October 26, 2017 Show with Jeffery C. Waddington on “Restoring Reformation Passion”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's.

Our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 26th day of October 2017. And the only thing keeping me conscious right now since I am suffering from a very severe case of sleep deprivation, having not had any sleep, not even a minute sleep last night, the only thing that's keeping me riding on a high and conscious is the wonderful time I had with Pastor Jeff Waddington and about 100 other men at the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon which was just held today with keynote speaker Pastor Bill Shishko of Reformation Metro, New York, faculty member at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Teller, South Carolina, and also a retired pastor of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, Long Island, New York.

What a blessing it was and I have with me in studio today the aforementioned Pastor Jeff Waddington who is the pastor of Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, and he's a board member of the Reformed Forum.

Today we're going to basically be picking up on the theme that Pastor Bill Shishko spoke on today, Restoring Reformation Passion, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back into the studio of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Pastor Jeffrey C. Waddington. Oh, very pleased to be with you, Chris, and as you said, the luncheon together was great. The food was phenomenal provided from the firehouse subs. Firehouse subs. Those of you in Carlisle and the surrounding area will know that the restaurant, and if you don't, you should.

They did a fine job providing all that gratis,.

Right? Not only gratis, but much more than we even agreed about or agreed on, I should say, or talked about. He never mentioned to me when I approached him to cater the pastor's luncheon for free. First of all, he agreed to do it in probably, and I'm not even exaggerating, about three minutes after the first time talking to him face-to-face about it, but he didn't tell me that he was going to provide dessert and salads and beverages and.

All the utensils. That's right. And forks and all that, and went over very well with the men. They were more than happy. The roast beef and the cheese and ham and cheese and turkey and cheese, so all three plus, they were well made, beautifully made, and I, not being local, but I can tell you that the next time I come into town, I may be looking for them.

I'll say, hey, Chris, let's go there. And not that this is a food critic program, but I know that you did enjoy Wenger's Meats and Ice donation as well.

Yes, the macaroni salad. It was very good.

And so we got to thank Brad Wenger, owner of Wenger's Meats and Ice for that as well. And in fact, the only reason I asked Brad to donate that is because I had no idea that.

Firehouse Subs was donating all those other things. Oh, but it was all good. And it's good outreach to the community. If we have Christians who are patronizing local establishments, you do create an opportunity at some point, perhaps, to plant the seed of the gospel.

Yes, and one of the signs of a successful event is when the majority of the people are still.

Lingering around talking long after it's over. Yes, which they did. I don't think I saw anybody dash out the door when it was over. Maybe there was.

I think there was a tiny handful of people that had obligations.

But it seemed like all the men that were there were happy to be there,.

Including Representative Steve Bloom. That's right. Pennsylvania State Representative Steve Bloom, who's running for Congress. He was there, and he is a very inspiring politician because of the fact that he is the real article when it comes to his Christian faith.

And I pray that more men like him are raised up into offices of power in this country, and especially I hope that one day even Steve might become president of the United States.

Well, there you go.

What a blessed brother he is, and I'm so glad that he enjoyed himself and stayed there long.

After it ended. I believe that he was there after the thing had officially concluded, when we remembered that we had a cake made in his honor.

That's right. That was donated by Carlyle Bakery. Eric, the owner of Carlyle Bakery, donated that. And it was good. Yep, it was good. But this is really, like I said, sounding like a food critic program.

Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the OPC Heritage

But the message that Pastor Bill Shishko gave was quite powerful. But before we go into that, and that theme of restoring Reformation passion, I want you to tell our listeners, especially those who haven't heard you on this program before, who may be unfamiliar with you, about, tell our listeners about Knox Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.

Sure. Knox OPC has been in existence as a congregation from the beginning of the time of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which began in 1936. So it's, I believe, one of the original congregations to leave the mother church, the Presbyterian Church in the USA, PCUSA.

And then eventually took the name Knox OPC. They're a unique congregation in the OPC in that they are an exclusive psalm singing non-instrument congregation. There's only a handful of those within our denomination.

