8
JUSTIFICATION AND ALLEGIANCE ALONE
The previous two chapters examined the Christian vision for final salvation. Final salvation is not about the individual soul going to heaven after death; it is about resurrection into new creation. Our whole person—body, soul, and spirit—will be raised to new life by God, and we will do what humans were designed all along to do: we will act as “idols of God” who are fully imbued with the divine presence. That is, we will be perfect representations of God, as finally we are fully conformed to Jesus’s image—the original, authentic image of God. The kingdom of God that was inaugurated with Jesus’s first coming, especially with his enthronement at the right hand of God, will be brought to a fullness as that reign is actualized through us. The lost glory having been more than restored, Christians will rule over creation alongside Jesus the king as citizens of the new Jerusalem, the city that God will bring down to the earth. Allegiance to Jesus the king ultimately means that we reign with the king.
Yet this depiction of our final salvation only begins to answer our questions about salvation. Others remain, especially about how an individual comes to experience the benefits of this final salvation. That is, granted that the triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—has acted in history to effect salvation, how is that salvation applied in individual cases? It is one thing to say “Jesus died on the cross to save us” and quite another thing to explain how the death of a single man nearly two thousand years ago can actually effect salvation for a person today. In seeking to explain, the Bible uses a number of metaphors to speak about our salvation—redemption, adoption, washing, clothing, regeneration, and more.
One particularly important, complex, and controversial metaphor is God’s “justifying” activity and how it might relate to our “righteousness.” These terms are both part of the dikaio- word family in Greek. As such, they are predominately forensic in nature, referring to legal uprightness or innocence. But their purview is not restricted to the individual, for justification’s scope is ultimately as wide as creation (see Rom. 5:11–21; 8:19–21).
Paul especially favors this language, but his use is puzzling because he can speak of justification as a past, present, and future occurrence for the people of God (cf. Rom. 2:13; 3:24; 5:1; 1 Cor. 6:11; Gal. 2:16). How can a seemingly one-time event, this declaration of innocence, truly be past, present, and future for Christians? Moreover, upon my declaration of “faith,” aren’t my sins transferred or otherwise reckoned (“imputed”) to Jesus and carried away on the cross, while his righteousness is given to me—glorious exchange!—so that God sees only Jesus’s righteousness rather than my own sin when he looks upon me? It would seem that a personal, irreversible transaction has already occurred. If this model is correct, then Jesus has taken my sin upon himself, and I have been clothed in his righteousness. How, then, is there any room for continued allegiance in justification? Justification is clearly a complex matter.
Indeed, a principle cause of the Protestant Reformation was disagreement over how a person can come to be described as “right” or “just” before God. Protestants tend to favor a model of “imputed” righteousness, as above, and Catholics “imparted” or “infused.” What’s the difference? Why might it matter? And are there other ways of thinking about God’s justifying activity that might prove fruitful? This chapter will seek to further the “salvation by allegiance alone” thesis by focusing on what Scripture teaches about righteousness and justification. As with the other topics broached in this book, the goal is not to exhaust justification (as if that were even possible!) but to consider new horizons in light of the main contours of the biblical teaching.
The Primacy of Union
So much has been written about justification by biblical scholars and theologians that there can be a danger of losing the forest amid the trees. In seeking to clarify how justification fits with the allegiance-alone proposal, my primary intention is to locate it properly within a larger scheme of personal salvation. This will also help clarify how to best conceptualize justification, assisting us as we assess imputation, impartation, and other possible models. As a starting place, I take it as axiomatic that we cannot treat justification as an abstract, isolated transaction carried out between God and the individual by virtue of the Christ’s sacrifice, for an individual’s justification is entirely bound up with the union of the church to Jesus the king.1
In rendering this judgment I am by no means alone. Although subsequently in the Institutes John Calvin is perhaps not as clear on the precise relationship between justification and union as one might wish, he nevertheless does clearly affirm the primacy of union in salvation.2 Meanwhile, the great twentieth-century biblical scholar, medical doctor, and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer was so convinced of the centrality of union that he famously called the doctrine of righteousness by faith a “subsidiary crater” within the main crater or larger category of redemption through “being-in-Christ” (although I wouldn’t follow Schweitzer’s delineation of union in Paul in predominately mystical terms).3 A tremendous number of contemporary biblical scholars and theologians are eagerly (and correctly!) pointing at the primacy of union or participation for soteriology.4
But if union with Jesus the king is key to understanding personal salvation, then it is worth asking what this union entails. The New Testament speaks of this union via a diverse array of metaphors and terms. These include language of location (“there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in the Christ Jesus” [Rom. 8:1]), mutual indwelling (“you are in me, and I in you” [John 14:20]), and oneness of spirit/Spirit (“he who is joined to the Lord becomes one pneuma with him” [1 Cor. 6:17]), as well as diverse images drawn from agriculture, construction, the temple, marriage, and clothing. Moreover, I would follow Constantine Campbell in asserting that union in Paul (and arguably in the remainder of the New Testament too) should be qualified as involving nuances of participation, identification, and incorporation.5 Not only is union a robust theological category firmly evidenced in the New Testament; it is able to organize and explain how activities, metaphors, and theological categories that might otherwise seem independent (e.g., justification, resurrection, baptism, ecclesiology, eschatology) in fact interrelate. If we are saved, it is because we have been united with Jesus and incorporated into his innocence by means of the atoning function of his sacrificial death and the gift of the Holy Spirit; we are now part of him, so we participate in his death and resurrection unto victorious new life. In the final analysis, then, an individual can be said to be righteous or justified—past, present, and future—when and only when he or she is “in the Messiah” or united to Jesus the king.
In this chapter, the heart of what I want to say about how union relates to an individual person’s justification is this: properly speaking, at the present time Jesus the king is the only person who has already been directly judged by God (the Father), found to be in the right (justified), and vindicated. His resurrection from the dead is proof of his innocence—that he truly has been justified. Resurrection constitutes Jesus’s deliverance and total vindication. Currently no other person has been directly justified and declared righteous apart from him. All other cases are reserved for the final judgment. And here apart from him does not mean in the absence of Jesus as merely an abstract atoning sacrifice that covers over sin; it means apart from him as the church’s kingly representative, the one to whom we are united (as a head is united to the members of its body) by the Holy Spirit. Yet, in order to arrive at this conclusion, we must lay a foundation by exploring some key concepts within soteriology: ordo salutis and election.
