Let us now consider the second aspect of grace. We have moved from thinking of grace as an attitude in God’s heart towards a lost person. We are now looking at grace as a power that flows out of God into a converted person and empowers that person to live in obedience to God’s revealed will. We are moving from justification to sanctification. We will examine several texts that lead to this understanding.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me (2 Cor. 12:9, KJV).

In this text, Paul sees grace as something distinct from an attitude in God’s heart. It is a power that flows out from God and into Paul, thus enabling Paul to act differently than he could have without grace. Paul uses parallels to make his point. The phrase, “My grace is sufficient” means exactly the same thing as “My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Paul sets “my infirmities” in distinct contrast to “the power of Christ.” This text shapes our definition of the second aspect of grace:

Grace is also a spiritual power that flows from God into a sinner that effects a genuine change in that sinner. In this sense, grace is the only source of power for both regeneration and sanctification. In this second sense, grace is almost synonymous with the work of the Holy Spirit.

Several things in this definition require further explanation. First, grace must produce and maintain a real and lasting change in those who profess to have received it. That is another way of saying that a justification that does not produce an ongoing sanctification is not biblical justification. We refuse to reduce salvation by grace to salvation from hell. Biblical grace is salvation from sin that turns us to obedience. We hold this in common with those who, in our minds, misunderstand and misuse the law. We both want to see holy living among God’s people. However, as in the case of evangelism, the message we present as a means to produce that holiness is different from those who emphasize law as the means to the end of holy living. This is evident in the second statement in our definition above.

Grace alone is the only power that can produce holy living. Pastors and teachers cannot send people home every week with the threat of the law ringing in their ears and expect them to grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ and his grace. Remember the illustration of the husband who reminded his wife every day that it was her duty to refrain from adultery.

Marytn Lloyd-Jones explains his view of Paul’s use of the word law. We agree with his view and with his definition of a legalist. All of the emphasis in the following quotation is mine.

In winding up his first argument in [Romans] chapter 6 he [Paul] had said, ‘For sin shall not have dominion over you’, and his reason for saying that is, ‘for (because) you are not under the law, but under grace’. He seems to glory in that fact. He seems to be striking another blow at the Law. He has already knocked it down, as it were, in chapter 5, verse 20; he is now trampling on it. At once his opponents take up the cudgels and say, ‘Surely these are very wrong and very dangerous statements to make; surely if you are going to abrogate the Law and do away with it altogether, you are doing away with every guarantee of righteous and holy conduct and behaviour. Sanctification is impossible without the Law. If you treat the Law in that way and dismiss it, and rejoice in doing so, are you not encouraging lawlessness, and are you not almost inciting people to live a sinful life?’ Law, they believed, was the great guarantee of holy living and sanctification. [JGR: Log that statement into your mind!] The Apostle clearly has to safeguard himself, and the truth of the gospel, against that particular misunderstanding and charge.…

But the Apostle has another particular object in view also, namely, to show that sanctification by the Law is as impossible as was justification by the Law. The theme of the first four chapters of the Epistle is that a sinner can never be justified by the Law. He had already summed that up in a great statement in chapter 3, verse 20: ‘Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no man be justified in his sight’. There it is stated categorically. Now, here he is saying in effect in chapter 7, ‘Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no man be sanctified in his sight’. As it is impossible to be justified by the Law, it is equally impossible to be sanctified by the Law. As we shall see later, he even puts it as strongly as this, that not only can a man not be sanctified by the Law, but it is actually true to say that the Law is a hindrance to sanctification, and that it aggravates the problem of sanctification. That is the thesis of this 7th chapter; not only can a man not sanctify himself by observance of the Law; the Law is even a hindrance and an obstacle to sanctification. That is his general thesis, the fundamental proposition he sets out to prove; we must keep it very firmly in our minds.^[1]

