Justification and Sanctification
The Deep We Disagreements, Part 3
This is part of an occasional series I’m calling The Deep We—an attempt to name the core doctrinal agreements (and honest disagreements) that Christians share across our many traditions.
If “salvation by grace through faith” is widely affirmed, Christians still differ over the details. How exactly does God put sinners right with himself? What is the relationship between God’s declaring us righteous and his making us righteous?
This essay looks at the long-running disagreement over justification and sanctification.
What We Agree On
Across traditions, key affirmations repeat:
Salvation is rooted in God’s grace, not human merit.
Any true faith in Christ will bear fruit in a changed life.
Holiness is not optional; it is the proper goal of God’s saving work.
The disagreements concern the timing, logic, and language.
Imputed, Infused, or Both?
Classic Protestant teaching (especially in the Lutheran and Reformed streams) speaks of justification as God’s forensic declaration. 1 He counts sinners as righteous on the basis of Christ’s righteousness, received by faith alone. The righteousness in view is “imputed”—credited to our account—rather than the moral quality of our present life. Sanctification, by contrast, is the ongoing work of the Spirit making us actually holy.
Roman Catholic teaching, especially as articulated at Trent, sees justification as both the forgiveness of sins and the inner renewal of the person. 2 Grace is “infused,” enabling real righteousness. Faith is foundational, but is “formed by love” and opened to growth. Good works, done in grace, can truly be pleasing to God.
Eastern Orthodox theology often resists the legal framework and speaks instead of deification. Justification language is present but not heavily systematized; the emphasis falls on union with Christ and transformation.
Faith and Works
Much of the historic Protestant–Catholic debate has turned on the phrase “faith alone.”
Protestants fear that denying “faith alone” smuggles human merit into salvation and undermines assurance.
Catholics fear that “faith alone” can be taken to mean that works do not matter, leading to cheap grace.
In practice, official teaching on both sides insists that faith must be active in love and that works, without grace, cannot earn salvation. The tension lies in how to articulate that without confusion or presumption.
Why It Still Matters
These are not merely semantic disputes. How we frame justification touches:
Assurance: Can believers have a settled confidence of God’s favor?
Discipline: Are works a condition of final salvation, or a necessary consequence?
Ecumenism: Can Protestant and Catholic accounts be seen as complementary, or are they irreconcilable?
Recent dialogues have found more convergence than the 16th-century polemics might suggest. 3 But real differences remain, especially around the language of merit, purgatory, and the exact role of works.
The Deep We here is that salvation is by grace, through Christ, and that God both declares and makes his people righteous. The disagreement is over how best to safeguard both the sheer gift and the real transformation.
Protestant accounts: Augsburg Confession, Articles IV–VI; Westminster Confession of Faith chs. 11–13.
Catholic account: Council of Trent, Decree on Justification; Catechism of the Catholic Church §§1987–2029.
Ecumenical attempts: “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” (1999) between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church.