Order of Salvation
In addition to speaking about the past historical process by which salvation has been and will be achieved (historia salutis), theologians have sought to describe the “order of salvation” (ordo salutis), the logical progression or activities by which God makes salvation applicable to an individual. That is, an ordo salutis seeks to describe the sequence by which God brings an individual to final salvation.
So what elements are found in an ordo salutis? And how does “justification” fit into it? To give a popular outline rooted in the Reformed tradition, one might speak of personal salvation as a process that begins with God’s unfathomable eternal decree to save certain humans and continues with those humans sinning but then progressing onward to effectual calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, union with Jesus, and finally glorification.6 So even if justification has often been treated as the centerpiece of salvation, the moment of declaration of innocence before God, it has nevertheless traditionally been regarded as just one of many crucial steps on the road to personal salvation. But even so, there are difficulties with this approach.
Difficulties with Order of Salvation
Although undeniably systematizing the true order of salvation is a worthy goal, biblical scholars, myself included, generally remain wary of such systems. For even when such systems employ biblical terms as conceptual categories or organizational rubrics, they tend to foist alien concerns onto the biblical text rather than allowing the biblical narrative to supply the framework, and this leads to skewed emphases.7 For instance, a common category in the order is “election.” This is a biblical term (eklektos and cognates), and it is indeed sometimes used in the Greek Old Testament and the New Testament to emphasize God’s sovereignty in choosing specific individuals and groups for various purposes. But as it is mobilized by systematicians, the tendency is to treat it as a special “salvation” category pertaining to God’s eternal (or slightly later) decree to save or damn certain individuals, when in fact the word means merely “choosing” and frequently doesn’t have eternal salvation or condemnation in view at all, especially not with regard to the individual. My intention is not to suggest that systematics is unnecessary or unhelpful in clarifying Scripture through philosophical inquiry; my point is rather that the biblical story has not always been correctly aimed for systematic inquiry.
To illustrate the problem, consider the definition of election given by noted systematician Louis Berkhof: “that eternal act of God whereby He, in His sovereign good pleasure, and on account of no foreseen merit in them, chooses a certain number of men to be the recipients of special grace and of eternal salvation.”8 This definition is surely constructed in conversation with the biblical data, but it is certainly not a definition that any first-century follower of Jesus could or would have supplied. When election is reified as a distinct theological category in such a manner, it is then made to fit into an overarching scheme of additional reified categories that are likewise slightly artificial (calling, regeneration, justification, sanctification, glorification). In this manner a whole system is created that is considerably distant from any system that a first-century follower of Jesus could have held. This is a problem because the thought structures native to our biblical texts should inform subsequent systematization in a more holistic way.
Moreover, since salvation has been discussed in the church throughout its lengthy history, certain systematic ways of analyzing “order of salvation” and accompanying schools of thought have come to dominate the conversational landscape. These systems are often put forward not only as competitors but as the only possible options—as if one must choose between the Catholic, Reformed (Calvinist), Arminian, Barthian, or existential system wholesale, and one cannot select parts of one and parts of another. This lock-stock-and-barrel approach is flawed, however, for it is doubtful that the scriptural evidence conforms to any of these systems entirely. (And I hope that the reader will likewise resist labeling the results obtained here as Reformed, Arminian, semi-Pelagian, or Catholic, as this present author would reject these descriptions.)
In contradistinction, biblical scholars when systematizing (that is, when doing “biblical theology”) tend to describe how the various terms such as “election” function in ancient texts while resisting the tendency to treat these terms as overarching, reified categories or as discrete stages in an “order of salvation” except inasmuch as they seem to function consistently as such for specific ancient thinkers.9 So it is crucial to allow the narrative flow of Scripture, considered historically, to control the categories and meanings if we are to understand the Bible’s vision of salvation. When we do so, it becomes apparent that we must reckon with Scripture’s emphasis on corporate election if we are to make sense of justification.
God Chooses the Son
Some statements in the Bible affirm that God the Father had saving purposes before time began. God chose Israel, and the Messiah within Israel, for the sake of bringing salvation to the world through him.10 In fact, Scripture is clear that God chose the Son (1 Pet. 1:20; Luke 9:35 echoing Isa. 42:1 and Ps. 2:7) and the church in the Son (Eph. 1:11; 1 Pet. 1:2) for salvation in eternity or ages past. But how this election of the Son and the church relates to the salvation of this or that individual must be teased out. The Bible does suggest that God knows the future and controls its unwinding in intimate detail (Prov. 19:21; Acts 2:23; 17:26; Isa. 46:10). Moreover, God directs saving outcomes by working with, not against, personal free will (Acts 13:46; 28:24; Phil. 2:12–13). So philosophical consistency together with general biblical evidence may lend probability in favor of the individual-election conclusion, as the time-transcending God works with our free will.
Nevertheless, within biblical theology, foreordained individual election may not be a safe starting point, for even if it is allowed (perhaps even encouraged) by the general biblical evidence and is philosophically consistent, at the same time it runs roughshod over the election story the Bible wants to tell: God’s election of the Messiah through Israel’s election in order to save Jew and gentile alike within his elect church. In fact, there is not a single statement in the Bible that unambiguously indicates that God preselects specific individuals before they are born (apart from the Son) for eternal salvation11—and the same can be said for eternal separation.12 Nor does the Bible stress an individual-first sequence of salvation, but a community-first sequence. The Bible is not really interested in telling a story about God’s predestining election of individuals, even if such a view is compatible with the biblical witness.13 So if the Bible is reticent to articulate an election-based individual theology of salvation, then might it not be wise for us to follow suit?
In short, it is crucial that we recognize the primacy of God’s choice of the Son as Messiah, and the church in the Son, as central to biblical theology. We must also recognize that God graciously takes the initiative in stimulating personal salvation for individuals (John 6:44; 15:16), so even the ability to render allegiance to Jesus the king is a gift (Eph. 2:8; Acts 18:27). But God’s prior choosing of specific individuals for eternal life or reprobation remains at best on the outer fringes of the story our biblical authors want to tell about salvation.
