When Sanctification Becomes Justification: How Fake Lutherans Created a Passive Church

From Gospel Reductionism to Doctrinal Decay: A Case Study in How Novel Theologies Undermine Sanctification, Vocation, and the Christian Life

Introduction

It was at the 1989 LCMS National Youth Gathering in Denver, Colorado at McNichols Arena. There, some 19,000 young people, their youth leaders, and their pastors spiritedly sang together:

“Lord, teach us how to proclaim

All your goodness, your love and your name!

Lord, teach us how to forgive And in love, teach us, Lord, how to live.

Raising our voices in song, Help us tell all the world we belong.”

Even then, I felt that something was wrong. What did “tell[ing] all the world we belong” have to do with being “assembled as one in the name of the Son”? But how could all the people whom I trusted and the whole Synod be mistaken? I was, after all, 15 years old.

I submit that the key problem in the LCMS right now is that heresies have gradually been infiltrating us for years. A spawn of gospel reductionism, Radical Lutheranism, – better, Fake Lutheranism – is the main culprit.

This version of antinomianism explicitly denies it can cooperate with God but will cooperate with – at least by enabling – the evil culture that increasingly surrounds us all. Arguably all of the problems we are seeing in the LCMS right now, covered in recent Ad Crucem articles, come down to this satanic deception.

Summary of Caleb Keith’s position on sanctification

In his helpful conversation with Pastor Bryan Stecker from On the Line, 1517’s Caleb Keith confidently articulated his own understanding of the Lutheran teaching of sanctification. Everything below is a summary of Caleb Keith’s position, much of which is not the position of the Lutheran confessions.

Again, in this and the next section of this article, Keith’s views are what follow. The things I take issue with the most – seeing them as opposed to the Lutheran confessions – have been italicized.

Regarding sanctification, or “holy-making”, Keith says it comes by the means of grace in the church. Here, we are united to Christ and he changes our hearts. We participate in the divine nature as everything is accomplished in Christ.

We are not transformed by our cooperation. Sanctification is not a slow process, he says, even if it is ongoing (see below). We have the totality of sanctification, holiness, being set apart, when the external word is applied to us.

Our will is not free to completely fulfill the law. You are not free to fulfill the law through your own works, will, or means. He asserts we do not have a free will that is growing in virtue day by day to accomplish the law more and more. The good works do not come from my will but from the union with Christ.

The purpose of the union with Christ is not to grow the “me”, so that I am the one who is holy, Keith says. This is not about degrees of holiness or our will being more united to Christ. As he says this, he references the idea of backsliding in American evangelicalism and how the main purpose of progressive sanctification there seems to be to know and explain God’s hidden will (“Why are some saved and not others?”) apart from hearing God’s will given to us in the means of grace…

Is sanctification an ongoing process of growth? “No”, Keith says. Sanctification is ongoing or perpetual in that it is received in the life of the church through the means God has established. It is not the process of us doing good works. You will not, Keith believes, find that in the Lutheran confessions or Luther. We do not become more sanctified.

Keith: The problem is category errors!

At the same time, as a result of your already being completely sanctified in Christ, Keith insists that you are going to need to do better for your wife, you are going to need to improve how you work with your coworkers. You are going to need to tamp down on your pride. These are the demands that are placed on those who are sanctified. The Lutheran doctrine of vocation is helpful here, he says.

There are better and worse people in this life, and better and worse Christians. Keith is fine talking about the Christian life in terms of personal growth, increased discipline and character, but just not as an increase in sanctification, holiness, righteousness.

Again, he says there are not more or less sanctified Christians. A person living in this life will nevertheless see personal growth, personal development, accomplishments that he did not have in the past, and fruits, works, called good by Christ.

This is all a part of good human development, but, again – he is at pains to communicate this – these are not righteousness and holiness, not sanctification. Rather, such fruit comes from the personal growth that originates from the righteousness and holiness and sanctification we already have completely in Christ.

