Only Two Options

If you desire to be justified before God, you must either bring to him a perfect righteousness of your own, and wholly renounce Christ; or else you must bring the perfect righteousness of Christ, and wholly renounce your own.
Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity (Christian Focus, 2009), 111

This is clear and simple

Justified Freely

“We are justified freely, for Christ’s sake, by faith, without the exertion of our own strength, gaining of merit, or doing of works. To the age-old question, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ the confessional answer is shocking: ‘Nothing! Just be still; shut up and listen for once in your life to what God the Almighty, creator and redeemer, is saying to his world and to you in the death and resurrection of his Son! Listen and believe!’” Gerhard O. Forde, Justification by Faith (Philadelphia, 1983), page 22.

This is hard for Christians today to accept and believe because they trust in themselves and are sure what they add to their salvation will put them over the top and make them acceptable to God. What Forde is saying has been falsely proclaimed as easy believe-ism but what he is saying is that salvation is justification by faith alone through Christ alone.

Oxygen For The Soul

The justification of a sinner is instantaneous and complete. . . . It is an all-comprehending act of God. All the sins of a believer, past, present, and future, are pardoned when he is justified. The sum-total of his sin, all of which is before the Divine eye at the instant when God pronounces him a justified person, is blotted out or covered over by one act of God. Consequently, there is no repetition in the Divine mind of the act of justification; as there is no repetition of the atoning death of Christ, upon which it rests.

--William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, Volume 2 (New York: Scribner's, 1891), 545

Dane Ortlund

The Heidelberg Catechism on Justification

This comes from question 60 of the Heidelberg Catechism. Gold.

Q. How are you right with God?

A. Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. 

Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously 

sinned against all God's commandments

and of never having kept any of them,

and even though I am still inclined toward all evil,

nevertheless,

without my deserving it at all,

out of sheer grace,

God grants and credits to me

the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ,

as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner,

as if I had been as perfectly obedient

as Christ was obedient for me.

All I need to do

is to accept this gift of God with a believing heart. 

Praise God! This is the best news ever! What a gracious father! Without deserving it at all, God, out of sheer grace, grants and credits to Christians the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ. Understanding this truth is imperative to understanding the Gospel, and I pray  God continues to enliven my heart to the glorious riches of Christ's saving work.

How The Gospel Liberates Us

Silly Peter:

'Before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles, but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party' (Gal 2:12).

Fellowship broke.

Now how does Paul handle this? Certainly, he rebukes Peter—'I opposed him to his face' (2:11). 

Yet how does Paul do this? What is his diagnosis?

Paul identifies Peter’s error as gospel error. 'I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel' (2:14). What was Peter’s mistake? Gospel leakage.

But in what way was Peter's heart leaking out gospel? How specifically was he not believing the gospel?

The text tells us: 'fearing the circumcision party' (2:12). Fear. That was what drove Peter.

To sum up: Paul says Peter feared other men, causing him to not walk in step with the gospel, causing him to introduce all kinds of dysfunction into his relationships with other people.

I conclude: the gospel liberates us not only from fear of the judgment of God in the future but also from fear of the judgment of men in the present. By Galatians 2 Paul had already learned this (Gal 1:10). Peter had not.

In Christ we are already in. The craving to be judged positively, welcomed in, affirmed by another, brought inside—at bottom, the craving to be justified—has been met. Secured vertical in-ness empties the need for elusive horizontal in-ness. Justification by faith alone breathes health and calm and quiet into our relationships. Remember, it is on the immediate heels of this passage, right here in Galatians 2, that Paul pens the most famous words in all the Bible on justification by faith (Gal 2:16). 

 

Dane Ortlund

The Prison of Free-Lunch-Think Versus The Gospel

Gerhard Forde, Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life, pg. 24
The gospel of justification by faith is such a shocker, such an explosion, because it is an absolutely unconditional promise. It is not an “if-then” kind of statement, but “because-therefore” pronouncement: because Jesus died and rose, your sins are forgiven and you are righteous in the sight of God! It bursts in upon our little world all shut up and barricaded behind our accustomed conditional thinking as some strange comet from goodness-knows-where, something we can’t really seem to wrap our minds around, the logic of which appears closed to us. How can it be entirely unconditional? Isn’t it terribly dangerous? How can anyone say flat out, “You are righteous for Jesus’ sake? Is there not some price to be paid, some-thing (however minuscule) to be done? After all, there can’t be such thing as a free lunch, can there?”
You see, we really are sealed up in the prison of our conditional thinking. It is terribly difficult for us to get out, and even if someone batters down the door and shatters the bars, chances are we will stay in the prison anyway! We seem always to want to hold out for something somehow, that little bit of something, and we do it with a passion and an anxiety that betrays its true source–the Old Adam that just does not want to lose control.

Mockingbird

Only Two Options

Fisher:

If you desire to be justified before God, you must either bring to him a perfect righteousness of your own, and wholly renounce Christ; or else you must bring the perfect righteousness of Christ, and wholly renounce your own.

Edward Fisher, The Marrow of Modern Divinity (Christian Focus, 2009), 111

Dane Ortlund

Gerhard Forde, Walter White and Aggressive vs. Passive Death (and Resurrection!)