Justification as Union, Not Order
All of this is pertinent to a discussion of justification (and related dikaio- terms) for three reasons. First, as with “election,” we need to be wary lest we reify “justification” and “righteousness” in ways foreign to Paul or early Christianity. Much as with election, it is prima facie doubtful that the earliest Christians thought in terms of a theology of justification. That is, they used dikaio- language as a helpful metaphor but did not isolate it as a distinct step of salvation or an object of separate inquiry. In fact, as we will see momentarily, since the dikaio- word group involves past, present, and future dimensions, it encroaches on other “stages” in the traditional order of salvation, because these are best considered not as stages at all. So justification is best regarded not as a discrete additional step in the midst of calling, regeneration, sanctification, and glorification, but as a metaphor explaining union that is informed and bounded by these other terms.
Second, Paul, when he gives his famous “order of salvation,” is not speaking about a sequential progression that an individual must be moved through, but rather about God’s actions, holistically considered, as events that have been accomplished on behalf of the collective people of God:
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Now, those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. (Rom. 8:29–30)
Since Paul is speaking of a group, we cannot apply his words about foreknowledge and predestination to assert that specific individuals have certainty of final salvation without considering how an individual enters and stays within the boundaries of this group.
To show why this is so, consider a comparison to the modern business world. Imagine that the president of a corporation has been awarded a secure contract from a stable government. The president’s entire company will certainly and necessarily receive the benefits through the accomplished work. In fact, current employees have already received the first payment from the contract as a guarantee that the full amount will be delivered in the future. The company’s present and future health is guaranteed by the first installment. But if some individuals choose to leave the company, severing ties with the president, then present and future benefits are revoked. New employees may join the company at any time. Loyal employees may die, but even in death they finish employment as full employees, guaranteed all associated benefits. The president’s prior actions guarantee the future of the company in whole and also the future welfare of all individual employees that remain affiliated, but there is no such guarantee for any who choose to revoke allegiance to the president, leaving his company.
In weighing this analogy, consider Jesus the king as the president who has been chosen by God the Father to receive not just a secure contract but an unwaveringly certain one, because he has already fulfilled its terms. His company is the church, whose benefits are not just absolutely guaranteed but also presently enjoyed, as the first installment (the benefits accrued through the union-securing Spirit) has already been paid out. No member of the body of the Christ can be unwillingly fired or forced out by external pressures, but if a person were to entirely cease giving allegiance to the Lord (and the Lord’s people), then she or he would be denied the benefits secured through Jesus’s contract.
Whether or not such a cessation is possible is a matter of dispute among Christian theologians and is beyond the purview of this study. But the more important point here is that although Romans 8:29–30 gives rock-solid promises of eternal security for the collective people of God, these promises only lend assurance to the individual who remains “in the Messiah”—that is, within the body or group. Since Paul has the collective in view here, his words about foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification apply to the company as a whole, but he does not speak to the security of individual membership in the company. Contrary to the conclusion of many systematic theologians,14 Paul says nothing here directly about the election of specific individuals to eternal life (or condemnation) or about the inevitability of final salvation for any such chosen individuals.
Notice further that Paul does not say, “Those whom he justified he also will glorify,” but rather “those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). That is, just like “justified,” the verb “glorified” is in the aorist indicative, the verbal form in Greek that is most often used to represent past events in a holistic fashion. In other words, glorification is not spoken of as future here, for glorification (just like justification) has a past, present, and future dimension. So, Paul is probably not delineating a progressive order of salvation designed to climax with future glory.
Since Paul understands union as a whole, under ordinary circumstances, to have begun decisively at baptism (that is, not specifically at the moment of immersion in the water but at the event holistically considered), it is best to see the past dimension of our glorification as individuals in the midst of the collective church as also having begun, for Paul, at baptism. At baptism, repentance was embodied by the washing away of sins in the water, allegiance (pistis) was publically confessed, and the Spirit was invoked with the laying on of hands—so baptism was not separate from declaration of allegiance and Spirit-infilling, but rather it was the larger context in the midst of which these activities transpired.15 In regard to baptism, Paul speaks of our union with Jesus the Messiah in death: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death” (Rom. 6:4a). Yet then Paul goes on to speak of glory in association with resurrection life: “Just as the Christ was raised . . . through the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4b). In so doing, Paul connects not only Jesus’s resurrection life with the glory of the Father but also our own since we have come to participate in the resurrection power of the king through baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Those who are in the Messiah have already come to share in his glory (2 Cor. 4:6; 8:23) as a past reality, but that glory is presently being actualized by the Spirit in the midst of the people of God (2 Cor. 3:7–11).
Paul’s words about our past, present, and future glory, then, are conditioned on our ongoing participation with the Messiah. So it is not surprising that present glory is most clearly seen when we suffer in the Christ (2 Thess. 2:14), as suffering shows that we truly are participating in the Christ’s death-unto-glorious-life (Rom. 8:17). Those who are in the Christ are currently in the process of transformation into a greater glory: “And all of us who with unveiled faces are beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory into glory, even as by the Lord, that is, by the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). Finally, those who are in the Messiah will be fully glorified alongside the Messiah in the future—as numerous passages indicate (e.g., Rom. 5:2; 2 Cor. 4:17; Col. 1:27; 3:4). So Paul’s “he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30) speaks not of a sequence culminating in future glory, but of glory as the past, present, and future reality for all those who are in the Christ.
Third, the construal of Romans 8:29–30 as delineating an order of salvation is often connected to a faulty way of reading Romans as a whole, in which Romans 3–4 is felt to articulate the first step in individual salvation, “justification by faith,” and Romans 5–8 is felt to describe “sanctification” while announcing our future “glorification.”16 But this is wrongheaded. As Michael Gorman puts it:
This series is often taken as a reference to the ordo salutis, the order of God’s saving acts toward the individual. But in context the last three verbs are more precisely an elaboration of what God has done to create a family of Christlike (which is to say Godlike) siblings. Paul’s point is not to define an order so much as to stress the effectiveness and totality of God’s saving action.17
In other words, Paul in Romans 8:29–30 is not giving an order by which an individual comes to be saved—predestination, calling, justification, glorification. Rather, he is bringing to a climax his description of how the collective people of God are united with the Messiah’s death and resurrection. If Paul were giving an order, it would be odd for him to fail to mention purportedly crucial steps such as regeneration and sanctification. So this is a further indication that delineating an order is not Paul’s intention at all. Paul’s point is not that God’s predestination of an individual leads to calling, justification, and finally glory, but that union with the Christ in his death and resurrection is constituted by a past, present, and future calling, justification, and glorification for the collective people of God. Our justification and glorification are not mere stages of salvation but its past, present, and future substance if we are “in the Christ.”