Were they always like that? No, I get, I could be wrong on that, but I get the impression that they came to those convictions at some point after they had left the mainline church to form a congregation of the OPC.

They had a pastor who was convinced of that, and I guess he was successful in persuading the congregation at the time, and they've kept with that.

And the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, for our listeners who are unfamiliar with that denomination, it was given birth to during the fundamentalist modernist controversy with J. Gresham Machen.

That's right.

And the church had become so liberal that a break was required. And now was J. Gresham Machen excommunicated?

Well, he was deposed from the ministry, defrocked we would say, over the issue of being involved, creating and being involved with the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. One of the problems that was arising was that the mainline Presbyterian Church Foreign Missions Board was sending people overseas who weren't believers.

They didn't even believe the message they were meant to convey. And so he, Machen, took the extraordinary step of establishing a private Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, the independent board. And the General Assembly ruled in 1937, I think, 36 rather, that he was wrong in doing that, founding it and then being involved with it.

So he was removed from the ministry, and that immediately led to the founding of the OPC, called originally the PCA, the Presbyterian Church of America. And they were sued over that name by the PCUSA, and the court sided with the mainline church.

And that's when the name Orthodox Presbyterian Church was eventually adopted.

I never heard that before. And it's interesting that they didn't sue the PCA Presbyterian Church in America.

Well, that's interesting. Admittedly, you've got 30 plus odd years between the two, the founding of the two denominations. But why did they go after us in 36 and not after, well, the PCA was born out of the Southern Presbyterian Church.

And at that point in 1973, the Northern and Southern mainline churches had not reunited. They reunited in 85, somewhere in that neighborhood. So that may be why they didn't go after them. Although I don't know that for sure.

Yes. Well, it is one of the very conservative, biblically Orthodox, pun intended, denominations within Presbyterianism because the more dominant Presbyterian body in the United States is the PCUSA. And although there are a remnant of faithful men who are either pastoring or members of congregations in that denomination, it is a denomination that has really gone apostate in many cases.

Oh, yeah. And gets worse with each passing day, I think, with all the issues that we're.

All familiar with out in the broader culture. And the message, as we keep referring to Pastor Bill Shishko's message at the Iron Shepherds, Iron Pastors luncheon, I could sense from the reaction of the pastors there that he really struck a chord with that issue.

And of course, that was, my suspicions were further proven to be true when people were clamoring around him to.

Talk about it. Yes, yes. I did notice that. Yes, it was not a historical lecture, although, of course, he did make reference to Martin Luther. But the whole drift of his sermon message was to be both an encouragement and a challenge to the pastor there, you know, in all the various points and sub points that he made.

And he's a very effective speaker, preacher. And I think a blessing to the men who came. So I think on all levels, whether it be fellowship, physical food, spiritual food, on all levels, Chris, I think it was a good day.

What, three hours altogether, 11 to 2? That was the time frame. Well, that was the time frame, but we didn't leave there until.

After 3, 3 .20. And Bill was still there. He was, he was. And the staleness, the indifference, the deadness that many, even true Christians, can fall themselves sliding into when something becomes commonplace, when these are things that, as Bill joked about someone behaving in a Pentecostal manner over truth, these are things that should be making us really praise for joy and thanksgiving and gratefulness from the top of our lungs, these doctrines that we say we love.

And yet people will, men in the ministry will very often drone on about them as if they are really just discussing the chemical properties of glue or something. You know, it's a very serious issue. And when someone, that honeymoon season of excitement over having discovered not only salvation, believing and finally coming to the glorious realization that you have been freed from bondage and also freed from death and damnation, when you know that every day and years go by and people can become seemingly bored with these realities, that's a dangerous area to be in and it's a destructive emotion to be carrying with you when you, especially when you're a pastor and an evangelist.

Yes, if you become complacent about these truths, about the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, it's really what we're talking, we're not talking about something in addition to the teaching of God's Word.

