With the wider analogy of union with Christ we may now move through the ordo salutis, noting the connection between the forensic basis and the transformative effects of our salvation in Christ.
“God justifies the wicked.” As counterintuitive as it is simple, that claim which lies at the heart of the good news has brought immeasurable blessing—and trouble—to the church and the world. It is not the Pharisee, confident in his own righteousness, who went home justified, said Jesus, but the tax collector, who could not even raise his eyes to heaven but cried out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Lk 18:9–14). It was precisely these outcasts who would be seated at the wedding feast clothed in the wedding garment, said Jesus, while those who entered in their own attire would be cast out (Mt 22:1–14).
It was this simple claim that caused the apostle Paul to look back on all of his zealous obedience to the law as that of “a Pharisee” and to call it “rubbish,” “in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Php 3:8–9). As the revelation of the righteousness of God, the law condemns and leaves no one standing. Yet the gospel is the revelation of the righteousness from God, the good news that sinners “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Ro 3:24–25). “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ro 5:1). Paul considered this doctrine to be so central that he regarded its explicit denial as “anathema”—that is, an act of heresy that the Galatian church was on the verge of committing (Gal 1:8–9). For Paul, a denial of justification was tantamount to a denial of grace and even to a denial of Christ, “for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal 2:21).
God justifies the wicked—not those who have done their best yet have fallen short, those who might at least be judged acceptable because of their sincerity, but those who at the very moment of being pronounced righteous are in themselves unrighteous. “And to the one who does not work but believes him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works …” (Ro 4:5–6).
Numerous passages testify to the imputation or crediting of our sins to Christ (on the basis of his substitutionary atonement) and his righteousness to us (on the basis of his active obedience). Following Paul’s banking, clothing, and courtroom analogies from our everyday experience, the Reformers called this the “marvelous exchange.” Jesus Christ, sinless in himself, becomes the greatest sinner who ever lived, while we become “the righteousness of God [in him]” (2Co 5:21). In Romans 4:17, God’s work in justification is compared to his work in creating the world out of nothing. Justification is the fiat declaration, “Let there be righteousness!” even where, at present, there is nothing but guilt and unrighteousness in the sinner, because Christ’s righteousness is imputed through Spirit-given and gospel-created faith. As in creation, only after God’s declarative Word of justification (“Let there be … And there was …”) can there be an appropriate creaturely response (“Let the earth bring forth …”).
This claim that God justifies the wicked brought enormous controversy to the apostolic church and has continued to do so throughout the history of the church.1 And in spite of the heroic efforts of representatives on both sides during the sixteenth-century, the Council of Trent (1545–1563) in no uncertain terms condemned the Reformation’s understanding of justification.
Rome teaches that “‘justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.’”2 Justification is therefore regarded as a process of becoming actually and intrinsically righteous. The first justification occurs at baptism, which eradicates both the guilt and corruption of original sin.3 Entirely by God’s grace, this initial justification infuses the habit (or principle) of grace into the recipient. By cooperating with this inherent grace, one merits an increase of grace and, one hopes, final justification.4 So while initial justification is by grace alone, final justification depends also on the works of the believer, which God graciously accepts as meritorious.5 Since the believer’s progress in holiness is never adequate to cancel the guilt of actual sins, he or she must be refined in purgatory before being welcomed into heaven.
By contrast, the Reformers taught, and evangelicals teach, that justification is distinct from sanctification. Although all of Christ’s gifts are given in our union with him through faith, justification is a verdict that declares sinners to be righteous even while they are inherently unrighteous, simply on the basis of Christ’s righteousness imputed to them. Whereas Rome teaches that one is finally justified by being sanctified, the evangelical conviction is that one is being sanctified because one has already been justified. Rather than working toward the verdict of divine vindication, the believer leaves the court justified in the joy that bears the fruit of faith: namely, good works.
In Scripture, especially in Paul, Luther discovered that the righteousness that God is, which condemns us, is the same righteousness that God gives, freely, as a gift, through faith in Jesus Christ (Ro 3:19–31). As have seen, this “marvelous exchange” of Christ’s righteousness for the sinner’s guilt was beautifully articulated by some medieval theologians. True, the Reformers, especially Luther and Calvin, were influenced by some more Augustinian writers like the Cistercian monk Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). However, the understanding of justification as an exclusively forensic (legal) declaration, based on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness through faith alone, was the chief insight of the Reformation.
The inextricable connection between doctrine and experience is acutely evident in Luther’s spiritual wrestling that led to his fresh interpretation of Scripture. Though to some extent motivated by his own confusion and anxiety as to whether he was the object of God’s grace or wrath, Luther did not arrive at his conclusions simply out of his own experience of “tortured subjectivity,” as some modern interpreters suggest,6 but rather from doctrinal reflection, for which others had already laid a foundation. Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (1455–1536), an eminent French humanist and biblical scholar (who made the first French translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate) arrived at some of Luther’s principal insights a decade earlier. Erasmus also had made important textual contributions that paved the way for the Reformers. Luther’s own mentor, and the head of Germany’s Augustinian Order, Johann von Staupitz, also set the Reformer on his course. Then, appointed by Staupitz as a professor of Bible, Luther undertook his own close exegesis of Scripture and was gradually led to further insights with radical implications.
Like Luther, Calvin and the other magisterial Reformers were humanists, steeped in the original languages and guided by the Renaissance cry, Ad fontes, “Back to the sources!” In the process, they recaptured the clear biblical teaching that God “justifies the ungodly” (Ro 4:5). According to the fourth article of the apology of the Augsburg Confession, God justifies the wicked on the basis of Christ (propter Christum), apart from our inherent righteousness. This is the solo Christo (by Christ alone). And he credits this righteousness through faith alone (sola fide), apart from works. Believers are just before God not to the extent that they are inherently righteous; rather, they are “simultaneously just and sinner” (simul iustus et peccator).
All of the Reformers were at one on this point, over against both Roman Catholic and Anabaptist interpretations. Calvin regarded justification as “the primary article of the Christian religion,” “the main hinge on which religion turns,” “the principal article of the whole doctrine of salvation and the foundation of all religion.”7 In fact, Melanchthon and Calvin influenced each other in working out the refinements of this common evangelical position.8 This righteousness “consists in the remission of sins, and in this: that the righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to us.”9
According to this evangelical interpretation, justification is not a process of transformation from a condition of sinfulness to a state of justice. Believers are simultaneously justified and sinful.10 Sin’s dominion has been toppled, but sin still indwells believers.11 Consequently, whatever works believers perform will always fall short of that righteousness that God’s law requires; nevertheless, believers are accepted as fully righteous already through faith in Christ.
This orientation stood in sharp contrast not only with Rome, but with the radical sects. “Certain Anabaptists of our day conjure some sort of frenzied excess instead of spiritual regeneration,” Calvin relates, thinking that they can attain perfection in this life.12 Rome teaches that Christ’s sacrifice remits the guilt but not the punishment of sins.13 In either case, justification is understood as a process of inner transformation, rather than as God’s free acquittal of sinners for the sake of Christ and his imputation of Christ’s righteousness to their account. Of course, a diversity of moral character is evident to us as human beings, but Calvin reminds us (repeating Luther’s contrast) that righteousness before humanity (coram hominibus) is not the same as righteousness before God (coram deo).14 “Therefore,” Calvin responds, “we explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous. And we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.”15
The logic of Calvin’s argument in the Institutes (book 3, chapters 11–19) may be summarized as follows:
Faith unites us to Christ (3.1.1), but it is the Holy Spirit who gives faith and it is Christ, rather than faith itself, who always remains the sole ground of salvation. In other words, faith is nothing in itself; it receives Christ and with him all treasures (3.11.7; 3.18.8). After all, “if faith in itself justified one by its own virtue, then, seeing that it is always weak and imperfect, it would be only partly effectual and give us only a part of salvation” (3.11.7).
