CHAPTER 8
THE GIFT OF SALVATION
The Father and the Son are, of course, engaged in this powerful work of new creation. Yet the Spirit’s role is unique in its own right. The Spirit does not become incarnate. However, the Spirit by whose power the Son assumed our humanity also glorified our representative head. And he kept and still keeps the Jesus of history from slipping away into the past by uniting us to him now. The Son became history so that he could redeem our humanity, but the Spirit ensured that his history would not end in the grave. It is the Spirit who creates this intersection between history and eschatology, making Christ’s life, death, and resurrection in this present age the site of the in-breaking of the powers of the age to come. “The Spirit makes of Christ an eschatological being, the ‘last Adam,’ ” as John Zizioulas observes.1
Even though Jesus is separated from us in the flesh, the Spirit unites us to Christ, our federal head. In baptism, he has broken our alliance with death. He has “raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). Therefore, our lives even now are not defined by this present evil age but by the same powers of the age to come that Christ enjoys in a consummated manner. “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1 ESV). “By this we know that we abide in [Christ] and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13 ESV; cf. 1 John 3:24).
The focus of this chapter is on the Spirit’s gifts that we all share equally in Christ; the next chapter examines the variety of gifts that the Spirit distributes among the saints for the good of the whole body.
THE SPIRIT’S CHIEF GIFT
One tragedy of prolonged debates over the spiritual gifts is that the gifts can become more important than the Giver. Above all, the greatest gift that Christ gives in his ascension is the Spirit himself. For our salvation the Father gave his two greatest gifts, John Owen observed. “The one was the giving of his Son for them and the other was the giving of his Spirit unto them. . . . To these heads may all the promises of God be reduced.”2 And now, in applying redemption, “there is no good communicated unto us from God but it is bestowed on us or wrought in us by the Holy Ghost.”3
It is the Holy Spirit’s presence within us that brings about our “amen!” of faith to the word and that defines the age in which we are now living as “these last days.” We were chosen by “God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood” (1 Pet 1:2 ESV, emphasis added). The Holy Spirit broods over the darkness and void of our heart, “cherishing the confused mass,”4 as he infuses life into us. Only in this case, unlike the first creation the chaos is not merely raw material waiting to be shaped but is a whirlpool of idolatry and immorality. Thus the new creation is more astonishing than the first. The triune God creates a new world this time not out of nothing but out of sin and death, not only without assistance but in the face of hostility from the creatures he made in his image. It is the Spirit who completes the salvation accomplished by the Father in the Son. He prepares a natural body for the Son and then, as we will see in chapter 10, forms an ecclesial body for Christ. The Spirit is the Lord, who makes us sharers in the new creation by uniting us to our glorified Head and indwelling us as the deposit on our final salvation. The Spirit who made the Son the door of salvation now opens the door of our hearts to embrace Christ with all of his benefits (cf. Acts 16:14).
I have argued that Jesus’s reference to the Holy Spirit as paraklētos hails from the language of the courtroom. Precisely because he is an advocate or attorney, the Spirit is also a comforter who comes to our defense. But the Spirit is another advocate because whereas Jesus came alongside us, as one of us, in the place of us, and intercedes for us now in heaven, the Spirit exercises his advocacy within us, convicting us of guilt and assuring us of our election, justification, and adoption. He is the attorney who offers himself as the surety or deposit on our glorification. And on the basis of this judicial work within us here and now, fastening our faith on the judicial work that Christ accomplished for us in history, the Spirit begins his powerful work of renovation, conforming us more and more to Christ’s image. Thus the entire golden chain of salvation from election to glorification is comprehended under the broader rubric that all good gifts come from the Father, in the Son, through the Spirit. The Spirit’s intimate presence is the basis for Jesus’s assurance that he will not leave his disciples as orphans in the world. Despite the world’s hostility Christ has overcome the world, and they too will be overcomers in him through the power of the Spirit in spite of their temporal insecurity (John 16:33). Both divine persons are paraklētoi in both senses, as advocate-comforters, but in different ways due to their different persons and therefore operations.
What then does the Spirit seal? We turn now to the Spirit’s application of redemption to the elect: the ordo salutis. Just as there is a historical progression from the initial promise of salvation in Genesis 3:15 to the incarnation and, eventually, the consummation, there is a logical golden chain leading from election in eternity past to redemption, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom 8:30 ESV).
