Herman Bavinck, John Bolt and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), writes:
Are these two positions irreconcilable?
The fact is that Christ is not just sitting around, as if things are all done. Our Mediator’s work did not end with his suffering and death. For example, in heaven our Lord continues his prophetic, priestly, and royal activity. While we may have ownership rights “in Christ” to the benefits Christ has acquired, we possess them only by faith. We don’t acquire salvation unless there is application of the benefits Christ has acquired. Indeed, acquisition implies a twofold application—justification and sanctification. So we need not ask, “What must I do to be saved?”, but, as Bavinck notes, “What is Almighty God doing in his grace to make the church participate in the complete salvation acquired by Christ?”
Sanctification is a work of God, just as creation and redemption. But there is the insistence in Scripture of passive (Eph. 2:10) and active sanctification (Phil. 2:12–13). Being born of God, is it any wonder that the children of God grow more and more as his image bearers, seeking to be imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1)? The more the indwelling, the more we are strengthened in our faith. Our faith the grows, and the more is communicated to us. And so on.
There is a difference between justification which follows regeneration and faith, and sanctification. Justification is a legal act of divine grace, affecting the judicial status of man, and sanctification is as a moral or re-creative work, changing the inner nature of man. Yet there is an inseparable connection between the two. While man is justified by faith alone, the faith which justifies is not alone. Justification is immediately followed by sanctification, since God sends out the Spirit of His Son into the hearts of His elect as soon as they are justified, and that Spirit is the Spirit of sanctification.
We say that man takes part in the work of sanctification. This does not mean that man is a free agent in the work, so as to make it partly the work of God and partly the work of man. Sanctification is a work of the triune God, but is attributed more specifically to the Holy Spirit in Scripture (Romans 8:11; Romans 15:16; I Peter 1:2). Instead we mean that God effects the work in part through the instrumentality of man as a rational being, by requiring of man prayerful and intelligent cooperation with the Spirit. That man must cooperate with the Spirit of God is clear from (a) the repeated warnings against evils and temptations, which clearly imply that man must be active in avoiding the pitfalls of life (Romans 12:9; Romans 12:16-17; I Corinthians 6:9,10; Galatians 5:16-23); and (b) the constant admonishments to holy living. These imply that the believer must be diligent in the employment of the means at his command for the moral and spiritual improvement of his life, Micah 6:8; John 15:2,8,16; Romans 8:12-13; Romans 12:1,2,17; Galatians 6:7-8; Galatians 6:15.
Summing up, God commands our ongoing attention to our faith, that we examine ourselves to make sure our faith is real. God also provides that which He commands, ordaining the ends as well as the means to the ends, even the believer's salvation. Augustine's little prayer sums it up: "O Lord, grant what Thou dost command and command what Thou dost desire." Pelagius never grasped what Augustine meant, failing to see that no one can please God unless God helps us in some manner to meet His requirements.
As Scripture teaches, enduring to the end, holding fast to the faith, abiding in Christ and His Word are essential to one's salvation. If these do not exist a professing Christian cannot expect to be saved.
But, and this is important, some hold that a true believer may not persevere and can be ultimately lost. Instead I believe that the true believer will in fact persevere. At this point, some would then ask, "Well, if the believer will persevere then why do the Scriptures contain admonitions or conditions for salvation?" In reply I answer, as noted above, God ordains the end but also the means to the end.
One of those means of God to His final glory is the perseverance of the Christian in faith to the end. I understand that one way God effects this means of perseverance in the saved is by admonishing them of the consequences of not persevering to the end and the conditions for salvation. I take these admonishments seriously. These admonishments stir up the faithful. Acts 27:21-32 has always been a good example for me in what I mean here.
We read that God had assured Paul that no one would lose their life in that shipwreck. Yet, despite this clear assurance from God, Paul admonishes those on the ship that unless the persons trying to leave by the lifeboat remain on board, those on the ship would not be saved. Note here that the Apostle was assured of their salvation, he knew the means of their salvation, and his warning produced the desired result.
Speaking under the inspiration of the Spirit, Peter tells us that those who are "elect according to the foreknowledge of God" and "begotten again unto a lively hope" are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (I Peter 1:2-5).
Indeed, God's almighty power preserves the true believer so that he or she receives that final and complete salvation that will be revealed at the eschaton. It can be no other way, for the work of salvation is God's work and God's work does not fail.
For the definitive and progressive aspects of sanctification see my blog entry here:
Definitive Sanctification - Christian Forums
- Sanctification is as much a benefit of Christ as justification. Inasmuch as the good works in which believers must walk are prepared by God in Christ [Eph. 2:10], faith cannot stop at the forgiveness of sins but reaches out to the perfection that is in Christ, seeks to confirm itself from works as from its own fruits, girds itself with courage and power not only to live in communion with Christ but also to fight under him as king against sin, the world, and the flesh, and to make all things serviceable to the honor of God’s name…
…Antinomianism, generally speaking, is the trend that reduces the application of salvation to its acquisition and almost completely equates the two. On this view, Christ has accomplished everything. He has taken over from us not only the guilt of sin but even its pollution. He has acquired for us not only righteousness but also regeneration and sanctification. Hence for humans there is nothing left to do. Contrition, conversion, repentance, prayer for forgiveness, doing good works—it is all unnecessary, bears a legalistic character, and fails to do justice to the perfection of Christ’s sacrifice. People need only to believe; that is, they need only to arrive at the insight that they are justified, born again, sanctified, that they are perfect in Christ. The sins they still commit are no longer sins; they are the works of the old Adam, which do not concern believers as such, for they are perfect in Christ, freed from the law, and now glory in grace.