One of the clearest summaries of the evangelical doctrine of justification is found in chapter 13 of the Westminster Confession:
Those whom God effectually calls, he also freely justifies: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the sole instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love.
The justified may fall into grave sin and “fall under God’s Fatherly displeasure,” but they “can never fall from the state of justification.”16
The Heidelberg Catechism also emphasizes that this divine verdict has Christ’s righteousness, not ours, as its basis, so that through faith alone we who “have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God and have not kept any one of them” are nevertheless regarded as though we had never sinned and had perfectly kept the commands. Not even the gift of faith itself can be considered the ground of justification, but simply the empty hand that receives it. This teaching cannot be used to justify moral carelessness, however, “for it is impossible for those who are engrafted into Christ by true faith not to bring forth the fruit of gratitude.”17 Similar summaries can be found, of course, in the Lutheran Book of Concord, the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles, and the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith.18
It was this understanding that Rome officially anathemized at the Council of Trent in its longest decree, which included the following:
Canon 9. If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone … let him be anathema.
Canon 11. If anyone says that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the righteousness of Christ or by the sole remission of sins … let him be anathema.
Canon 12. If anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in divine mercy, which remits sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is this confidence alone that justifies us, let him be anathema.
Canon 24. If anyone says that the justice [righteousness] received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of the increase, let him be anathema.
Canon 30. If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.
Canon 32. If anyone says that the good works of the one justified are in such manner the gifts of God that they are not also the good merits of him justified; or that the one justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit an increase of grace, eternal life, and in case he dies in grace the attainment of eternal life itself and also an increase of glory, let him be anathema.19
Much has happened since the Council of Trent, to be sure, especially in the fruitful ecumenical discussions since the Second Vatican Council. Nevertheless, Trent remains binding dogma, and even if it could be amended, the official statements of the magisterium to the present day continue to deny the evangelical view. Not even in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification between the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican (whose status is not confirmed, much less binding, on the Roman Catholic side) is the Reformation’s formulation of justification affirmed.20 Furthermore, the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity issued a caution when the Joint Declaration was released. While applauding the consensus reached by the two sides, the statement added, “The Catholic Church is, however, of the opinion that we cannot yet speak of a consensus such as would eliminate every difference between Catholics and Lutherans in the understanding of justification.”21 Citing the Council of Trent, the official statement reminded Roman Catholics that they must hold as dogma that “eternal life is, at one and the same time, grace and the reward given by God for good works and merits.”22
The Roman Catholic Church has never denied the necessity of grace—indeed, its priority. The Council of Trent expressly repeated the condemnations of Pela-gianism, in fact. However, the addition of works to faith as the instrument of justification is as strongly affirmed today as it was in the sixteenth century. From the evangelical perspective, the strongest affirmation of the importance of God’s grace does not mitigate the corruption of the gospel by including our own merits. “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (Ro 11:6).
Differences over justification are motivated by different understandings of grace. In Roman Catholic theology grace is understood as a medicinal substance infused into a person at baptism, elevating nature to supernatural appetites. In Reformation theology grace is understood as God’s favor to those who are dead in sins and ungodly, on account of Christ’s merit alone. Through faith, God gives believers nothing less than Christ and all of his benefits. Among these gifts is rebirth and sanctification, but this renewal is the consequence of justification rather than part of its definition.
Though in some respects more radical in distancing itself from the medieval church than were the Reformers, Anabaptists were closer to Rome on justification. Contemporary Anabaptist theologian Thomas Finger observes, “Robert Friedmann found ‘A forensic view of grace, in which the sinner is … undeservedly justified … simply unacceptable’ to Anabaptists. A more nuanced scholar like Arnold Snyder can assert that historic Anabaptists ‘never talked about being “justified by faith.” ‘ “23
Rejecting any conception of a forensic (substitutionary) atonement, Socinians (forerunners of modern Unitarianism) rejected a forensic justification in favor of a basically Pelagian soteriology, and this became the presupposition of Enlightenment rationalism. Kant rejected a forensic doctrine of justification as counterproductive to moral striving, and the same arguments may be found in the writings of American revivalist Charles Finney, as noted below (p. 628).
Although the classical Arminianism of the original Remonstrants (led by Arminius) affirmed justification through faith alone, the atonement came to be understood along the lines of Grotius’s governmental theory. Rather than a satisfaction of God’s justice in the place of sinners, Christ’s atonement was seen as the basis for the propriety of God’s offering salvation on the basis of the sinner’s repentance and new obedience. Some Arminians, like Philip van Limborch, moved in a Pelagian (Socinian) direction. Evangelical Arminians, such as John Wesley, taught God’s free justification of sinners, but sometimes confused it with sanctification and in general subordinated it to the inner renewal and perfection of personal holiness.24
From the New Haven divinity of Nathaniel Taylor, some Arminians (especially in the United States) also moved in a more Pelagian direction. Justification by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness not only is “absurd,” said evangelist Charles Finney, but undermines all motivation for personal holiness. Christians can perfectly obey God in this life if they choose, and only in this way are they justified. In fact, “full present obedience is a condition of justification.” No one can be justified “while sin, any degree of sin, remains in him.”25 Finney declared concerning the Reformation formula, “simultaneously justified and sinful,” “This error has slain more souls, I fear, than all the universalism that ever cursed the world.” For, “Whenever a Christian sins, he comes under condemnation and must repent and do his first works, or be lost.”26 The basis of justification is perfect obedience, but that of the believer rather than Christ:
As has already been said, there can be no justification in a legal or forensic sense, but upon the ground of universal, perfect, and uninterrupted obedience to law…. The doctrine of an imputed righteousness, or that Christ’s obedience to the law was accounted as our obedience, is founded on a most false and nonsensical assumption, for Christ’s righteousness could do no more than justify himself. It can never be imputed to us…. It was naturally impossible, then, for him to obey in our behalf. Representing the atonement as the ground of the sinner’s justification has been a sad occasion of stumbling to many.27
In Protestant liberalism (especially Schleiermacher and Ritschl), justification loses its objective and forensic character as a verdict before God in favor of a consciousness of the realization that God never really was at enmity with the believer in the first place. We have already observed this in relation to the atonement. In this conception, justification is not an objective change in status from wrath to grace (as Paul states explicitly, for example, in Romans 5:8–11); rather, the believer merely overcomes estrangement—the feeling that one is alienated from God.
While affirming, against liberalism, the necessity and fact of God’s wrath being turned away by Christ’s death, Karl Barth refused to see the various elements of the ordo salutis as occurring successively in time. Rather, they are simultaneous, belonging to a single event in God’s eternal history of election: objectively true of every person yet ever-new in every moment of faith and obedience.28 God’s justification of the ungodly is a major theme in Barth. He saw himself as recovering the insights of the Reformation over against a Protestantism that was at least as guilty as Roman Catholicism for exchanging a complete, perfect, and finished justification by God alone in Christ alone received through faith alone for a progressive, incomplete, and unfinished justification by the believer’s cooperation with grace.29 Nevertheless, if the usual temptation is to collapse justification into sanctification, for Barth the tendency is to collapse justification into election (conceived in universal terms) and the law into the gospel. As a consequence, he denies the necessity of faith for receiving this justification. Faith simply acknowledges the status that pertains objectively to every person.
More recently, criticism of the evangelical doctrine of justification has been growing within Protestant circles. First, trends in New Testament scholarship (especially identified with the “New Perspective on Paul”) sharply criticize the Reformation interpretation both of Judaism and of Paul. Although there is some diversity among proponents of this perspective, they agree that justification does not mean for Paul the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believing sinner.30 Second, trends in historical and ecumenical theology criticize the confessional Lutheran and Reformed interpretations of Luther and Calvin and try to draw the Reformers closer to Eastern Orthodox and/or Roman Catholic positions that they contend were lost to later orthodoxy.31 An impressive movement in theology known as Radical Orthodoxy (led by John Milbank) has attracted many Protestants, including evangelicals, to its renewal of Christian Neoplatonism over against the “extrincisism” and “forensicism” of Reformation theology.32 Third, Anabaptist and Arminian theologies and various types of liberation theology have combined to renew their challenge of the emphasis on justification and in many cases the doctrine itself, as inhibiting personal and social transformation.33
For the remainder of this chapter I will summarize the exegetical basis for the classic evangelical doctrine of justification, interacting along the way with contemporary criticisms.