REGENERATION
The Spirit is our first contact with the Holy Trinity,5 bringing us to our adopted Father by uniting us to the Son. “The Eternal and Ever-blessed God comes into vital touch with the creature by an act proceeding not from the Father nor from the Son, but from the Holy Spirit,” writes Kuyper.6 To be sure, it is always the Father, in the Son, who meets us through the Spirit. Yet “Christ never entered into a human person. He took upon Himself our human nature, with which He united Himself much more closely than the Holy Spirit does; but He did not touch the inward man and his hidden personality.”7 This should not surprise us when we know already that “the Spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters, that He brings forth the host of heaven and earth, ordered, animated, and resplendent.” But he enters the very precincts of the human heart.8 Thus his disciples only knew Jesus after Pentecost in the way that all believers have ever since: after the Spirit, not merely as rabbi and master but as the eschatological head of his body. Throughout its liturgy, especially in its focus on Christ and the Father through him, the church is always crying, “Veni, Creator Spiritus” (“Come, Holy Spirit, Creator!”). “There is always the same deep thought: the Father remains outside of the creature; the Son touches him outwardly; by the Holy Spirit the divine life touches him directly in his inward being.”9
For those who are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1 ESV), nothing short of regeneration will do: “Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [he] made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (v. 5 ESV). The old Adam is not merely wayward, requiring better advice and habits. The condition is dire: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14). Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit, “even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive,” but who indwells his elect (John 14:17). Apart from regeneration, we cannot even repent and believe in Christ (John 3:5; 6:44); even faith is a gift (Eph 2:8–9). The Spirit does not enter hearts that prepare him room or sweep the floor and dust before his arrival (an optimistic set of tasks to expect of the dead); rather, he enters, hovers, infuses life, gives faith, and begins immediately to renovate the mansion in which he once breathed merely the natural (i.e., biological) life but now breathes the breath of eschatological—new creation—life.
Effectual calling is not the brute force of an agent acting upon an object but a speech act from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit, winning our consent to the gospel and through the gospel. When God says, “Let there be light!” whether in the first creation or the new creation, it is so. Nevertheless, he also commands, “Let the earth bring forth . . .” (Gen 1:24 ESV). The new birth, in which we are passive recipients of a life-giving fiat declaration, yields to conversion, in which we respond in Spirit-given repentance and faith. This is how actual instances of conversion are described in the New Testament, as in the case of Lydia: “The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14 NRSV). This is not violent coercion; it is life-giving liberation.
The word never returns to God without effect (Isa 55:11). This is not only because it comes from the sovereign Father, nor even merely because it has Jesus Christ as its content, for even then it would fall on deaf ears, as it did typically in Jesus’s ministry. It achieves its effect because the Spirit opens the ears to hear and believe. God’s word is not therefore only the speech of the Father concerning the Son which we then make effective by our own decision, but the instrumental action through which the Spirit brings about within us the appropriate response. “Therefore I want you to understand that . . . no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). “For in [Christ] every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen,’ to the glory of God” (2 Cor 1:20 NRSV).
Furthermore, the Spirit uses creaturely means for this regenerating work that do not detract from God being the ultimate source and author of life. The Spirit regenerates us through this external preaching of the gospel (1 Pet 1:23, 25). “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth . . .” (Jas 1:18 ESV). “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). We “were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13 ESV). Those who by nature “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom 1:18 NASB) are swept into the story that God is telling the world. “Those he predestined, he also called” (Rom 8:30).
JUSTIFICATION
Paul adds to Romans 8:30 (ESV), “And those whom he called he also justified. . . .” Paul proclaims the gospel “concerning [the Father’s] Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead . . .” (Rom 1:3–4). The verb horisthentos means marked off, separated by boundaries, set apart or declared. It is a public and legal announcement. The Spirit publicly vindicated—justified—the risen Christ, and now he unites us to Christ to receive that same justification. Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 6, after a list of perversions that mark human rebellion, Paul writes, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (v. 11).
Typically, we think of justification as a transaction between the believer and Christ. For that reason, some scholars see the pneumatological turn as a way of subordinating the forensic aspect of salvation to the transformative. Both options offer a false choice based on a misunderstanding of the Spirit’s operations. Having established the Spirit’s association with judgment in God’s courtroom, we should not be surprised that he is involved specifically in the act of justification. As Jesus taught in the farewell discourse, the Spirit brings conviction of guilt and faith in Christ, so that we are assured even now of the verdict that will be made publicly visible when we are, together with all the saints, raised with Christ in vindication-glory. Through the Spirit’s work, we receive the eschatological verdict of the final judgment in the present: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1 ESV).
It is not the Spirit’s obedience that is imputed to sinners or whose death bears our sins and who “was raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25). Nevertheless, as Calvin puts it so well, “As long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.”10 There can be no exchange of debts and riches apart from a marriage.
The language of union and marriage were staples of patristic soteriology. Bernard of Clairvaux especially emphasized this theme in the Middle Ages, which Luther credited as a major influence in his own understanding of union with Christ.11 Calvin quotes Bernard directly twenty-nine times in the section of the Institutes treating this subject.12 However, for both Reformers the major source was the New Testament—especially John’s Gospel and Paul. Union with Christ means that we are “engrafted into him” (Rom 11:17) and that we “put on Christ” (Gal 3:27 ESV). We are not saved by Christ “from a distance” but by being united to Christ through faith in the most intimate bonds. The basis of this marriage bond is Christ’s redeeming work, but the bond is actually effected through the secret energy of the Holy Spirit. We have been chosen by the Father, said Peter, “in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood” (1 Pet 1:2 ESV). Jesus gave his blood, and the Spirit sprinkles it on us, baptizing us into Christ for everlasting life.
