Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Anglicans pray this collect in October, during the buildup to All Saints’ Day. In the historic prayer books it is appointed for the 17th Sunday after Trinity, although there it has the lovely and now archaic word “prevent,” meaning the opposite of what most people understand that word to mean. In the Church of England’s Alternative Service Book, this prayer is the post-Communion for the same Sunday. In the Book of Common Prayer 1979 it is the Collect for Proper 23. Whether we use the old language with its delightful “prevent” or common speech, the prayer is the same: a petition grounded on an acknowledgment that justification and sanctification are both the work of a gracious God who has intervened in our helpless condition.
In the waning days of the Christian year, the church’s attention turns to a bundle of related themes: Christian responsibility, stewardship, sainthood and holiness of life, and then to the ultimate reign of Christ, that one to whom God has put all things in subjection (1 Cor. 15). One thread in these last days is the connection, often subtle, between God’s work of justification and God’s work of sanctification.
Since the Reformation era, this subject—the relationship between justification and sanctification—has received a good deal of attention. In more recent years, however, the topic has receded from the popular audience but continues to be a feature of ecumenical dialogue. Charitable theologians have tried their best to talk with one another across divides, attempting to clarify, with integrity, what the role of human activity is in the event of justification and the process of sanctification. This dialogue is complicated by the perpetuation of certain caricatures, e.g., Catholics are Pelagians trying to earn their salvation while Protestants deny holiness and the Christian life.
In this brief space, I want only to highlight, especially as we turn to All Saints’ Day, that most Christians agree that the work of salvation and their growth in holiness is all a gift from God, the same God who raised Israel from the death of Egypt and gave Israel new life in the Promised Land. The broadly put claim that these are both gifts from an intervening and gracious God is now, mercifully, an ecumenically acceptable proposition.
Philip Melanchthon wrote in his Loci Communes that “trust in the goodwill or mercy of God first calms our hearts and then inflames us to give thanks to God for his mercy so that we keep the law gladly and willingly” (“On Justification & Faith”). Richard Hooker wrote in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity that “we participate [in] Christ partly by imputation, as when those things which he did and suffered for us are imputed unto us for righteousness; partly by habitual and real infusion, as when grace is inwardly bestowed while we are on earth, and afterwards more fully both our souls and bodies made like unto his in glory” (V.56.11). For Hooker, the declaration of justification, the imputation of an alien righteousness to the sinner who is dead in his trespasses, is followed by the enduring presence of the Holy Spirit within the justified Christian. This is the unfolding process of sanctification.
In short, Hooker claimed that justification is an imputed and unmerited gift from God and, likewise, that the process of sanctification, although occurring within the believer, was no less the work of God.
The unknown mid-18th-century author of the hymn “How Firm a Foundation” captures this work of God in this verse: “My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply; The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.” God’s grace burns away sin and brings the golden image of God marred by sin into relief, into dazzling holiness. But this is all the work of God. In another hymn from roughly the same period, “Rock of Ages,” Augustus Toplady reflected on this complete work of God. Consider the verse that prays for Christ’s blood to “be of sin the double cure; save from wrath and make me pure.”
Justification is the work of God, and so is sanctification. On the one hand, grace is a conferred and favored relationship status, one declared by God, but also, on the other hand, grace is the divine power of the Holy Spirit who actively conforms the justified believer to that same Jesus who died and was raised on the third day.
While there is so much more to be said about the relationship between the Spirit and the regenerate life of the justified sinner who is daily conformed to Christ, there is a particular pitfall that needs to be avoided. I’m not setting up an Adolf von Harnack-style teaching tool of “two ditches,” e.g., a Pelagian works-righteousness ditch and a rejection-of-holiness ditch. Rather, there is a pitfall in the middle of the road into which both Catholic-minded Christians and Protestant-minded Christians can both easily fall, a pitfall caused by not following to its end the now ecumenically acceptable claim that, broadly put, both justification and sanctification are the work of God.
Imagine the sort of person who was taught, likely early on in life, the importance of writing “Thank You” notes in polite society. Among some well-meaning Christians, there seems to be the sense that what happens in the experience of God’s grace is that one takes a deep step back and soberly recognizes all God has done for him and then realizes (again intellectually) that he ought now to live for God out of that rational sense of gratitude. But notice that this instinct to do the right thing has little to do with the alien work of God. Rather, it comes from within the individual now sobered from his sin. His depravity was evidently only skin deep.
This functional description of sanctification unfortunately—and, in fairness, probably unintentionally—places a high degree of personal ability, once one knows and grasps what God has done, to recognize the need to do the right thing and then to do the right thing. The challenge is that God’s grace is not merely a few cups of strong coffee to shake off the whiskey and get our heads straightened out.
Accepting the presentation above on its merits, there is some irony here. If one were to attend an AA meeting (or any form of addiction recovery) where there is the emphasis on the daily if not hourly reality of sin, the admission of abject helplessness, and the cry for grace, one finds that these people—who truly experience external, alien grace—also know that there is little rationality in the life of the addict, even after the experience of grace, their moment of clarity.
Paul’s cry of the heart in Romans 7:15-20 should shoot through us: “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. … Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
If we genuinely believe the ecumenically acceptable claim, broadly put, that the work of justification and sanctification is all the work of God, then there is no point where we make such an intellectual turn and, by our good upbringing as upper middle class polite people, realize the depth of God’s initial work and then, again on our own strength, go about a life of thankfulness and good works. There is no point at which you or I recognize (cognoscere), on our own own, “Wow, I really ought to write that thank you card,” and then actually write it. When pen goes to stationary, to continue the metaphor, the Holy Spirit is actively at work. To be clear, this is not a denial of experiences of conversion and repentance, but rather a necessary acknowledgement of the full nature of the active work of God, the author and finisher of our faith, the one who both justifies and sanctifies.
In other words, sainthood is God’s work. There is no point at which the Spirit is not doing the work of remaking us and remaking all justified sinners. If this is the case, if sanctification—growth in holiness (sainthood)—is also the work of God, then helpless sinners who have been raised from the grip of sin by the work of a gracious and intervening God are also graciously set on a long journey within the life of the body of Christ, the church. In that fellowship they are continually corrected and nourished in word and sacrament; they are goaded and allured by the presence and work of the Spirit who conforms each one us to Jesus. Dross to consume, indeed, and gold, likewise, to refine. Or to borrow from the prayer book collect, we pray that God’s grace will precede and follow us.
The Rev. Calvin Lane, PhD is the Editor of Covenant: The Online Journal of The Living Church. The author of two books on the Reformation, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2013 . In addition to serving as associate rector of St. George's Episcopal Church, Dayton, Ohio, Dr. Lane has taught for various seminaries and colleges, including as Affiliate Professor at Nashotah House. His service to the church includes a term on the General Board of Examining Chaplains (2018-2024).
