Partakers of the Divine Nature

If you're not aware of the tiff about the nature of sanctification that began earlier this year at Christianity Today and that continues between Kevin DeYoung and Tullian Tchividjian (see a helpful collocation of the debate here), it is well worth your while to find out about it. But if you read nothing else, read this recent editorial piece by Bill Evans. It is an outstanding critique of a the growing trend in evangelical circles to reduce sanctification to an overflow of the grace of justification.

The position taken by Hood, DeYoung, and now especially by Evans, that sanctification is causally unrelated to justification and involves great human effort, is easy to attack. No doubt the blogosphere will soon be filled afresh with charges of "legalism," "diminishing the Gospel," and "making too little of the cross of Christ," etc.

It is this last charge I wish to address, because I believe that it could be more legitimately laid at the feet of those making the charge. Because when Christ died on the cross, he did more than simply secure for us the grace of justification. That Christ did secure for us this grace is a glorious doctrine worthy of great attention. But it is not so great as to be worthy of our sole attention. When Christ died on the cross, he secured for us what the Reformers used to call a duplex beneficium, or the double benefit of justification and regeneration. The first is legal, the second practical. Or to put it another way, the first gives us a righteous standing, the second a holy nature.

It is the latter benefit that is in jeopardy of neglect in this discussion.  Despite the significant emphasis in Scripture on the fact that the believer is a "new creation," a "new man," and, most startling of all, a "partaker in the divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4), and despite the endorsement by NT writers of self-implemented personal austerity measures in the pursuit of godliness (e.g., Rom 8:13; 1 Cor 9:27; Phil 3:13-14; Col 3:5; Heb 12:1-2; etc.), some seem to be arguing today that simple reflection on one's justification is an adequate strategy for progressing in godliness. Me genoito. It is surely true that gratitude for Christ's justifying work is a valid impetus to holiness, but without a systematic change in one's nature (which, after all, was totally depraved prior to salvation), sanctification will never occur.

We need justification. Most emphatically. But we need more than justification. And, thankfully, by extending to us his Spirit and making us partakers in the divine nature, Christ in God has given us everything necessary for life and godliness (2 Pet 1:3-4). And with that great reality in place, let us, "for this very reason, make every effort to add to our faith" the disciplines of a godly life (v. 5). The stakes are high here, brothers, for without the effort of sanctification, "no one will see the Lord" (Heb 12:14).


MAS