The righteousness that justifies remains external to the believer because it is accomplished by Christ, who became one of us but is now in heaven. Yet we receive this verdict because the Spirit convicts us inwardly of our guilt and gives us faith to embrace Christ in the most intimate union. Again, this is precisely why we need both advocates—the one outside and above us and the other within us.
THE SPIRIT OF ADOPTION
It is the Spirit who enables us to cry to the Father in the Son. Apart from this work, we could not pray as Jesus taught us, “Our Father. . . .” When Mary Magdalene discovered the empty tomb, Jesus told her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father’ ” (John 20:17 ESV). Similarly, Paul explained:
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. . . . For all who are led by the Spirit are sons of God. . . . The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Rom 8:11, 14, 16–17 ESV)
He continues a bit further in the letter: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (vv. 26–27).
Typically we are drawn toward two errors. The first is to assume that God is our Father even apart from Christ and the Spirit’s regenerating grace. The second, more common especially in the church, is to regard the Father as too distant and too lofty to be approached “boldly” and “with confidence,” as the writer to the Hebrews invites (4:16). The writer gives us such confidence by proclaiming Christ as our mediator. But it is also the Spirit who enters the courtroom—not the heavenly courtroom, as Christ has, but the courtroom of our own hearts, to assure our conscience that Christ has fully discharged the debt of justice on our behalf. Here we meet another paradox. We do not turn away from Christ and his objective work outside of us in history when we encounter the Spirit’s ministry within. On the contrary, the Spirit’s witness within directs us not to what is happening in our own hearts but to the external word in its promise that Christ is witnessing on our behalf in the heavenly court surrounded by the holy angels in festive assembly. Furthermore, the Spirit not only testifies but translates, taking our foolish and inadequate prayers to the Father, in the Son. We are not even quite sure what we should pray for or how, but he makes our prayers intelligible (Rom 8:26). We are free to offer laments, sighs, praises, and supplications that are in themselves unworthy of the Father’s majesty, not only because of his paternal clemency toward us in Christ but also because the Spirit is our intercessor within. The Spirit is the other Paraclete whom Jesus sent from the Father.
SANCTIFICATION IN THE SPIRIT
Paul speaks on occasion of sanctification as something that believers already possess (Acts 20:32); in his letters he typically greets churches as those who are called to be “saints [hagiois]” (Rom 1:7; 2 Cor 1:1; Eph 1:1; Phil 1:1; Col 1:2 [ESV]), and he even addresses the immature and undisciplined Corinthians as “those sanctified [hēgiasmenois] in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor 1:2 ESV). Similarly, Peter addresses his first letter to Christians of the Jewish diaspora as those “chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified [hagiasmō] by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood” (1 Pet 1:2 NRSV), and his second letter, “To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 1:1 ESV).
All that is found in Christ is holy because it is in Christ. He is our sanctification—“the LORD is our righteousness” (Jer 23:6 ESV; 1 Cor 1:30). He is our holy land and holy place. The sprinkling of Christ’s blood is vastly superior to that of blood of goats and bulls for sanctification since it purifies “our conscience from dead works to worship the living God!” (Heb 9:13–14 NRSV). “And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all” (10:10). It is this “blood of the covenant by which they [covenant members] were sanctified” (v. 29 NRSV). Jesus suffered outside the camp “in order to sanctify the people by his own blood” (13:12 NRSV). God “saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim 1:9–10 NRSV). All of this belongs especially to that consecration that we encountered in the previous chapter.
At the same time, the Spirit’s ministry also renovates as he brings us into the new creation that Christ has inaugurated: a ministry not only of judgment but of power. As in all of the external works of the God, the Spirit is sent to complete the work that has been initiated by the Father and accomplished in the Son. Sanctification is part of the gospel.
We should not hesitate at the threshold of the Spirit’s marvelous renewing work as if it were somehow a threat to the article of justification. This false choice between justification and sanctification joins antinomians and legalists in an unholy alliance. Nor should we yield to the temptation to see ourselves as saved objectively and yet subjectively in the same condition after regeneration that obtained before. To be still sinful, still prone to wander, still weak in repentance and faith (which I take to be the argument of Romans 7) is not to be “dead in trespasses and sins” and “children of wrath” like the rest of humanity (Eph 2:1–3 KJV).
In regeneration, we are passive—we are the dead who are raised: “Let there be light!” But in conversion (viz., faith and repentance), we are active: “Let the earth bring forth . . .” Both are the result of the word of the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. The sovereign grace of the Spirit does not obliterate human agency; on the contrary, it frees us to be—and to become more and more—the image of God in Christ.