Lloyd-Jones cannot possibly mean that we should never teach people that it is a sin to commit adultery. We surely do not hinder a person’s sanctification by reminding him or her that the Word of God commands a person to love God with all of their heart. Instructing a Christian in the clear duties that Christ has laid upon them can in no way hurt their Christian life. Such an idea is ridiculous. What then does Lloyd-Jones mean? He means that it is futile to lay the law on a saint’s conscience in order to make that saint afraid and thus motivate him to be holy. He means that it is wrong to preach to God’s people as if they were hard-hearted sinners instead of tender sheep with new hearts. It is wrong, as Lloyd-Jones says, to believe and to preach like a legalist who sincerely believes that only the law can produce holy living. That is to exalt Moses above Christ and to trust the law to do what only the power of grace can do. If Lloyd-Jones is right, and I believe he is, then some Reformed preaching is a great hindrance to the sanctification of many sincere sheep. If the law is indeed a hindrance to sanctification, then to press it continually on the conscience of sheep is to help defeat the efforts of those sheep to be holy.

In what way do the biblical authors see charis as producing holy living in saints?

For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works (Titus 2:11-14, KJV).

Does this text imply that grace has a teaching power that the law does not? Can grace alone accomplish in a believer what the law could never accomplish? Or is there no holiness without the law being the teacher? Questions such these raise an important issue. What is the relationship of the law of God to the grace of God? It is futile to assign the law a job that it lacks the power to accomplish. Unfortunately, this is just what the Puritans often did. In reacting to Rome’s misuse of texts such 2 Corinthians 12:9, 10, the Puritans went too far. They tended to deny that grace alone has the power to sanctify. They relied on the law to produce holy living in the saint. Here is a classic example:

In a day when antinomianism abounds (The view that the directions of the law of God are no longer needed for Christians to grow in holiness) the Puritans were insistent: ‘If Moses goes to the gallows then holiness dies with him.’ If the ‘grace’ we have received does not help us to keep the law, we have not received grace. As the Puritan Samuel Bolton once put it, ‘The law sends us to the gospel, that we may be justified, and the gospel sends us to the law again to enquire what is our duty being justified…’ The Puritans knew that the Bible was the unalterable rule of holiness and would never let themselves, or their hearers, forget it.^[2]

The author of this article not only mixes apples and oranges, he throws in some bananas and lemons. Consider the quotation in detail. First, the author does not give an accurate definition of antinomianism. An antinomian is against all laws and is a law unto himself. We believe, just as much as the author of the quotation believes, that a Christian’s life is under the directions of objective laws. We merely disagree on where the Christian finds the laws that are his or her ultimate rule of life. We believe that the Sermon on the Mount and New Testament Scriptures give us a higher standard than Moses ever gave Israel.^[3] We affirm as strongly as anyone that the believer needs objective revelation, which includes clear and specific dos and don’ts, and we find more than sufficient of these in the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, the new Lawgiver, and the teaching of his Holy Spirit-inspired writing disciples.

Now look at the end of the quotation. “The Puritans knew that the Bible was the unalterable rule of holiness and would never let themselves, or their hearers, forget it.” I hope I never stop believing, or stop reminding my hearers and readers, of exactly the same thing. All true Christians believe that the Bible alone is the unalterable rule of holiness. But what has that to do with the gospel sending saints back to Moses to learn about holiness? We wholeheartedly agree that when Peter quotes Leviticus 11:44, (1 Peter 1:16), he means that just as God commanded the Israelites to be holy, so he commands believers today to be holy. However, Peter, unlike Samuel Bolton, does not send his readers back to Moses (Lev. 11) to learn how to be holy. Among other things, Leviticus 11:44 concerns defilement by eating unclean food. Holiness looks different on an Israelite than it does on a sheep of Christ. The laws that made an Israelite ceremonially clean, or holy, are not the same laws that govern a Christian’s life. The responsibility to be holy persists; but the particulars of that responsibility change.

A Christian is indeed under the unalterable rule of the Word of God as it is understood and interpreted by Christ, the new Lawgiver, and by his Holy Spirit-inspired writing disciples. The unalterable rule of holiness in the Bible and the unalterable rule of holiness in a particular theological system are often quite different. The holiness movements, classical fundamentalism, and the New England Puritan theocracy are only a few examples that illustrate this. 

