Pastoral Note—Both Justified and Sinner
Dear Cornerstone Family,
Today we celebrate Reformation Sunday!
In high school I thought I understood grace. I could define the five points of Calvinism and memorized a handful of verses in case I ever needed to defend them. Then one afternoon I confidently told a well-read Roman Catholic acquaintance that the difference between us was simple: “We believe in salvation by grace, and you believe in salvation by works.” He smiled and spent ten minutes showing me, from Scripture and history, that his church had always taught salvation by grace.
I was humbled and more than a wee bit confused. That conversation caused me to dig deeper into theology and history. In the weeks following that conversation, I learned he was right and wrong. He was right when he said Protestants and Catholics both believe in salvation by grace. He was wrong when he assumed Protestants and Catholics mean the same thing when we say we believe in salvation by grace.
The man credited with catalyzing the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, was trained first as an Augustinian monk in the Via Moderna, a particular stream of late medieval Catholic theology shaped in large part by the German scholastic, Gabriel Biel. Within that tradition, grace was often conceived as kind of spiritual boost. Picture God spotting you at the bench press. You push the bar as far as you can, but when/if you get stuck, grace helps you finish the lift. Biel’s school put it plainly: “God will not deny grace to those who do their best.” Said another way, grace is the reward of effort and the strength for more effort.
When Luther read Romans, he found a very different definition of grace. The righteous are not those who put in their best effort and are rewarded grace. Righteousness is a “free gift” from God (Rom. 5:17) by which he “justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5). Contra Biel, grace was not God’s response to our best; it was God’s initiative toward people who had nothing to offer. Long before grace ever becomes a power that changes us, it is a gift that changes our standing positionally before God.
The good news of God’s grace was tantamount to the change that happens at a wedding. In love, Christ, the rich and royal Bridegroom, marries a poor and unfaithful bride. In that marriage a wonderful exchange takes place: He takes on her shame and debt, and she receives His wealth and His name. She becomes queen, not because she was queenly, but because she belongs to the King. She will grow queenlier as she lives in His love, but she will never be more the queen than she is on her wedding day.
Luther called it simul justus et peccator––at the same time justified and a sinner. The moment you trust in Christ you are declared righteous and fully accepted, even though in life you are still a sinner with a long way to go. Today, you are complete in Christ, and, today you are incomplete and far from perfect. To pull on the analogy above, you are the queen, but you’re still missing a lot of queenliness. You aren’t yet the queen you will be.
So, if you’ve trusted in Christ alone for salvation, you have every reason to worship today with joy. You are justified in Christ! At the same time, you have every reason to worship today with humility. For you still have a ways to go. But if it feels today like you have a really long way to go, do not despair about the distance. You can worship today with hope––for the same God who has saved you is sanctifying you, and he won’t stop short of perfection (Phil. 1:6).
Your servant,
