Justification's Implications for Sanctification

Quoting D. A. Carson from his Crossway sponsored lecture on evangelicalism at the 2009 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society:

Justification has huge implications for how you live. What is the opposite of justification? Non-justification? Pastorally, the opposite of justification is self-justification. Over against being justified by someone outside ourselves—being justified by God, through what he has done in Christ—we justify ourselves.

So the man, for example, who approaches Jesus: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”, whence Jesus gives him the first round of responses, he asks another question. Luke’s comment is, “He, wanting to justify himself, said….” And then a few chapters farther on, further people approach Jesus “wanting to justify themselves.” Or the parable of the Pharisee and the publican going up to the temple together, the Pharisee saying, “I thank you God that I am not as other men are, including this wretched publican over here.” What is that but self-justification?

So now you have come out of a rotten background where you never could gain enough of your parent’s approval. They were just so harsh and miserable all of the time. And you’ve become a Christian, and you know that you’re justified before God. What is it in you, then, that is constantly trying to show yourself good enough to be accepted by others, to be loved by church people, to be accepted by your siblings? Isn’t that a form of self-justification that is denying the justification that you have experienced in the onset of the gospel?

There is so much of Christian discipleship and growth that is bound up with the cross-work in justification. What sins do we commit where we are not tripping over self-justification? Self-justification in our publications, in our schools, in how our spouses think of us, in how we think about ourselves? Self-justification, even though at some level we know we’ve been justified by another?

If the gospel is rightly understood, if the gospel is rightly conceived, the glory of being justified by God himself through what he has provided in his Son by grace alone through faith alone begins to transform all of our relationships. In one sense, sanctification, understood in the Reformed sense (not always in the Pauline sense), is nothing other than the progressive application of justification.

Thankful Thursday

On Thursday’s throughout this year, I plan to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving along with Kim at the Upward Call and others.

Tonight I’m thankful for

• a busy and productive day.
• four extra minutes of light per day.
• my treadmill. It means I can get my daily workout even in January.
• the pup, who makes us laugh every day. He just entertained us by jumping up and running to the front door barking when a doorbell rang on television.

Redemption Accomplished and Applied: Adoption

I’m participating in Tim Challies’ Reading the Classics Together program. The book is Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray, and this week’s reading is the sixth chapter of Part 2: The Order of Application.

In this week’s reading, John Murray focuses on God’s gracious act of  adoption. In the application of redemption, it is by our adoption that we become sons and daughters of God.

Adoption is a distinct act, differing from both justification and regeneration, but related to them. The three acts—regeneration, justification, and adoption—always come together. No one is justified who does not become an adopted child  of God, and all God’s adopted children have already been born again. Like justification, adoption is a judicial act of God. In it God takes into his family sons and daughters who are also being made like him in their nature, making the renewal of regeneration a prerequisite to adoption. Adoption, Murray says, “is the apex of grace and privilege. … It staggers imagination because of its amazing condescension and love.”

There are scriptural distinctions to be made when thinking about the fatherhood of God. First of all, within the Trinity, the Father is the father of the Son. That is a unique relationship, and no one else shares in this particular father-son relationship. There is also the universal fatherhood of God, in which God is called the father of all people because he created them and provides for them. But more frequently, when scripture speaks of God’s fatherhood in relation to men, it is speaking of the special relationship he has with his people—the fatherhood that comes by redemption and adoption. “God,” Murray reminds us, “becomes the father of his own people by the act of adoption.”

In the last half of this chapter, Murray establishes that it is specifically the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, rather than the Trinity as a whole, who becomes our father in adoption. One text he uses as proof of this is John 20:17 where Jesus says he is going to “my Father and your Father.” The same person who is the Father to the Son is also the Father of the disciples. However, that Christ does not say “our Father” instead of “my Father and your Father” reminds us that our relationship to the Father is different than his own.

How secure this makes us as God’s own children!

Could anything disclose the marvel of adoption or certify the security of its tenure and privelege more effectively than the fact that the Father himself, on account of whom are all things and through whom are all things, who made the captain of salvation perfect through sufferings, becomes by deed of grace the Father of the many sons whom he will bring to glory?