iustitia aliena

“Christ for us” and “Christ in us”

According to an assertion of the great Roman Catholic historian of philosophy, Etienne Gilson, “For the first time, with the Reformation, there appeared this conception of a grace that saves a man without changing him, of a justice that redeems corrupted nature without restoring it, of a Christ who pardons the sinner for self-inflicted wounds but does not heal them.”  A surprising number of Protestants–including evangelicals–seem to share Gilson’s misunderstanding.

While Rome simply assimilated justification to sanctification, the Reformation position affirmed both as distinct yet inseparable gifts, G.C. Berkouwer replies to those who deny Luther’s interest in God’s gracious renovation of believers: “To anyone who has had a whiff of Luther’s writings this conception is incredible.  Even a scanty imitation is enough to be convinced that justification for Luther meant much more than an external event with no importance for the inner man.”

Like the relation of the doctrine of substitution in relation to other aspects of the atonement, forensic justification not only allows room for other benefits of Christ; it is their source and security.

The reformers saw “Christ for us” and “Christ in us” –the alien righteousness imputed and the sanctifying righteousness imparted–as not only compatible but as necessarily and inextricably related.  Those who are justified through faith are new creatures and begin then and there to love God and their neighbor, yielding the fruit of good works.  Reformed churches agree with the Lutheran confession that if sin has free sway over one’s life, “the Holy Spirit and faith are not present.”  However, it is not simply that justification and sanctification always go together in the application of redemption, as if they were parallel tracts; justification is the only reason that there can be any sanctification of sinful believers.  And both are granted in our union with Christ.  The real question, then, is whether justification is the source of new obedience or its result. In fact, presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, according to Paul, is “our reasonable [logiken] worship” in the light of  ”God’s mercies” that have been explored to that point (Rom. 12:1).  It is the Good News that yields good works.  Salvation is not the prize for our obedience but the source.  In the light of God mercies in Christ, offering themselves as living sacrifices actually makes sense.

I have mentioned before that Scripture integrates drama, doctrine, doxology, and discipleship in ways that we easily overlook.  Christian faith and practice arise first of all out of a dramatic narrative: the unfolding plot of redemption from Genesis to Revelation.  This story gives rise to doctrines: specific conclusions that God himself reveals as to the meaning and implications of this divine drama.  The doctrines provoke us to faith, wonder, and praise.  Our sails filled with the gust of grace, we sail out of the harbor into the wide open spaces of the world, loving and serving our neighbors in thanksgiving and joy.  Without the biblical drama, the doctrine is abstract; without the doctrine, the doxology is much ado about nothing; without the doxology (shaped by the drama and the doctrine), discipleship is just another makeover: a few more fig leaves to conceal our nakedness.

Taken from Michael Horton’s Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World from the chapter ‘The Promise-Driven Life in page 155-156.

More resources (Download and streaming audio)

White Horse Inn broadcast –  The Heart of Christianity listen here.

White Horse Inn broadcast – Rightly Dividing the Word: Law and Gospel here.

R. Scott Clark answers a question regarding the agreements and differences between Reformed and Lutheran Orthodoxy.  In writing about the differences and doctrines that the two hold in common, Clark mentions something important and helpful citing from the Belgic Confession on Sanctification and a couple of books covering Gospel-Driven Sanctification.  Quoting now:

I think this agrees with the Reformed doctrine of progressive sanctification. In the Belgic Confession (Art 24) we confess:

We believe that this true faith, produced in man by the hearing of God’s Word and by the work of the Holy Spirit, regenerates him and makes him a “new man,” causing him to live the “new life” and freeing him from the slavery of sin.

Therefore, far from making people cold toward living in a pious and holy way, this justifying faith, quite to the contrary, so works within them that apart from it they will never do a thing out of love for God but only out of love for themselves and fear of being condemned. So then, it is impossible for this holy faith to be unfruitful in a human being, seeing that we do not speak of an empty faith but of what Scripture calls “faith working through love,” which leads a man to do by himself the works that God has commanded in his Word.

These works, proceeding from the good root of faith, are good and acceptable to God, since they are all sanctified by his grace. Yet they do not count toward our justification– for by faith in Christ we are justified, even before we do good works. Otherwise they could not be good, any more than the fruit of a tree could be good if the tree is not good in the first place.

So then, we do good works, but nor for merit– for what would we merit? Rather, we are indebted to God for the good works we do, and not he to us, since it is he who “works in us both to will and do according to his good pleasure”60– thus keeping in mind what is written: “When you have done all that is commanded you, then you shall say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have done what it was our duty to do.’ “

Yet we do not wish to deny that God rewards good works– but it is by his grace that he crowns his gifts. Moreover, although we do good works we do not base our salvation on them; for we cannot do any work that is not defiled by our flesh and also worthy of punishment. And even if we could point to one, memory of a single sin is enough for God to reject that work.