Resurrection for Justification
Once we have come to appreciate the corporate nature of election—God has chosen his Son, Jesus the king, and the people of God only “in” the king—and have better located justification as constitutive of salvific union rather than as a discrete stage in an individual’s ordo salutis, then we are in a better position to understand what is otherwise an odd conundrum in Paul’s Letters: we are accustomed, correctly, to regard our justification as effected through Jesus’s atoning sacrifice on the cross (e.g., Rom. 3:25; 5:9), so why in Romans 4:23–25 would Paul speak not of the cross but of resurrection as purposed toward our justification?
But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his [Abraham’s] sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who give pistis to him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. (Rom. 4:23–25)
For many of us, justification is exclusively about how Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross resulted in our innocence. But with his “raised for our justification,” Paul surprisingly also connects Jesus’s resurrection to our justification. Why? We are ready to answer this question, at least in brief—and the answer helps pave the way for an analysis of how justification relates to the puzzling and vitally important phrase “the righteousness of God.”
When Paul speaks of justification to his churches, he speaks of it as the past and present possession of his churches because through union those who confess Jesus as king truly share in Jesus’s death and his resurrection unto new life. Justification is not only about what happened on the cross; it also depends on Jesus’s resurrection. Through pistis we are united to Jesus in such a way that his resurrection (which liberated him from death and served as proof of the genuineness of his own justification) forms part of the basis of the church’s past, present, and future justification. Because the head has been “raised for our justification,” the body and its members are justified too. That is, the church is delivered through Jesus’s resurrection so that union with his resurrection guarantees our own. Paul explains in more detail how both the cross and resurrection are bound up with God’s justifying activity in his use of the compact phrase “the righteousness of God.”
Reconsidering the Righteousness of God
At the epicenter of the debate about how justification works is the meaning of Paul’s phrase “the righteousness of God.”18 Disagreement about the meaning of this phrase is at the heart of the Catholic-Protestant divide—and there is still no firm consensus today regarding its meaning. But that should not discourage us from attempting to offer ever-more satisfying definitions. Nor, since disagreement prevails, should we come to the conclusion that we have no idea whatsoever about Paul’s meaning, for since Paul uses the phrase (or references it) ten times, these occurrences give parameters that bound possible meanings. Moreover a better understanding of “the righteousness of God” might help us move beyond Reformation-era disputes toward a better, truer synthesis. My aim here is to present the biblical data and to suggest an overarching framework for how the “righteousness of God” connects to justification.19 This, of course, does not by any means exhaust all that systematic theologians can or should say about such matters, but I hope that this is a helpful sketch of how Scripture should shape further inquiries.
The Scriptural Evidence
The principle biblical evidence pertaining to “the righteousness of God” for Paul can be consolidated as follows.20
We first meet the phrase “the righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17. In a chain of “for” clauses, Paul explains why he is eager to preach the gospel in Rome:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who gives allegiance, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed by allegiance for allegiance, as it is written, “The righteous one shall live by allegiance.” For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Rom. 1:15–18)
We learn, then, that the reason Paul believes that the gospel is the power of God for salvation is that it reveals the righteousness of God in association with a new movement in salvation history (cf. Rom. 3:21). We also discover that the revelation of the wrath of God from heaven against unrighteousness is so closely associated with the revelation of the righteousness of God that the same judging activity of God appears to be in view. This conclusion is reinforced in Romans 3:5: “But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Surely God is not unrighteous when he inflicts wrath on us?” So Romans 1:17 and 3:5 show that the righteousness of God is freshly revealed in the gospel, clarify how the gospel is truly the power of God for salvation, and indicate that it is closely bound up with God’s wrath against unrighteousness. The righteousness of God is also revealed by allegiance for allegiance—that is, probably, by the Messiah’s allegiance to God and for the purpose of fostering our allegiance to the Messiah.21
Meanwhile, in Romans 10:3–4 and Philippians 3:9 the meaning of the righteousness of God is constrained in a different way. In Romans 10:3–4 we discover that Paul’s compatriots who are outside the Christ have stumbled, not because they did not have zeal, but because they did not have appropriate knowledge concerning the righteousness of God: “For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to confirm their own righteousness, they did not submit to the righteousness of God. For the Messiah is the end/goal of the law for righteousness to everyone who gives allegiance.”22 Thus, the righteousness of God is something that Paul believes his compatriots had been ignorant of, had sought to confirm on their own, and had failed to submit to, and he believes it has reached its end/goal in the Christ for everyone who gives allegiance. Meanwhile, Paul gives a closely related statement in Philippians 3:9. Paul in his pre-Jesus days had felt that he had a profit on his ledger, which he further describes as “a righteousness of my own.” Yet he concludes that it was in fact rubbish, for he did not have the only thing that can count as profit, the allegiance-based righteousness of God. Furthermore, this righteousness of God is very closely associated with participation in the Christ—in his suffering unto death and his resurrection life (Phil. 3:10–11). So what Paul says about Israel apart from the Messiah in Romans 10:3–4, we find reinforced on the level of the individual in Philippians 3:9–11.
Additionally, we learn something absolutely vital about the righteousness of God from 2 Corinthians 5:21—we can “become” it in the Messiah: “The one who did not know sin, he was made sin for our sake, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Several observations should be made. First, we become the righteousness of God only “in the Christ.” Second, the Messiah-king was made sin “for our sake” or, better, “on our behalf” (hyper hēmōn)—that is, for the purpose of our becoming the righteousness of God, or to achieve this result. So there is at least a one-way exchange (the Christ was made “sin,” and since it was not his it must be ours). But if the righteousness of God is something that is the Messiah’s possession or describes his status in an analogous way to how sin is our possession or describes us, then a two-way exchange is quite possibly implied (our becoming the Messiah’s “the righteousness of God”).23
Romans 3:21–26 contains the highest density of “righteousness of God” language. It has been saved until last because it is the most central. Two additional points about the righteousness of God are fairly straightforward here. Paul declares that “the righteousness of God has now been manifested apart from the law” (3:21), meaning that prior to the Christ event it was not present, but it is now present apart from performing the commandments enshrined in the Mosaic law. For as Paul has thoroughly demonstrated, “no one will be ‘justified’ [or declared righteous] through works of law” (Rom. 3:20; cf. 3:28). Nevertheless, the righteousness of God is “attested by the Law and the Prophets” (Rom. 3:21), meaning the Old Testament bears witness to it. The Old Testament attests God’s judging activity (saving and condemning) and its results. So this freshly unveiled righteousness of God cannot be attained through performing the commandments, yet it is somehow witnessed to by the Law and the Prophets.