Thus, even in our sanctification the Spirit does not save us from nature but restores nature. He works within creatures through ordinary creaturely means. John Webster draws our attention to this point nicely:
The sanctifying Spirit is Lord; that is, sanctification is not in any straightforward sense a process of cooperation or coordination between God and the creature, a drawing out or building upon some inherent holiness of the creature’s own. Sanctification is making holy. Holiness is properly an incommunicable divine attribute; if creaturely realities become holy, it is by virtue of election, that is, by a sovereign act of segregation or separation by the Spirit as Lord. . . . From the vertical of ‘lordship’ there flows the horizontal of life which is truly given. Segregation, election to holiness, is not the abolition of creatureliness but its creation and preservation.13
As the Spirit sanctifies us, cutting us away from this passing evil age and its corrupt fruit, he enables us to bear his fruit of righteousness. His saving word does not smother our speech but liberates it to sing his praises; the Spirit gives us our voice back to reply to the word of the Father in the Son with the “amen!” of faith. But this tension between the “already” and “not yet” is what the New Testament intends by the warfare between the flesh and the Spirit. Unlike election, regeneration, justification, and adoption, our sanctification is incomplete in this life. Nevertheless, it is real and decisive. The eschatological newness that has come with the ascension and Pentecost is so striking that John can speak of the old commandment to love neighbor as “at the same time . . . a new commandment . . . because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining” (1 John 2:7–8 ESV). There has been a qualitatively new transition in history from the age of sin and death to the age of righteousness and life.
There is already a consecrating or “cutting away” in a certain sense with our election in Christ “before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4 ESV). Already in eternity, the triune God has separated unto himself from the mass of condemned humanity a people for his Son. It is for “those whom the Father gave me,” Jesus says repeatedly, that he has given his life (John 6:37, 39; 10:11, 15; 17:9). And it is this bride whom the Holy Spirit unites to the risen Son in an everlasting marriage. “To sum up,” wrote Calvin, “the Holy Spirit is the bond by which Christ effectually unites us to himself.”14
Against both Rome and the Anabaptists, Calvin emphasizes with Paul that we do not find Christ by ascending into heaven or by descending into our hearts, but by the work of the Spirit through his Word. We are “one with the Son of God; not because he conveys his substance to us, but because, by the power of his Spirit, he imparts to us his life and all the blessings which he has received from the Father.”15 “Since we are clothed with the righteousness of the Son” in justification, “we are reconciled to God and renewed by the power of the Spirit to holiness.”16 For “with a wonderful communion, day by day, [Christ] grows more and more into one body with us, until he becomes completely one with us.”17
So, for the Reformers the mystical and subjective aspects of union are inseparable from the objective and legal, just as the Spirit’s judicial work is inseparable from his renovating power. Nevertheless, we do not find Christ by descending into our hearts but by being drawn out of ourselves to Christ as he is clothed in his gospel. “If you contemplate yourself,” Calvin counsels, “that is sure damnation.”18 He continues:
But since Christ has been so imparted to you with all his benefits that all his things are made yours, that you are made a member of him, indeed one with him, his righteousness overwhelms your sins; his salvation wipes out your condemnation; with his worthiness he intercedes that your unworthiness may not come before God’s sight. Surely this is so: We ought not to separate Christ from ourselves or ourselves from him. Rather we ought to hold fast bravely with both hands to that fellowship by which he has bound himself to us. So the apostle teaches us: ‘Now your body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit of Christ which dwells in you is life because of righteousness’ [Rom 8:10].19
Through the same act of faith, one receives the whole Christ, Lord and Savior, with all of his gifts, including justification and renewal. The Holy Spirit operates upon us as Lord and life-giver while we were dead (Eph 2:1–5). But having made us alive together with Christ, the Spirit empowers us by grace for good works (v. 10).
It is a serious narrowing of the good news to announce merely the forgiveness of sins and justification, as if now that we are “off the hook,” sanctification is either “our part” or something that we can take or leave. The Scriptures know nothing of two acts of faith—one that receives Christ for justification (“making Jesus your personal Savior”) and another that submits to him as Lord. We do not make Jesus anything. Faith merely embraces him for all that he is, does, and gives.
When this question of the relation between justification and sanctification arises, the New Testament repeatedly invokes the organic analogies—vine and branches, head and members—to make the point that one cannot be united to Christ for some gifts (such as election, redemption, justification, adoption), but not for others (sanctification and glorification). In Romans 6 Paul argues that those who are baptized into Christ are sharers not only in his death for the forgiveness of sins but in his resurrection life. They have been renewed by the Spirit: this is as much in the past tense as their having been justified. The regenerate cannot return to a state of spiritual death. Sin therefore no longer has dominion over them.
After treating the Ten Commandments, the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “But can those converted to God keep these commandments perfectly?” The answer: “No. In this life even the holiest have only a small beginning of this obedience. Nevertheless, with earnest purpose they do begin to live not only according to some but to all the commandments of God.”20 We cannot keep God’s law for justification. Nor can we become perfectly sanctified by keeping it. We are always in a position of confessing our sins and, indeed, our ongoing sinful condition, and anyone who claims perfection makes God a liar (1 John 1:9–10). Nevertheless, we can obey Christ, follow his example, and lead a new life. We can rejoice in God’s law with even greater alacrity than David, who hymned, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Ps 119:97 ESV). Our experience may tell us otherwise: that we do not love God’s law and do not—even cannot—follow his commands. However, the promise trumps our experience. Anyone who refuses categorically to obey any one of God’s commands is not united to Christ.
