Calvin’s Institutes: Doctrine of Justification Pt 4. Jesus Gives Us His Righteousness

If you read this blog you are obviously aware that I am writing again.  I had stopped blogging near the end of 2011.  I was working on other projects.

I am continuing my summaries of Calvin’s Institutes.  This work still continues to bless the church of Jesus Christ even after all these years.  Every time I read it I learn something new or I learn something that I already know more deeply.  God the Spirit gives to the church pastors and teachers for the edifying of the body of Christ.  John Calvin was and still is one of God’s gifts to us. 

Our last entry on Calvin’s Institutes was from Book 3, chapter 11 on “Justification by Faith” (You will find it in volume 1 of the Library of Christian Classics edition.  Edited by McNeill and Battles). 

Because this chapter is so tightly packed I divided my summary into 4 parts.  Below is part 4.  Parts 1-3 are in the previous postings.  You can check them out by clicking the label “Calvin’s Institutes.”  Here is the summary.  Enjoy God!

1.         There is an axiom to know:  “The wrath of God rests upon all so long as they continue to be sinners.    Isaiah has says that sin is division between man and God, the turning of God’s face away from the sinner; and it cannot happen otherwise, seeing that it is foreign to his righteousness to have any dealings with sin.”  (Pg., 751)

2.         The only hope for the sinner is to be “restored to grace through Christ.”  (Pg., 751)

3.         We are not righteous (holy & good) in and of ourselves.  God is of course, and so is Christ because he is God.  So then how do we become holy before God?  “We are justified before God solely by the intercession (gift) of Christ’s righteousness.”  (Pg., 753)

4.         Let’s explain how we are saved and made righteous solely by Jesus Christ.  “God was in Christ reconciling the world...that the elect might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”  (2 Cor. 5:19-21)  Righteousness is obtained by us “When our sins are not counted against us (Rom. 4:6-8; Ps. 32:1-2; Lk. 1:77; Acts 13:38-39), and Christ's righteousness is counted to us.  And our sins are not counted to us, and Christ's righteousness is counted to us when and only when Jesus Christ has paid for the penalty of our sin and given us His righteousness.

5.         As Calvin says, “You see that our righteousness is not in us but in Christ, that we possess it only because we are partakers in Christ; indeed, with him we possess all its riches.”  (Pg., 753)

6.         And how do we get His righteousness?  Christ shares this righteousness with the elect through imputation.  That means he gives it to us freely.  He charges to our account His righteousness.  And when we have His righteous, by his grace, we are not judged by God as a sinner, but are deemed to be His sons!  “For in such a way does the Lord Christ share his righteousness with us that, in some wonderful manner, he pours into us enough of his power to meet the judgment of God.”  (Pg., 753)

7.         This gift of salvation from God is received by us through faith alone!  Praise God that He through Christ has wrought our salvation.  We are declared righteous by faith alone, which is truly righteousness by Christ alone.  Hence foul sinners (like you and me) “Hide under the precious purity of our first-born brother, Christ, so that we may be attested righteous in God’s sight.”  (Pg., 753)

Calvin’s Institutes: Doctrine of Justification Pt.3. “By faith not by works”

Here is today’s summary.

1. Justification is by faith alone, only! Sinners are not justified by faith and works, but only by faith alone. Justification must be either by one of the other. If we are justified by works then it is not by faith. If by faith alone, then it is not by works. (Phil. 3:8-9)

2. If we achieve our own righteousness by our own works, then we must do away with God’s gift of grace in Christ because it will be of no value to us…we don’t need grace. So if God does not put us right by Christ then boasting in who we are is not excluded but rather encouraged.

3. This is completely against God’s grace. We receive righteousness from God by grace through faith alone. (Rom.3:25-27; 4:2-4; Gal 2:21) Calvin says, “Righteousness according to grace is owed to faith. Therefore it does not arise from the merit of works. Farewell, then, to the dream of those who think up a righteousness flowing together out of faith and works” (Pg., 744).

4. This grace of justification which we receive by faith alone is God freely imputing to us the righteousness of Christ. It is not an infusion of Christ’s righteousness to us, thus enabling us to co-operate with God in salvation.