“And those whom he called he also justified” (Ro 8:30). Understanding what Paul meant by justification depends on whether we can come to terms with his anthropology (universal human depravity)34 and therefore his compelling interest in, as Peter Stuhlmacher puts it, “whether Jews and Gentiles will or will not survive before God’s throne of judgment.”35 The gospel is not simply that Jesus was crucified and raised, or that these events demonstrate his lordship, but that he “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification’ (Ro 4:25, emphasis added).
“In the qal” notes E. P. Sanders, “the verb [sādaq] usually means ‘to be cleared in court’ and is not really distinguishable from the use of the zakah root to mean ‘innocent.’”36 “It may also mean to make something correct, as in the phrase ‘make the scales just.’ The hif’il, ‘to justify,’ also has a forensic connotation. When the passage in Ex. 23.7 says ‘I will not justify the wicked,’ it is clearly understood to mean ‘hold innocent.’”37 Berkhof correctly notes that the Hebrew word hisdîq means, in most cases, “to declare judicially that one’s state is in harmony with the demands of the law” (Ex 23:7; Dt 25:1; Pr 17:15; Isa 5:23), as does the piel form siddeq (Jer 3:11; Eze 16:51–52).38Dikaioō, “to declare just,” is unmistakably judicial in character. Just as the medieval system of penance was founded exegetically on a mistranslation in the Latin Vulgate of metanoeō (to change one’s mind, repent) as poenitentium agite (do penance), dikaioō (to declare just) was erroneously rendered iustificare (to make righteous).39
Though hardly motivated by doctrinal concerns, Erasmus had pointed out these lexical inconsistencies even before Luther. Obviously, being made righteous is quite a different thing from being declared righteous. By itself, the latter term does not require the evangelical doctrine of justification, but it does render erroneous the Vulgate’s translation and therefore the interpretation of justification as moral transformation. A number of Roman Catholic New Testament scholars have pointed out in recent years that dikaioō has to do with a legal vindication.40 The lexical definition of to be justified is “to be cleared in court,”41 which, as Sanders has said above, is true even in relation to the Old Testament (sâdaq and cognates), and can be amply attested. That significant consensus can be reached on this point even among those who stand in some critical relation to the Reformation interpretation demonstrates that we are quite far from witnessing the destruction of a forensic definition of justification.
While the verb is judicial or forensic (that is, it expresses a declaration rather than a process), the use of it does not by itself indicate the basis on which or the means by which one is justified before God. It simply indicates that the demands of the law have been fully met (Ac 13:39; Ro 5:1, 9; 8:30–33; 1Co 6:11; Gal 2:16; 3:11). Its opposite is condemnation, which is quite evidently a judicial concept as well (Jn 3:17–18; Ro 4:6–7; 8:1, 33–34; 2Co 5:19).
So far, even some vigorous proponents of the New Perspective such as N. T. Wright will agree: justification is a declarative, judicial verdict. It cannot be understood as a process, at least on lexical-semantic grounds. The further question concerns the nature of the phrase “the righteousness of God” and whether it can be credited or imputed to believers. According to Wright, the term God’s righteousness can refer only to his own faithfulness to the covenant.42 Though certainly “a forensic term, that is, taken from the law court,” righteousness does not refer to something that can be transferred from God to us. Nor can it refer to a righteous condition inherent in the defendant, making him or her deserving of acquittal. Rather, “for the plaintiff or defendant to be ‘righteous’ in the biblical sense within the lawcourt setting is for them to have that status as a result of the decision of the court.”43 However, this courtroom verdict cannot involve an imputation of righteousness. It makes no sense to say that the judge somehow gives his own righteousness to the defendant.44 God’s people will be “justified.” “But the righteousness they have will not be God’s own righteousness. That makes no sense at all. God’s own righteousness is his covenant faithfulness” (emphasis original).45
However, it is crucial to point out that it has never been the Reformation position that God’s righteousness is imputed. First, this assumes that righteousness is a substance or a commodity that is transferred from one person to another, rather than a legal status. Second, missing from Wright’s courtroom setting is the third party: the mediator who, as representative head, fulfills the law and merits for himself and his covenant heirs the verdict of “righteous” or “just” before God. Although the one who fulfilled the terms of the law covenant as the human servant is also the divine Lord, it is his active obedience rather than the essential divine attribute of righteousness that is credited to believers.
In fact, the mature Reformation doctrine of justification was articulated against both Rome’s understanding of justification as an infused quality of righteousness and Andreas Osiander’s notion of the believer’s participation in the essential righteousness of Christ’s deity. The Reformers and their heirs labored the point that it is Christ’s successful fulfillment of the trial of the covenantal representative that is imputed or credited to all who believe. This is what keeps justification from being abstract or a legal fiction, since the justified do in fact possess “in Christ” the status of those who have perfectly fulfilled all righteousness. This is the covenantal language that is everywhere presupposed but so clearly comes to expression in Romans 5, where Adam’s federal headship imputes guilt and condemnation as well as imparting inherent corruption, while Christ’s federal headship imputes righteousness and imparts his inherent new life. The forensic language of the courtroom and the organic language of head and body, tree and fruit, vine and branches converge without being confused. In Christ we have both justification and new life, an alien righteousness imputed and Christ’s own resurrection life imparted.
To build on Paul’s banking analogy, for one to have not only one’s debts cancelled but one’s account filled by a transfer of funds from someone else renders that wealth no more a fiction than if it were the fruit of one’s own labors. As Paul looks over his ledger in Philippians 3, he places all of his own righteousness in the liabilities column and all of Christ’s righteousness in his assets column. Wright’s account so far does not seem to allow for an inheritance actually to be given to anyone in particular. Justification may be forensic (that is, judicial), but there can be no transfer of assets, if you will, from a faithful representative to the ungodly. If guilt can be imputed from one person to another (which Wright affirms), why not righteousness? The sin of Adam was imputed to the human race as a covenantal entity in solidarity because it was imputed to each member (Ro 5:12). This notion of imputing the sin of one person to each Israelite—and thus to the nation generally—is found elsewhere, as in Achan’s theft (Jos 7:10–26).
Interpreting “the righteousness of God” (dikaiosynë tou theou) as a subjective genitive, Wright paraphrases Romans 1:17: “The gospel, [Paul] says, reveals or unveils God’s own righteousness, his covenant faithfulness, which operates through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for the benefit of all those who in turn are faithful (‘from faith to faith’).”46 However, does this make adequate sense of the rest of the verse: “as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’”? Paul’s citation of Habakkuk 2:4 refers to the human partner in the covenant rather than to God. It seems more consistent with Paul’s wider argument in Romans 1–3 to say, in agreement with Luther, that the law reveals God’s essential righteousness (his justice that condemns us), while the gospel reveals God’s gift of righteousness that saves us. After establishing the point that everyone, Jew and Gentile, is condemned by the law and will never be justified by it because of their sin, Paul adds, “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” They are now “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation here, but for a defense of the subjective genitive construction, see Bruce W. Longenecker, “Contours of Covenant Theology in the Post-Conversion Paul,” in The Road from Damascus: The Impact of Paul’s Conversion on His Life, Thought, and Ministry (ed. Richard N. Longenecker; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 133; cf. Richard Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1—4:11 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983); Richard B. Hays, “Justification,” The Anchor Bible Dictionary (ed. D. N. Freedman et al.; New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4:1129–33. by his blood, to be received by faith” (Ro 3:21–25). According to this view, God indeed reveals his covenant faithfulness, but by itself this is not good news—unless God reveals that the righteousness that he is and that his law requires has been given to us as a gift in Jesus Christ.