Again, Keith asserts, a person has sanctification, righteousness and holiness in their totality by being in Christ and good works flow from this. So righteousness and holiness come by faith and good works come by righteousness and holiness, sanctification.

Finally, he says that good works are like fruit on a good tree that continues to grow but in no sense is this like a tank of holiness, something we can have any success measuring. The only way that we can be measured is by the word of God, and really by others in our lives who are there to help us and use God’s word to evaluate us. Oftentimes, the very real needs of others also call us into action, helping us to become that which God intends for us to be.

Again, all of this is my account of Keith’s own understanding of sanctification, which he shared with Bryan Stecker on his On the Line program.

Keith’s sanctification mirrors Kolb’s and Arand’s novel view

The book The Genius of Luther’s Theology: A Wittenberg Way of Thinking for the Contemporary Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008) is on a 1517 essential reading list for Lutheran theology. One of the authors, Robert Kolb, is a fellow 1517 participant, and he and his co-author Charles Arand put forth an understanding that appears to mirror Keith’s own in some respects.

For example, regarding sanctification, they assert that:

“...as faith grows, one could say that the Christian grasps more firmly the righteousness of Christ. As faith grows, just like a tree, it does not become more righteous, but it does produce more fruit… For Luther, one can speak of more works or fruit, but this does not imply growth in sanctification….” (126, read a more extended excerpt here).

Of course, in their book, Kolb and Arand can go much deeper than Keith goes in a podcast. For instance, regarding Luther’s statements in the Large Catechism about sanctification not being completed, they say that it makes sense from their viewpoint of the “two kinds of righteousness”, what the Formula of Concord refers to as the distinction between justification and sanctification:

“Christ’s righteousness is a totality, and the believer participates in it totally. It is partial when viewed from the standpoint of the world’s approval of us and as a new beginning for human beings along with a new obedience” (Genius, 124, italics mine).

Earlier, they had written:

“Luther’s simul Justus et peccator means that in this life a person is a sinner in the eyes of the law, the world, and oneself, while at the same time completely a saint in the eyes of God on account of Christ” (49, italics mine).

Needless to say, all of this raises a number of questions, particularly since 1517 men like Kolb (and Keith) heavily promote the Fake Lutheran Steve Paulson, and therefore support novel understandings of God’s law. Is the believer’s righteousness or sanctification really only “partial” when viewed from the standpoint of the world’s approval of us? Why in the world is the world’s approval of us important anyways? Furthermore, in this life will we – each of us who will die – not remain sinners before the eyes of God? And what about “walk[ing] in danger [of the world, the flesh, and the devil] all the way” – with each moment a battle of faith?

Kolb and Arand aim to take the focus off any personal righteousness we might be tempted to think is “our possession”, looking to focus on the neighbor God gives us to serve instead. But who ultimately determines how the neighbor should be served? The world, with its judgment and approval? And by taking this approach do Kolb and Arand actually, in effect, simply remove the Christian from the equation here?

For Keith at least, it appears that God’s word really does judge some of us to be more in line with his designs, desires, thoughts, words, and deeds – and he then rewards these servants accordingly. Therefore, perhaps this is a difference when it comes to his own understanding vs Kolb and Arand’s view.

Critical Analysis of Keith’s views

Still, we are not out of the weeds yet.

Some of the things that Keith says above are merely incomplete while others are more consequential. Again, these are the claims from Keith – central claims – that I take issue with and which are italicized above.

I understand that probably for the sake of the comfort of conscience Keith wants to say that sanctification is entirely a positional thing, and not progressive at all.

Further, I believe that Keith is correct about the issue of category errors, but for a completely different reason than the one he thinks. The problem here is that he is basically looking at sanctification as having the qualities of justification. Most everything that he says about sanctification can and should actually be applied to the doctrine of justification! (which 1517 heavyweights also get wrong!)

Lutherans don’t talk about cooperation when it comes to justification or regeneration (dead men do not cooperate!), but we do when it comes to sanctification. Just because the 1530 Apology to the Augsburg Confession does not distinguish between regeneration and justification does not mean sanctification and justification can be conflated, as the Formula of Concord makes clear in a number of places (SD III. 28, 32, 35, 41).