5. The Bible witnesses that God the Father first purposes to embrace the sinner whom he has elected in Christ his Son. The Father then draws that sinner to his Son by the Spirit’s power giving him a sense of God’s goodness and his own sinfulness, thus despairing of his own goodness flees to Christ. “This is the experience of faith through which the sinner comes into possession of his salvation when from the teaching of the gospel he acknowledges that he has been reconciled to God: that with Christ’s righteousness interceding and forgiveness of sins accomplished he is justified” (Pg., 746).

6. Is there such a thing as law righteousness? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that the law of God is God and true and would give life if it could. However, it cannot because of human sin. That leads to the no! No, because law righteousness does not and cannot save the sinner because he cannot attain to law righteousness. We must know the distinction between the righteousness of the law and gospel; and the differences between the promises of the law and gospel.

The righteousness (being put right) that comes by the law attributes being put right to works. The promises of the law depend upon human obedience. It is different with the gospel. Being put right by the gospel means God himself puts us right by giving us the righteousness of Christ, apart form the help of works. The promises of the gospel are free and freeing, and dependent solely upon God’s mercy.


7. It is obvious from Scripture that the law is different from faith. (Rom. 10:5-6; Gal. 3:18; Hab. 2:4; Gal 3:11-12) Why? Because, works are mandatory for law righteousness, but faith righteousness demands no works, it is all of grace. Calvin writes, “Now the gospel differs from the law in that it does not link righteousness to works but lodges if solely in God’s mercy” (Pg., 748).

8. But the question arises, “What about good works?” More on that latter in Calvin, but at this juncture it should be understood that, “Moral works are also excluded from the power of justifying. Why, ‘since through the law comes the knowledge of sin’ [Rom 3:20], therefore not righteousness. Because the law does not make conscience certain, it cannot confer righteousness either. Because faith is imputed as righteousness, righteousness is therefore no the reward of works but is given unearned [Rom. 4:4-5]. Because we are justified by faith our boasting is cut off [Rom 3:27] and ‘if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.’ [Gal 3:21-22]” (Pg., 749).

9. One last thing but the most important thing is this, by faith alone means, by Jesus Christ alone!.

Calvin’s Institutes: Doctrine of Justification Pt.2. “Union with Christ”

Through the advent, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ the forgiveness of God and justification of sinners has come to those who repent and believe the gospel.

That brings me to continue my summary of Calvin’s doctrine of justification by faith. Christ was born so we would be put right with God. Amazing is it not? God himself in his self-giving in his Son put us right with him so he could be our Father.

1. Andreas Osiander (1498-1552), a German guy thought and wrote about justification, but Calvin thougth it was wrong so he took him on. Basically Osiander taught that the sinner is justified by Christ by becoming essentially one with him ontologically; having Christ’s essence mixed, co-mingled with the sinner.
Calvin defines the idea this way, “He (Osiander) pretends that we are substantially righteous in God by the infusion both of his essence and of his quality... Then he throws in a mixture of substances by which God ‘transfusing himself into us, as it were,’ makes us part of himself” (Pg., 730,731).

2. Now it is very true that the justified sinner partakes of Christ’s nature, possesses the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, is a member of Christ and has Christ as his Head; in short he is in union with Christ. But a distinction must be made. By faith we receive the righteousness of Christ’s Person, not His very essence.

3. Osiander also asserted that if the sinner does not receive the essence of Christ, a sinner’s nature will remain corrupt and sinful vices will grow. Osiander was mistaken and many still are on this point. Why, by failing to realize that righteousness and sanctification are “jointly inseparable” (Pg., 732).

For Calvin, the goal of justification was sanctification. Calvin is very clear that there is no justification without sanctification. Karl Barth explains that for Calvin, "It is certainly not in virtue of our holiness that we enter into fellowship with God. We have to stand in this already if, engulfed by His holiness, we are to follow where He calls. But it belongs to His glory that this should take place, for there can be no consortium between Him and our iniquity. We cannot, therefore, glory in God without—and this is for Calvin the basic act of penitence and the new life—renouncing all self-glorying and thus beginning to live to God’s glory. Thus the righteousness of God calls for symmetry, a consensus, which must be actualized in the obedience of the believer. It calls for a confirmation of our adoption to divine sonship. For this reason the one grace of God is necessarily sanctifying grace as well." Church Dogmatics Vol.4. Pt.2. Pg 506.