Growing in holiness is a constant struggle. However, to say that it is an impossibility for the regenerate is to deny the Holy Spirit. Jesus invites, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:28–30 ESV). In sharp contrast with the religious leaders who tied people down with heavy burdens, Jesus’s lordship is easy and his burden is light. This is so not only because he has eliminated the Pharisees’ manual of rules but because his law of love—which actually demands more of us—is no longer an external threat but an inner disposition that is furnished by the Spirit’s indwelling, regenerating, and sanctifying presence. The day the prophets longed for has arrived when the Spirit would put the law in our hearts. If we are seeking justification or any good gifts from God from the law itself, then it is anything but an easy yoke and a light burden; rather, it leads to utter despair. But if we are delivered from the curse of the law in Christ, we have freedom from guilt and the dominion of sin. In the age of the Spirit, believers are never to conclude that they are unable to love and obey God’s commands.
Repentance is always unfinished, but it is always comprehensive: unfinished because our best works are halfhearted and fall short of meriting anything from God, but comprehensive in that we no longer claim any right to determine what we believe or how we live. We are not allowed to pick and choose which teachings we will believe or which commands we will keep. God has claimed us wholly and entirely for himself. Getting used to that takes a lifetime, of course. Just when we find ourselves yielding to the Spirit in a particular area, we discover a new front of battle opening on another side. Even at our death we remain justified before God and yet far from that glorious workmanship that will be revealed in us when Christ returns.
With good reason the term synergism (“working together”) is viewed with suspicion by many Protestants. Through a long history, the term has been associated with a system of applied soteriology (the ordo salutis) that blurs any distinction between being declared righteous in Christ alone (justification) and being gradually conformed to Christ’s image (sanctification)—and, we might add, between regeneration and sanctification. Such synergism easily slides toward a semi-Pelagian or even Pelagian notion that salvation is our achievement rather than a pure gift of grace. According to these theories (judged heretical by the early medieval church), grace is merely divine assistance in response to the believer’s decision and effort. Even in classic Arminian teaching, prevenient grace makes it possible for people to be regenerated if they so choose; thus, Arminians accept the label synergist.21 From the perspective of Reformation exegesis, however, the new birth is never treated in the Scriptures as the result of human cooperation any more than resurrection depends on the cooperation of one who is dead.
But we are no longer dead. Alive in Christ through the power of the indwelling Spirit, we are now able to cooperate with God subsequent to regeneration. If synergism is too loaded a term given its associations, its synonym—cooperation—is not. I do not know how else we can interpret straightforward passages such as the following, from the apostle Paul no less:
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. (Rom 6:12–13)
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. (Gal 5:16–25)
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. . . . (Phil 2:12)
Passages could be multiplied. In these examples, the moral imperative is grounded in the gospel indicative. Cooperation does not lead to the new birth, but from it. We are not to give sin free reign because we “have been brought from death to life” (Rom 6:12–13 ESV). “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (v. 14 ESV). We are to “walk by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16)—indeed, even to “keep in step with the Spirit” (v. 25b) because “we live by the Spirit” (v. 25a) and are no longer under the law’s condemnation (vv. 5–13). And immediately after his imperative to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), Paul adds “for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (v. 13). Recalling the distinction I drew from Genesis 1, regeneration belongs to the “ ‘let there be. . . .’ And there was . . .” type of speech act, while sanctification comprehends the “ ‘let the earth bring forth. . . .’ And the earth brought forth . . .” type. The Spirit is gradually producing the effects of regeneration and union with Christ—hence, the fruit of the Spirit in, with, and through our own activity.
On the one hand, there is a clear call to cooperate with the Spirit in our sanctification. On the other hand, the asymmetry is just as apparent. No less than in regeneration and justification is sanctification attributed to God’s gracious operation. There is no synergism in the sense of each partner contributing something toward the work of salvation. Rather, the work that we are called to do is in response to a gift, and even that response itself is a gift and remains so until we die. But cooperation it is still. From the above imperatives it is clear that if we yield our bodies to the Spirit we will bear the fruit of the Spirit; if we offer ourselves to our sinful nature we will bear the fruit of the flesh that leads to death. Sanctification is God’s work, the fruit of Christ’s victory that is being applied to us by the Spirit. At the same time, in our growth as Christians we can quench the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19) or yield to the Spirit (Rom 6:13). Again notice the logical order of dependence: “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal 5:25).
“We tread carefully here to avoid the impression that this relies on us,” Edith M. Humphrey observes, “for all of it comes from the initiative of God. Yet we are called, in a certain sense, to ‘co-operate.’ (Perhaps we could coin the word ‘sub-operate’).”22 Formal terminology must always be bent to godly use, and in spite of its novelty I think “sub-operate” gets at the uniqueness of the covenantal understanding of sanctification. Sanctification is due entirely to God, and we are responsible for attending the means of grace and responding in daily faith, repentance, and obedience. We are not the sanctifiers of ourselves, even with God’s assistance. Only God is qualified for the role of sanctifier. Yet we are the subject of sanctified action. Only God can make us grow, but we are the ones who repent and believe, exercise and eat a balanced spiritual diet. We are in Christ and live only in that union. “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 3:18).
