Two Ways to Confuse Justification and Sanctification by Heath Curtis

To listen to this soundbite, click here. Read along while listening below.

“We’re drawing the Biblical distinction between justification and sanctification.

And you can do the rules – if you use the rules of one.

And when I say rules, I mean, the rule that Scripture set down for them.

If you try to take, okay, the Scriptures say this is how justification works.

Human beings are purely passive in justification.

The Holy Spirit saves us by His work alone bringing faith into our hearts.

If you try to make sanctification run by those rules, you end up with ‘once saved, always saved.’

On the other hand, if you take the rules of sanctification, the Holy Spirit has given me new powers, I’m a new person, I’m a new creation in Christ, I work along with the Holy Spirit – and you take those rules and try to make justification work by them, you end up in Roman Catholicism.

So Lutheranism is about being faithful to the Biblical witness in both.

And they (justification and sanctification) are distinct.”

Pastor Heath Curtis

(To listen to this soundbite on its original site, click here.)

(The Holy Spirit via Waiting For The Word)