Calvin when on to say too, that there is no sanctification without justification. After all as Calvin said, "Repentance cannot exist without true faith." For how can a man truly repent before God if he does not know he belongs to God, and how can he know he belongs to God until has been grasped by God's grace? “Whomever, therefore, God receives into grace, on them he at the same time bestows the spirit of adoption (Rom. 8:15), by whose power he remakes them to his own image” (Pg., 732).

4. What about faith itself? Does it of itself possess the power to justify? No. Why? “For if faith justified of itself or through some intrinsic power, so to speak, as it is always weak and imperfect it would effect this only in part; thus the righteousness that conferred a fragment of salvation upon us would be defective” (Pg., 733).

5. Properly speaking it is God through Christ who justifies and faith is “a kind of vessel” (Pg., 733); the instrumental cause of justification.

6. Now about union with Jesus Christ. This justification which is wrought by God, through the Person and work of Christ brings with it a mystical union with Christ, but not a union with him in his essence. Calvin explains this union in these words. “Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed...because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body, because he deigns to make us one with him. For this reason, we glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him” (Pg., 737). We rejoice, not that we are him (we are not united to him in his essence), but that we are his brothers, his joint heirs, his servants, God’s sons, and part of the Temple of God in Christ.

Calvin’s Institutes: Doctrine of Justification Pt.1

Chapter 11 of Book 3 starts the big section of justification by faith. It goes all the way to chapter 18. This was a big subject for Calvin, and all the Reformers. It’s still a big subject today. Just google justification by faith and you’ll step into a huge discussion. From N.T Wright to John Piper to Guy Waters to Pope Benedict XVI this issue is examined, reasserted, some would say being redefined.

I want to simply review what Calvin in his Institutes. I will make four posts on Chapter 11.

1. Justification by faith alone is the article upon which the church stands or falls and the article upon which the sinner stands or falls. This was both Luther and Calvin’s position.

2. The sinner partakes of Christ, not by any merit of his own, but by faith which is itself a gift of God’s grace. As Calvin writes, “Christ was given to us by God’s generosity, to be grasped and possessed by us in faith” (Pg., 725).

3. If the sinner is given grace to embrace Christ by faith alone, he receives a double grace, as Calvin says, “By partaking of him, we principally receive a double grace: first, that being reconciled to God through Christ’s blamelessness, we may have in heaven instead of a Judge an gracious Father…and secondly, that sanctified by Christ’s spirit we may cultivate blamelessness and purity of life” (Pg., 725).

4. To understand this doctrine, two terms must be understood.

First. What does it mean to be justified in God’s sight? Calvin gives the meaning. “He is said to be justified in God’s sight who is both reckoned righteous in God’s judgment and has been accepted on account of his righteousness” (Pg., 726). However, man is a sinner, guilty before God. God cannot accept him as righteousness simply because he is not righteous. The wrath of God is what he deserves. But if God reckons him as righteous by giving him righteousness, that sinner will stand before God, while all the others will justly fall before God. That righteousness is Christ’s righteousness imputed to the elect sinner, and is received by faith alone.

Second. Is a person justified by faith or works? It cannot be by works because a sinner cannot “meet and satisfy God’s judgment” (Pg., 726). “Justified by faith is he who, excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner but as a righteous man” (Pg., 726). All “in Christ.”

5. Calvin clearly sums up justification this way: “We explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous men. And we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness” (Pg., 727). This is what the Bible teaches. (Gal. 3:8,26; Rom. 8:33-34; Ps. 32:1-2; 2 Cor. 5:18-20; Rom. 5:19; 4; 3:20-25)

6. In conclusion, “to justify means nothing else than to acquit of guilt him who was accused, as if his innocence were confirmed...he absolves us not by the confirmation of our own innocence but by the imputation of righteousness, so that we who are not righteous in ourselves may be reckoned as such in Christ” (Pg., 728).