Whereas the Reformation interpretation recognizes that Paul speaks of the righteousness of God as his essential justice and faithfulness to the covenant and as the gift of righteousness, Wright reduces all references to the former. Yet the dialectical play between these two seems to lie at the heart of Paul’s argument especially in Romans 1–3: the righteousness that God is (as revealed in the law) condemns everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. It makes little sense, especially in the sweep of Paul’s argument, to say that God’s covenant faithfulness is disclosed through our faith in Christ. Rather, Paul argues that the righteousness that God is (i.e., his essential righteousness) actually condemns everyone—Jew and Gentile alike, because no one has fulfilled it; the gospel, however, discloses the gift of righteousness which is received through faith. The revelation of God’s righteousness that is revealed by the law, “so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (3:19), is different from the revelation of God’s righteousness that is revealed in the gospel “apart from law,” through faith in Christ (v. 21). The law reveals that God is just (and therefore must condemn all transgressors), but the gospel reveals that God is just and justifier (v. 26).
There is no place for a transfer of righteousness to the believer in Wright’s interpretation, but for Paul, in this passage, “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” is a “justification” that is “a gift” given to “all who believe.” The closest that Wright comes to allowing for justification as a gift of right-standing given to individuals is in the statement that believers “are declared, in the present, to be what they will be seen to be in the future, namely the true people of God. Present justification declares, on the basis of faith, what future justification will affirm publicly (according to 2:14–16 and 8:9–11) on the basis of the entire life” (emphasis added).47 Not only do we meet the distinction in Roman Catholic theology between present and future justification; the basis of the latter is one’s own covenant faithfulness. Where for Paul the verdict of the last day has already been rendered in favor of those who have faith in Christ—through faith alone—according to Wright this future verdict is merely anticipated in faith.
According to Wright, faith is not how one is “saved,” but “is the badge of the sin-forgiven family.”48“The emphasis of the chapter [Ro 4] is therefore that covenant membership is defined, not by circumcision (4:9–12), nor by race, but by faith.”49 However, this faith is now also redefined as faithfulness—our own covenantal obedience, which is the basis for the final justification. Crucially absent from his list is Paul’s clause, “nor by works,” or the apostle’s statement that this justification comes to the one (notice the individual-personal reference) “who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly” (v. 5). Paul’s contrast is between working and trusting, not between circumcision and our Spirit-led obedience. Basically, Wright’s claim is tantamount to saying that we are justified by some works (our covenant faithfulness), but not by others (ethnic purity).
As we have already seen in relation to the substitutionary atonement, a legal satisfaction of God’s justice on the part of sinners is only part of the story. It is so central that without it the other theories are left hanging in midair. Nevertheless, it provides the basis for a cosmic and eschatological victory of Yahweh over the powers that hold us in bondage. Similarly, far from excluding personal and cosmic renewal, the justification of the ungodly is the source of the abundant and varied fruit of Christ’s conquest.50
The Reformation view of justification rests on the declarative character of the verb and the twofold meaning of the righteousness of God as that justice that God is, which condemns us, and the justice that God gives, which saves us. Yet it requires a further point: namely, imputation as the way in which God gives this righteousness or justice to the ungodly through faith.
The verb “to impute” (logizomai) is used explicitly in Romans, especially in chapter 4, where Paul refers to Abraham, quoting Genesis 15:6: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Ro 4:3). Notice how imputation fits in Paul’s argument: “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted [imputed] as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (vv. 4–5). Clearly something is being transferred or given from one person (employer) to another (employee): namely, wages. But in this case it is different: God does not justify those who work for it but only imputes righteousness to those who trust in the justifier of the ungodly. David is another example of one “against whom the Lord will not count his sin” (v. 8). Abraham could not even count his circumcision as the instrument of his justification before God (vv. 9–12). “But the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (vv. 23–25).
In Galatians 3, with the contrast between “the works of the law” and “hearing with faith,” Paul repeats the quotation from Genesis 15:6. “Counting as” or “being counted as,” logizomai eis, is also found in Romans 2:26; 9:8 and 2 Corinthians 12:6, as well as Acts 19:27 and James 2:23. Although the term does not appear in Romans 5, the idea is evident throughout Paul’s comparison and contrast between Adam and Christ. Under Adam’s headship, the whole race is guilty and corrupt; under Christ’s headship, many are justified and made alive. These passages unmistakably teach that the righteousness by which the believer stands worthy before God’s judgment is alien: that is, belonging properly to someone else. It is Christ’s righteousness imputed, not the believer’s inherent righteousness—even if produced by the gracious work of the Spirit.
As we have seen, N. T. Wright holds that God’s final justification is a declaration that believers are righteous based on their whole life lived. While generally eschewing talk of the ordo salutis (“how individuals ‘get saved’”), he does make regeneration the basis for the verdict that one is at present a member of this community that will be justified on the last day. Therefore, whatever other differences there might be on other points, he shares Rome’s view of justification as an analytic verdict. In the quotation from the Westminster Confession above, the clause is added that not only works “done by us” but even works “wrought in us”—by the Holy Spirit—are excluded from justification. Far from denying the Spirit’s work within us, the Confession is simply saying that this is not justification.
The notion of one person’s righteousness being imputed to another is already present in Second Temple Judaism (the “merit of the fathers”).51 Furthermore, we have already seen that Wright strongly affirms that our sins were transferred or credited to Christ, so his rejection of an imputation of righteousness from Christ to the believer seems arbitrary. Criticisms of imputation are not restricted to representatives of the New Perspective(s) on Paul. For example, Mark Seifrid remains unconvinced that the language of “imputation” is necessary. Justification grants forgiveness of sins; what need is there for an imputation of righteousness on the basis of Christ’s active obedience, which Seifrid considers “unnecessary and misleading"?52 ‘In reducing ‘justification’ to a present possession of ‘Christ’s imputed righteousness,’ Protestant divines inadvertently bruised the nerve which runs between justification and obedience. It is not so much wrong to use the expression ‘the imputed righteousness of Christ’ as it is deficient.”53
However, the Reformed interpretation cannot be reductive or deficient if it actually says more than Seifrid allows.54 More critically, the question arises, how does forgiveness by itself establish rectitude? It is not mere forgiveness (negation of guilt) that withstands the last judgment, but righteousness (positive standing). Without the latter, both the goal of the covenant and its conditions are unfulfilled. Seifrid concludes, “Justification” cannot be “reduced to an event which takes place for the individual at the beginning of the Christian life” within “an ‘order of salvation’ (ordo salutis)’55 ’ 55 Yet does not Paul place it in an ordo salutis in Romans 8:30? Apart from the positive imputation of righteousness, based on Christ’s active obedience (fulfilling the law in our place), justification truly is a “legal fiction,” as its critics allege. On the other hand, because the obedience of Christ is actually imputed or credited to us, we are legally just before God.