We see in the Old Testament, Israel often falls into this trap, whether you're thinking of the Old Testament as a whole or the book of Judges, you have the Judges cycle where you have the people sin and God sends a judgment in the form of a foreign nation domineering over, dominating over Israel, and they cry out for help.

He sends a judge, and for about 40 years they have peace and prosperity, and then they slide into complacency and then idolatry again, and the cycle recurs. And when you look at it, you realize, hold it, that's the whole history of Israel.

It's also the history of the Christian church. I don't know if it's necessary, but you do see the decline of church denominations and seminaries and other institutions and agencies. Years ago, I forget who it was, a professor at Westminster Seminary said that the average lifespan of a denomination was 70 years, and it was getting shorter.

Really, of a denomination? 70 years. Wow. And he said, well, how long will it take for Westminster to go bad? And of course, as you know, Westminster has been through a few of those challenges in the last 20, 30, 40 years.

Now, when you're saying 70 years for the life of a denomination, are you talking about before it begins to depart from its moorings and its roots, or are you saying before it disappears?

Before it starts departing from its norm, its commitments, doctrinal commitments, its spiritual commitments, expectations for how Christians are to behave in the world and in the church. This was something that was said, it might have even been Paul Woolley, who was one of the founding faculty members, so it was a while ago that he said this.

It would be interesting to see if that's gotten shorter, if it's now 50 years or something. I don't know. It does seem as though, just like empires and businesses have a life cycle, churches in God's providence seem to have that.

It happened to Israel. That's why Bill's presentation, his sermon, it was a preaching event, not a lecture, right? Why it was so key is that when we look at the Reformation, we're not just looking at something historically, we're not trying to be coldly analytical.

He was reminding us of what it was that was such a big deal and how we need to be able to, in God's kindness and providence, to recapture the passion that was unleashed at the time of the Reformation.

Why the Reformation Was a Doctrinal Reformation

Why don't you tell us some of those reasons why it is such a big deal? Because there are a lot of people, both evangelical and Roman Catholic, who don't think it's such a big deal.

Well, yes, you may remember a couple, well, more than a couple, a few years ago, Mark Noll and Carol Nystrom came out with a book called, Is the Reformation Over? And they basically, at the end of the book, say, yes.

And those of us who are on the opposite side say, we beg to differ. Mark Noll is an evangelical at Notre Dame, right? That's correct. He has a history with the OPC and I think with the EPC, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

I don't know what his affiliation is now. Carol Nystrom has co-written books with J .I. Packer. But this was a very, on the one hand, we can understand why someone might think the Reformation was over, because there are places for what we call co-belligerency in the issues of social issues out in the world, right?

In other words, conservative Catholics, Greek, Eastern Orthodox, and evangelicals might be able to come together. And atheists. And atheists and Muslims and Jews, right? Who recognize that, by common grace, recognize that marriage between a man and a woman for life is important, that abortion is wrong, is murder, those kinds of things.

So there is a place for that. But what's happened is, people, they don't demonize one another. So they go to the opposite extreme, where on one extreme is demonization, which of course is an error, and then on the other extreme, you have, well, we all like each other now, so doctrinal differences must not matter.

Or we won't let them matter. And the Reformation, specifically the Protestant Reformation, was a doctrinal Reformation. You see, at the time of the Reformation, you had many people calling for moral reformation, because you had popes who led immoral lives out in public.

You had immorality practiced in the streets of Rome. When Luther went for his pilgrimage to Rome, he saw priests taking advantage of the services of prostitutes out in public. It wasn't even hidden. It was that brazen.

But he recognized that the Reformation that needed to happen was doctrinal. It's doctrine that is at the foundation of life. A doctrine is simply another word for teaching. In other words, the Christian faith teaches something.

And when I read a book about a reformer like Luther or Calvin or Zwingli or Ecclampotius or Thomas Cranmer in England, I often come away recognizing that they were not infallible, not inerrant, sinful, saved by grace, saints.

I get excited in the sense that I say, if the Lord could do that through him, maybe he can do something through me. And that's why reading Christian biography and history is a good thing. And that's one of the points that, as you may remember, Bill made.

