Of course Jesus comes first; of course we are nothing but sinful wretches without him; of course good works do not save us and we have no confidence in them for that. But for us to say that the good works are therefore not “better” than that which makes them possible seems to forget that we are justified for the sake of doing good works, or as Paul also said, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
As most of you know, I spent most of my childhood reading comic books in the peace and quiet of my room. On one of those days, my youngest brother came in looking for some affection from his older brother who had his head in a comic book, and the lad innocently asked, “Frank: Who would win in a fight – the Hulk, or Captain America?”
Now: of course Cap would win in a fight, but that is not the point of this brief blog post. The point is to look with some bewilderment at the question “Which is better: Justification or Sanctification?”
Some of you right now are recognizing that this post is reworked from another one which can’t be found anymore on the internet, but I thought the matter was good enough to bring it back from oblivion. Why? Because the point of theology is not to pit holinesss against holiness to see which one will win — or whether one or the other is made less for its lack of victory.
Paul, to avoid that sort of untoward dismay, put it this way to good Timothy: “As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned: From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.” In Paul’s view, it was not a question of whether justification was better than sanctification: rather, it was that justification created sanctification, and those who were teaching and doing otherwise were jangling in vain.
Of course Jesus comes first; of course we are nothing but sinful wretches without him; of course good works do not save us and we have no confidence in them for that. But for us to say that the good works are therefore not “better” than that which makes them possible seems to forget that we are justified for the sake of doing good works, or as Paul also said, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
When my brother asked me if a Gamma-Ray mutant could smash the Sentinel of Liberty, he was asking me a question to show how much he knew about something I definitely loved. He was trying to connect with me over something which should be some common ground — and at 5 years old, he didn’t realize it wasn’t the smashing which we both enjoyed most of all. There’s something like that going on here. I think those of us who are in various stages of reformed intoxication ought to be careful of it. We should be much more worried that we have idolized one kind of holiness in such a way that it has dismantled and buried another kind of holiness which God says is part of the total package. It leads us to say things like, “my sanctification is more imaged than real,” which is an explicit denial of WCF XVI.2 and XVI.3 — not to mention the letter of James and the last half of the letter to the Galatians.
While we may affectionately ask the question which is “better” in order to establish our bona fides amongst ourselves, the truth is that somehow the thing which ought to be caused is the way we do the things God expects us to do — and it causes the ordinary grace God has ordained in this world which shows the lost who God really is.