Robert Gundry also objects to the doctrine of imputation. First, he highlights the texts that refer to imputation of righteousness explicitly. “But none of these texts says that Christ’s righteousness was counted,” writes Gundry, “so that righteousness comes into view not as what is counted but as what God counts faith to be.”56 What God counts or imputes is faith, not Christ’s righteousness, Gundry argues.57To be sure, “Paul rejects the Jewish tradition that God counted Abraham’s faith as righteousness because it was a work (a good one, of course).”58 Yet if faith is the ground of justification rather than the instrument, one wonders how that Jewish interpretation could be faulted. Gundry clearly states that “the righteousness that comes ‘from’ (ek) faith (Ro 9:30: 10:6) and from God ‘through’ (dia) faith and ‘on the basis of’ (epi) faith (Php 3:9) is the faith that God counts as righteousness. Paul’s language is supple: faith is the origin, the means, and the basis of righteousness in that God counts it as righteousness” (emphasis added).59
However, epi has a much broader lexical range than Gundry allows.60 While in technical theological jargon the basis (or formal cause) of something is distinguished from the means (or instrumental cause), epi and dia both are used with greater range and flexibility in Scripture, as their English equivalents are in common use. In fact, epi appears as a basis (“on account of,” “because of”), a marker of basis for a state of being, an action, or a result, in numerous places.61 In other words, epi (“on account of”) is interchangeable with dia (“through”). In the light of various challenges to the Reformation understanding of justification from Protestant as well as Roman Catholic quarters, the terminology became more refined: justification by grace, through faith, because of Christ. However, it would be anachronistic to impose the more refined distinctions of scholasticism on the New Testament. Even Luther can say, in his exegesis of Galatians, that we are justified “for the sake of our faith in Christ or for the sake of Christ,” as if the two phrases are interchangeable.62 It all depends on what one is contrasting: is it between faith and works or between faith as an inherently worthy basis and faith as a passive instrument? In Gundry’s formulation, however, one would say that we are justified by faith, through faith, on the basis of faith. This view makes our faith the meritorious ground of our justification.
Rejecting the imputation of Adam’s sin, since the people’s sinning (before the law) “was not like the transgression of Adam,” Gundry denies imputation in relation to justification.63 Yet this verse (Ro 5:14) seems to make the opposite point: namely, that even though they did not commit the same sin, they were still sinners in Adam. Further, Gundry speaks of “the failure of Paul, despite his extensive discussion of law and writing that Christ was ‘born under the law’ (Gal 4:4), ever to make a point of Christ’s keeping the law perfectly on our behalf (not even his sinlessness in 2Co 5:21 being put in relation to law-keeping).”64
Yet what other import might the phrase “born under the law” have served? And how else would a Jew have understood sinlessness other than “in relation to law-keeping"? And why does Paul contrast Adam’s one act of disobedience and Christ’s one act of obedience? Does this not suggest that Christ’s obedience, rather than our faith, is imputed? Gundry argues,
To be sure, dikaiōma, translated “act of righteousness” in Romans 5:18 and “righteous requirement” in Romans 8:4 (also in Ro 1:32), may be collective in Romans 8:4 for all the requirements of the law. But that collective meaning is unsure, even unlikely, for Paul writes in Galatians 5:14 that “the whole law is fulfilled in one command, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”65
Yet even such an interpretation of Galatians 5:14 seems strained. Paul was merely summarizing “the whole law” (i.e., all the requirements of the law collectively comprehended). Surely loving one’s neighbor does not consist in one act. And in the context of his running polemic in Galatians, would it not be legitimate to assume here that Paul is simply repeating the claim in 3:10 that to offend at one point (failing to love God and neighbor perfectly) is to be “under the curse” of the law? Although he has argued that faith is not a work, Gundry says, “The righteousness of faith is the moral accomplishment that God counts faith to be even though it is not intrinsically such an accomplishment” (emphasis added).66Christ’s “obediently righteous act of propitiation made it right for God to count faith as righteousness.”67
It is worth noting in passing that this view has a theological history. Although Arminius held simultaneously that the meritorious ground of justification was Christ’s imputed righteousness, his followers (Simon Episcopius and Hugo Grotius) taught that faith itself (and repentance) becomes the ground of justification. The Puritan Richard Baxter made a similar argument, treating faith and evangelical obedience as the “new law” that replaces the “old law” as the basis for justification. Chapter 11 of the Westminster Confession targets this error of neo-nomianism when it states that God justifies believers “[not] by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on him and his righteousness, by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.” 68 In fact, there are obvious similarities between neo-nomianism and the covenant (or better, contractual) theology of late medieval nominalism, according to which justification is granted on the basis of one’s imperfect obedience. In this view, no one merits final justification according to strict merit (de condigno), but only according to God’s gracious decision to accept it as if it were meritorious (de congruo).
Aside from historical parallels, is Gundry’s position exegetically plausible? D. A. Carson responds, first, by offering a salutary reminder that systematic and biblical (or exegetical) theology represent different fields of discourse that should serve each other’s ends, but often speak past each other, failing to take each other’s fields and research into account. 69“In Jewish exegesis,” Carson points out, “Genesis 15:6 was quoted not to prove that Abraham was justified by faith and not by works,” but rather to prove his meritorious obedience (Rabbi Shemaiah, 50 BC; Mekilta on Ex 14:15 [35b]; 40b). “What this means, for our purposes, is that Paul, who certainly knew of these traditions, was explicitly interpreting Genesis 15:6 in a way quite different from that found in his own tradition, and he was convinced that this new way was the correct way to understand the text.”70
More specifically, Carson draws our attention to the parallelism in Romans 4:5–6:
“In other words, ‘justifies’ is parallel to ‘credits righteousness’; or, to put the matter in nominal terms, justification is parallel to the imputation of righteousness.”71 And it has to be an “alien” righteousness, since “God justifies the ungodly (Ro 4:5); he credits righteousness apartfrom works (Ro 4:6).”72
In response to Gundry’s argument, Carson reasons, “If God has counted or imputed our faith to us as righteousness, then, once he has so counted or imputed it, does he then count or impute the righteousness to us, a kind of second imputation?”73 In Philippians 3, it is clearly not an inherent righteousness.74 “In 2 Corinthians 5:19–21, we are told that God made Christ who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. It is because of God that we are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us righteousness (and other things: 1Co 1:30). Passage after passage in Paul runs down the same track.”75 Having faith—even if it is faith in Christ—is not the same as having a righteousness that is “not of my own.” If we think the two are the same, then faith, not Christ, becomes the basis for the transfer from unrighteous to righteous.76
I have referred to the sibling rivalry between biblical and systematic theology, but the arguments we have encountered thus far in opposition to the traditional Protestant account of justification reveal that theological convictions and exegetical conclusions are inextricably connected. Schweitzer judged, “But those who subsequently made [Paul’s] doctrine of justification by faith the centre of Christian belief, have had the tragic experience of finding that they were dealing with a conception of redemption, from which no ethic could logically be derived.”77
Yet this conclusion completely misses the quite natural transition in Paul’s logic even in Galatians, where, as in his other epistles, ethical imperatives are extrapolated from gospel indicatives. The gospel of free justification liberates us to embrace the very law that once condemned us. This new life Paul calls “life in the Spirit,” yielding “the fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:16–26). When we were “in Adam,” that law yielded death and condemnation; “in Christ,” the law approves us—hence, Calvin’s view that the so-called third use (guiding believers in the way of gratitude) is, for the Christian, “the primary use” of the law.78 Only when it no longer can condemn us is the law a friend rather than an enemy.
Reformation theology, as we will see, has certainly derived an ethic from justification—as well as from the rest of the ordo, as evidenced by the division of the Heidelberg Catechism into guilt, grace, and gratitude. Every Lutheran and Reformed catechism includes an application of the Ten Commandments to the Christian life. In fact, the first question-and-answer of the Heidelberg Catechism underscores the point that because Christ paid the price for our redemption and sent the Spirit, “[My] only comfort in life and in death [is] that I am not my own, but belong—in body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”79 Justification is not only a promise; it is a claim upon one’s total life.