As Paul continues, he describes in Romans 3:22 the righteousness of God as “through the pistis of Jesus the Christ” and “for all who give pistis.” Whether the first clause, “through the pistis of Jesus the Christ,” intends “through the faithfulness of Jesus the Christ to God” or “through our faith in Jesus the Christ” remains a matter of scholarly debate.24 Nevertheless the second clause, “for all who give pistis,” suggests with its “for” language that the righteousness of God is a status or gift that is attainable. All have sinned and lack the glory of God, but this is counterbalanced by God’s free gift, as all in the Messiah Jesus are “justified.” The Messiah was put forward by God as a hilastērion (“mercy seat”), the place where atonement was made, which involved the satisfaction of God’s wrath and the removal of sins. Paul says that this was a demonstration of God’s righteousness, as God had “passed over” or left unpunished previous sins. It was a further demonstration of the righteousness of God in the present moment, so that “he might be just and the justifier of the person by the pistis of Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). In sum, the righteousness of God is “for” those who give allegiance and is bound up with God’s making Jesus the place of atonement—where God’s wrath was satisfied and sins were wiped away. The righteousness of God is also established, probably, through Jesus’s allegiance to God as the Messiah.
Defining the Righteousness of God
If we synthesize our observations about the “righteousness of God,” the following seven statements emerge as key.25 The righteousness of God is
1. something that the people of God (“we”) become in the Messiah;
2. nearly always associated with pistis—whether with the Messiah’s allegiance to God or our allegiance to Jesus as the Messiah, or both;
3. tightly linked with atonement and exchange;
4. associated with God’s judgment—both his wrathful judgment of sin and his saving judgment unto new resurrection life;
5. frequently connected with union or participation with the Messiah;
6. attested in the Old Testament but cannot be obtained through performing the commandments of Moses either on the individual or corporate level;
7. revealed in the gospel but was not available prior to the Christ event.
In seeking to bring these emphases together into a coherent whole, we must ask ourselves, What story might Paul have had in mind that could produce these multifaceted associations with regard to the righteousness of God? Perhaps the following best brings together Paul’s description.
Israel was called to be the people through whom God’s righteousness would be made manifest and would be mediated to the nations (e.g., Isa. 51:7; 62:2). As such, the law of Moses was a righteous standard that held the promise of life, but it was unable to deliver on that promise because of the reign of sin and its death-dealing consequences (Rom. 4:25; Gal. 3:21). Instead of life, the law brought a heightened awareness of sin in the form of the covenant curses (Rom. 5:20; Gal. 3:10). God chose the Messiah, the king, as a righteous representative figure within Israel to bear the sins of Israel (and through Israel, the world): “From the distress of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge the righteous one, my servant, will make many righteous, and he will bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11). In bearing the sins and establishing the righteousness of the many, Jesus as the king was fulfilling a fundamental purpose of Israel: to create one worldwide family in the Messiah characterized by the “righteousness of God.”
Jesus the Christ-king is the righteous one, the one who lives through allegiance—just as Scripture attests, “the righteous one will live by allegiance” (Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11). But this allegiance to God the Father meant coming “in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, in order to condemn sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3). It meant “becoming a curse of the law for us” (Gal. 3:13). It meant allowing himself to be put forward as the hilastērion, the mercy seat (Rom. 3:25). There the wrath of God, an expression of his righteous judgment against all the ungodliness and wickedness of the world, was focused on Jesus as the designated Messiah, the representative king-in-waiting, the one chosen and anointed as king. In his body sin was condemned, but Jesus, because of his pistis (allegiance) to God even unto death, was not condemned. Jesus, because he was the sinless, righteous one, was raised up by God unto resurrection life and installed at God’s own right hand. As the enthroned Messiah his kingly rule has begun. He has now poured out the Holy Spirit so that all who give allegiance to him might be united to him—to his death, his resurrection, and his enthroned glory.
For Paul, then, the righteousness of God is God’s resurrection-effecting verdict that Jesus the wrath-bearing, sin-atoning, allegiant king is alone righteous—a verdict that all who are united to Jesus the representative king share. This death-unto-resurrection-life verdict is made effective for us as an unmerited gift when we are united by allegiance alone to the death and resurrection of Jesus the king via the Holy Spirit.26 The result is that “in the Messiah-king” we “become the righteousness of God”; that is, we become the family that has died with the Christ and that has been reconstituted “in him” by God’s declarative (innocence-creating) yet transformative (resurrection-effecting) verdict. Cleared of guilt, final salvation means above all else joining the family that shares the Messiah’s resurrection life. Scripture is clear that this righteousness is properly the king’s righteousness, not our own righteousness, for we receive this resurrection-effecting verdict only “in the Christ”—that is, initially, presently, and finally only through pistis-securing union with Jesus the king, when God declares us righteous “in him.”