The attitude of the Puritans toward the power of the law is seen in the sentence, “If Moses goes to the gallows, then holiness goes with him.” No Moses, no holiness! For the Puritans, only the law can assure holy living in the life of a Christian. This idea persists and is a fundamental error of many theologians. This view of the power of the grace of God is horribly inferior to that found in the New Testament Scriptures! Has this good brother never read 1 Timothy 1:9-11 and Titus 2:1-15? Or has he found some way to get Moses into the second chapter of Titus? 

My last comment on this quotation concerns the sentence, “If the ‘grace’ we have received does not help us to keep the law, we have not received grace.” We have been emphasizing the truth that grace always produces fruit, and that fruit is worship and obedience. However, we dare not restrict the help that grace gives to be nothing but helping us obey the Mosaic law. This view—a law-centered mentality—undercuts the true power of grace. Grace enables us to love and serve under the new commandment. Grace also will always produce the fruit of the Spirit “against which there is no law” (i.e., the law does not deal with such things, see Galatians 5:18-23). One law-centered writer commented that we were so afraid of the law that we had Sinai-phobia. I think the writer of this quotation has Sinai-itis.

In no sense whatsoever am I suggesting that the Puritans (or we today) were wrong when preaching the commandments of God to both sinners and saints. They are part of the whole counsel of God that is profitable for doctrine, instructing in righteousness, etc. However, preaching the commandments of God is not necessarily the same thing as preaching the law. When Paul asked the Galatians, who were eager to put themselves under the law, “Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law” (Gal. 4:21), surely he did not just mean, “Did not anyone ever tell you that it was a sin to commit adultery? Did you never hear that the seventh day was the holy Sabbath and God required you to abstain from all work?” You can hear all ten words of the covenant document written on the tables of stone (Exod. 34:27, 28), without ever hearing the law in the sense that Paul is using the word.

For Paul, “hearing the law” is hearing it in its covenantal promise of life and threat of death. It is hearing the holy law justly condemn you to hell! You have not heard the law until you hear it saying, “Thou shall not commit adultery, and the moment you do, you are a dead person.” The first part of that sentence, “Thou shall not commit adultery,” is a clear commandment concerning adultery, and it is just as necessary for us today to teach that commandment as it was when it was written on the tables of the covenant (cf. Deut. 9:9-11) and given to Israel. The second half of the sentence is the just and certain punishment the law mandates when that commandment, which is part of the covenant of law, written on tables of stone (cf. Exod. 34:27-29), is broken. You have not heard the law until you have heard its just and holy curse against the slightest infraction of that “holy, just and good” law. An Israelite could hear that it was his duty to refrain from all physical work on the seventh day, but he never heard the law until he heard, “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy, and if you so much as pick up a few sticks, then you will be stoned to death.”

In other words, you can hear all of the Ten Commandments without ever hearing the law, and likewise you can hear the law and, just as with the gospel, never really hear at all.

Israel did not hear the law when it was given to them at Sinai, or they would have never said, “All that the Lord had said we will do.” They would have fallen on their faces and said, “Oh, God, this law is indeed holy, just, and good. It is a most righteous and fair covenant that you are making with us today. You have every right to impose it upon us and we have every duty to obey it. We acknowledge all of that. However, you know, and we know, that if this law is to be the terms of the life or death relationship between us, we are all dead before the sun goes down. Is there no other way?”

Likewise, we today have never heard the law until we have heard it in our consciences, justly condemning us to hell. That is what Paul wanted the Galatians to realize about hearing or being under the law. The moment they allowed that knife to touch their skin, they committed themselves to keep every point of the law. When they did that, they came under the law’s curse. In that one act of circumcision as obedience to the Mosaic law, they denied Christ and grace, and at the same time put themselves under the law and its dreadful curse. Christ came to bear the curse of the law in the place of his people. If we move ourselves into the place where the law curses us, we have moved away from Christ and in effect, have rejected his work on our behalf. To hear the law is to be forever grateful that we are free from the law because we are under the blood of Christ!