In short, sanctification primarily has to do with its progressive or deepening aspect, with God’s Holy Spirit “daily mak[ing Christians] more upright and holier.” It is always to be kept distinct from justification, even if its positional aspect (our incipient cleansing in Christ and our being set aside for his purposes) coincides chronologically with justification (SD II. 35).

Furthermore, you can see in Keith’s conversation with Stecker that he is at pains to say that he is not saying that personal growth and improvement do not happen in the Christian life. Still, the problem with his view is that terms like sanctification, justification and righteousness need to be defined by Scripture itself. The Apostle Paul, for example, writes things like the following:

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:17-18).

And of course Luther, who Keith says he is following, follows the scriptures in identifying and showing some men to be more holy than others. In the Formula of Concord itself, in its Solid Declaration, we also read that “the converted and believing [in Christ] have incipient renewal, sanctification, love, virtue, and good works…” (SD III.35), and also that, again, the Holy Spirit “daily makes them more upright and holier.” (SD II. 35)

In union with the Christian, Christ does transform that believer’s own inherent or concreated righteousness (SD I.10) and holiness, and this happens, in part, by the Christian’s faithful response to his word. In sanctification, cooperation or synergy, “working together”, exists, even if weakly (SD II.65). In 2 Cor. 5 and 6, we hear Paul say: “working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain”.

Re-framing help from Robert Preus, Luther, and my pastor

It would seem that a man like Robert Preus addresses the kinds of concerns that Keith has when in his 1995 Concordia Theological Quarterly piece on justification he talks about Christians’ inherent righteousness. He begins: “Luther says, ‘The church is indeed holy, but it is a sinner at the same time.’ Here simul justus et peccator becomes simul sanctus et peccator.”

Preus then goes on to quote Luther again:

“Therefore [the church] believes in the forgiveness of sins and prays ‘forgive us our debts’ (Matthew 6: 12)… Therefore we are not said to be holy formally as a wall is said to be white because of its inherent whiteness. Our inherent holiness is not enough. But Christ is the perfect and total holiness of the church [perfecta et tota sanctitas ipsius]. When our inherent holiness is not enough, Christ is enough [satis est Christus].”

As my pastor, Paul Strawn, is excellent about pointing out, an acknowledgement of the Old Adam and New Man here can help to clarify everything::

“...the simul justus et peccator is looking at the Christian from the outside as he stands before God: his standing as far as the law. Old Adam and New Man refer to the inner state of man: What is going on inside of him…

From the outside, the gradual ascendency of the New Man in fits and starts may in fact be seen in the person of the Christian from the outside. The inward experience of the Christian, however, may be one of an increase in tension as the Old Adam fights not to lose power and prestige. We need to come to a greater understanding of this if we are to talk more accurately about it…”

So, knowing that we live by every word that comes from his mouth, the Christian pursues God’s words, that he might meditate on them, and know them forever. For all these words comfort and help equip us, so that we leave childhood behind and attain to the “mature manhood” mentioned in Eph 4: 13-15. And since “the word of God…is at work in you believers” (I Thes. 2:13), this is the kind of activity we actively run to, and, by God’s Spirit, initiate ourselves as well.

Men like Kolb and Arand, echoing the Fake Lutherans like Gerhard Forde, state:

“...in the end, if human beings see themselves as makers and doers, they will find themselves having to carry the entire world on their shoulders like the mythical Atlas holding the world on his back” (92).

On the contrary, “the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power”. And because judgment begins in the house of God, repentance must begin there as well. We are justified without our powers, but cooperating with God’s Spirit, insofar as we are new men, concrete Christians are certainly courageous makers and doers who influence and impact both the church and the world.

God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven! The gates of hell won’t prevail against Christ’s church precisely because he will always preserve some men who are vigorous to defend and promulgate the things of God.

FIN