Proponents of covenantal nomism (synergism) have regularly insisted that a gospel of free grace—sola gratia, solo Christo, sola fide—can lead logically only to license. E. P. Sanders, who pioneered the New Perspective, assumes that an unconditional election is arbitrary: there must be something in the chosen that explains the gift.80To be sure, “getting in” depends on obedience, but this does not constitute “works-righteousness,” since there are things that we can do to make up for our mistakes. Apparently such provisions for re-balancing the scales by our own efforts constitute grace on God’s part. These theological presuppositions guide Sanders’s verdicts on Second Temple Judaism and Paul. James D. G. Dunn concedes that his interpretation of Paul is consistent with his Arminian theological commitments.81 N. T. Wright pleads, “If Christians could only get this [doctrine of justification] right, they would find that not only would they be believing the gospel, they would be practicing it; and that is the best basis for proclaiming it.”82 Thus, the gospel is something to be done by us, not simply an astonishing and disruptive announcement of what has already been achieved once and for all on our behalf.83 Faith and holiness belong together, Wright properly insists, but the only way to keep them together, he seems to suggest, is to conflate them. “Indeed, very often the word ‘faith’ itself could properly be translated as ‘faithfulness,’ which makes the point just as well,” although he reminds us that “faith” is not the way one gets in but is the badge indicating who is in.84 Gundry appeals to Mark Seifrid’s far-from-novel charge that “in reducing ‘justification’ to a present possession of ‘Christ’s imputed righteousness,’ Protestant divines inadvertently bruised the nerve which runs between justification and obedience.” He appeals also to Wesley’s criticism on the same ground: it leads to antinomianism.85
In this, the well-worn path of criticism, illustrated in Albert Schweitzer’s charge that “there is no road from it [forensic justification] to ethics” is followed.86 Gundry sees his own treatment as going “a long way toward satisfying the legitimate concerns not only of Roman Catholics but also of pietists in the Lutheran tradition, in the Anabaptist and Baptist tradition, in the Keswick movement, in the Holiness movement and in Pentecostalism.”87 No less than the Reformers and their heirs, therefore, are such criticisms of the evangelical doctrine of justification shaped by systematic-theological categories and assumptions.
Adapting the ancient Near Eastern treaties to God’s covenantal purposes, Scripture indicates that to be adopted by the Great King, the vassal “puts on” the identity of the suzerain, including its regal glory. It is this lost glory that is recovered—and, because it is no less than the glory of the God-Man, it is greater than the original glory of “the first man … from the earth, a man of dust” (1Co 15:47). “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (v. 49).88 “To be the image of God is to be the son of God.”89 To “put on Christ” is to derive all of one’s righteousness from him, both for justification and for sanctification. That is not only because he is the eternal Son, but because he is the justified covenant head of his people, “and was declared to be Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead …” (Ro 1:4). In Christ, our rags are exchanged for robes of regal splendor, and we are seated at the same table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
The clothing analogy is not original to Pauline theology. It occurs first with God’s clothing of Adam and Eve after the fall, the vision of Joshua the high priest having his filthy clothes exchanged for a robe of righteousness in Zechariah 3, and a host of other passages. In Isaiah 61:10, we read, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (cf. Rev 21:2, which paraphrases this verse). The guests at the wedding feast in Jesus’ parable are adorned in festive garments (Mt 22:1–14), and the prodigal son is decked out by the father in the best clothes upon his return (Lk 15:11–32). So when Paul says that Christ is “our righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1Co 1:30) and refers repeatedly to our being “clothed with Christ” and “having put on Jesus Christ,” and calls us on that basis to “put on Christ” in our daily conduct, this same connection between justification and sanctification is being drawn.
We could make the same point by drawing on the analogy of drama. In effectual calling, God has “rescripted” us and recasts us in his story. No longer trying to fit “God” or the gods into our own life story, we become characters in his unfolding drama: seated at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. From God’s perspective, our own script was all wrong. Regardless of the role we thought we had, our inherited character was that of “strangers to the covenants of promise” who were “having no hope … in the world” (Eph 2:12). But God calls us, as he did Abram and the disciples, away from our dead-end character. In God’s story, our old character dies and a new character emerges who is now given a supporting role in a plot that centers on Christ. As the casting director, the Spirit gives us not only a new identity with new clothes but a new script, with new lines.
In common with the practices of its neighbors, Israel’s law made the firstborn son heir of the estate, which was also the inheritance law of the Greco-Roman world. Yet in the new covenant (fulfilling the promise to Adam and Eve as well as the covenant with Abraham and Sarah), with Christ as the head, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal 3:28–29). Everyone who is in Christ is a “firstborn son,” co-heir of the entire estate.
A lodestar for justification, Galatians 3 and 4 are also crucial for our understanding of adoption. After all, the same logic that announces freedom from the bondage of the law for righteousness also pertains to the right of inheritance, which is a question of “sonship.” Paul unfolds his argument redemptive-historically, with the law (here intending the whole old covenant administration) as the “guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (3:24).
I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. (Gal 4:1–7)
These “sons” who are legally entitled to the inheritance include females as well as males, Gentiles as well as Jews, slaves as well as free citizens, without distinction (Gal 3:28–29).
Furthermore, these brothers and sisters are not only heirs of whatever is left over from the spoils of the firstborn son’s inheritance. In fact, the very passage we are using for the structure of the ordo salutis (Ro 8:30) begins first with the statement, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (v. 29). Jews and Gentiles alike are “fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph 3:6). Properly speaking, it is Christ who is the “heir of all things” (Heb 1:2; cf. Lk 20:14), but precisely because he possesses all things not only as a private but as a public person, his inheritance is a public trust. Believers hold all things in common with Christ and therefore with each other.
In the economy of the Sinai covenant, Moses is a servant in God’s house, while Jesus Christ is the firstborn son (Heb 3:1–6). So even Moses’ adoption is dependent not only on the condition of his personal fulfillment of the law covenant made at Sinai but on Christ’s personal fulfillment of that covenant by which he has won the inheritance for his brothers and sisters in the covenant of grace: “For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, saying, ‘I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in him.’ And again, ‘Here am I and the children whom God has given me’” (Heb 2:11–13, NRSV). As with justification, this adoption is not a legal fiction, since the law is fulfilled: the firstborn Son has won the entire estate by his victorious service to the crown, but, as established in the mutuality of the covenant of redemption (i.e., election), every adopted child has an equal share.
At this point, the character of the covenant of grace as founded on a royal grant becomes especially obvious. Having merited his estate by his loyal service to the Great King, the Son passes on the inheritance in perpetuity to all of those co-heirs included in his last will and testament. Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John 17 is pregnant with this covenantal grant, even to the point of linking his own fulfillment of his earthly mission to the intratrinitarian covenant of redemption, referring to “those whom you gave me,” who are now to be included in the koinōnia (fellowship) of the Trinity itself.
The children need not worry about their future or jockey for their Father’s favor (as Jacob and Esau). After all, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Ro 8:32). As Calvin comments on Ephesians 1:23,
This is the highest honour of the Church, that, until He is united to us, the Son of God reckons himself in some measure imperfect. What consolation is it for us to learn, that, not until we are along with him, does he possess all his parts, or wish to be regarded as complete! Hence, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, when the apostle discusses largely the metaphor of a human body, he includes under the single name of Christ the whole Church.90
If union with Christ in the covenant of grace is the matrix for Paul’s ordo, justification remains its basis, even for adoption. We do not move from the topic of justification to other (more interesting) ones, but are always relating the riches of our inheritance to this decisive gift. In William Ames’s words, “Adoption of its own nature requires and presupposes the reconciliation found in justification The first fruit of adoption is that Christian liberty by which all believers are freed from the bondage of the law, sin, and the world.”91
Adoption, like justification, is simultaneously legal and relational, as is the obverse: alienation and condemnation. Adoption is not a goal held out to children who successfully imitate their parents; nor is it the result of an infusion of familial characteristics or genes. Rather, it is a change in legal status that issues in a relationship that is gradually reflected in the child’s identity, characteristics, and actions. From the courtroom, with the legal status and inheritance unalterably established, the child moves into the security of a growing and thriving future.
