Decree, Procurement, Application: Is John Gill Within the 1689 Confession?

Over the last three posts we have defined justification (Part 1), watched the Particular Baptists answer the charge of justification from eternity in their confessions (Part 2), and followed the 1689 Confession's thread from Christ's work to the Spirit's call to faith (Part 3). John Gill has walked with the Confession the whole way. Now we reach the sentence written, in effect, against the doctrine he is known for.

Three distinctions in chapter 11

Paragraph 3 of chapter 11 describes what Christ did:

Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those who are justified; and did, by the sacrifice of Himself in the blood of His cross, undergoing in their stead the penalty due to them, making a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God's justice on their behalf

This is the same full satisfaction we met in chapter 8, where the Confession also spoke of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Justification flows from Christ's obedience and death, and the certainty of that death reaches back to the beginning.^*

Then paragraph 4:

God did from all eternity decree to justify all the elect, and Christ did in the fullness of time die for their sins, and rise again for their justification; nevertheless, they are not justified personally, until the Holy Spirit does in due time actually apply Christ to them.^†

The Confession separates three things:

1. Decree. God decreed from eternity to justify the elect.
2. Procurement. Christ obtained their justification by his death and resurrection, "in the fullness of time."
3. Application. The Holy Spirit applies Christ to each of the elect personally, "in due time."

Only the first is eternal. The third is the moment a sinner is actually justified: when he believes.

Gill blurs the first line

Gill does not draw these lines as sharply. He writes:

Now, as before observed, as God's will to elect, is the election of his people, so his will to justify them, is the justification of them; as it is an immanent act in God, it is an act of his grace towards them, is wholly without them, entirely resides in the divine mind, and lies in his estimating, accounting, and constituting them righteous, through the righteousness of his Son; and, as such, did not first commence in time, but from eternity.^‡

For Gill, God's will to justify is justification. He will not let the eternal act be reduced to a mere decree about something future. And he answers the Confession's distinction head-on:

that as God's decree and will to elect men to everlasting life and salvation is his election of them; and his will not to impute sin to them, is the non-imputation of it; and his will to impute the righteousness of Christ unto them, is the imputation of it to them; so his decree, or will to justify them, is the justification of them, as that is an immanent act in God.^§

The argument runs by analogy. Nobody says God's decree to elect is merely a plan to elect later; the decree is election. Why should justification be different?

Active and passive justification

If Gill stopped there, he would simply be contradicting paragraph 4. But he does not stop there. He leans on a distinction older Reformed divines had used:

Justification is by many divines distinguished into active and passive. Active justification is the act of God; it is God that justifies. Passive justification is the act of God, terminating on the conscience of a believer, commonly called a transient act, passing upon an external object. It is not of this I shall now treat, but of the former; which is an act internal and eternal, taken up in the divine mind from eternity, and is an immanent, abiding one in it; it is, as Dr. Ames expresses it, "a sentence conceived in the divine mind, by the decree of justifying."⁵

Active justification is God's own act, within himself. Passive justification is that act landing on the believer, received in his conscience by faith. When Gill speaks of justification from eternity he means strictly the first.

Map this onto the Confession's three distinctions and the shape becomes clear. Gill folds the decree, and the certainty of Christ's procuring it, into "active justification." The Spirit's application to the believer is "passive justification." And passive justification, for Gill, is by faith, in time, just as the Confession says. As we saw in Part 3, he insists:

In the manner of actual enjoying [pardon and justification], which is in a way of receiving, and that by faith. It is by faith men receive the forgiveness of sins; and by it they receive abundance of grace, and the gift of righteousness to justification of life; and this is what the Scriptures call justification by faith, Rom. 5:1–18.⁶

Gill never says a sinner possesses pardon, or enjoys justification, before he believes.

Assurance: why it matters

Why would Gill press so hard on the eternal side? The answer, I think, is pastoral, and the Confession itself points to it. Chapter 18, paragraph 2, describes the believer's assurance:

this certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope, but an infallible assurance of faith, founded on the blood and righteousness of Christ revealed in the Gospel

The paragraph goes on to name subjective grounds as well (the evidence of grace in the believer, the Spirit's witness), and paragraph 3 admits a believer may wait long and struggle hard before he has assurance. But it begins with the objective ground: Christ's blood and righteousness. Assurance rests first on something outside us that does not change.⁷

That is exactly what Gill's justification from eternity offers: an objective ground, settled in God's mind and secured by Christ, that no fluctuation in the believer's feelings can touch.

The verdict

The Confession teaches that God predestined the elect to life before the foundation of the world and appointed the means of their salvation. The elect, fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept to final salvation. The decree of justification is certainly eternal. Its procurement by Christ happened in history, and its application happens when the Spirit brings a sinner to faith through the ministry of the Word. The Confession is explicit that no one is personally justified before that.

The Confession does not leave the door open here. When chapter 8 says the price of redemption was "not actually paid by Christ until after His incarnation," Renihan observes, it "is preparing for a problem to be addressed in chapter eleven, namely the doctrine of justification from eternity."⁸ Chapter 11.4 then rejects justification from eternity and justification at the cross alike. Both views, as Renihan puts it, held that the elect "were never under the wrath and curse of God." The failure of their advocates was that "they fail to make the proper distinctions."⁹

That gives us the test for Gill. Does he make the distinctions?

He does, and they are the very ones Renihan commends in Thomas Goodwin. Goodwin spoke of the elect as justified "in our Head" at election and at Christ's resurrection, but called both "immanent acts in God," acts toward us and not upon us, while God "pronounceth his elect ungodly and unjustified, till they believe."¹⁰ Gill's "active justification" is Goodwin's immanent act; his "passive justification," terminating on the conscience by faith, is Goodwin's third stage, and the only one the Confession calls personal justification.

Gill meets Daniel's definition of a High Calvinist: he plainly emphasizes eternity over time. But he does not leave the Confession behind. When he calls justification eternal he is not saying anyone is personally justified, or that justification is actually applied, in eternity. He is locating the ground of justification there: everything needed to justify the elect was settled by God and secured by Christ, their federal head. What Crisp and Saltmarsh came close to collapsing, Gill keeps apart.

Gill's emphasis is not the Confession's, and his language is less careful than paragraph 4's. But his aim is the Confession's aim: to give believers an assurance founded on something infallible, accomplished by God from eternity, procured by Christ, and applied by the Spirit through the Word when they believed.

---