As John Owen points out, Adam and Eve were created upright; their righteousness was not a superadded gift but was intrinsic to their created dignity. But they were also upheld continually in their integrity as God’s image bearers. “And all these things were the peculiar effects of the immediate operation of the Holy Ghost.”23 Thus, in regeneration, the Spirit “doth thereby restore his own work”; “so also the Holy Spirit renews in us the image of God, the original implantation whereof was his peculiar work.”24 According to that first covenant, “it was possible that they should utterly lose him, as accordingly it came to pass. He had him not by especial inhabitation, for the whole world was the temple of God. In the covenant of grace, founded in the person and on the mediation of Christ, it is otherwise. On whomsoever the Spirit of God is bestowed for the renovation of the image of God in him, he abides with him for ever.”25 Later he writes, “There is, therefore, nothing more to be abhorred than those carnal low and unworthy thoughts which some men vent of this glorious work of the Holy Spirit, who would have it wholly to consist in a legal righteousness or moral virtue.”26
Even before there is a gradual renovation, notes Owen:
Sanctification is an immediate work of the Spirit of God on the souls of believers, purifying and cleansing of their natures from the pollution and uncleanness of sin, renewing in them the image of God, and thereby enabling them, from a spiritual and habitual principle of grace, to yield obedience unto God, according unto the tenor and terms of the new covenant, by virtue of the life and death of Jesus Christ.27
Along with the satisfaction of Christ and justification by his imputed righteousness, this doctrine of sanctification is attacked as undermining all diligent obedience. But Scripture represents these doctrines of grace as the only genuine basis of the pursuit of godliness.28
Owen’s opponents reduce regeneration to mere amendment of life according to the laws of nature.29 But this is merely to abandon the covenant of grace for the covenant of works. Like the diseased woman who grasped the hem of Jesus’s garment (Matt 9:20–22), notes Owen, the poorest sinner with the most meager faith is healed. “Multitudes press and throng about Christ in a profession of faith and obedience, and in the real performance of many duties, but no virtue goes forth from Christ to heal them. But when any one, though poor, though seemingly at a distance, gets but the least touch of him by special faith, this soul is healed. This is our way with respect to the mortification of sin.”30 Faith in Christ brings love in its wake.31 Believers no longer hear God’s commands from Mount Sinai as a legal covenant but as “inseparably annexed unto the covenant of grace.”32
The Spirit is not merely conforming us to the image of Adam before the fall, but to Christ—who is the very “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15). Even more, this image is now the exalted Son, who, glorified in our humanity, is the consummated image-son that Adam failed to be. We have seen that this is a principal reason why the Spirit could not be given until Christ had ascended in glory. His humanity had to be glorified in order for the prototype of the new humanity to actually exist and to be enthroned at the Father’s right hand. Thus our sanctification now is a transformation—a transfiguration—“from glory to glory,” which will be fully realized on the last day (2 Cor 3:18 KJV). This is far above natural improvement, moral development, the education of the human race, or the betterment of humankind. It is a supernatural, utterly miraculous, gift from heaven as we are not only swept into Christ through baptism but being conformed by degrees to the glorious image of Christ himself.
Believers are the only people in the world who feel the tension of living between the “already” and the “not yet” of this union with Christ by the Spirit. They experience their lives now as liberated from sin, and yet are frequently disappointed by the quality of their growth in Christ. It is the Spirit’s indwelling presence and the union with Christ we enjoy by his operations that make us to feel the inner contradiction between our objective identity and our ongoing struggle with sin. Clearly from Scripture, our ongoing sanctification always rests on the security of our election, justification, and adoption. Equally as clear from Scripture is the truth that the goal of our justification is sanctification and ultimately glorification (treated in chapter 11). Both of these points are made in numerous passages, even from Paul alone, where he moves from the indicative to the obvious imperatives that issue from it (e.g., Rom 6:13; 12:1; 2 Cor 5:15; Eph 2:10; 4:1; Col 1:9–10; Titus 2:14; 3:8). Our sanctification in the present therefore takes its bearings from God’s promise concerning what he has already done for us in the past and what he will do in the future. With those anchors comes the assurance that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6).
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
Unlike the various gifts distributed to each believer for the health of the body, the fruit of the Spirit is produced in all believers. Not just some but all believers are baptized by the Spirit into Christ and are therefore obliged to express love and humility toward one other. One may recognize special gifts of hospitality in other saints that one lacks in the same degree, but no one is exempt from bearing all, not just some, of the fruit of the Spirit. Jesus teaches that he is the vine and we are his branches. To be united to him is to be alive, bearing the fruit of love and good works. Similarly, in Galatians 5 the apostle Paul specifies the “fruit of the Spirit,” contrasted with the fruit of the flesh: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Gal 5:22–25).
This way of stating the matter highlights the dynamic movement of sanctification. The Spirit has not only regenerated us but by his indwelling presence leads us. He is “out in front,” enabling us to keep up with him. The fruit he describes could be enumerated in any number of ethical treatises of the pagan philosophers. And yet, the flesh—shorthand for the potentialities of this present evil age—has no power to bring them forth. They may be civil virtues, but they are not fruit of participation in the new creation. It is also significant that Paul’s exhortation to “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph 5:18) entails thankful singing of Christ’s word and greater submission to one another in our ordinary relationships (vv. 19–33).