Consider again our definition of the second aspect of grace.

Grace is also a spiritual power that flows from God into a sinner that effects a genuine change in that sinner. In this sense, grace is the only source of power for both regeneration and sanctification. In this second sense, grace is almost synonymous with the work of the Holy Spirit.

The third thing of importance in this definition is the statement that “grace, in this second sense, is almost synonymous with the work of the Holy Spirit.” We acquire this understanding from several texts. We have already seen in 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 that grace and the power of Christ function synonymously. Calvin makes the following comment on this text:

The term grace, does not here mean, as it does elsewhere, the favour of God, but by metonymy, the aid of the Holy Spirit, which comes to us from the unmerited favour [charis] of God; …^[4] 

In other words, grace was a spiritual force in Paul that energized him to act correctly. To say, God’s grace enabled me to resist temptation” is the same as saying, “The Holy Spirit enabled me to resist.” This strengthening and enabling power of grace is not emphasized sufficiently in modern preaching, especially in Reformed circles. In most Reformed Baptist churches, law alone has the power to teach and give directions. These churches believe that love and grace are “blind without the law.”

Look at several other texts:

But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me (1 Cor. 15:10, KJV).

We could substitute the words Holy Spirit for the word grace at the end of the sentence, without changing Paul’s meaning. In the first part of the sentence, Paul could use grace to mean the love of God in election, but in the later part, he clearly refers to the powerful effect of that grace in his life. Grace made Paul act in holiness. Charles Hodge says, “The grace of God, in this connection, is not the love of God, but the influence of the Holy Spirit.”

We would say, “by God’s grace, I was able to forgive him.” We are not talking about an attitude in the heart of God, but about the power of the Holy Spirit sent from God into our hearts. We could just as easily say, “The indwelling Holy Spirit moved me to forgive.” The confessions of faith spell out this truth (and so many others), but we somehow have lost it in our preaching and application. As I said earlier, the classic Reformed litany that I heard for many years was, “Moses will drive you to Christ to be justified and Christ will lead you back to Moses to be sanctified.” I know of no better way to utterly frustrate the working of God’s grace, as a power in us, than to follow that unbiblical advice. That is the quickest way to get our eyes off Christ and onto our own works. If we follow this advice, we soon will be occupied with law, works, self, and guilt. Look at another text:

For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich (2 Cor. 8:9, KJV).

If we take this verse out of its context, we might think that grace refers to an attitude in the heart of God. But considered in its context, the text refers to the manifestation of the power of grace. Paul wants the Corinthians to give alms in the same sacrificial manner as the Macedonians did. For this, the Corinthians need grace. Grace moves and motivates. Paul presents Christ as an example of the amazing effects of grace. That grace made him forsake everything and become nothing. The grace that made Christ do what he did was not “unmerited favor to a hell-deserving sinner.” The result of that powerful grace, bestowed on us, is indeed unmerited favor to the worst of hell-deserving sinners. However, that grace in us in turn moves us to holy actions.

Grace alone enables sinners to be and do all that God intends them to be and do. Our goal, as mature Christians, is to harmonize knowing, wishing, and doing. We want always to know what the right thing to do in every circumstance is. We want to desire to do the right thing in every circumstance. We want to actually do the right thing in every circumstance. Grace, not law, harmonizes these three facets of Christian maturity. Sadly, we lose this truth when we define grace as merely an attitude in the heart of God. Grace is God’s power infused into us through the Holy Spirit. Not only are we saved by grace, we live and overcome by grace. Too much preaching today gives more grace to the lost sinner than it does to the saint. Jerry Bridges is right when he says:

All true Christians readily agree that justification is by grace through faith in Christ, and if we stop to think about it, we agree that glorification is also solely by God’s grace. Jesus purchased for us not only forgiveness of sins (justification) but also eternal life (glorification). But sanctification—the entire Christian experience between justification and glorification—is another story. At best, the Christian life is viewed as a mixture of personal performance and God’s grace. It is not that we have consciously sorted it all out in our minds and have concluded that our relationship with God, for example, is based on 50 percent performance and 50 percent grace. Rather it is a subconscious assumption arising from our own innate legalism—reinforced and fueled by the Christian culture we live in.

