This is Part Five of a special article on John Calvin written by Dr. Joel R. Beeke of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Dr. Beeke also has an interesting web site on located at http://calvin500blog.org titled “The Calvin 500 Blog” “Fostering a healthy discussion for an international community about events, conferences, tours, reviews, studies, discussions, and developments related to the 2009 quincentenary of Calvin’s birth.” Dr. Beeke has given me permission to post his article here which I copied and pasted from his post at his web site. I hereby thank him for giving me this permission to post his article here and for giving us his web site as a resource to use.
Piety’s Double Cleansing: Justification and Sanctification
According to Calvin, believers receive from Christ by faith the “double grace” of justification and sanctification, which, together, provide a twofold cleansing. Justification offers imputed purity, and sanctification, actual purity. Calvin defines justification as “the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous men.” He goes on to say that “since God justifies us by the intercession of Christ, he absolves us not by the confirmation of our own innocence but by the imputation of righteousness, so that we who are not righteous in ourselves may be reckoned as such in Christ.” Justification includes the remission of sins and the right to eternal life.
Calvin regards justification as a central doctrine of the Christian faith. He calls it “the principal hinge by which religion is supported,” the soil out of which the Christian life develops, and the substance of piety. Justification not only serves God’s honor by satisfying the conditions for salvation; it also offers the believer’s conscience “peaceful rest and serene tranquility.” As Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is the heart and soul of piety. Believers do not need to worry about their status with God because they are justified by faith. They can willingly renounce personal glory and daily accept their own life from the hand of their Creator and Redeemer. Daily skirmishes may be lost to the enemy, but Jesus Christ has won the war for them.
Sanctification refers to the process in which the believer increasingly becomes conformed to Christ in heart, conduct, and devotion to God. It is the continual remaking of the believer by the Holy Spirit, the increasing consecration of body and soul to God. In sanctification, the believer offers himself to God as a sacrifice. This does not come without great struggle and slow progress; it requires cleansing from the pollution of the flesh and renouncing the world. It requires repentance, mortification, and daily conversion.
Justification and sanctification are inseparable, Calvin says. To separate one from the other is to tear Christ in pieces, or like trying to separate the sun’s light from the heat that light generates. Believers are justified for the purpose of worshipping God in holiness of life.
Reformed Doctrine Daily Devotions 