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.

Certainly we recognize well that we are poor and despised people; that is, before God we are miserable sinners, scorned and cast out by people, and even — if you will — the dung and waste- sweepings of the world or whatever can be named that is even more vile.  We are such that we have nothing about which we can glory before God, except His mercy alone, by which we are saved without any merit of our own; and we have nothing about which we can glory with regard to people except our weakness, that is, what all regard as our great shame (2 Cor. 10 [13, 17]; Tit. 3[5]; 2 Cor. 11 [30-31] and 12 [5,9]).  (7-8)

Besides, what is more fitting for faith than to promise that God is a gentle and beneficent Father when Christ is recognized as Brother and propiciator? What more fitting to await all good and prosperity from God, whose love for us has extended so far that “He did not spare His very Son but delivered Him up for us” (Rom. 8[32]).   What is more fitting than to rest in the certain expectation of salvation and eternal life, when we consider that the Father gave us Christ, in whom are hidden such treasures?  They resist and reject such things, and say that such a certainty of confidence is not without arrogance and presumption.  But just as we dare claim nothing for ourselves, so we should claim everything for God, and the only reason we are deprived or our empty glory is so that “we may glory in God” (2 Cor. 10 [17]; Jer. 9 [23-24]).  (8-9)

Taken from John Calvin’s dedication to Francis 1 in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition, The First English Version. Translated by Elsie Anne Mckee.

What do you do with the person who says, “I’ve asked God to forgive me about this, but I still feel guilty”? I hear that statement over and over again.

Sproul: I usually say to these people, “If you still feel guilty, then pray to God again. But this time don’t ask him to forgive you for the sin that is haunting you. Rather, ask him to forgive you for insulting his integrity by refusing to accept his forgiveness. Who are you to refuse to forgive yourself when God has forgiven you? When God promises to forgive his people when they repent, he is not playing games.  If he says he will forgive you, then he will forgive you.  And if God forgives you, you are forgiven.” It is often a difficult thing to accept the grace of God. Our human arrogance makes us want to atone for our own sins or to make it up to God with works of super-righteousness. But the fact of the matter is that we can’t make it up to God. We are debtors who cannot pay. That’s what justification by faith is all about.

-R.C. Sproul

HT: Roy Kil

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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A great discussion on the Holy Law and the triumphal indicative on the White Horse Inn.

Michael Horton: Now when we are talking especially about the third use of the law.  Is it important to ground this particularly in the distinction between indicative and imperative?

Kim Riddlebarger: Absolutely.

Michael Horton: You talk about not imposing things on the text, you actually have Greek moods in the text that are indicatives and imperatives it’s a form of… Kim Riddlebarger: An indicative is a statement of fact…

Rod Rosenbladt: Christ has died for you, carried your sin in His body on the tree it will count before the Father at the end all these things are true whether you believe them or not!

Michael Horton: Therefore…

Kim Riddlebarger: Therefore…  I’m always amazed in the book of Romans for example when Paul moves from his discussion of Justification in chapter 3, 4, and 5 into some would consider his discussion on sanctification in 6 through 8. The first imperative in chapter 6 is “reckon yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God.” The first command is to consider your Justification. That’s the basis for any sanctification is to consider yourself dead to what you were in Adam, and alive to what you are in Christ!

Ken Jones: I love Colossians 1. He sets forth everything we have in Christ: You have been translated to the Kingdom of His Son, you have been conformed…you have all of these things. And then later in chapter 3 he goes on to say: Now put to death the members which are upon the earth. Now if you begin in chapter 3 and think you could work back to chapter 1 you will die of depression.

Michael Horton: I remember growing up how Romans 6 just scared me to death because I was raised with the carnal Christian teaching, you know you could be a first class Christian and go to heaven up in the front of the plane—live in victory, or you could sort of get in by the hair of your chinny, chin, chin.

