The Reformed Baptist minister John Piper, whom I owe a significant amount of my ministerial growth to, is publishing a little book that attempts to refute the Bishop of Durham, N.T. Wright, and his views of justification. Piper used to be in close connection to the “developed” perspective of justification as we will see in quotes from his 1995 book Future Grace (the name is a dead give away), but since then has become closer to C.J. Mahaney and other more modern baptistic theologians.
On page 21 of Future Grace Piper says,
From this angle I would say that the aim of this book is to explore how the faith that justifies also sanctifies…(p. 21)
the historic viewpoint of the Reformed confessions is that justifying faith is also sanctifying faith…(p. 25)
My point in this book is that the faith, which is the occasion of justification, is the same faith through which sanctifying power comes to the justified sinner. There are three assumptions here. The first assumption is that justifying faith is persevering faith. As Jonathan Edwards explained with careful and nuanced language, “Perseverance in faith is, in one sense, the condition of justification; that is, the promise of acceptance is made only to a preserving sort of faith, and the proper evidence of it being that sort is its actual perseverance Thus it is proper to speak of the moral effectiveness of justifying faith not merely because it brings us into a right standing with God at the first moment of its existence, but also because it is a persevering sort of faith, whose effectiveness resides also in its daily embrace of all that God is for us in Jesus.
A second assumption is that justifying faith is not only a trusting in the past grace of God, but also a trusting in the future grace of God, secured by the past grace of Christ’s death and resurrection…(p. 27)
No one can become a Christian without past grace. And no one can be a Christian moment by moment without future grace. Our standing as Christians is as secure as God’s supply of future grace…(p. 67)
In another chapter, A Love Affair with God’s Law, (close your ears all you antinomians) Piper demonstrates how the prophets of the Bible loved God’s Law and expected grace from His Law. He quotes passages such as Psalm 119: 47, 48, and 127. He goes on to say the following within this chapter:
The commandments of the Law are woven together with the threads of grace - past grace, future grace, forgiving grace and empowering grace…(p. 144)
[All Kline fans, turn away during this one] What brought a person to ruin in the Old Testament was not the failure to have the righteousness of sinless perfection. Rather the ruin was caused by the failure to be righteous, first, in the sense that Abraham was “reckoned righteous” by faith in future grace; and second, in the sense of habitual (though not perfect) obedience to God which was rooted in an abiding (though not perfect) faith in his future grace. Imperfection would be forgiven; but impenitent, habitual, distrusting disobedience would not.
It is terribly confusing when people say that the only righteousness that has any value is the imputed righteousness of Christ. I agree that justification is not grounded on any of our righteousness, but only the righteousness of of Christ imputed to us. But sometimes people are careless and speak despairingly of all human righteousness, as if there were no such thing that pleased God. They often cite Isaiah 64:6 which says our righteousness is as filthy rags…But that does not mean that God does not produce in those “justified” people (before and after the cross) an experiential righteousness that not “filthy rags”…(p. 151) [the term "filthy rags" is tantamount to worthlessness in many circles today. This denies sanctification all together]
Piper goes on in other chapters to demonstrate the value of God’s Law and how the law involves love rather than just condemnation as many teach. Here are a few more quotes to drive home Piper’s teaching on justification:
One of the most important implications of this conclusion is that the faith that justifies and the faith the sanctifies are not two different kinds of faith. “Sanctify” simply means to make holy, or to transform into Christlikeness…For faith is the act of the soul that connects with grace, and it receives it, and channels it as the power of obedience, and guards it from being nullified through human boasting…(p. 193)
The simple reason why the faith that justifies is also the faith which sanctifies is that both justification and sanctification are the work of sovereign grace. They are not the same kind of work but they are noth works of grace…(p. 194)
My claim is that justifying faith and sanctifying faith are one, and that the heart of this faith is future oriented, promise-trusting confidence in God…(p. 202)
There is not one god that justifies and another god that sanctifies. It is the same God with the same power, but sanctifying grace is the eschatological aspect of this power, where as justifying grace is the declarative and initiating power. Justifying grace is that power which first pulls the victim from the wreckage. Sanctifying grace is when that same power begins to stop the bleeding from the victim and nourishes them into the hospital (Church).
Let us not overreact to Rome, and separate the gospel into fragments that in no way make sense when they are attempted to be put together for the completion of the puzzle. The Reformers did indeed distinguish doctrines for us, since Rome had mixed them all together in the ecclesiastical blender, but they never meant for these doctrines to be loaners, and fragment the gospel and the Church itself!
Click here to purchase Future Grace!