In the New Testament, Jesus explains that He "came to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10). Jesus is active - He is seeking and saving. The people whom He saves are passive - they are being sought and being saved. Likewise, Scripture tells us that "by grace you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:5 and 2:8). Again the verb is passive.
Likewise, the Old Testament sees salvation as God's activity, in which humans are passive objects. In Psalm 44, the text ascribes to God a great variety of saving activities. Concerning people, it is God who "set them free" and the Psalmist confesses that "it is You who saved us." By contrast, of the people it is true that "not by their own sword did they win," and the author of the psalm admits that "not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me." Thus in both Hebrew and Greek, in the Old Testament and in the New, God's active role, and man's passive role, in salvation is clarified.
Yet, despite the pervasiveness and clarity of the Scriptural exposition of this dichotomy, there are disputes about it. Exactly how far should we apply this active/passive paradigm?
It seems, for example, that when we transition from justification to sanctification, that the argument can be made that humans become at that point active - they are activated by the Holy Spirit. A Pauline expression like "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" leaves some ambiguity.
Theologians of all varieties are drawn into passive language when describing salvation - even those who espouse "decision theology," which is a partial or complete rejection of human passivity in justification. Author J.D. Greear, who advocates for a type of decision theology, writes:
We are "born again" (John 3:1-3); our sins are washed away (Acts 22:16); Christ's righteousness is credited to us (Rom. 4:5); we are transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light (Col. 1:13); we go from being children of death to being beloved sons and daughters of God (Eph. 2:1-4); God's favor replaces His wrath over us (John 3:36); and we are filled with His Spirit and baptized into His body (Acts 10:44; 1 Cor. 12:13).
If we scan that text for verbs, and parse them, the result is a picture of God in action, and humans as the passive recipients of His grace. People "are born" - they don't give birth to themselves; "being born" is a passive verb structure. Our sins are washed away - we don't wash them them away. Righteousness is credited to us - we don't credit it to ourselves. We are transferred into God's kingdom - we don't transfer ourselves. We are beloved children of God - He loves, we receive His love. God's favor replaces His wrath - we don't replace wrath with favor. We are filled with the Holy Spirit - we don't fill ourselves. The pattern of passive verbal structures here is relentless.
To be sure, J.D. Greear uses one active structure - "we go" from being children of death to being alive in Christ. This single exception is not enough to cause the reader to ignore the consistent pattern. The deeper structure of the sentence and paragraph allow us to conceptualize this active "go" as a passive "are moved" from one point to another. While the surface grammar may be active, the deeper semantic signification is passive.
Yet Greear is a proponent of some variety of "decision theology" - note how his verbs change when he expresses his soteriology:
It may have been a subconscious decision, but it was a decision nonetheless. In the same way, there is a moment where you transfer your hope for heaven from your own merits to Christ's substitutionary work.
Now Greear is using active verbs - humans "transfer" their hopes - and talk of a "subconscious decision" reflects a deeper semantic structure which is also active.
It is clear, then, that the active nature of God, and the passive nature of humans, pervades the salvation process so powerfully that even those who embrace "decision theology" - those who therefore seek an active role for humans in the salvation process - find passive language creeping into their texts. The hypothesis that humans are passive in the justification process has plausible and persuasive evidence.
After justification - and here one speaks of both logical and temporal posteriority - the case for an at least partially active humanity is at least possible. Key Pauline texts - Galatians 2:20 - contain enough ambiguity that the slogan "humans are passive salvation but active in sanctification" may be reasonably entertained. While complex discussions about free will may continue eternally without clear resolution, some level of consensus might be garnered for a hypothesis like this: if humans ever do have a free will, it is more likely to happen after justification than before.
Leaving the door open for the possibility that humans might be active in their sanctification, we remain firm in our conclusion that they are utterly passive in their justification. As Martin Luther wrote:
So then, do we do nothing to obtain this righteousness? No, nothing at all. Perfect righteousness is to do nothing, to hear nothing, to know nothing of the law or of works, but to know and believe only that Christ has gone to the Father and is no longer visible; that [H]e sits in heaven at the right hand of [H]is Father, not as a judge, but is made by God our wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption; in short that[H]e is our high priest, entreating for us and reigning over us and in us by grace. In this heavenly righteousness sin can have no place, for there is no law; and “where there is no law there is no transgression” (Romans 4:15).
It might be objected that adopting the view of humans as completely passive in salvation obliges one either to accept a doctrine of universal salvation, or to adopt a doctrine in which God is capricious and arbitrary as He saves some but not others randomly. But the Lutheran - as we may venture to call those who insist on human passivity in justification - need not feel himself confined to either of those two options. One can argue that humans are passive in receiving salvation, but once having received it, are free to actively reject it; this would clear God of the charge of capricious arbitrariness while avoiding the bald assertion of universalism - humans are free to reject God's salvation, because His offer of it creates a moment of free will. Alternatively, the Lutheran can accept some variety of universalism, and seek some variation of universalism which might hope to avoid charges of heresy; bald universalism - the assertion that all are saved - lacks textual evidence to support it. A more nuanced universalist sentiment - the assertion that God wants all to be saved, that it is possible for all to be saved, and that we should work, hope, and pray that all are saved - are more plausibly supported from the text.