Kim Riddlebarger: The self is still on the throne. Michael Horton: Your carnal Christian. And of course no Christian, no one who really is dwelt by the Holy Spirit wants to be a carnal Christian, so your striving to get into that upper region, and Romans 6 was the victorious Christian life. Romans 7 was the defeated Christian life or the carnal Christian—it’s not the same Paul at the same time, it’s two different stages of a persons life as a victorious Christian or as a carnal Christian. The thing that was just revolutionary for the Christian life was not only Justification but realizing too that Sanctification was by the Grace of God, and that Sanctification was rooted in the triumphant indicative when Paul says [in Romans 6], “Shall we then sin that grace may abound?” He doesn’t say, either on one hand, “Sure, God likes to forgive and I like to sin, that’s a great relationship.” Nor does he say on the other hand “You better not unless you want to be a victorious Christian.” What he says is you cannot! It is impossible for you to be carnal Christian. It is impossible!

Ken Jones: Because you have died to sin!

Michael Horton: You have died. I’ve buried you with Christ. I raised you up, it’s done, get over it, stop trying to walk around in grave clothes.

Kim Riddlebarger: Well, the great change in Romans 8 that theology produces because if your in the carnal Christian Romans 8 then sets out the option of walking in the flesh or walking in the Spirit, when the contrast is between all Christians who walk in the Spirit versus all those in Adam will and can only walk in the flesh. And once you are freed from that now you make real progress in the Christian life. Rod Rosenbladt: Yeah, ironically when that victorious life teaching has its stake put through its vampire heart it becomes possible in following what we are discussing in Romans. Finally it becomes possible to maybe hear the Law and have a shot at it, you know, to fight the fight.

Michael Horton: That’s right, yeah exactly.

Ken Jones: Because now you have the victory—the real victory which is Romans 8:1 “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ.”

Michael Horton: Yeah. Rod Rosenbladt: Right on.

Michael Horton: Anytime you hold out victory as a reward for my personal performance whatever kind of victory it is, I’m going to eventually become a Pharisee or…

Rod Rosenbladt and Michael Horton: …suicidal.

Michael Horton: but the alternative isn’t “Oh, we get a free seat in heaven and obedience doesn’t matter.” The alternative is to obey from freedom.

Kim Riddlebarger: The person that I get is the person who has been to every church, gone to every seminar, read every book, and still has some sin or some struggle that has them in what they think is a death grip. And they are wondering “Am I a Christian because I still keep doing this. I try and stop it. I can’t or I don’t seem to make much progress.” That’s the person I get. Michael Horton: That’s got to be the biggest pastoral problem.

Kim Riddlebarger: That is the biggest pastoral problem. You have people who kick up their heels and do all kinds of unholy things in the name of Christ and they need to be disciplined and dwelt with but that is not…

Rod Rosenbladt:…that is not the major problem

Kim Riddlbarger: The major category is somebody who’s been in the church for a long time, and who is seriously questioning God’s favor toward them because of their miserable performance and obedience to the Law.

Rod Rosenbladt: Yup.

Kim Riddlebarger: And as more Pastors try to deal with that by making sanctification more of an emphasis and stressing the need to get beyond that by trying this and trying that the more frustrated people become.

Michael Horton: One of the things that we ought to take a look at is the way in which the Law is distinguished from the Gospel in various ways. I know that both of our traditions, Reformed Confessions and Lutheran Confessions, and our dogmatics basically say the same thing. Here’s a quote and I betcha Rod this is right out of what you guys would say too. Zacharias Ursinus commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism:

“The doctrine of the church is the entire and uncorrupted doctrine of the Law and the Gospel concerning the true God together with His will, works and worship. This is the whole doctrine of the Church can be subdivided into two parts…The doctrine of the church consists of two parts: the Law, and the Gospel; in which we have comprehended the sum and substance of the sacred Scriptures…Therefore, the Law and Gospel are the chief and general divisions of holy scriptures, and comprise the entire doctrine comprehended therein…For the Law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ constraining us to fly to Him and showing us what that righteousness is which he has brought out and now gives to us. But the Gospel professedly treat of the person, office, and benefits of Christ. Therefore we have in the Law and Gospel the whole of the Scriptures comprehending the doctrine revealed from heaven for our Salvation. The Law prescribes and enjoins what is to be done and forbids what ought to avoided whilst the Gospel announces the free remission of sin through and for the sake of Christ alone. The Law is known within us by nature. The Gospel is divinely revealed outside of us in His Word. The Law promises life upon the condition of perfect obedience. The Gospel on the condition of faith in Christ and commencement of new obedience.