Imputed Righteousness
So in the past, present, and future our right standing before God is an alien righteousness, for it properly belongs only to Jesus the Christ, and it is ours also only through union with him. Luther, Calvin, and their spiritual descendants in the Protestant Reformation rediscovered and rightly celebrated this. Luther was fond of saying that the Christian is simultaneously just and a sinner. By this Luther did not mean that the Christian remains helplessly trapped, forever wallowing in sin’s filth. He meant that God reckons the one who has faith, however filthy he or she might be at that moment, to be righteous in the presence of God. For Luther, the justified Christian has victory over sin, will progress in holiness, and will produce the fruit of good works. Luther meant that as far as our justification proper is concerned, we are declared to be in the right in the presence of God by virtue of our “faith alone” in God’s promises to us in Jesus, because Jesus’s righteousness is imputed to us. For Luther and likeminded Reformers, Jesus’s alien righteousness is like a clean garment that is once and for all laid over an individual’s filthy rags at the moment of “faith,” so that when God judges us he looks only upon Jesus’s righteousness; the result is that we are freed from sin’s bondage and liberated to progress in holiness.27
But here we run into an obstacle. Not only is pistis capable of a richer definition, but the transactional idea of the Christ’s righteousness being imputed to us so that it covers our unclean sins is nowhere to be found in Scripture. There are passages that urge the Christian to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14) or that affirm that “as many of you as were baptized into the Messiah have put on the Messiah” (Gal. 3:27) and so forth. Meanwhile, there are texts that speak of God counting or reckoning righteousness on the basis of pistis (e.g., Rom. 4:5, 9–11). One passage speaks of the Messiah as having become “wisdom for us from God, and also our righteousness, holiness, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30), but the context does not pertain to legal declaration. Finally, several of the passages reviewed above speak of our genuine sharing in the righteousness of God as that righteousness has been manifested or made available through and in the Christ (e.g., 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:8–9). But these various images are not combined.
So, contrary to some expressions within the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, Scripture does not affirm in an unqualified fashion that the Messiah’s righteousness becomes ours by virtue of imputation in the abstract “transactional exchange” or the instantaneous “covering over” sense of this word apart from a prior or simultaneous union. Imputation in this sense is not a preferable biblical concept, category, or term.28 The language of imputation can be preserved if it retains a more modest valence as a subset of union with the Christ-king. Paul favors the language not of covering for imputation, but of counting or reckoning or considering (logizomai) for those who are found to be “in the Messiah” (e.g., Rom. 4:3–11, 22–24; 2 Cor. 5:19; Gal. 3:6). Imputation can be maintained from a biblical standpoint only if it is predicated on a prior or simultaneous union and if it is regarded as a counting or reckoning.29
When we recognize the limitations in traditional Protestant constructions of imputation, we are in a better position to recognize how the Catholic position on justification offers clues that lead ultimately to a more scripturally faithful understanding of the whole doctrine, even though the Catholic position also needs to be reworked in light of advances in biblical scholarship. The Catholic tradition prefers organic metaphors such as impartation or infusion in speaking about how justification transpires. Although penned nearly five hundred years ago, the Council of Trent’s “Decree Concerning Justification” remains the Catholic Church’s most authoritative statement on justification.30
Infused Righteousness
Trent teaches that justification, although secured by the merit of Jesus’s sacrifice, is not a direct human participation in God’s own (or Jesus’s own) righteousness; that is, justification is “not that by which God himself is just” (§7; cf. canon 10). Although won by Jesus’s merits, as a gift it becomes our own righteousness through the sacrament of baptism, and it is subsequently developed as God’s grace comes alongside us. Moreover, although baptism is the instrumental means by which it comes about, justification has one and only one formal cause: a renewal of the spirit of our mind through the Holy Spirit.31 The virtues of faith, hope, and charity are “infused” in the act of baptism/justification (§7). This infusion waters the seed of true righteousness that has been imparted by the Holy Spirit (received by our cooperation), and this righteousness then grows with God’s assistance to the degree that we allow, so that our righteousness/justification might increase (§10). Good works performed with God’s grace increase a person’s justification, and this increase in justification is necessary to receive the final “crown of justice” at the end of life (§16). Anyone who thinks otherwise is declared cursed and cut off from Christ (canon 24).
So, according to Trent, although we as Christians can have firm hope, we cannot be absolutely confident that our righteousness will increase sufficiently to avoid condemnation, for it is our own (not the Christ’s) and depends on our cooperating perseverance (§§11–13). In fact, those who commit a mortal sin (serious and intentional) after baptism lose their justification and must undertake the sacrament of confession and penance in order for justification to be restored (§§14–15).
In sum, for Catholics, as an undeserved gift won by Jesus’s merits, God imparts a true seed of righteousness into the heart of the individual at baptism. That righteousness is not a direct participation in the Messiah’s righteousness; it is the individual’s own righteousness, albeit provided by Jesus’s benefits and given by grace. This seed of righteousness can blossom into sufficient righteousness for final salvation through the sacraments and perseverance in good works.
Can Trent’s formulation help us better understand justification? Yes. But there are also some difficulties that must be discussed first. The Reformers correctly judged, contrary to Trent but according to Scripture, that the formal cause of justification (the “not guilty” verdict rendered over the individual in the past, present, and future) is not a graciously imparted righteousness that becomes our own. Rather the formal cause is God’s declaration of Jesus as righteous and our union with him as such, so that we share in his resurrection-effecting verdict.
To emphasize an infused righteousness that becomes our own and is gradually nurtured (achieved in collaboration with God’s grace as one participates in the sacraments), as does Trent, is to fail to recognize that the individual who gives pistis participates immediately, truly, and fully in the forensic, once-for-all-time declaration of complete “righteousness” that has already been rendered over Jesus the king. The formal cause of our justification is God’s resurrection-effecting declaration of the representative king’s righteousness, not a righteousness that has become our own (however graciously given) except inasmuch as we are joined to his righteousness so that we come to share in it (all of which Paul terms the “righteousness of God”). The one who gives allegiance has been reconstituted in the king and is a new creation, a new person, and he or she joins with others who collectively have become “the righteousness of God,” but only in the Messiah (2 Cor. 5:17, 21; Gal. 6:16; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10). As such, the formal cause of justification cannot be enhanced or increased by our cooperation as we labor in the sacraments, trusting that God will meet us by increasing our justification through our actions.
