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One of the great blessings of the Protestant Reformation has been the Confessions and Creeds growing out of that movement to call the Church back to Scriptures and the great doctrines of the faith.  While Martin Luther was primarily concerned about key aspects of salvation such as justification, John Calvin focused on the Sovereignty of God, the Kingdom of God, including salvation.   Calvin carefully emphasized that while justification and sanctification are separate aspects of salvation, they must not be separate. The Reformation was committed to setting forth the authority of God’s Word as it relates to all of life, including salvation.

While the Presbyterian Church in America embraces The Westminster Confession of Faith and The Larger and Shorter Catechisms as its doctrinal standards, other Reformed Churches have the Heidelberg Catechism.  Both Westminster and Heidelberg are doctrinally formulated catechisms representing the same commitment to a biblically Reformed theology.

As we remember the Protestant Reformation, we will use both to highlight their unity and harmony regarding salvation.   How can people, all of whom are sinners, ever stand in the presence of a holy God justified and freed from the guilt of their sins? For example by summary:

HC Question 60: How are you right with God?

A: Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. AllI need to do is to accept this gift of God with a believing heart.

Question 61: Why do you say that by faith alone you are right with God?

A: It is not because of any value my faith has that God is pleased with me. Only Christ’s satisfaction, righteousness and make it mine in no other way than by faith alone.

WLC:  Q. 70. What is justification?

 A. Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which he pardoneth all their sins, accepteth and accounteth their persons righteous in his sight; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.

Comment:  Justification is that part of salvation where, based on faith in the righteousness of Christ, sinners are declared to be righteous in God’s sight.  Justification is God’s judicial and gracious act of acquitting us from the guilt of our sin on the basis of Christ’s work of redemption.

Q. 75. What is sanctification?

A. Sanctification is a work of God’s grace, whereby they whom God hath, before the foundation of the world, chosen to be holy, are in time, through the powerful operation of his Spirit applying the death and resurrection of Christ unto them, renewed in their whole man after the image of God; having the seeds of repentance unto life, and all other saving graces, put into their hearts, and those graces so stirred up, increased, and strengthened, as that they more and more die unto sin, and rise unto newness of life.

Comment: As the HC question 88 states, conversion is coming to life of the new self. We might say that while justification is being declared just in and by the power of the Holy Spirit, sanctification focuses on that aspect of the Christian life that has ethical dimensions. It has to do with living the Christian life.

Q. 77. Wherein do justification and sanctification differ?

A. Although sanctification be inseparably joined with justification, yet they differ, in that God in justification imputeth the righteousness of Christ; in sanctification his Spirit infuseth grace, and enableth to the exercise thereof; in the former, sin is pardoned; in the other, it is subdued: the one doth equally free all believers from the revenging wrath of God, and that perfectly in this life, that they never fall into condemnation; the other is neither equal in all, nor in this life perfect in any, but growing up to perfection.

Q. 78. Whence ariseth the imperfection of sanctification in believers?

A. The imperfection of sanctification in believers ariseth from the remnants of sin abiding in every part of them, and the perpetual lustings of the flesh against the spirit; whereby they are often foiled with temptations, and fall into many sins, are hindered in all their spiritual services, and their best works are imperfect and defiled in the sight of God.

Q. 79. May not true believers, by reason of their imperfections, and the many temptations and sins they are overtaken with, fall away from the state of grace?

A. True believers, by reason of the unchangeable love of God, and his decree and covenant to give them perseverance, their inseparable union with Christ, his continual intercession for them, and the Spirit and seed of God abiding in them, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.

Commnent:  Dutch Theologian Herman Bavinck has written: Sanctification is also a call to active continued repentance on the part of the Christian.  Sanctification is both a gift and a task.  Active sanctification coincides with what is called “continued repentance,” which according to the Heidelberg Catechism, consists in the dying away of the old self and the coming to life of the new self.” (Reformed Dogmatics, page 579).