The remaining consolation of justification
Calvin said that a Christian is not in a
different way right with God on his deathbed after a life in the service of
God, than the hour he first believed. In the writings of Calvin you do not find
that smell of activism and triumphalism we see in the writings of some of his
followers.
Although stressing that the Word of God
has significance for all the domains of our life, Calvin emphasised that the
Christian is in the first place a pilgrim and that his most important duty is
to meditate on the life to come. Meditating on the life to come also means for
Calvin meditating on the work of Christ as the only ground of our
justification.
In this context I call also your attention
to what the Heidelberg Cate-chism teaches with regard to
justification. Question 60 of the Heidelberg Catechism is stated in the following way:
‘How are you righteous before God?’ the important thing is the present tense.
The question is not: ‘How did you become
righteous before God?’ No, for sake of clarity we could add: ‘How are you now righteous before God?’ Then
the most exercised and sanctified Christian must give the same answer as a
weak, beginning believer. There is not any difference.
That answer is: ‘Only by a true faith in
Jesus Christ: so that though my conscience accuse me, that I have grossly
transgressed all the commandments of God, and kept none of them, and am still
inclined to all evil; notwithstanding God, without any merit of mine, but only
of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness
and holiness of Christ, even so, as if I had never committed any sins, yea as
if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ has accomplished
for me; inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart.’ Again, note
that in both the question and answer the present tense is used.
The original title of the most famous hymn
of August Montague Toplady (1740-1778) Rock of Ages was: ‘A Living and Dying Prayer of the
Holiest Believer in the World’. And what is his prayer? Well let us hear:
Rock of Ages, cleft for me
Let me hide myself in thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
Nothing in my hand I bring;
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress;
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
The deviation of the “Victorious living”
teachings
I now come to victorious living as a
serious devia-tion of the biblical and reformed doctrine of justification by
faith alone. Victorious living also known as Keswick teaching (after the
village Keswick in the Lake district in England where since the second half of
the nineteenth century conferences of victorious living or higher life were
organised) is a form of perfectionism; a form of teaching that states that it
is possible to become so completely perfect in this life that there is no place
left for the complaint about your imper-fections. The South African, Andrew
Murray, is one of its most famous representatives.
According the victorious living teaching
true believers must be divided into two classes: the believers who are still
beggar and the believers who are conquerors. To reach the last stage it is
necessary to live a live of complete surrender. This life is seen as a fruit as
the baptism of the holy Spirit. A baptism that is seen as a second blessing
that chronologically separated from regenerating.
In regeneration according to this view we
come a believer, but only after being baptised with the Holy Spirit we became a
victorious believer. It is not difficult to notice that the holiness movement or
movement of victorious living was one of the roots of Pente-costalism and other
types of charismatic teaching.
Victorious living differs from Wesleyan perfectionism. Wesleyan perfectionism
states that you can completely eradicate your sinful nature in this life.
Victorious living states that this is not possible. Although it is not possible
to completely eradicate your sinful nature, adherents of victorious living
teach that when you live a life of complete surrender, your sinful self is no
longer active. It cannot develop itself. I must agree there is a measure of
truth in this statement.
When a Christian lives a life in close
fellowship with God, the Lord will preserve you in this way from sinful deeds,
words and thoughts. But even then we cannot say that we are completely perfect
in sanctification and do not have reasons to complain. Even when our sinful
nature is totally inactive – although I think that this is never the case- we
still possess a sinful nature and in the light of our being originally created
perfect in the image of God, we ought not to have even one sin.
So just the fact that you have a sinful
nature is a reason to complain and confess with the psalmist: ‘If thou, LORD,
shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?’ (Psalm 130:2-3). That is
also the glory in God’s way of salvation: But there is forgive-ness with thee,
that thou mayest be feared." (Psalm 130:4)
The Church of the Reformation denies that
original sin is completely taken away in baptism, meaning baptism received by a
living faith. Even thoughts that arise in us against our own will are sin. The
view that we can be perfect in sanctification is always connected with a
superficial view of sin. Sin is then restricted to sinful acts or only to
sinful thoughts we do not resist, but every act, word or thought not according
to God’s will is sin.
The highest phase we can arrive at in the
life of sanctification is the deepest awareness of our remaining sinfulness.
For the most important thing in sanctification is to be humble, and in this
connection even knowing that you are humble is dangerous. For the moment you
think that you are humble, my friend, you are in fact becoming proud.
