Warfield says Sanctification from Justification
Justification and sanctification are thought of as parallel products of faith. This is not, however, the New Testament representation. According to its teaching, sanctification is not related to faith directly and immediately, so that in believing in Jesus we receive both justification and sanctification as parallel products of our faith; or either the one or the other, according as our faith is directed to the one or the other.
Sanctification is related directly not to faith but to justification;
and as faith is the instrumental cause of justification, so is
justification the instrumental cause of sanctification. That which binds justification and sanctification together is not that they
are both effects of faith – so that he who believes must have both –
because faith is the condition of both alike.
Nor is it even that both are obtained in Christ, so that he who has Christ, who is made to us both righteousness and sanctification, must have both because Christ is the common source of both. It is true that he who has faith has and must have both; and it is true that he who has Christ has and must have both. But they do not come out of faith or from Christ in the same way.
Justification comes through faith; sanctification through
justification, and only mediately, through justification, through
faith. So that the order is invariable, faith, justification,
sanctification; not arbitrarily, but in the nature of the case.”
B.B. Warfield, “The German Higher Life Movement,” in Perfectionism, vol. 1, p 362
Tags: sanctification from justification, Warfield
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