A Double Grace: John Calvin on Justification and Sanctification

John Calvin, the sixteenth-century Reformer of Geneva, is probably talked about more often than he is read. This is unfortunate. Christian readers who are willing to risk his Institutes of the Christian Religion will discover a treasury of Christ-centered theology that is precise in exegesis and lyrical in expression.

Calvin may be at his most helpful in Book III of the Institutes, on “The Way We Receive the Grace of Christ.” I have benefited much from Calvin’s reflections on grace and salvation. Here is a powerful summary statement:

Christ was given to us by God’s generosity, to be grasped and possessed by us in faith. By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace: namely, that being reconciled to God through Christ’s blamelessness, we may have in heaven instead of a Judge a gracious Father; and secondly, that sanctified by Christ’s spirit we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life.[i]

Grasping Christ by faith, we receive a “double grace.” We receive justification and sanctification.

Justification: Reconciled through Christ’s Blamelessness

When we grasp Jesus with the hand of faith, we are “reconciled to God through Christ’s blamelessness.” This is clearly Calvin’s meaning, for he goes on to say:

Justified by faith is he who, excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man. Therefore, we explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous men. And we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.   Continue at  Brian Hedges