Meanwhile, although the official Catholic dogma on justification advanced at Trent needs to be reworked in light of advances in scriptural understanding—especially the formal cause—it does get several important things right. According to the Catholic view, a person’s initial justification does indeed stand at the fountainhead of a lifelong process of becoming increasingly righteous. Generally Protestants agree, tending to call the latter “sanctification.” But Trent is helpfully clear about this matter, for it straightforwardly affirms that Scripture does not make a clean conceptual division between initial righteousness (traditionally “justification” proper for Protestants) and subsequently enjoyed righteousness (traditionally part of “sanctification” for Protestants). All too often Protestants have treated these as separate, self-contained categories, with the righteousness of “justification” alone deemed relevant for an individual’s final salvation, and the righteousness of “sanctification” regarded as merely the inevitable outworking of a prior justification.32
Protestants urgently need to reassess their grammar of salvation. For such distinctions between initial righteousness (so-called justification) and subsequent righteousness (so-called sanctification) simply cannot be consistently maintained by a careful exegesis of the specific terms, thought structures, and categories actually used by even a single one of our biblical authors. Such terminology promotes an individualistic one-time transaction model of justification and in so doing does not deal seriously with justification’s past, present, future, communal, and creational dimensions. In the final analysis Scripture does not make consistent qualitative distinctions between the declared righteousness of the Messiah attained at our initial moment of justification (when we are united with him) and our righteousness in the Messiah as subsequently nurtured and maintained by the Holy Spirit, as if one or the other were more primal or important for our final salvation.33
Any saving righteousness that we enjoy is predicated on God’s justifying actions. And this righteousness is ours (past, present, and future) by allegiance alone only “in the Christ” as that allegiance is upheld—and all of this without speaking of sanctification as part of an ordo salutis. And since allegiance (pistis) is not disembodied, this involves both a recognition of our bankruptcy apart from Jesus the righteous king and our enacted loyalty to him. Hence good works are necessary. These good works involve an enfleshment of pistis, an enacted loyalty, an “obedience of faith” (Rom. 1:5) and are necessary, as the final judgment will be (at least in part) on the basis of works.34 So Trent, in stressing the necessity of perseverance in good works, offers helpful directives that Protestants should consider, even if some of its specific formulations are problematic.
A recent Catholic-Protestant effort to come to agreement about justification makes strides in the right direction. The document resulting from this effort, titled “Joint Declaration on Justification” (1999), was issued by the Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation. Thus, it is not yet affirmed officially by the highest levels of Catholic authority, nor has it been affirmed by all Lutheran fellowships. Nevertheless, in the document it is jointly affirmed that justification “means that Christ himself is our righteousness, in which we share through the Holy Spirit in accord with the will of the Father” (§15). Furthermore, it is also jointly agreed that “persons are by faith united with Christ, who in his person is our righteousness” (§22). Although some have given only a lukewarm reception to this document, I think it makes huge steps toward truth and unity.35 This new agreement that the Christ himself is our righteousness and that salvation is through pistis-union with the Christ is both a major breakthrough in ecumenical relations and a very promising realignment (or clarification) for Catholics of Trent’s teachings.
For maximal clarity, subsequent ecumenical work should add that Jesus as our atoning, representative Messiah-king is our declared, realized, and effective righteousness, and that we genuinely share in the king’s liberating righteousness by pistis alone as we are declared righteous in him by God upon our own confession of allegiance and come to share in the Holy Spirit (ordinarily at baptism). The Messiah’s righteousness (that is, the resurrection-effecting verdict that he possesses) is then maintained and infused by our collaboration with the Holy Spirit, so that in him we become the righteousness of God (that is, we share in the Christ’s resurrection-effecting verdict). This pistis is not primarily “faith” or “trust” or “belief” in the validity of God’s promise that we are justified (righteous) in Jesus—and this misplaced emphasis characteristic of the Reformation era still holds sway today. Rather, this pistis is especially submissive and embodied allegiance to Jesus as the ruling Messiah, an allegiance that forges and maintains union with Jesus the righteous king.
One can only hope the preliminary statements in the “Joint Declaration” will be subsequently reaffirmed and strengthened within Catholicism by more authoritative conciliar documents and within Protestantism by confessions and official denominational position papers (and the like). The righteousness of God, God’s resurrection-effecting verdict rendered over Jesus the anointed king, alone suffices for us as we remain in union with Jesus the enthroned king through rendered pistis—intellectual agreement with the gospel, declared allegiance, and embodied loyalty.
Incorporated Righteousness
As we have seen, both the traditional Lutheran/Reformed view of imputed righteousness and the Catholic position favoring imparted and infused righteousness preserve valid insights into justification. Both also have shortcomings. Accordingly, rather than imputed or infused righteousness, new terminology should be considered.
Imputed righteousness correctly reminds us that Jesus the Messiah has been declared righteous and totally vindicated, and that our own justification, past, present, and future, is predicated on his righteousness. Yet unless classical notions of imputation are reduced from instantly “covering” to an in-the-Christ “reckoning” or “considering” (per logizomai in Gal. 3:6 and elsewhere)—which does not really clarify how the “reckoning” transpires, then imputation cannot be regarded as a biblical concept or term. That is, apart from a prior (or simultaneous) union with the Messiah, imputed righteousness collapses. The declared righteousness (received status of innocence unto resurrection life) that properly belongs to the Messiah alone is declared ours through union with Jesus as the crucified, vindicated, and enthroned king. Salvation is sharing in Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and kingly glory.
Meanwhile, imparted righteousness also fails to front union sufficiently. The Bible’s description of justification does not suggest that we are given a righteousness (through Jesus’s merit) that then becomes our own when it is imparted as a gift at baptism, nor does it suggest that we work with God’s grace (through the sacraments) to increase our own deposit of righteousness in order to receive final justification.36 This is precisely why the realigning affirmation that “Christ himself is our righteousness” by the Catholic commission responsible for the “Joint Declaration” is such an encouraging step forward in Catholic-Protestant dialogue.
On the other hand, infused righteousness does front union, and so it is a helpful metaphor; but it is inadequate as a standalone description of how we attain a right standing before God.37 Infused righteousness remains helpful inasmuch as we are limbs of the body of Jesus the Christ (e.g., Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:12; Eph. 3:6), much as in John’s metaphor of Jesus as the vine and ourselves as the branches (John 15:1–5). So we might think of declared allegiance and initial receipt of the Holy Spirit as the first moment of grafting into Jesus the king (creating the union), and enacted loyalty as ensuring the continual flow of benefits (that which maintains the union). An organic metaphor, such as infusion, that suggests the flowing over of the Messiah’s righteousness and resurrection life into us upon declaration of allegiance is totally appropriate so long as it is clear that the righteousness communicated properly belongs to Jesus as the Christ and only derivatively to us (that is, it is never imparted so that it becomes our own independently). Nor is this simply a one-time infusion, but rather it is critical that the life-giving sap of righteousness (received status of innocence unto resurrection life) continues to link the individual to King Jesus via the Holy Spirit. In other words, perseverance is required. This lifelong infused righteousness (which is shared but originates and flows from the Christ to us) does pertain to our final justification as, scripturally speaking, it is not different in quality than the righteousness associated with initial justification.
