Aulen on justification and sanctification

This is from Gustaf Aulen’s excellent book Reformation and Catholicity:

The act of salvation is entirely an act of Christ. This act creates faith. Faith is the sign of man’s new relationship to Christ, which comes into being when man is incorporated into a living fellowship with him. Luther has a classic statement: “in faith itself Christ is present” (in ipsa fide Christus adest). If “faith” therefore involves a relationship between Christ and man, it means that faith may also be considered from man’s point of view. Faith means then man’s acceptance of the gift given by Christ. This point of view eliminates completely the question as to how salvation can be partly the work of God and partly the work of man; or how it can be partly dependent on what God does, and partly on qualifying achievements on the part of man. The man whom Christ saves is an unqualified sinner. Faith cannot be understood as a qualifying, human achievement. On man’s part faith is primarily receptive. But this does not mean at all that man is passive in relation to what takes place. He participates actively to the highest degree. From this point of view faith is man’s Yes to the gift given to him on the basis of pure, undeserved grace. His acceptance of the gift means that he has been won and overcome by Christ and has been brought to obedience in faith under him. If faith were not primarily conceived of from this point of view, but were regarded as a matter of holding more or less tenaciously to certain doctrines as true–to speak in modern terminology–“Christianity” would be transformed into an ideology, one among many ideologies competing with each other. To be sure, Christian faith includes both the acceptance of something as true and a confession. But acceptance and confession depend primarily on the fact that faith is “God’s work,” God’s redemptive act through Christ. If this context is ignored, the truth will be lost, and faith will be devoid of meaning. (pp. 62-3)

Aulen goes on to discuss how, for Luther and the Reformation, Christ is actively present in faith. He comes to us in the Word and the Sacraments, actively justifying, forgiving, giving us new life, and sanctifying us.

Salvation takes place thanks to the fact that Christ as Kyrios continues in his church the work of reconciliation he fulfilled on the cross. The characteristic feature of the Reformation is not only its strong emphasis on the fact that the atonement has taken place once for all but also, and especially, that it combines what once happened with that which continually takes place in the church of Christ, where Christ realizes the victory which had been won through sacrifice. He accomplishes this continuing work through the means of grace, the Word and the sacraments. (p. 63)

Because Christ is present with us in the church, the Word, and the sacraments, justification isn’t merely “forensic” as some critics of the Reformation have charged, because to be united with Christ in faith is to “posses” all that he has – his life and his righteousness. This is the essence of Luther’s “happy exchange.”

From this point of view justification by faith alone, through Christ alone, involves possessing. “He who believes has.” He “has” Chirst with all that he is, owns, and can do. Because this is so, Reformation preaching and hymns are filled with the joy and confidence of faith. The life of faith is a life “in Christ,” “in the Spirit.” God’s gift, salvation and adoption as sons, is a gift given to man now in the present. We can speak here with a modern expression of “realized eschatology.”

But the eschatological perspective also prevents us from thinking that we have already attained the perfect righteousness that is our hope in faith. The meaning of simul iustus et peccator – being at the same time saint and sinner – is that our trust is always in Christ’s righteousness, not our own. Before God, considered in ourselves, we always remain sinners. We have no righteousness of our own that we can use to make claims upon God. And the righteousness we do have – the righteousness of Christ – is only party realized in this life.

What this formula wants to say about the Christian relationship with God is that this relationship always depends on and has its foundation in the forgiveness of sins. This is something, therefore, that does not have reference only to the beginning of the Christian life, to initium, but is true of Christian life as a whole under the conditions of human life here on earth. Man never comes to a point where he has so qualified himself that by his own attitude and his own work he could present his “own” rigteousness before God. Before God, coram deo, he is always a sinner who has nothing else to trust in than God’s mercy which meets him in the forgiveness of sins. He is not partly a sinner and partly righteous. He is altogether a sinner, who lives by and finds his righteousness in the grace of God which is new every morning. (pp. 84-5)

This doesn’t mean, however, that there’s no progress or growth in sanctification. Though our righteousness always remains partial and incomplete in this life, the Spirit does really effect change in our life.

The Holy Spirit accomplishes sanctification by “obliterating, destroying, and killing sin.” Here on earth there is “a Christian and holy people in whom Christ lives, works, and reigns per redemptionem, through grace and forgiveness of sin–and the Holy Spirit per vivificationem et sanctificationem, through daily washing away of sin and daily renewal–so that we do not remain in sin, but can and ought to live a new life in all kinds of good works, as God’s Ten Commandments demand.” By these means man grows in sanctification and becomes more and more a new being in Christ. This growth in sanctification, in faith and obedience, continues throughout life. It takes place through the use of God’s Word and the Lord’s Supper, which are the means the Spirit employs in sanctification. (pp. 88-9)

And yet, in another sense, we’re always beginning anew. This is because “the Christian life never reaches a point where it can build on anything else than God’s forgiving grace that is new every morning” (p. 89). We always live between the “already” and the “not yet,” and this reminds us not to have unrealistic expectations of perfection and to always rely only on God’s mercy.