He made it almost in two ways. He talked about reading the lives of important saints, but also he talked about war stories. And in a sense, they're similar. Reading the biography has just happened to be of older stories, and war stories are significant.

We need to encourage one another in this race that Christians are running. The Reformation is not over. Yes, there are plenty of people, even in our own ranks, unfortunately, who think it is. They think that the Reformation was a tempest in a teapot.

And it wasn't. Now, if you go and you read the 39 theses, actually, Martin Luther probably didn't nail it. Someone else did, but to the door. That apparently is a misnomer. But when he had them posted, however they were posted, to the door, the 95...

You're confusing the 95 theses and the 39 articles of religion. No, no, I'm talking about the 95 theses. Right, yes. When you look at them... But you used 39 as a number. Did I say 39? Yes. Oh my goodness.

Because you were thinking of the 39 articles. Probably. The 95 theses, when they're nailed to the door of the castle church of Wittenberg, they are not the full-fledged doctrine that Luther is known for.

They are primarily a challenge to the penitential system of the Roman Catholic, the abuses of the penitential system. Sale of indulgence. Correct. That would be at the heart of that dispute. Those are key to the Reformation.

But Luther's discovery, crystallization, if you will, of the doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, that comes about because he was a professor of theology. And he was teaching on the Psalms and the Book of Romans.

And it was through that preparation for teaching those courses in the university that he became aware of the centrality of the gospel. And I would imagine at least most of our listeners have some familiarity with the outlines of his life.

How he had, before coming to faith in Christ, he had been training to become a lawyer. And then he got caught in a thunderstorm and got nearly zapped with lightning and called out to St. Anne, who was the patron saint of whatever.

And he said, if I survive, I'll become a monk. And he kept his vow. He became an Augustinian monk. And it's actually in that context where he discovers the sinfulness of his own personality. And there are somewhat comical stories of him driving his father confessor nuts with all of his confessions.

Will you get out of here or just go home? Yeah, do something. Come back when you've really committed some sin. And his father confessor, Johann Staupitz, it's interesting, it's another whole story. So there were people in medieval Roman Catholicism who were inching their way toward the truth.

Because if there were no Staupitz, there probably would have never been a Luther as we know him. But I find that exciting. I find history absolutely thrilling. Biblical history, secular history, church history.

I find it all because you're reading about people in biblical and church history. You're reading about what the Lord is doing through people. And you discover the Reformation was not a tempest in a teapot, but was over the doctrine of justification.

It was about the union with Christ. It was about the Reformation of worship. Things that we either take for granted if we're in churches that are sound, or we've forgotten and reverted back to almost quasi-medieval Roman Catholic concerns with smells and bells, as we like to call incense and robes, and all of the.

Accoutrements of formal liturgies. Yeah, the reason why people yawn over the why the Reformation needed to occur and the areas involved over that very cataclysmic break that reformers had with Rome, the reason why they are indifferent about it is because I think it is likely if you really are consciously, even after a thorough prayerful thought, still coming to the conclusion that this is no big deal, I don't believe that you can really have a regenerate heart.

No, I would agree with you. Yes, I would agree with you on that.

Because it is a huge difference. It's darkness to light. It is the treadmill, the never-ending, futile treadmill of man trying to merit favor with God that will never happen. And the fact that not only won't it happen, but the more he tries to do that, the more he tries to lift up his deeds and his goodness, his own goodness to God's face as some kind of payment to Him that would deem him or her worthy of entrance into heaven.

The more the person does that, the more they are worthy of hell.

Yeah, the interesting thing, as you pointed out, if you honestly understand the Reformation and the theological issues that were—biblical issues that were at stake, and you think and you yawn, not because you're tired physically—.

Like I am right now. But for lack of interest, I may have used this expression before, if this doesn't light your fire, your wood is wet. And I think I honestly believe that that is the case, biblically speaking.

