For Pastors: Justification, A Turning Point

If you would like to help your congregations dig deeper into the Word and inspire them in spiritual growth, a suggestion that once helped me may be of interest to you.

I was saved out of Catholicism while serving in the Marine Corps in ’56. I wanted a personal relationship with Christ, not an institutional one. Once I was discharged, I attended a Keswick-founded Bible college in the South. It was great to finally be in a Protestant Biblical environment. However I soon found myself engulfed in the “holiness movement.”

Although I knew that holiness and purity were the goal of my sanctification, I found myself trying to seek it by my own self-attainments. I found myself sinking more and more into a sort of “self-effort” religion. One morning I woke up thinking, “Wow! I have come full circle and headed right back to my Roman Catholic roots of mystical, emotional, striving for impossible goals of an experience with the saints (or like Pentacostalism, a second blessing, tongues or even merit towards my sanctification).”

This religious philosophy, like Catholicism keeps you saying more rosaries—or in Protestantism, striving for the “deeper life” and its power. This was exactly what I ran away from in ’56. I transferred to a Bible college nearer to my home in the North, a school founded by A.B. Simpson and discovered the same emphases although it was not as devotional a school.

Thank God, in His providence, a pastor/teacher threw his arms around me and said, “Bill, you have to get back to the basics of Biblical truth—that you are justified by faith alone, that the righteousness of Christ was imputed to you. That was an objective, one time experience and fact. You don’t have to seek anything other than to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in your conformity to the image of Christ.”

Wow! That was a turning point for me. I was free from subjective relativism. A full understanding of this doctrine changed my life forever. Under this pastor's care, we dug deep into the character of God, His attributes, His sovereignty, His beautiful plan of saving His people (salvation) and His mission for me. I found that justification by faith alone, through Christ alone as the bedrock of all theology and that I needed nothing more added. This doctrine helped me from drowning in a sea of religious subjectivism.

I feel this doctrine alone will give second thoughts to anyone seeking meritorious works, seeking self-satisfying experiences or a second blessing. It is a permanent, exhilarating objective fact you can rely on! The power of God unto salvation.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please feel free to email me with comment, suggestions or questions at coach@chapelfield.org

W.H. (Coach) Spanjer

Solo Christo gloria

Next Tuesday’s Blog: “Horse and Buggy Theology”