So we would always be in doubt, tossed back and forth without any certainty, and our poor consciences would be tormented constantly if they did not rest on the merit of the suffering and death of our Savior.

In the brief essay to which I referred above, David doesn’t say which “Protestants” he has in mind but the Reformed churches agree that believers are no longer under the curse of the law. We agree that we are not sanctified by the law, but we confess that the law is the norm for our sanctification. As Walter Marshall explained in The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, and as Mike Horton has recently explained in The Gospel-Driven Life, the gospel is the power of the Christian life. The law never gives us the ability to do what it commands. Only God the Spirit does that, through the word of the gospel. Nevertheless, as the Epitome says, we are not idle. Sanctification is by grace alone, but that grace is operative in us and through us and enables us to cooperate toward Christlikeness in this life.

Full post here: http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/differences-between-lutheran-and-reformed-orthodoxy/#more-6124

A section from Horton’s book God Of  Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology here: http://iustitiaaliena.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/the-gospel-gives-what-the-law-commands/

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HT: Peter Chen

Here’s what is on the back cover:

Michael Horton’s highly anticipated The Christian Faith represents his magnum opus and will be viewed as one of—if not the—most important systematic theologies since Louis Berkhof wrote his in 1932.

A prolific, award-winning author and theologian, Professor Horton views this volume as “doctrine that can be preached, experienced, and lived, as well as understood, clarified, and articulated.” It is written for a growing cast of pilgrims making their way together and will be especially welcomed by professors, pastors, students, and armchair theologians.

Features of this volume include: (1) a brief synopsis of biblical passages that inform a particular doctrine; (2) surveys of past and current theologies with contemporary emphasis on exegetical, philosophical, practical, and theological questions; (3) substantial interaction with various Christian movements within the Protestant, Catholic and Orthodoxy traditions, as well as the hermeneutical issues raised by postmodernity; and (4) charts, sidebars, questions for discussion, and an extensive bibliography, divided into different entry levels and topics.

It is already out for display at Christianbook.com here.

This is a White Horse Inn broadcast that is a worth a listen.  The audio is available through stream and download  here.

Audio transcription of this particular broadcast (w/ permission granted) is found  here.

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Here are some quotes from Concise Reformed Dogmatics, you gotta love these two confessionally Reformed Christian theologians they carry the good news.  I’m finding this book very beneficial, encouraging, and a good learning resource of the Christian Faith.

Here the authors are writing  about Herman Bavinck’s Dogmatics:

In subsequent editions of his work, in which this preface was omitted, it is noted that the first duty of every practitioner of science, and particularly of any theologian, is to be humble and modest.  He may not think himself to be wiser than he ought to think.  (17)

5.2  Special Revelation

When a distinction is made between general and special revelation a description or definition of special revelation is in order.  Bavinck provided the following one:  It “is that conscious and free act of God by which, he, in the way of a historical complex of special means (theophany, prophecy, miracle) that are concentrated in the person of Christ, makes himself known–specifically in the attributes of his justice and grace, in the proclamation of law and gospel–to those human beings who live in the light of this special revelation in order that they may accept the grace of God by faith in Christ or, in case of impenitence, receive a more severe judgement. One might opt for a shorter formulation: it is that revelation of through which, by special means which have their focus and climax on Christ, he has disclosed a way of life for sinners, whom he grants to live in this light.  (52, 53.   The Bold is mine)

What changed in the light of the Reformation was described in Klare wijn (clear wine, 1967) as follows:  Luther and Calvin are suddenly enflamed with passion.  To them the Bible is not in the first instance a source of information from which they obtain truths and precepts, but in Scripture they encounter the living God and his message.  (70)

In referring to the concept of revelation in theology, we saw that it was typical of Calvin to believe that God adapts himself to our capacity to understand (accommodatio).  God can speak to us in a throughly human manner.  It resembles the teaching of small children.  He is like a king whose majesty we must not take lightly, but who wants to have an intimate conversation with us.  When he communicates his Word to us through human mouths, in human language, he thereby takes our needs into consideration.  (72)

The Old Testament is seen as the book of retribution.  The Old Testament would present the religion of holiness and the New Testament faith in God’s love.  But this view is not really tenable.  It is indeed the case that in the Old Testament we encounter God in his exaltation and holiness.  But he is also “merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.”  This is how the announcement of his name begins in Exodus 34:67.  Thus the LORD manifests in Christ but also refers to his wrath (John 3:36).  ”Our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29). “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31).   Already the first few chapters of the book of Genesis are of fundamental significance for self-knowledge.  Man, created in God’s image, fell away from him, but God considered his state and sought him out.  Thus man stands there as creature of God and sinner before God.  God, who is the creator, also seeks to be his redeemer.  God both demands and grants the atonement for sin (Lev. 17:11).  Via the subsequent preaching of atonement through sacrificial ministry and through prophecy, all lines lead to Christ, of whom the New Testament says:  ”Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).  When Paul refers to Christ as the last Adam the unity of the Old and New Testaments is underscored (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45; Rom. 5:12-21).  (69)

