Justification and Sanctification

Justification

What is justification? The epistles of Paul are a good place to go to find the answer. Now Peter says of these epistles that in them there are “some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” 2Pet 3:16. Let us not therefore be unlearned and unstable, wresting the scriptures to our own destruction, but rather with prayer and humility, through the Spirit’s guidance, may we let God speak to us through His word.
Justification is the incredible gift of God, where an unjust man is counted to be just, if the blood of Jesus is covering his sins.  God is the “justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” Rom. 3:26.

Confusion About Justification

Many look at salvation in the life of an individual as a three stage process: 1 justification, 2 sanctification, 3 glorification. So, they believe that when someone becomes a Christian they are justified but then there is a period of time where no righteous works are present in the life. This only comes later as part of sanctification. According to this belief a person is declared to be righteous but has no righteous works. This is not what the Bible teaches. Also this is not what Ellen White teaches.
Let’s see what the Bible teaches on the subject. Let us consider Gen. 15: 6 “And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.” Here we have a description of righteousness by faith in the life of Abraham. Paul quotes this verse in Rom 4:3-5 “For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”I believe this is where the confusion comes in. Paul talks about justification by faith without works.

Justified by a Faith that Works

Indeed we are justified by faith, not by works. This does not mean there are no good works present in the life. In the epistle of James it is made very clear that good works are the natural result of faith, meaning that if there are no righteous works then there is no true faith. To the person that is confused about Romans 4:3, I encourage him to go back to Gen. 15:6, which Paul is quoting and then look at the life of Abraham up to that point.
God asked Abraham to leave his homeland. This was a very hard thing for him to do yet he obeyed God. This is a righteous work. The very fact of God calling him and of him accepting the call shows that he was set apart for a special purpose by God. He was holy. The process of sanctification was taking place in his life. Paul’s point is not that there were no righteous works in Abraham’s life. The point is that these righteous works did not save him. In reality Abraham did not do those good deeds, for there is only one that is good, that is God. Mar. 10:18. Therefore it was God that was doing those good deeds through Abraham. Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: 2Co 5:21 For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Col 1:27 To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Sanctification

Sanctification means to be made holy. Indeed no one can be justified without being holy and no one can be holy without being justified. Sanctification is the work of a lifetime. Day after day we may become more and more like Jesus. God is also constantly considering everyone to see if they should be counted as righteous or as unrighteous. Every thought and action shows God whether a person has faith in Him or not. Jesus died for everyone. All have been given physical life and probationary time.

Confusion

Some people believe that justification happened at the cross but the Bible teaches that justification is by faith. Salvation is offered to all as a free gift. God wishes to make us all righteous and holy like our father, Abraham. An understanding of justification and sanctification that implies that Abraham did not have good works in his life before Gen. 15:6 is confusion. When there is confusion in the pulpit there is confusion in the pews, but God’s word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, that we need not be confused.

Let’s look at an Ellen White statement on the topic:

Righteousness within is testified to by righteousness without. He who is righteous within is not hard-hearted and unsympathetic, but day by day he grows into the image of Christ, going on from strength to strength. He who is being sanctified by the truth will be self-controlled, and will follow in the footsteps of Christ until grace is lost in glory. The righteousness by which we are justified is imputed; the righteousness by which we are sanctified is imparted. The first is our title to heaven, the second is our fitness for heaven.—The Review and Herald, June 4, 1895. . MYP 35.2

Many stumble over this statement. Is this indulgence preaching, is this license to sin theology? No. Certainly not. She says that the first; justification, is our title to heaven, the second is our fitness for heaven. So does God give a title to heaven to anyone that is unfit for heaven? No never. Not even for a second. Justification and sanctification are like companions that walk together. You can’t have one without the other. When we go to the beginning of the quote she says that righteousness within is testified to by righteousness without. Justification is by faith in God, which is internal righteousness. This is manifested in imparted righteousness without, which is sanctification. For many people the big point of this quote is that these are two stages of salvation, separated in time, justification being at the beginning of the Christian walk and then being over with, and Sanctification maybe starting at some point later on with good works. Ellen White’s point is totally different that these two processes start at the same time when the life is surrendered to Christ and go on through life, as our faith is constantly manifested in good works, and as we grow closer and closer to Christ.
She says that justification is our title to heaven. By faith we are justified and given a title to heaven. But we are judged by our works, the sanctification that has taken place in our lives. And indeed we are only fit for heaven if the process of sanctification continues till the end of our lives.

This is a beautiful and very insightful statement, when read carefully and prayerfully, but you can end up in a lot of trouble if you do not read this carefully with wisdom. Ellen White has some specific points to make here. She is not saying all that can be said about justification and sanctification. This statement was made after much careful and prayerful Bible study. Ellen White did not want us to leave our Bibles on the shelf and read such statements and build our theology on them but rather she wished to direct us to the Bible to study the word of God and to build our theology on the word of God. Ellen White’s words help us get a better understanding of the word and so do other preachers’ words but our beliefs should be based on the word of God.