“This transcription of “Rightly Dividing the Word: Law and Gospel” is a
broadcast of the White Horse Inn radio program that originally aired on May
22, 2005 and is posted with permission. The White Horse Inn exists to equip
Christians to “know what you believe and why you believe it.” For more
information about the White Horse Inn, please visit www.whitehorseinn.org or
call (800) 890-7556.”

Notes from the Calvin’s Legacy Blog here.

Law and Gospel “Two different kinds of words. They do different things.”

Paul R. Schaefer (D.Phil. Oxford University) professor at Grove City College has a chapter in a compilation on the Puritans titled The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the Puritan Classics. To introduce William Perkins (an Anglican in the Elizabethan era) Schaefer writes, “…[Perkins] was one of the most widely read preachers of his own age. (38) 

In regards to the Law/Gospel distinction in William Perkins, Schaefer states,  

 “He further contended that passages when applied fit either the category of law or gospel and should be brought in a manner to instruct and upbuild the congregation: ‘The basic principle of application is to know whether the passage is a statement of law or of the gospel.’ From this perspective, Perkins masterfully wove together the concerns of the earlier Reformers Luther and Calvin and also their heirs.” (47)

Schaefer further quotes Perkins, “Thus, since the law demands the ‘need for perfect inherent righteousness,’ the preacher should use it to show that all are under a curse from which they cannot escape through their own efforts.” (47)

Further, Perkins in Art of Prophesying writes in regards to rightly dividing the Word,  

 The basic principle in application is to know whether the passage is a statement of the law or of the gospel. For when the  Word is preached, the law and the gospel operate differently. The law exposes the disease of sin, and as a side-effect stimulates and stirs it up. But it provides no remedy for it…The law is, therefore, first in the order of teaching; then comes the gospel. (54, Art of Prophesying)

Regarding Perkin’s third use of the law (a rule of gratitude for believers in Christ) Schaefer writes,

Perkins then continued this discussion about the place of good works in the life of the Christian by stating that the law has application for the justified believer not in terms of a “legal” character but in terms of “evangelical” character “in light of Christ.”  This evangelical character contains no merits of its own and thus cannot be the way of salvation, but rather uses the law now to show a true believer a guide to godly walking.  Such an emphasis fits well with Calvin’s discussion on the “third use of the law” in the Institutes.  And by the way of an intriguing parallel–intriguing because Perkins did not mention it as a source–his discussion of law and gospel as a whole appears to follow the basic outline of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) with its three-part structure of guilt-grace-gratitude. (47)

Paul R. Schaefer, “The Arte of Prophesying By William Perkins” in  A Devoted Life: An Invitation To the Puritan Classics. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004)

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Part of Turretin’s concluding remarks:

I do not expect or ask for any praise in the future from my little work, but I will consider my labor to be well satisfying if you soberly and favorably regard that this work of mine, such as it is, renders service to the church of God.  If any fruit is returned from hence, it will come through divine blessing for illumination of the truth and edification of the saints.  But if this main portion of my labor be neither unhelpful for you nor clearly useless–which I alone have reluctantly brought into the light–were I to perceive this to be the case, I would proceed to another part more eagerly and act with aid of a good God if he would see fit to bestow to me strength and life and that I might more swiftly deliver the faith once given.

Meanwhile, since I am a man (and I do not suppose that I am free from any human limitations), if anything would be said by me here that would correspond little with Scripture united with the rule of our faith, not only do I want it to be unsaid, but even to be stricken out.

You then, dear reader, when you kindly express appreciation and are lenient toward my errors: “If you know something better than these precepts, pass it on, my good fellow. If not, join me in following these” (Horace, Epistles 1.6.67-68) [Loeb, 290-91]).

May the God of truth and of peace cause us to walk always in truth and charity; may we grow every day in him who is the head, until we all arrive at the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, perfected in power and to the measure of the maturity of Christ Amen.  

Francis Turretin, translated by George Musgrave Giger, edited by James T. Dennison, Jr.  Institutes of Elentic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992), xlii.

  

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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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