal is essential; not essential to justification, but an essential consequence of it, bound inseparably to it, not something which is simply tagged on. The one gift is of two graces in parallel, though the way each gift blesses the recipient is very different.”[3]
No comments:
Post a Comment