As we saw at the beginning of the chapter it is important that we comprehend the nature of the covenant of works.  Adam was given the possibility ex pacto to obtain the eschatological rest of the seventh day by his obedience.  In a prefall world, therefore, Adam would be justified by his works.  Some might object to using the term “justification” in connection with Adam, as there are inherently redemptive connotations associated with the term.  If, however, to be justified is to be declared righteous, contrasted with condemnation as the declaration of a person’s wickedness, then Adam’s justification is based upon the completion of the agreed work of the covenant.

That Adam’s covenant work was to be marked by obedience sets an important element upon the table for consideration in one’s doctrine of justification.  It means that an important aspect of the redemptive work of the last Adam must include obedience in his covenant work–fulfilling the failed work of Adam on behalf of the people of God.  As G.C. Berkouwer notes, “The obedience of the crucified Christ—this is the alpha and omega of our justification.  He covers our obedience with His obedience, our unrighteousness with His righteousness.”  In technical terms, this means that an important element of Christ’s work as it concerns justification is not only his passive obedience, his obedience throughout his life connected with his passio and ultimately his crucifixion, but also his active obedience, his fufillment of the law.  This brings up a second issue, namly the imputation of Christ’s obedience to those who look to him by faith.

That Adam forfeited the right to obtain the eschatological blessing by his obedience, requiring the work of the last Adam, explains why Paul excludes the works of the law as the ground for our justification: “Yet we know that a person is not justified by work of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified (Gal. 2:16).  Now, while in this context Paul addresses the subject of the works of Torah, that is, those who sought to be justified on the basis of their obedience to the law of the Mosaic covenant, yet the principle of excluding works, or obedience, of any kind is rooted in Adam’s failure in the garden.  In the world of Adam before the fall, one could be justified by works, but in the eschatological world of the last Adam, one can be justified only by faith.

One thing that is clear from Adam’s state in the garden-temple is that he did not represent himself alone-he was the federal head of mankind.  Paul succinctly states that all men sinned because Adam sinned: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12).   Paul’s statement is clear-the universal reign of death is due to the one sin of Adam.  There is a parallel between the two federal heads, the first and last Adams: just as Adam’s disobedience and guilt are imputed to those whom he represents, so too Christ’s obedience, or righteousness, is imputed to those whom he represents.  This means that one of the key elements of the doctrine of justification is the concept of imputation.

Taken from Justification: Understanding The Classic Reformed Doctrine by  J.V. Fesko, pages 134-135.

Was looking at GP’s old xanga site and found this post with some quotes on it.  

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

“Anyone who denies the prelapsarian covenant of works jeopardizes the Biblical and Protestant doctrine of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.”

“Monocovenantalism or refusal to distinguish between the covenants of works and grace implies a confusion of Law and Gospel. “

“The hermeneutical distinction between law (covenant of works) and gospel (covenant of grace) is the distinction between our personal and perpetual obligation to keep the law perfectly for justification and the announcement that Christ has kept the law perfectly for us.”

“The historical distinction between law and gospel may be reckoned as the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.”

“The historical distinction between law and gospel may also be reckoned as the distinction between Moses and Christ.”

“When the law/gospel distinction is reckoned as that between Moses and Christ, there may be said to be gospel in the law and law in the gospel. This way of speaking, however, may not be used properly when considering the law/gospel distinction hermeneutically.” -some sentences from R. Scott Clark On the Covenant of Works

Josh quotes from The Economy of the Covenants. The Post is titled, Witsius on the Mosaic Covenant: Works of Grace? and it may be read here.

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While God’s mercies to the Israelites despite their disloyalty to the Sinaitic covenant are always justified on the basis of the Abrahamic promise, there are no passages that read, “Yet God remained faithful to David/the house of David for the sake of his covenant with Moses and the people at Horeb.” The covenant does not work in reverse. God never remains faithful to unfaithful national Israel on the basis of the Sinaitic covenant itself–for on that basis, as he repeatedly says, he would have scattered them long ago. And yet it is on the basis of the Sinaitic covenant that God exiles Judah and eventually, through Jesus’s prophetic ministry abolishes the theocracy and pronounces judgment upon it. This reiterates the fact that the ministry of Moses could not being about that blessedness that was the positive side of the sanctions–not because it was flawed, but because those who answered with one voice, “We will do all these things,” in fact did not.
- Michael S. Horton, God of Promise (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books) 99.

 

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Good stuff. Part two is at the Heidelblog here.