Justification and Union with Christ, Part 13

A. A. Hodge on the Ordo Salutis, Part 3

Why is Hodge concerned about this issue? He is concerned because he is noticing a rise in moralism among Protestants, specifically in connection with the beginnings of liberalism or modernism. American Protestantism had not entered the fundamentalist vs. modernist controversy ��� that would be a couple of decades after Hodge wrote this in the opening decades of the 20th century. But Hodge was already seeing the signs of the coming struggle. Some Protestants were devaluing the doctrine of free justification and emphasizing the importance of moral living. They were reducing Jesus to a moral example and making void the cross. They were making the classic moralist argument that preaching justification leads to moral laxity; therefore, we must make justification less free, we must condition it upon our faith and our obedience in some way. But Hodge sees this as a fundamental betrayal of the Reformation. Even making faith a condition for receiving justification is misguided. Hodge argues we must be assured of our justification in order to grow in our sanctification. We can only pursue holiness and evangelical obedience if we are already confident that we are forgiven, justified, and accepted by God.

There is an unhappily significant tendency observable among many modern preachers and writers to ignore, if not positively to deny, the absolute necessity of a gratuitous justification as an essential precondition of the very beginnings of all moral reformation ���. It is evident that the modern rationalistic moral legalism ��� makes the cross of Christ of none effect by their traditions ���. Without antecedent reconciliation men cannot be truly sanctified. (pp. 318-320)

The ��� characteristic mark of Protestant soteriology is the principle that the change of relation to the law signalized by the term justification, involving remission of penalty and restoration to favor, necessarily precedes and renders possible the real moral change of character signalized by the terms regeneration and sanctification. The continuance of judicial condemnation excludes the exercise of grace in the heart. Remission of punishment must be preceded by remission of guilt, and must itself precede the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart. Hence it must be entirely unconditioned upon any legal standing, or moral or gracious condition of the subject. We are pardoned in order that we may be good, never made good in order that we may be pardoned. We are freely made co-heirs with Christ in order that we may become willing co-workers with him, but we are never made co-workers in order that we may become co-heirs. These principles are of the very essence of Protestant soteriology. (p. 311 emphasis added)

We return to the title: ���The Ordo Salutis: or, Relation in the Order of Nature of Holy Character and Divine Favor.��� What in Hodge���s view is the relation between ���holy character��� (transformative) and ���divine favor��� (forensic)? The forensic is the cause of the transformative. Divine favor is the cause of holy character. To say that God first gives us a holy character and then on that basis we obtain the divine favor is legalism and moralism. The Protestant Reformers recaptured the distilled gospel truth that God first blesses us with his favor by freely imputing the righteousness of Christ to us, and then as a result we are regenerated and thereafter progressively transformed in holy character. We are not justified only to the degree that we are sanctified, as Rome would have it. Rather, we first have our legal standing with God established for the sake of Christ and his righteousness, and only on that basis are we regenerated and progressively sanctified.