In bringing this chapter to a conclusion, we may ask whether there is a phrase that can capture the valid insights in imputed and infused righteousness, minimize inadequacies, and stay near to the Bible’s own idiom. In answer, rather than imputed or infused righteousness, it is better to speak of in-the-Messiah righteousness or incorporated righteousness.38 In-the-Messiah or incorporated righteousness can be defined as the saving perfect righteousness of Jesus the Christ that is counted entirely ours when we join the Spirit-filled body that is already united to the righteous one, Christ the kingly head. That is, this alien righteousness, this righteous standing that properly belongs to Jesus alone, becomes ours derivatively when we give allegiance to Jesus as the sovereign king, at which moment the life-giving Spirit that already envelops the allegiance-yielding community also enters into us. At the moment of allegiance-generated, Spirit-enabled union, the individual is born again, is declared and truly is fully righteous in God’s sight, and can properly be described as having eternal life because and only because she or he is united to Jesus the king and so shares his totally righteous standing. Paul envisions all of this ordinarily happening as part of the baptismal process.
As nearly all Christians agree, perseverance in allegiance is required.39 If the union were to be severed by an unrepentant cessation of pistis (allegiance to Jesus as Messiah-king), then the continuing presence of the union-securing and fruit-producing Spirit would be decisively ruptured; the born-again person would experience spiritual death. That individual would no longer be justified, righteous, or innocent before God; eternal life would no longer be a present possession. Christian traditions disagree about whether or not such a severance is possible. Reformed and some Lutheran Christians prefer to speak of the impossibility of rupture (“eternal security”).40 Meanwhile, Catholic, Orthodox, and some Protestant traditions believe that it is possible for an individual to enter decisively into saving union but then to depart through an unrepentant turning away.41 This debate should not, however, obscure the larger point about which Christian theologians are nearly unanimous: it is necessary for an individual to persevere in pistis throughout the course of her or his lifetime in order to attain final salvation.
Justification and Allegiance Alone
In sum, the language of justification is controversial and complex. The location of justification as a discrete stage in an individualized ordo salutis is problematic. Ultimately Scripture does not give much attention to justification as a discrete stage within the sequence of an individual’s salvation, preferring to speak in collective terms about God’s election of Jesus the king and derivatively of the election of the people of God only in and through him. Properly speaking, only Jesus the Christ alone has been justified and glorified, but a person’s present justification and glorification is real through union with his death and resurrection. This righteousness is best described neither as imputed nor as infused, but rather as incorporated.
It is necessary for final salvation that we (individually and collectively) be declared innocent by God. Toward that end, we must participate in “the righteousness of God,” the resurrection-effecting verdict rendered by God over Jesus the Messiah, which occurs by pistis alone when the Holy Spirit unites us with him. Paul understands this union to be secured through the baptismal process, at which time repentance is embodied by the washing away of sins in the water, allegiance (pistis) is publically confessed, and the Spirit is invoked. For Paul the righteousness of God is God’s resurrection-effecting verdict that Jesus the wrath-bearing, sin-atoning, allegiant king is alone righteous—a verdict that all who are united to Jesus the representative king share. Salvation means sharing in the righteousness of God, the verdict that Jesus the anointed king received unto resurrection life. Scripture is clear that this righteousness is properly the king’s righteousness, not our own righteousness, for we receive right standing “in the Christ” initially, presently, and finally only through pistis-securing union with Jesus the king when God declares us righteous in him. Accordingly, our ongoing and future justification depends on the maintenance of our righteousness-union with Jesus the saving king. We are saved past, present, and future through allegiance alone as that allegiance forges a union with the Messiah through the Holy Spirit.
Our past and present justification is not a legal fiction, for if we have given allegiance (pistis) to Jesus the king, we genuinely share in the unshakable, irreversible verdict of innocence that the resurrected Jesus enjoys. Jesus will never be judged again in the future. Jesus the king already stands justified, and so does every person who gives allegiance, because they are incorporated into his righteousness, found to be “in him.” In this indirect sense the Christian does not come under judgment but has eternal life, because the one who gives allegiance is united to the head, King Jesus. That person has died, and his or her life is now “hidden with the Christ in God,” so that when the Christ appears, that person as a member of the Christ’s body will also appear with the Christ in glory (Col. 3:3–4).
Although indirectly already justified and glorified, those who remain loyal to the Messiah will still be directly justified and glorified in the future when each one passes through the final judgment. At that time the union-securing allegiance to the Messiah (as established by intellectual affirmation of the truthfulness of the gospel, sworn fealty, and embodied loyalty) must be present in order for the individual to be declared innocent (“justified”). Since genuine allegiance cannot be disembodied, allegiance will be manifested by good works performed in union with Jesus the Christ through the Holy Spirit and judged accordingly.
True allegiance is enacted. But inasmuch as we remain “in him,” participating in his Spirit-filled corporate body, that final judgment has already truly been traversed, because his resurrection life is already at work in our bodies and hence in our embodiment. We have been declared “righteous” (and truly are righteous) as the life-giving, good-works-producing Spirit flows in us, for we are united to the righteous one, Jesus the king.
FOR FURTHER THOUGHT
1. What’s the difference between the history of salvation and the order of salvation? Why are both worthy of attention?
2. What are some problems with classic articulations of an order of salvation?
3. What is the difference between individual and corporate election? Why might the difference be important for how we understand justification?
4. If justification, for Paul, is not best described as a step or a stage in an individualized order of salvation, then how is it best described?
5. For Paul, how does justification relate to glorification?
6. What does the resurrection of the Messiah have to do with our justification? What do we learn through this about the meaning of the interconnection between Jesus the king’s righteousness and the meaning of “the righteousness of God”?
7. If “the righteousness of God” is considered merely God’s fairness in judging, what biblical data would this fail to account for? Likewise, what is excluded if it is merely considered God’s saving activity? Or God’s gift of right standing?
8. Why might it be important to see that God’s justifying activity goes beyond declaration to liberation?
9. What is imputed righteousness? What does it accurately express? What are some of its limitations?
10. What is imparted righteousness? Infused righteousness? What do these terms accurately express? What are some limitations?
11. Within the model of incorporated righteousness, how can a sinner come to be declared righteous in God’s presence?