If justification be God’s great act declaring us righteous, and thereby as its direct, necessary, and instantaneous result making us (in our degree) righteous,—if it be an act external to us, continued on into an act within us,—if it be a divine Voice issuing in a divine work, acceptance on the one part leading to acceptableness on the other, imputation to participation,—it requires very few words to explain how it comes to have been taken for what it involves; in other words, how justification has been said to be renewal, or to follow on or consist in renewal, or renewal said to be justification. And yet not a few words may be necessary to make familiar to our imaginations what is so obvious to the reason,—nay, to allay the feelings of distrust with which the very notion of such an attempt is commonly received at this day. Little indeed can anyhow be effected in the course of a single Lecture, yet suggestions on the subject may be of service to inquirers.
I say, then, if the direct result of pronouncing righteous be actual righteousness, it is not at all unnatural or strange, that righteousness or renewal should be called our justification (as little as saying, as we do without scruple, that a man has no “life” in him, when we mean no “activity” or no “heat,“—heat and activity being effects of life,—or in using “animation” first for life, then for liveliness); nor is it at all justifiable, after the fashion of the day, to set down such a mode of speech to spiritual blindness, and to stigmatize it as perilous to its maintainers. My reasons are as follow:—
2.
1. Justification renews, therefore I say it may fitly be called renewal. Is not this an allowable variety of expression which is exemplified every day? For instance, to tempt is to solicit or assail with temptation, to invite towards evil; yet it not unfrequently means to overcome by temptation, or to seduce. To persuade means either to use persuasives or to succeed in persuading. To cure a patient, that is, to heal or restore to health, is properly nothing more than to take care of him. To gain a battle means to gain a victory, conquest being the intended object of engaging. A commander is one who is obeyed as well as commands. To call spirits from the deep is not merely to call, but so to call that they come, or to evoke. In such cases we anticipate the result of an action from its beginning, and contemplate it in its completeness. Certain implications or effects are necessary for the adequate notion of a thing, and in speaking of it we take their presence for granted; we realize the thing itself in our minds by affixing to it names which properly belong to its effects. To call spirits implies an effectual call; and to declare just is to make just.
It is a parallel mode of speaking, to say that justification consists in renewal, or that renewal constitutes justification. This is much the same as saying, which we are apt to do, that a certain remarkable event is a Providence. It is a result, a manifestation of Divine Providence. And so our works of obedience are said to be a justification or a declaring righteous, as being the result and token of that declaration. To be justified by or through works is nothing more or less than to be justified in works; and it may suitably be urged against the thoughtless, lukewarm, formal, and superstitious, how they can suppose themselves justified, seeing that God justifies in works, or that works are the mode, medium, or state of justification.
I have before now spoken of justification as a sort of sacrament; it is so, by a figure of speech, being an external word effecting an inward grace. Here, then, we shall have another illustration of the matter in hand, which is the more apposite because our Catechism becomes a party to it, allowing itself, as it so happens, in the same verbal inaccuracy, in explaining the nature of a sacrament, as is committed when justification and renewal are made equivalents of one another. A sacrament, it will be recollected, is there defined to be “an outward visible sign of an inward spiritual grace.” But if so, the inward grace is not part of the sacrament, but a result distinct from it. Yet in the very next answer, upon the question, “How many parts are there in a sacrament?” we are told there are “Two; the outward visible sign, and the inward spiritual grace,” as if the inward grace were not distinct, but an internal result or essential part of the sacrament. Who does not see the real meaning in spite of this apparent inconsistency? viz. that the act of administering a sacrament so involves and secures the inward grace, that the grace comes under the meaning of the term, so that whether or not it be part of the sacrament, is a mere question of words, the term in its elementary sense denoting the outward act, in its full meaning comprising the inward grace also. And in like manner we may say, without any inconsistency and with truth, first, that justification is only that acceptance on God’s part, which is the earnest of renewal; next, that it consists of two parts, acceptance and renewal. Justification tends to sanctify; and to obstruct its sanctifying power, is as if we stopped a man’s breath; it is the death of that from which it proceeds.