Much of popular devotion is focused on the inner life of the individual believer. In contrast, the Scriptures place the emphasis on the Spirit’s work of opening us up and turning us outside of ourselves, looking up to God in faith and out to our neighbors in love. The fruit of the Spirit has to do with the way we relate to others. How do I, as a finger or an elbow, contribute to the whole body’s health? Wherever Paul refers to the Spirit’s power in our lives, the effects are to teach and persuade us of the truth and to bear the fruit of good works: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph 4:30–32). The fruit of the Spirit that Paul describes in Galatians 5:21–22 are graces that we do not normally associate with spiritual gifts. The evidence of being filled with the Spirit is not speaking in tongues or healings or new revelations, but patience, joy, love, peace, self-control, and so forth.
When Paul rather shockingly equates the natural law (stoicheia tou kosmou) of the Greeks with Torah, he is not condemning either. The physical and natural laws that govern the universe are God’s, as provident Creator and Lord. They are good ordinances, as surely as the Mosaic law. They keep calling us back in our conscience to the way in which God has ordered nature. Nevertheless, given our fallen condition, they cannot save us; they only condemn us. We break ourselves against them. Not because of their character but because of ours, these good laws become part of the futility of human existence. But there is another reality—the new creation that is being brought into this age by the Spirit. Only the Spirit has the power to bring an end to the old age of death and inaugurate the new age of righteousness. Whether written on the conscience or on stone tablets, the law is nothing like the “new heart” that God will give in the new covenant (Jer 31:31–34). We are slaves to the law—whether the “elementary principles” or Torah, but in Christ the Spirit makes us heirs. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption (Rom 8:12–21, 23, 29; 1 Cor 12:3; Gal 4:1–7; Rev 21:7).
As Paul interprets prophetic revelation, he explains, “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (Rom 7:5–6). To be “in the Spirit” is to be living in the reality that we are part of the new creation that he is bringing into this age through the resurrection of Christ.
When we look at the fruit of the flesh, we see as if in a mirror the vices that our own culture often regards as virtues. Sexual liberty (Gal 5:19) is regarded increasingly in Western societies as self-authenticating and self-affirming, while self-control is considered immoral. This attempt at self-creation, even against the grain of the obvious facts of nature, demonstrates the passion for self-deification: to make ourselves gods rather than be made like God by God. Even if we have avoided any explicit assimilation of Christian doctrine and rites to paganism or “drunkenness” and “revelries,” mention in the same breath of “enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, [and] factions” stops the mouth of the rest of us (vv. 20–21 NRSV). Far more than any need for new prophecies today is a serious concern for self-control. Of far greater value than a thousand “tongues” that no one else understands is edifying instruction concerning how we are to conduct ourselves with kindness, humility, and love, avoiding personality cults and angry insults on blogs.
We have seen how the Spirit’s ministry is associated particularly with bringing the word of the Father, in the Son, to completion—to full effect. Where the Spirit is, there is not only liberty but fruitfulness—a garden blossoms in the wasteland. The Holy Spirit came upon the watery depths in creation, dividing the waters from dry land, and then he made the implanted seed fruitful. He gave breath—spirit—to man in creation. He saves Noah and his family both from and through the waters, once again separating the waters from dry land to make a fruitful place for covenantal communion with Yahweh. A dove returns with a leafy twig as the seal that judgment is passed, the family is saved, and a new creation is appearing. As the down payment on our final redemption, the Spirit gives us the “already” of our participation in Christ as the new creation, and it is the Spirit within us who gives us the aching hope for the “not yet” that awaits us in our union with Christ (Rom 8:18–28; see 2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Eph 1:14). The more we receive from the Spirit of the realities of the age to come, the more restless we become, having already received a foretaste of the future.
THE CHIEF FRUIT: LOVE
This eschatological hope breeds love. The traditional order is crucial: faith, hope, and love. According to Roman Catholic teaching, faith only becomes justifying when it is perfected by love and its meritorious fruit. But the traditional order from 1 Corinthians 13 is exactly right. Faith comes first and remains the source of hope, love, and good works. Faith puts forth the fruit of love. No one who is united to Christ through faith is devoid of love. Even before one knows precisely how to exercise it, where to direct it, or how to channel it, trust in Christ immediately blossoms in love toward God and neighbor.
This love is the transition from faith to good works. Love is not the completion of justifying faith but its fruit. In justification, faith clings to Christ—not by loving and hoping, but only by an act of “receiving and resting,” in the words of the Westminster Confession.33 But even faith is not ultimately the greatest gift of salvation. It is now the vital root, because we do not yet have what we hope for (Rom 8:25). Justification is the present verdict of all who trust in Christ. We know how things will turn out with us in the end. But it is quite significant that Paul declares that the most excellent gift is love (1 Cor 13:13).