Are these two positions irreconcilable?
The fact is that Christ is not just sitting around, as if things are all done. Our Mediator’s work did not end with his suffering and death. For example, in heaven our Lord continues his prophetic, priestly, and royal activity. While we may have ownership rights “in Christ” to the benefits Christ has acquired, we possess them only by faith. We don’t acquire salvation unless there is application of the benefits Christ has acquired. Indeed, acquisition implies a twofold application—justification and sanctification. So we need not ask, “What must I do to be saved?”, but, as Bavinck notes, “What is Almighty God doing in his grace to make the church participate in the complete salvation acquired by Christ?”
Sanctification is a work of God, just as creation and redemption. But there is the insistence in Scripture of passive (Eph. 2:10) and active sanctification (Phil. 2:12–13). Being born of God, is it any wonder that the children of God grow more and more as his image bearers, seeking to be imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1)? The more the indwelling, the more we are strengthened in our faith. Our faith the grows, and the more is communicated to us. And so on.
There is a difference between justification which follows regeneration and faith, and sanctification. Justification is a legal act of divine grace, affecting the judicial status of man, and sanctification is as a moral or re-creative work, changing the inner nature of man. Yet there is an inseparable connection between the two. While man is justified by faith alone, the faith which justifies is not alone. Justification is immediately followed by sanctification, since God sends out the Spirit of His Son into the hearts of His elect as soon as they are justified, and that Spirit is the Spirit of sanctification.
We say that man takes part in the work of sanctification. This does not mean that man is a free agent in the work, so as to make it partly the work of God and partly the work of man. Sanctification is a work of the triune God, but is attributed more specifically to the Holy Spirit in Scripture (Romans 8:11; Romans 15:16; I Peter 1:2). Instead we mean that God effects the work in part through the instrumentality of man as a rational being, by requiring of man prayerful and intelligent cooperation with the Spirit. That man must cooperate with the Spirit of God is clear from (a) the repeated warnings against evils and temptations, which clearly imply that man must be active in avoiding the pitfalls of life (Romans 12:9; Romans 12:16-17; I Corinthians 6:9,10; Galatians 5:16-23); and (b) the constant admonishments to holy living. These imply that the believer must be diligent in the employment of the means at his command for the moral and spiritual improvement of his life, Micah 6:8; John 15:2,8,16; Romans 8:12-13; Romans 12:1,2,17; Galatians 6:7-8; Galatians 6:15.
Summing up, God commands our ongoing attention to our faith, that we examine ourselves to make sure our faith is real. God also provides that which He commands, ordaining the ends as well as the means to the ends, even the believer's salvation. Augustine's little prayer sums it up: "O Lord, grant what Thou dost command and command what Thou dost desire." Pelagius never grasped what Augustine meant, failing to see that no one can please God unless God helps us in some manner to meet His requirements.
As Scripture teaches, enduring to the end, holding fast to the faith, abiding in Christ and His Word are essential to one's salvation. If these do not exist a professing Christian cannot expect to be saved.
But, and this is important, some hold that a true believer may not persevere and can be ultimately lost. Instead I believe that the true believer will in fact persevere. At this point, some would then ask, "Well, if the believer will persevere then why do the Scriptures contain admonitions or conditions for salvation?" In reply I answer, as noted above, God ordains the end but also the means to the end.
One of those means of God to His final glory is the perseverance of the Christian in faith to the end. I understand that one way God effects this means of perseverance in the saved is by admonishing them of the consequences of not persevering to the end and the conditions for salvation. I take these admonishments seriously. These admonishments stir up the faithful. Acts 27:21-32 has always been a good example for me in what I mean here.
We read that God had assured Paul that no one would lose their life in that shipwreck. Yet, despite this clear assurance from God, Paul admonishes those on the ship that unless the persons trying to leave by the lifeboat remain on board, those on the ship would not be saved. Note here that the Apostle was assured of their salvation, he knew the means of their salvation, and his warning produced the desired result.
Speaking under the inspiration of the Spirit, Peter tells us that those who are "elect according to the foreknowledge of God" and "begotten again unto a lively hope" are "kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." (I Peter 1:2-5).
Indeed, God's almighty power preserves the true believer so that he or she receives that final and complete salvation that will be revealed at the eschaton. It can be no other way, for the work of salvation is God's work and God's work does not fail.
For the definitive and progressive aspects of sanctification see my blog entry here:
Definitive Sanctification - Christian Forums