Accordingly, the following time line could illustrate our view of the Christian life.

Justification	Christian Life	Glorification
Based on Grace	Based on Works	Based on Grace

According to this illustration, our concept of the Christian life is a grace – works – grace sequence. It is obvious that such a view is really a works view of the Christian life. In reality, in that system, the sinner is given a lot more grace than is given to the saint. The principal thesis of this book, however, and the truth I hope to demonstrate is that the illustration should look like this:

Justification	Christian Life	Glorification
Based on Grace	Based on Grace	Based on Grace

That is, the entire Christian life from start to completion is lived on the basis of God’s grace to us through Christ.^[5]

Bridges has identified a serious problem in much current preaching and in the lives of many sincere Christians. At least part of the root of the problem lies in our willingness to ascribe to the law the power to sanctify a Christian. In most Calvinistic circles, the empowering work of the Holy Spirit in sanctification is conspicuously absent. Let me be clear: biblical sanctification must stem from heartfelt obedience to God. Nothing less is acceptable. I am not suggesting that we should not earnestly teach saints all of the clear commandments of our heavenly Father. But just as we must point sinners to a risen Savior as their only help and hope of being justified, so we must direct a saint outside of themselves to look to that same risen Lord for all of their help and hope of sanctification. I am saying, along with Bridges and Lloyd-Jones, that we cannot be justified by grace and sanctified by the law.

Apart from Antinomians, all evangelicals agree about the two-fold nature of saving grace. In our last chapter, we emphasized that grace, to be biblical grace, must conquer sin in our lives. Pastor Gables said it better than I could:

You see, I have, as a sinner, a twofold problem. I have a bad record in heaven, and a bad heart on earth. I need a dual change. But such a double change cannot be accomplished by kindness, or love, or mercy. It can only be done by grace. “Be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure.”

You see then, that if we try to press the two components of sin into one, we will inevitably come up with a flawed remedy. If one group of teachers says that all that is needed is for man’s standing to be changed from condemnation to justification, then you end up with a justified man still in love with his polluted character. If another group of teachers say all that is needed, is for man’s polluted character to be sanctified into that of holiness, you end up with a man loving righteousness but still condemned for his past debt of sin. In either case, you have a warped foundation upon which to build the scheme of redemption. We need a double cure, and that cure is found in the grace of God mediated through Jesus Christ.

Pastor Gables has stated an essential truth. Cut it any way you want, we must insist that justification and sanctification are both essential to biblical salvation. And we must just as strenuously insist that only grace can produce either justification or sanctification. I know of many churches filled with the fruits of easy believism. These people have positive assurance that they are eternally secure, regardless of how they live. They fit into Pastor Gable’s category of “a [professing] justified man still in love with his polluted character.” We believe that such a creature is an impossible hybrid.

Likewise, I know of many churches where sincere people are serious about working on their sanctification. They strive to be holy in God’s sight, yet most of them lack any assurance or joy in their life. They fit Pastor Gable’s second category. They may not be actually guilty of gross outward wickedness (and therefore be lost), but they constantly feel guilty and have little, if any, assurance of justification. A joyless child of God is also an impossible hybrid.

Both justification and sanctification are essential to true salvation. However, we dare not hold assurance hostage to good works. We must never make the fruits of sanctification to be the grounds of finding peace of conscience before God. Our works have no more to do with keeping us saved, or making us more saved, than they have to do with saving us in the first place. Grace and law must be separated in both cases.

In the next chapter, we will see that being “under lawS” (plural) is not the same as being under “THE law” (singular). A New Covenant believer is under objective moral commandments just as Israel was. However, he or she is not under “the law” in the same sense that Israel was. If these statements confuse you, then you may not have heard the law.

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