Love is an attribute of the one divine essence: “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and each person of the Trinity expresses that love according to his personal attributes. The Father “so loved the world that he gave his Son” (John 3:16). As for the Son, he himself said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). Yet the Holy Spirit binds us here and now to the Father in love through the mediation of the Son, as we see in the farewell discourse and Jesus’s prayer with which it closes. The Holy Spirit is not the love of God, which would hardly distinguish him from the other persons who bear this essential attribute. Rather, we discover the uniqueness of the Spirit once again in the way that he loves. The Father extends his love toward us, and the Son shows his love for us. But “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5 ESV). Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, the love of God for us remains outside of us. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us faith, and it is faith that bears the fruit of love, and it is love that bears the fruit of good works.
What endures into eternity is love. There will be no need for faith once we behold the reality. No more promise and trust. We will no longer be dependent on hearing the word and seeing the sacraments ratify the promise visibly. And hope will give way to full sight, to realization. After all of this, into eternity there will be love.
The apostles are absolutely convinced here that love is the ultimate goal of the vertical relation to God and the horizontal communion of saints. Love is the ultimate bond. In the communion of saints, bound together in “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” love is the rule. There is to be no proud jockeying for position, backbiting, or devouring one another, precisely because in the new city all of us have everything that we need. But we have not arrived at this perfect city yet. Faith must lead the way to hope in Christ by the powerful working of the Spirit through the gospel. This kind of love—based on the ultimate perfection of the holy city—cannot be deduced from anything in this present age. Even the church is but a pale reflection of this unity. But it is a reflection. Even now this enduring love begins to blossom from the root of gospel-fed faith. Just as we live in hope because of the certain faith that we are justified and adopted, we love others in hope from the faith that sees our brothers and sisters from the perspective of the age to come. They too are imperfect, but they are coheirs with us of the Father’s inheritance in Christ. As we will love Christ without a veil, face-to-face, we will also love these others into all eternity. Let us begin now to bear the fruit of the Spirit, whose greatest issue is love.
In this context, prayer has its inestimable place. Prayer belongs in that nexus of faith-hope-love. Like the cry of a child at birth, the first springs of prayer are that of dependence, lament, need, and trial. Prayer is the filial cry of the child. But one day there will be no more prayer, any more than there will be preaching and sacraments. We will no longer lament, invoke, weep, confess, or long in an inchoate way for the “new song” that God has written for his symphony. It will be the everlasting song in the immediate presence of the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit.
CONCLUSION
It is worthwhile to pause for a moment to take in the grand vista—the astonishing security that we now have in the new covenant through the ministry of the Spirit. Even after the flood of Noah’s day, corruption mounted. “Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years’ ” (Gen 6:3). Here “abide” could just as easily be translated “strive.” “God gave them up,” after sending servants like Enoch to preach to them (cf. Rom 1:24, 26, 28 ESV). The Spirit will put up with it for the time being, however, in commitment to the promise to Noah. But the Spirit will only “strive” again within the boundaries of Israel, and eventually even there the Spirit evacuates the sanctuary and leaves the temple and land to be destroyed, a haunt of jackals.
At Pentecost, however, a new creation dawns with the Spirit once again transforming chaos into cosmos. From the rubble he will build not a restored temple of stone but a living sanctuary consisting of “living stones.” And now, striving with everlasting tenacity even against our quenching of his righteous love, he will never abandon his temple. With respect to his anointing as king, David could say after his adultery and murder, “Take not your Holy Spirit from me” (Ps 51:11 ESV). But with respect to regeneration the Lord pledges to his saints, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb 13:5 ESV).
1. John Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 130.
2. John Owen, A Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit, in vol. 8 of The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, 16 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), 23.
3. Ibid., 157.
4. I am referring to Calvin’s description of the Spirit’s activity in brooding over the waters, cited in chapter 2.
5. See on this point Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, trans. Henri De Vries (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 32–33.
6. Ibid., 32.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 33.
9. Ibid., 43.
10. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Lewis Ford Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 3.1.1.
11. Martin Luther, “Against the Antinomians,” in Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann, 55 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress; St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–86), 47:110: “This doctrine is not mine, but St. Bernard’s. What am I saying? St. Bernard’s? It is the message of all of Christendom, of all the prophets and apostles.” Cf. idem, “The Freedom of a Christian,” Luther’s Works, 31:351; idem, “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” Luther’s Works 31:298, 351.
12. Especially 3.20.1. For the calculation of references to Bernard see François Wendel, Calvin: Origins and Development of His Religious Thought, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 127n43.
13. John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 27.
14. Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.1.
15. Ibid.
16. John Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, in Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, trans. Ross Mackenzie, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance, 12 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 8:138.
17. Calvin, Institutes, 3.2.24.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Lord’s Day 44, Question 114; emphasis added.
21. Roger E. Olson, The Mosaic of Christian Belief: Twenty Centuries of Unity and Diversity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 281.
22. Edith M. Humphrey, Ecstasy and Intimacy: When the Holy Spirit Meets the Human Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 72.
23. Owen, Discourse, 102.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., 376.
27. Ibid., 386.
28. Ibid., 394–97.
29. Ibid., 526.
30. Ibid., 562.
31. Ibid., 564.
32. Ibid., 606.
33. Chapter 11.