Justification and Union with Christ: Lutheranism, Part 3

Is our view of sanctification as robust as justification?

As mentioned, Paul Tripp is a gifted, gifted man in his teaching and ministry.

On the DVD series What Did You Expect, the thrust of his application for married couples calls for dying to self. It’s the rock-solid call to get self out of the way and bow to one King alone—Jesus of Nazareth. Tripp’s many exhortations are on the wrestling that sinners do: 1) we wrestle with God, Who is truth and grace and sovereign; 2) we wrestle with the old sinful nature, which remains in the life of the believer and may be found just ever so slightly hidden under the surface of our skin, yet easily roused; 3) we wrestle with elevating the trivial—the inconsequential material things, the surface-y issues in relationships and circumstances, and thus we’re quick to have spats as married folks.

Tripp hits his target as a Marksman; he’s locked and loaded in the tall grass, and he’s a dead-aim blasting bottle-caps at 200 yards. Our inner-motivations are his target. Watch out, believer, Paul Tripp’s teaching will nail you! His down to earth stories drive home such points. His illustrations accurately speak to the kingdom of self. They are great stories—our relational game-playing, our selfish expressions, and other sinful inclinations. Tripp can smell a rotten deceitful heart a block away. Now we move a little closer to the theology.

Why is he so good with his analysis of a rotten heart? He’s using the Bible to open to us God’s righteous ways. In short, he applies God’s law to sinners extremely well. When the purity of the law is kept in view, then it’s a very, very short step to Christ. It is Christ alone who must rid us of sin by His death. As many men have noted in recent years, “Believers are to be known as cross-eyed disciples,”—it’s keeping their eyes on the cross of Christ for moment by moment forgiveness.

This, I would offer, is like a one-two punch emphasis in Paul Tripp’s DVD series. A one-two punch? Show the sinner his need, and then next, take him to the cross. In this way, it’s the law first, then grace second. That’s the one-two: first, law and then, grace. It’s effective teaching. It’s effective because it accents the sinner’s need for Jesus Christ. Who would ever want to discount or look down on that teaching?

This is where differences between Lutheran and Reformed traditions surface. Tripp casts a winsome Lutheran view that sees the key to the Christian life as keeping this law-grace principle readily in view. This law-grace principle works hard at keeping in view one’s sin—being sensitive about sin’s deceitfulness and one’s need—and going to Christ.

With this, a certain way of thinking about the Christian life may start to develop. It’s the thinking and teaching that emphasizes the chief concerns of the Christian's guilt and release from guilt. Justification by faith gets the focus and with that comes a susceptibility to see that aspect of Christ’s work for the sinner as a stand-alone, separate matter from sanctification. Then what happens? There’s a neglect of the importance of Christ’s work for sanctification for the believer. If we offer a weak view of Christ’s saving power for sanctification, we can get off track.

Note Dick Gaffin’s words on this:

“In the matter of sanctification, it seems to me, we must confront a tendency, at least practical and, my impression is, pervasive, within churches of the Reformation to view the gospel and salvation in its outcome almost exclusively in terms of justification…to the effect that the gospel is only about what Christ has done ‘for us’ and apparently does not include his work, through the Spirit, ‘in us.’ The effect of this outlook, whether or not intended, is that sanctification tends to be seen as the response of the believer to salvation, defined in terms of justification. Sanctification is viewed as an expression of gratitude from our side for our justification and the free forgiveness of our sins…The attitude we may have—at least this is the way it comes across—is something like, ‘If Jesus did that for you, died that your sins might be forgiven, shouldn’t you at least do this for him, try to please him?”

Gaffin’s thoughts should be underscored: Sanctification is viewed as an expression of gratitude…

In the next post, we’ll look at this matter of sanctification being viewed as an expression of gratitude.

For Gaffin’s comments, see his By Faith, Not By Sight, p. 76.

G. Mark Sumpter