Just as there is no opposition between forensic and relational categories in the earthly process of adoption, we are not forced to choose between forensic and effective categories in describing spiritual adoption either. God’s Word declares us to be righteous heirs of the kingdom, and this same Word immediately begins to conform us existentially, morally, and socially to this new-creation reality, with the firstborn Son as its archetype. As Oswald Bayer expresses this point, “What God says, God does … God’s work is God’s speech. God’s speech is no fleeting breath. It is a most effective breath that creates life, that summons into life.”92 Justification is not an inert but a living Word, on a par with creation ex nihilo, according to Paul (Ro 4:17, with Ps 33:6)—not only the Word about God, but of God, that creates the reality that it announces.93
Paul appeals to the examples of Abraham and David (especially in Romans 4 and Galatians 2–4). In fact, the familiar prophecy of Isaiah 53 describes this imputation or exchange. The suffering Servant bears our sins, suffers in our place, and by his righteous act “shall … make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (v. 11). Our sins are put on his account, and his righteousness is credited to us. In Zechariah 3, there is the prophecy of Joshua the high priest in the heavenly courtroom, with Satan as the prosecuting attorney and the Angel of the LORD as his defender. Although condemned in himself, Joshua has his filthy clothes removed and is arrayed instead in a spotless robe. All of these passages flood the New Testament’s testimony to Jesus Christ as “the LORD … our righteousness” (cf. Jer 23:5–6; 33:16, with 1Co 1:30–31; 2Co 5:21). “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Ro 8:1). Nothing remains to be done; all has been accomplished for us by Christ, and in him we are already holy and blameless before the Father.
Far from denying the subjective transformation of the new birth and sanctification, the classic evangelical view points to its only possible source. As with all sound teaching in the Scriptures, the goal of the doctrine is to bring us to doxology, giving all praise to God with nothing left for ourselves. “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? … Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? … Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” (Ro 8:31–35).
However, perhaps the best image in the New Testament for justification comes from Jesus’ parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee. “The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” (Lk 18:10–13). Luke introduces this parable as intended by Jesus for “some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (v. 9). Clearly, Jesus saw the problem of the religious leaders as self-righteousness, which bore fruit of course in exclusionary practices. Furthermore, the Pharisee and tax collector both “went up into the temple to pray” (v. 10), so the contrast was not between some works (circumcision and dietary laws) and others. Finally, the Pharisee even thanked God for his righteousness, tipping his hat to grace (v. 11). Nevertheless, the tax collector asked for mercy rather than for an approval of his righteousness. “I tell you,” Jesus concluded, “this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other” (v. 14).
1. The teaching of the ancient church is ambiguous with respect to justification. On one hand, there are marvelous testimonies to God’s justification of sinners, as Thomas Oden observes in The Justification Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). On the other hand, there are many threads of synergism that later Eastern Orthodoxy developed in Byzantine theology in a manner that parallels Western (medieval) developments.
2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 492, quoting the Council of Trent (1574).
3. Ibid., 482.
4. Ibid., 483.
5. Ibid., 486-87.
6. Krister Stendahl’s Paul: Among Jews and Gentiles (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1976) pioneered this psychological thesis, which has become a largely unexamined assumption among advocates of the New Perspective(s) on Paul (especially James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright). Bizarre attempts to psychoanalyze Luther to explain his “evangelical breakthrough” began with Erik H. Erikson’s Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1962).
7. Calvin, Institutes 3.2.1, 3.11.1; also sermon on Luke 1:5-10 in Corpus Reformatorum (ed. W. Baum; Berlin: C. A.Schwetschke, 1863–1900), 46:23.
8. See, for example, Richard Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 126–27. Calvin, however, sharply criticized Melanchthon’s later synergistic turn, which the orthodox (Gnesio) Lutherans also rejected.
9. Calvin, Institutes 3.11.2.
10. Ibid., 3.3.10.
11. Ibid., 3.3.11.
12. Ibid., 3.3.14.
13. Ibid., 3.4.30.
14. Ibid., 3.12.2.
15. Ibid., 3.11.2.
16. The Westminster Confession of Faith, in Book of Confessions (Louisville: PCUSA General Assembly, 1991), ch. 13.
17. Heidelberg Catechism, questions 60-64 (quote is A. 64), in Book of Confessions.
18. The Confession was adopted in London by Calvinist Baptists and eventually affirmed in Philadelphia (see www.reformedreader.org/ccc/1689lbc/english/1689econtents.htm).
19. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent: Original Text with English Translation (trans. H. J. Schroeder, OP; St. Louis: B. Herder Book Company, 1960), 43, 45-46.
20. Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: The Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). Among other problems, the Joint Declaration teaches, “The justification of sinners is forgiveness and being made righteous …” (4.3.27, emphasis added), and particular acts of sin require the sacrament of penance the condemnations of the sixteenth century no longer apply to each other’s respective communions. It should be noted that the Lutheran World Federation, like the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, represents the more liberal wing of its tradition. Their confessional rivals (including the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) rejected the Joint Declaration, because they do still hold the views condemned by the Council of Trent and all subsequent reaffirmations by the magisterium.
21. Reprinted in the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, weekly edition in English, 8 July 1998, p. 2.
22. Ibid.
23. Thomas A. Finger, A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology: Biblical, Historical, Constructive (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 109. Finger believes that Anabaptist soteriological emphases (especially on divinization) can bring greater unity especially between the soteriologies of marginalized Protestant groups (Pentecostals and Quakers) and those of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches (110). Finger observes that recent Anabaptist reflection is no more marked in its interest in this topic than its antecedents, with discipleship (“following Jesus”) and the inner transformation of the believer as central (132–33).
24. As ardent a defender of Arminian theology as Roger Olson recognizes Wesley’s somewhat confusing position concerning justification (Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2006], 213). Olson also points up differences in later Arminianism. For example, Richard Watson states unambiguously, “This whole doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ’s personal and moral obedience, as their own personal moral obedience, involves a fiction and impossibility inconsistent with the Divine attributes” (Richard Watson, Theological Institutes [New York: Lane & Scott, 1851], 2:216, quoted in Olson, Arminian Theology, 215). Olson argues that this view does not characterize all Arminian representatives, but even some of his contrary examples seem to suggest a closer proximity to Watson’s position, although Olson does not cite these passages. William B. Pope (A Compendium of Christian Theology [New York: Hunt and Eaton, 1880]) states that “to justify” in the New Testament means both “a declaratory and imputed righteousness, and at the same time the power of a righteousness internal and inherent” (2:404). At the same time, Pope properly insists that we are justified through faith (dia pisteös or ek pisteös), not on account of faith (dia pistin) (2:414). Nevertheless, “Faith, with works, justifies instrumentally the person believing: inasmuch as its works give evidence of its genuineness as a permanent living principle. It retains the soul in a state of justification, and is the power of a Divine life by which the righteousness of the law is fulfilled” (2:415). Pope states that “Arminianism was in its doctrine of the Atonement a mediation between Socinianism and the Anselmic teaching as revived at the Reformation …,” “although … Arminianism gradually declined from its first integrity” and “does not now represent any fixed standard of confession” (2:442). He points out that original Arminianism (including the belief of Arminius himself), which he affirms, denied the active obedience of Christ as well as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness (2:443). However, Pope says, Limborch went further than this, toward “the Romanist error” and Socinianism (2:443). According to Pope the English Arminians (Methodists) never denied the Reformation doctrine of justification, although they taught the doctrine of entire sanctification (perfection) and stressed forgiveness rather than the imputation of Christ’s righteousness (2:444–48). Watson explicitly denies that justification includes the imputation of Christ’s righteousness (Watson, Institutes, 2:215). After warning that the Reformation view tends to treat justification merely as a change in legal status, John Lawson writes in his Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury, 1967, 1986), “To be justified, therefore, is the first and all-important stage in a renewed manner of life, actually changed for the better in mind and heart, in will and action” (226). In fact, “regeneration” is “an alternative word for ‘the initial step …’” (227). At least these statements of the Methodist position reflect a basic affinity with the Roman Catholic view. On the other hand, Methodist theologian Thomas Oden has labored to defend the Reformation doctrine of justification, especially in The Justification Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).
25. Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology (Oberlin, Ohio: J. M. Fitch, 1846; repr., Minneapolis: Bethany, 1976), 46.
26. Ibid., 57.
27. Ibid., 321-22. Referring to the framers of the West- minster Confession and their view of an imputed righteousness, Finney wondered, “If this is not antinomianism, I know not what is” (322).
28. See Michael Horton, “A Stony Jar: The Legacy of Karl Barth for Evangelical Theology,” in Engaging with Barth: Contemporary Evangelical Critiques (ed. David Gibson and Daniel Strange; New York: T&T Clark, 2008), 346-81.
29. This concern was already evident in Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns from the 6th German ed.; London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1933), 366: “The Church must therefore know that nothing is gained by replacing an objective by a subjective religion, by transforming the service of God into ‘pious practices’ and righteousness into a law of righteousness, because even so it does not find what it is seeking. The Church can, of course, pursue religion and busy itself in the human work of the law. It can cultivate religious experience aesthetically, ethically, and logically. But it cannot do more than this: for religious experience is not the same thing as faith or righteousness; it is not the presence and reality of God, nor is it the divine ‘Answer.’ Religious experience is our human and, consequently, our very questionable, relation to God.”
30. I interact at length with these views in the first half of my Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007).
31. One prominent example is the “evangelical catholic” circle associated with Robert Jenson and Carl Braaten and the New Finnish interpretation of Luther led by Tuomo Mannermaa and others. See Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s View of Justification (ed. Kirsi Stjerna; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005). I interact with these views in Covenant and Salvation, 127-260.
32. John Milbank et al., Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Routledge, 1999).
33. Stanley Grenz challenged the older evangelical preoc cupation with “Christ alone” as the material principle and “Scripture alone” as the formal principle of the Christ ian faith (Stanley Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993], 62). Similarly, Brian McLaren, in A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), faults Reformation theology for its commitment to the solae: Christ alone, Scripture alone, grace alone, through faith alone, and to God alone be glory (221). For both writers, as for the generation of evangelicals that preceded them, the heart of Christianity is our imitation of Christ’s example, which—at least for McLaren—does not even require one to become a Christian, but only to be better Buddhist, Moslem, or Jewish followers of Jesus (221).
34. 34. See Timo Laato, Paul and Judaism: An Anthropological Approach (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995).
35. Peter Stuhlmacher, Revisiting Paul’s Doctrine of Justification: A Challenge to the New Perspective (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 43.
36. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 198.
37. Ibid., 199.
38. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 510.
39. Alister E. McGrath, Iusttia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), 11-14.
40. See for instance Joseph Fitzmeyer, “The Letter to the Romans,” and “The Letter to the Galatians,” in The Jerome Biblical Commentary (ed. Raymond S. Brown, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland E. Murphy; Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), esp. 241–44 and 303–15, respectively.
41. See BDAG, 246–50.
42. N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 96.
43. Ibid., 97-98.
44. Ibid., 98.
45. Ibid., 99.
46. Ibid., 109. Related to this debate over the righteousness of God is the question as to whether “faith in Christ” should also be given the subjective genitive construction (as “the faith of Christ”). This does not seem to make sense of the ordinary way Paul describes the relation of faith and justification, however. For example, Paul speaks of “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Ro 3:22), the last clause repeating the same idea as the middle (dia pisteös Iësou Christou), and in verse 25 adds that Christ’s propitiatory death is “to be received by faith.” This debate is beyond our scope
47. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 129.
48. For a good critique of Wright’s argument on this point, see Mark A. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Justification (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 176n13.
49. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 129.
50. I develop this cosmic-eschatological aspect in my Covenant and Salvation, 289-302.
51. Hermann Lichtenberger, “The Understanding of the Torah in the Judaism of Paul’s Day,” in Paul and the Mosaic Law: The ThirdDurham-Tübingen Research Symposium on Earliest Christianity and Judaism (ed. James D. G. Dunn; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 16. He refers to rabbinical sources that God will keep petitioners from sin “so that you may find joy at the end of the age …, this being counted to you for righteousness if you do what is true and good before God for the salvation of yourself and of Israel.”
52. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness, 175.
53. Ibid.
54. In an intriguing remark, Herman Bavinck judges, “The rationalistic school is rooted basically in Piscator’s teaching, according to which the righteousness we need is accomplished not by the active but solely by the passive obedience of Christ!” (ReformedDogmatics [ed. John Bold; trans. John Vriend; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006], 3:531).
55. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness, 176.
56. Robert Gundry, “The Nonimputation of Christ’s Righ teousness” in Justification: What’s at Stake in the Current Debates (ed. Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier; Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 18.
57. Ibid., 22.
58. Ibid. Gundry notes the following survey of the Jewish literature: J. A. Ziesler, The Meaning of Righteousness in Paul: A Linguistic and Theological Inquiry (SNTSM 20; Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972), 43, 103–4, 109, 123, 125–26, 175, 182–83.
59. Gundry, “Nonimputation,” 25.
60. According to Danker (BDAG, 363–67), there are no fewer than eighteen possible renderings.
61. Ibid., especially 366.
62. Martin Luther’s, Commentary on Galatians, in Luther’s Works (ed. Jaroslav Pelikan; St. Louis: Concordia, 1963),26:233.
63. Gundry, “Nonimputation,” 28.
64. Ibid., 32.
65. Ibid., 34.
66. Ibid., 36.
67. Ibid., 39.
68. The Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. 13, in Book of Confessions (Louisville: PCUSA General Assembly, 1991).
69. D. A. Carson, “The Vindication of Imputation,” in Justification: What’s at Stake, 49.
70. Ibid., 56.
71. Ibid., 61.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., 64.
74. Ibid., 69.
75. Ibid., 72.
76. Ibid.
77. Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of the Apostle Paul (New York: Seabury, 1968), 225.
78. Calvin, Institutes 2.7.12.
79. Heidelberg Catechism, q. 1, in Psalter Hymnal (Grand Rapids: CRC Publications, 1987), 861.
80. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 101-6.
81. “An Evening Conversation on Jesus and Paul with James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright,” (NTWrightpage.com/Dunn_Wright_Conversation.pdf, 2007), p. 20.
82. Wright, What St. Paul Really Said, 159.
83. Even where Paul speaks of “obeying” the gospel, what he has in mind is believing: “But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?’ So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Ro 10:16–17).
84. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 160.
85. Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness, 175, quoted in Gundry, “Nonimputation,” 44.
86. Schweitzer, Mysticism of the Apostle Paul, 225.
87. Gundry, “Nonimputation,” 44 -45.
88. Appealing to the research of Phyllis Bird, I pointed out in Lord and Servant (ch. 4) that Genesis 1-2 exploits Egyptian mythology for polemical purposes. While the Pharaoh was thought to be the son of the gods, in Genesis this royal sonship extends beyond the king, and not only to all sons but to all human beings: “male and female” created in God’s image, the language of sonship.
89. M. G. Kline, Images of the Spirit (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 1999), 35
90. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians (trans. William Pringle; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 218.
91. William Ames, The Marrow of Theology (1623; trans. John Dykstra Eusden; Grand Rapids: Baker, repr. 1997), 165.
92. Oswald Bayer, Living by Grace: Justification and Sanctification (trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 43.
93. The second Anglican—Roman Catholic International Commission, appealing to 1Co 6:11, stated that “justification and sanctification are two aspects of the same divine act: God’s grace effects what he declares: his creative word imparts what it imputes. By pronouncing us righteous, God also makes us righteous. He imparts a righteousness which is his and becomes ours” (Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, 1982—1998 [ed. Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, and William G. Rusch; Geneva: WCC Publications; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000], par. 15). In my estimation at least, ARCIC II, though still insufficiently attentive to the purely forensic character of justification, is more consistent with the Reformation perspective than is the Joint Declaration on Justification between the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican.