JUDICIAL WARFARE
Christian Reconstruction and Its Blueprints For Dominion
by Greg Loren Durand

Chapter Six:
The Object and Cause of True Sanctification

       According to Greg Bahnsen:

       Theonomy is not a scheme for personal self-justification. God's grace, expressed in the accomplished and applied redemption of Jesus Christ, alone can save us. The Savior is not embraced but by faith; one's works cannot earn his salvation. However, all too often Christians leave matters at that point, failing to see that God not only forgives the sinner, but also develops his "new life" according to the (previously spurned) pattern of holiness. God remedies not only our legal guilt (justification) but also our moral pollution (sanctification).... Theonomy is the Christian's pattern of sanctification. The believer's life is comprised not only of repentance and faith, but also of continual growth into conformity with the stature of Christ.⁽¹⁾

       This all sounds good on the surface, but the problem lies in the definitions. As we have seen, "sanctification" in the theonomic system is viewed as the process in which the believer becomes more righteous before God, and the "previously spurned pattern of holiness" by which this process is achieved is none other than the Mosaic law (minus the ceremonies). Bahnsen's reasoning is thus: Christ was obedient to every "jot and tittle" of the law and so the Christian must conform himself to the example of Christ in doing the same. However, what is missing from this assumption is the very important doctrine of the active obedience of Christ to the Covenant of Works. Christ came to merit justification by His fulfillment of the Covenant of Works as it was pictured in the Sinatic covenant. The obedience of Christ and that of the believer are categorically different because the former was prior to and necessary to declared righteousness, whereas the latter follows as the proper response to declared righteousness. Consequently, neither the Scriptures nor the Westminster Standards make obedience to the law the pattern for sanctification. According to the Westminster Confession:

       They who are effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created within them, are further sanctified really and personally, through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them; the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and then more and more quickened and strengthened, in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.⁽²⁾

       The Shorter Catechism states it even more succinctly: "Sanctification is the work of God's free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness."⁽³⁾ In other words, sanctification is an ongoing work of God in which the believer lives less and less in accordance to his former state in Adam (sin) and more and more in accordance with his present state in Christ (righteousness). In discussing sanctification, Paul viewed sin in light of the Christian legal standing before God, demonstrating that its indulgence in the life of the believer is wholly incompatible with their justification: "How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? ...[R]eckon ye also yourselves dead indeed unto sin" (Romans 6:2, 11). While those in whom this process does not occur are evidently not true believers, Paul never conditions the Christian's inheritance on the level of his sanctification because he is already positionally complete in Christ (Colossians 2:10):

       Justification precedes and is basic to sanctification in the covenant of grace. In the covenant of works the order of righteousness and holiness was just the reverse. Adam was created with a holy disposition and inclination to serve God, but on the basis of this holiness he had to work out the righteousness that would entitle him to eternal life. Justification is the judicial basis for sanctification. God has the right to demand of us holiness of life, but because we cannot work out this holiness for ourselves, He freely works it within us through the Holy Spirit on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is imputed to us in justification. The very fact that it is based on justification, in which the free grace of God stands out with the greatest prominence, excludes the idea that we can ever merit anything in sanctification. The Roman Catholic idea that justification enables man to perform meritorious works is contrary to Scripture.⁽⁴⁾

       It must be kept in mind that the law of Moses was given to restrain and instruct a people who were as yet carnal and disobedient and it did this by threatened temporal punishments and promised temporal blessings, both of which were intended to point them to spiritual realites. However, Paul expressly wrote, "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you" (Romans 8:9a). Unlike the Israelites, blessing for the Christian does not derive from obedience, but obedience derives from blessing: "The pattern of the Christian's life is not one in which we are commanded to do and to be in order to become and to have. Rather the pattern of the Christian life is this: because of who you are and what you possess in Christ, be and do the things that are pleasing to Christ."⁽⁵⁾ One will search in vain through the New Testament or the Reformed creeds and confessions for an identification of sanctification with law-keeping. While the law is useful to the Christian, it is so in an entirely different sense than in the theonomic system. Since perfect fulfillment of the law is impossible for mere man, it may only serve the Christian as a mirror — i.e. by illuminating indwelling sin. Because of regeneration, the believer has a new bent towards God and away from sin, and his reaction to the sin thus revealed is therefore one of hatred followed by a reliance on the strength of the Holy Spirit to mortify it. Even these efforts at mortification will not be fully successful until the moment of death, and thus, by showing the believer what he is in himself and apart from God's grace, the law serves to daily renew his faith in Christ as his only hope. Only in this way is the Old Covenant "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto good works" (2 Timothy 3:16-17):

       Wherefore whenever thou who believest in Jesus, dost hear the law in its thundering and lightning fits, as if it would burn up heaven and earth; then say thou, I am free from the law, these thunderings have nothing to do with my soul; nay even this law, while it thus thunders and roareth, it doth both allow and approve of my righteousness. I know that Hagar would sometimes be domineering and high, even in Sarah's house and against her; but this she is not to be suffered to do, nay though Sarah herself be barren; wherefore serve it also as Sarah served her, and expel her out of the house. My meaning is, when this law with its thunderings doth attempt to lay hold on thy conscience, shut it out with a promise of grace; cry, the inn is took up already, the Lord Jesus is here entertained, and here is no room for the law. Indeed if it will be content with being my informer, and so lovingly leave off to judge me; I will be content, it shall be in my sight, I will also delight therein; but otherwise, I being now made upright without it, and that too with that righteousness, which this law speaks well of and approveth; I may not, will not, cannot, dare not make it my saviour and judge, nor suffer it to set up its government in my conscience; for by so doing I fall from grace, and Christ Jesus doth profit me nothing.⁽⁶⁾

       Unfortunately for the Theonomist, attempting to keep the law in order to be sanctified is expressly condemned in Scripture (Galatians 3:3), and will actually have the opposite effect:

       But the Apostle has another particular object in view also, namely, to show that sanctification by the Law is as impossible as was justification by the law.... As it is impossible to be justified by the law, it is equally impossible to be sanctified by the Law. As we shall see later, he even puts it as strongly as this, that not only can a man not be sanctified by the Law, but it is actually true to say that the Law is a hindrance to sanctification, and that it aggravates the problems of sanctification. That is the thesis of this seventh chapter [of Romans]; not only can a man not sanctify himself by observance of the Law; the Law is even a hindrance and an obstacle to sanctification.⁽⁷⁾

       The Christian life could be illustrated by the account of Peter walking on the water. As soon as he took his eyes off Christ and focused on the fury of the storm, he began to sink. The storm may be seen as a symbol of the threatenings of the law. Biblical sanctification is therefore a growth in grace, not law-keeping: "But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law" (Galatians 5:18). In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul contrasted the veiled glory of Moses' face under the Old Covenant with the unveiled "glory of the Lord" under the New Covenant and taught that by focusing on the latter, Christians are "changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." Christians are therefore never told to look to Moses in order to be sanctified, but to Christ alone. Instead, they are daily to turn from their sin and turn to righteousness — the perfect righteousness of Christ that is theirs by faith. The starting point and daily object of sanctification is the imputed righteousness of Christ. Because Christ has perfectly kept the law in our behalf, we are to strive earnestly to please Him in every thought, word, and deed. Moral principles may indeed be extracted from the Old Testament and used to further the sanctification process,⁽⁸⁾ but it is not law-keeping, but Christ-believing that sanctifies us. According to Louis Berkhof, "[T]he degree of sanctification is commensurate with the strength of the Christian's faith and the persistence with which he apprehends Christ."⁽⁹⁾ In Christ, the believer is already declared completely righteous, and therefore cannot add one iota of righteousness to his standing before God by any of his own alleged law-keeping. Sanctification is by grace through faith alone (Acts 26:18) and Christ alone is the object of faith: "For I through the law and dead to the law, that I might live unto God. The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God" (Galatians 2:19-20). On this important subject, John Calvin wrote:

       We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ [Acts 4:12]. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is "of him" [I Cor. 1:30]. If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects [Heb. 2:17] that he might learn to feel our pain [compare to Heb. 5:2]. If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross [Gal. 3:13]; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment; in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from the fountain, and from no other.⁽¹⁰⁾

Endnotes

1. Bahnsen, Theonomy, pages 35-36.

2. Confession of Faith, Chapter XII.

3. Shorter Catechism, Question 35.

4. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, page 536.

5. Albert N. Martin, "Who We Are and What We Possess in Union With Christ," posted on www.sermonaudio.com on 5 June 2005.

6. John Bunyan, The Works of John Bunyan (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1977), Volume II, page 388.

7. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Law: Its Function and Limits (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1974), pages 4-5.

8. The Reformers referred to this as "the third use of the Law."

9. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, page 537.

10. Calvin, Institutes, Book II, Chapter 16, Section 19.