Adherents of victorious living say that
the Refor-mers and the Puritans concentrated too much on justification and did
not appreciate what can be realised by the help of God in the life of
sanctification. They make a distinction between two types of true believers.
The believer that leads the life of a beggar and the believer, that has by an
act of faith, completely surrendered himself to Christ and now lives from
moment to moment in depen-dence on Christ and for that reason no longer needs
to complain about his sinful nature.
The adherents of “Victorious living” argue
that incipient anti-nomianism is inherent to the reformed message of
justification; an accusation also made by the Roman Catholic Church. We reply
that it is an unjust accusation. Complaint about one’s sinful self accompanied
with a continual struggle against sin belongs to a healthy spiritual life. I
now wish to highlight the second part of answer 114 of the Heidelberg Catechism ‘yet so, that with a sincere
resolution they begin to live, not only according to some, but all the
commandments of God.’
The Anglican bishop Ryle wrote his classic
book called Holiness as an answer and refutation of the
Keswick teaching. A believer has a deep desire to be holy and still feels
himself a sinner and that is the reason he remains a beggar. He feels that even
his most holy acts are stained with sin. That is the reason that Paul wrote in
Philippians 3:13: ‘Brethren,
I count not myself to have apprehen-ded: but this one thing I do, forgetting
those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are
before.’
What Paul did not want to forget was that
he was once an enemy of Christ and persecutor of the saints. But in approaching
God he did want to forget all that he did and had done in the service of Christ
by the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul knew that he laboured more abundantly
than the other apostles (2 Corinthians 11:23). He had received marvellous
revelations.
‘I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether
in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God
knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the
body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) How that he was caught up into
paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to
utter.’ (2 Corinthians 12:2-4).
These were the things that Paul wanted to
forget. He did not glory in what he did for Christ and had received from Christ
but only in the cross of Christ. See Gal. 6:14: ‘But God forbid that I should glory, save in
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and
I unto the world.’ The Lord had said to Paul: ‘My grace is sufficient for thee:
for my strength is made perfect in weakness’ (2
Corinthians 12:9).
Accusing Reformers and Puritans of
incipient anti-nomianism the adherent of victorious living think that teaching
the possibility of life of known victory over all known sins is the real
antidote for that. But in fact this teaching is in a certain sense antinomian.
It does not take really serious the spiritual nature and spiritual all
compassing claims of God’s law. Even unknown sins and our sinful nature also
when it is not active is sin.
The most holy saint still stands in
himself as a condemned ungodly before a righteous God. The adherent of
victorious living teaching do not only restrict the spiritual significance of
justification to the beginning or to what they call the first stage of the
Christian living they also have their misgivings about some element the
Reformed doctrine of justification as such.
Against the Church of Rome that confuses
justification and sanc-tification and states that justification means that we
are actually made just by the power of the Holy Spirit given to us in the
sacraments, the Reformers taught that we are only just on account of the
perfect righteousness and holiness of Christ that is imputed to us. What Christ
did once and for all is imputed to us.
In answer 60 of the Heidelberg Catechism
the believer confesses that the Father ‘grants and imputes to me the perfect
satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ, as if I had never
committed nor had any sins, and had myself accomplished all the obedience which
Christ has fulfilled for me.’
Classical Reformed theology in this
connection the distinction was made between the passive and active obedience of
Christ. The passive obedience of Christ means that he paid for the guilt of all
his own by suffering an dying for them. So he paid their debts.
The active obedience of Christ means that
Christ being on earth fulfilled the law for all his people. By becoming man and
dying at the cross he fulfilled for them to claims of God’s holy law from the
beginnings of their existence in the womb to their last breath.
The adherents of victorious living
explicitly reject this last element of the imputation of the righteous-ness of
Christ. For in their view a believer really filled with the Holy Spirit, does
completely obey the law and does not need until the end of his life the
imputation of the active obedience of Christ. But the righteousness of him that is
justified by faith is never even not in the smallest part an inherent but
always an imputed righteousness. Otherwise we could never meet the Lord.
Because of it rich content I quote in full a hymn written by E. Mote
(1797-1874):
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
When darkness veils his lovely face,
I rest on his unchanging grace;
In every rough and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
His oath, his covenant, and his blood,
Support me in the whelming flood,
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.
I trust his righteous character,
His counsel, promise, and his power.
His honour and his name’s at stake,
To save me from the burning lake.
When I shall launch in worlds unseen,
O may I then be found in him,
Dressed in his righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.
Faultless to stand before the throne.