You understand that at the end of the day, church history is a benefit because it brings to light biblical truth or aspects of biblical teaching that we may not have grasped. The Reformation is a reformation because it's a reforming, not in the sense of constantly reinventing yourself like postmodernism, but in the sense of going back to the original, or endeavoring to go back to the original form of the church to recover the lost riches.

In this instance, particularly the doctrine of justification with Calvin, it was union with Christ and the reformation of worship. What is proper worship? What are the elements of proper worship? Those kinds of things.

And let's look at justification and union with Christ because those go together. Union with Christ is the umbrella encounter. We can't be justified if we're not united to Christ. As Calvin points out in the Institutes, when we are by grace through faith united to the Lord Jesus Christ, we get a twofold blessing.

Justification and he would say either regeneration or sanctification, meaning how guilt is addressed and how corruption is addressed. In other words, when Adam fell, when Adam disobeyed God in the garden, the results of the disobedience was immediate guilt before a holy God and the corruption of our whole nature.

In fact, let's go to a break right now and pick up where you left off. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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That's solidrockremodeling .com. Solid Rock Remodeling, bringing new life to your home. And it was such a joy to hear Pastor Bill Shishko speak at my Iron Sharpens Iron Radio luncheon today. And it had been a number of years since I had heard him preach, and this certainly was a sermon.

It wasn't merely just a dry, dull lecture. It was an impassioned sermon, and it was not only such a blessing to hear him preach, but it was also a blessing to enjoy some fellowship with him. And he is a very dear brother in Christ indeed, and somebody that has a very crucial role in my life personally, having known him since I was a very new Christian in the 1980s, and also having had been with him through thick and thin in my life after going through some dark times.

And it's just a joy to have a brother like him. And we are picking up basically on his theme that he spoke on at the pastor's luncheon, which was Restoring Reformation Passion. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And you were talking about the consequences of the fall in the garden.

Union with Christ, Justification, and Sanctification

One of the beauties of covenant theology is you get to trace out how God has dealt with the consequences of the fall. As I said, as a result of the fall, Adam and all of us who have descended from him, use the language of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, who have descended from him by ordinary generation, we are guilty before God for breaking his law and we are corrupt.

In other words, with the fall, we have lost the holiness and righteousness and true knowledge that we had at creation coming from the hand of God. And the ministry of Christ, at which the Old Testament Israel was pointing forward to in types and shadows and ceremonies, right?

Christ comes and his work, both of holy life and his sacrificial death and then resurrection and ascension, these things are meant to address the consequences of the fall. And that's why Paul refers to, talks about a first Adam and a second Adam or a first Adam man and last man in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15.

He's showing how Christ answers the problems of the fall. Calvin, in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, talks about being united to Christ by faith. The Holy Spirit enables us to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And being united to him, we get all of the benefits that he himself has earned as our God-man mediator. Justification answers the problem of guilt. Sanctification or regeneration, what we would call transformation, these deal with the problem of corruption or, yeah, corruption.

Trying to think of a couple of other words. It's escaping me right now. But the power of sin is initially dealt with broken. The dominion of sin, the dominion of Satan is broken in Christ's resurrection.

And then you have, that's called definitive sanctification. And then you have progressive sanctification, which is then the life of the Christian where we grow in grace, where we increase in our obedience to God and his word.

This is where we look to the law of God to guide us as Christians. We're not trying to earn God's favor because we already, by grace, have his favor. That's what justification is about. Justification is about forgiveness of sins and we might say the double imputation.

Our sins are placed on Christ and his righteousness is placed on us. But what Martin Luther referred to as the sweet exchange, he used the analogy of a marriage, one that also Calvin and Jonathan Edwards and others have picked up on.

We marry Christ. You heard Bill Shishko say, the only biblically legitimate time when it's okay for a man to marry a man is when the man marries Christ. That's another way of talking about our union with Christ.

We notice in the New Testament that the apostle Paul frequently talks about being in Christ, being with Christ. Pastor Shishko talked about being a fellow sufferer with other believers in Christ. So we are united to Christ by faith and when we're united to Christ, we're also united to all of our brothers and sisters, past, present, and future.

It's a wonderful thing that happens. We call that the communion of the saints. Right? But what Christ has done addresses the issue of the consequences of the fall. So you can trace that out. You can look at how the life of Israel is meant in some ways to recapitulate Adam.

In other words, the law was given to Israel to force them into a corner, so to speak, so that they would recognize their need of a Messiah. And the Messiah finally comes, as Paul says, in the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law.

And he was born under the law. He who had no need to be subjected to the law and in fact is the one from whose hands it was given now submits himself to the law, not for himself, but for us. His obedience to the law in all of its details is what enables us to be found acceptable in the sight of God.

Christ dying on the cross, which is the culmination of his obedience, his being in what we would call in a state of humiliation, right? From the time of his conception until the resurrection, Christ is in the state of humiliation.

With the resurrection, he is now in the state of exaltation. We talk about the two estates of Christ. We talk about Christ being the prophet, priest, and king in the two estates. Those who are trained in the Westminster Shorter Catechism will be familiar with those categories.

And this, I find this absolutely captivating. It helps me to conceptualize the whole of the Bible as well as the details to get the big picture. And we need to have that in our day because we are now, as Pastor Sisko said, we're not in a pagan society.

We are in an apostate society, one that has been exposed to the gospel and has rejected it as a whole. In some ways, like the early Christians in dealing with Israel. Israel had been exposed to the gospel both in an advanced form in the Old Testament and then with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Truth stood, you know, stood nose to nose and they didn't recognize it.

Yeah, and Pastor Bill also said that this is no longer an age of relativism, that the world actually has a specific agenda. That is really, I don't think Bill used this term, but it is really a religion.

They don't call it that. The secularists think that they can get away with their dogma that they insist upon all mankind adopting because of the fact that they don't call it a religion, but it is a religion.

It is, and of course, he is right. And we see this, this is why Christians are in a situation that in some senses we're not prepared for in this land, and I think it would be true in other parts of the world as well, where they not only are not relativists, they are totalitarian.

Okay, they're the opposite. They believe that a certain lifestyle is absolutely correct and we all have to get in line with it.

That's why even we who are conservatives far too often will use the label liberal when we are speaking to people on the left of us. And in reality, many of those whom we call liberal are really leftist totalitarians because liberals believe that all voices should have an equal place on the table of communication in the public square and so on.

But leftists don't want that. Technically speaking, conservatives in the United States are those who uphold classical liberalism in the sense of, as you've said, that people have the right to express their thinking on various issues like religion and politics, to be two examples, and the government doesn't have the right to silence them.

That's our First Amendment rights, those that are actually probably in most jeopardy of being tossed out the window in our day. But you're right, that's the culture that we're living in. And I think by going back and looking carefully at the Reformers, we can learn things from their own experiences dealing with the medieval Roman Catholic Church and other political situations also tied in there.

We can learn things that will be helpful for us. And again, of course, that's further establishing and confirming the teaching of Scripture. I meant to say this, if I may have gotten off on a bunny trail, but church history is, I did say this, is meant to help us to better, to clarify our thinking and understanding of what the Bible teaches us.

So that when I cite a favorite theologian, I'm doing so under most circumstances, I don't want to say every circumstance, but under most circumstances, it's a way of saying, I believe this teaching is biblical and this particular theologian, Calvin, Luther, Edwards, Augustine, Warfield, whoever mentioned, that they got it, they crystallized it in a way that's helpful.

And returning to the Reformation is, it will help us in dealing with issues that we're facing in this day as the church.

Now, one thing I didn't want to go on too much farther before I had you clarify something for me, on a couple of occasions in our conversation, you were using the terms sanctification and regeneration as synonyms, which I was wondering about that because obviously regeneration is something that occurs to a lost sinner, totally by the work of the Holy Spirit.

We are passive in that. We are not passive in sanctification.

Correct. Now, Calvin used them synonymously. If you read what we call historical theology, that is theology done in the past, you'll discover that precision, the theology gets more precise the longer we have to wrestle with the scriptures.