I’m in the middle of both reading Gerhard Forde’s Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life and watching Breaking Bad on Netflix. It’s quite a combo. And it has me thinking about how addicted we are to our notions of free will and how deeply that addiction affects our relationships with each other. I was expressing some thoughts along these lines to a friend the other day – how our wills maybe aren’t as free as we’d like to think and how good works may not be something we’re ultimately capable of, in and of ourselves – and she reacted as if I was telling her that I’m an alien from another planet. “I make choices everyday, I’m not a robot,” she insisted, inadvertently confusing what I was saying with the idea of free agency. (Free agency has to do with the obvious choices we make everyday, like getting out of bed and going to work – good things that keep our society functioning and safe, but which are fundamentally distinct from the question “are we able to choose to DO good of our own free will?”).
Breaking Bad, as you may know, is the story of an over-qualified high school chemistry teacher named Walter White who is diagnosed with terminal cancer and decides to cook methamphetamine in order to provide for his family after he’s gone. The moral ambiguity is there from the start: he breaks the law, but there are some undeniably good intentions at work. I won’t spoil it with any more details (disclaimer: it has inappropriate material for all kids and some adults). My wife calls the show a car accident in slow motion. We keep watching this downward spiral of man trying to DO some good for the people he loves most, that have been entrusted to his care, and yet the harder he tries, the deeper and deeper he plunges into an enormous mess.
 Forde’s book offers a very different understanding of Christianity than what most of us perceive it to be. The message we commonly hear, not just in church pulpits but on Oprah to Dr. Phil, is essentially a boiled-down Golden Rule: a code to follow that will change our behavior, improve the world, and get us closer to God. “Do onto others as you’d have them do onto you.” Of course, we also find this message in the Bible, and from the mouth of Christ specifically – in his articulation of the Law. In Matthew (22:36-40), when a man asks Jesus what the greatest commandment is, he replies “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Since the Law is written on the heart of every man, the rules resonate with us and even seem like good news. If we think we’re capable of fulfilling them on our own, that is. What I’d like to explore in this post is what we often hear about on Mockingbird: What if we aren’t capable of fulfilling the Golden Rule or Greatest Commandment perfectly? What do we DO then?
To get at the root of the issue we need to understand passive death, passive resurrection (which sounds a bit silly, as who can resurrect themselves?), and future hope. The Christian “Life,” or should we start calling it the Christian “Death,” is a period in history when we have the opportunity to follow what early Christians called The Way, to live as Christ lived, holy and righteous and perfect. If we are free and capable of loving as we should, then the advice “Be like Jesus” is good news. But if our will is compromised, these words have a different effect. They crush us like a giant hammer over the head, “BE LIKE GOD!” It’s the Law turned up to its highest degree. Forde puts it like this:

“For the point is that the unconditional declaration of justification, the imputation, the flat-out declaration, that which offends and shocks us so, that which shatters all our ambitions for “something to do” –that declaration is our death and our life, the new beginning. It is the act which recreates, redeems God’s creation. Death, you see, is put in the position of not being able to do anything according to the ways of this world—the law, religion, the upward climb—with all its plans and schemes. They suddenly stop, come to an end: “I through the law died to the law that I might live to God.” Both our vices and our virtues come to a full stop. The justification declaration is precisely that: a full stop “You have died,” says Paul. It is all over!”

 “We receive his Holiness”, “We are made perfect in Christ,” “He clothes us in His righteousness,” “We have died.” These passive words actually describe the Christian Life…. I mean Death...: how to die well and hope in the Gospel. Die well, what a silly notion. Talk about a marketing message that won’t put bodies in the seats at church! “Come by Sunday morning at 10 o’clock for coffee at the Sunshine Café, jam out with our praise band, and, oh yes, learn how to die well.” It just doesn’t fit.
By “die well” we are not talking about “aggressive death,” which is actually the active, conscious, and desperate refusal to die, the death of the narcissistic, me-focused, selfish, desperate person that doesn’t want to die. (I can’t help but think of the final scene of Scarface). Aggressive death shows no mercy and always demands a pound of flesh. It forgives only those who can change their behavior. It can’t risk love due to self-preservation. We’ve all engaged in this, flailing around, refusing to give up and hurting those closest to us. This is Walter White. Aggressive death contains no hope of life or resurrection!
Again, the question we need to answer is, “Are we free to love as we should? Or is our situation a bit more complicated/compromised?” If our will is bound and we can’t live a perfect righteous life (as Christ did), maybe we can die as Christ died, a “passive death.” Of course, sometimes it’s easier to SEE NO EVIL.
So what does the life – I keep doing that (it takes a miracle to change the way we think) – I mean the passive death of a Christian look like? A passive death might look like acquiescence and sacrifice. It might even look like the MOTH Story where a person in need of help from someone who seems to be their enemy

So how do you forgive people that continue to take advantage of you over and over? How do you show mercy to someone you know will turn around to another and force them to “PAY UP!”? How do you trust someone that has no track record of being trustworthy, or worse, a record of compulsive lying? How do you love the unlovable unconditionally? This I find to be the hardest because when those you love the most can’t change a behavior, to love them anyway requires a great sacrifice and huge risk in rejection. Talk to any family member of someone bound to an addiction. To love someone unconditionally risks everything. So why would anyone spend time dying (didn’t say living this time!) like this?
The only answer I’ve found lies in understanding my own addictions/bound will and the Hope in believing that Christ was crucified for my transgressions and raised for my justification. And that, by faith, I’m now free, free to die and therefore free to live.
Mockingbird

How to Be Radically Insecure

A fascinating statement from Lovelace illuminating both my own soul and why playing hoops with unbelievers is often more enjoyable than with believers.

Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification.

Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons--much less secure than non-Christians, because they have too much light to rest easily under the constant bulletins they receive from their Christian environment about the holiness of God and the righteousness they are supposed to have.

--Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal (InterVarsity, 1979), 211-12
Dane Ortlund

Listen and believe!

“We are justified freely, for Christ’s sake, by faith, without the exertion of our own strength, gaining of merit, or doing of works.  To the age-old question, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ the confessional answer is shocking: ‘Nothing!  Just be still; shut up and listen for once in your life to what God the Almighty, creator and redeemer, is saying to his world and to you in the death and resurrection of his Son!  Listen and believe!’”
Gerhard O. Forde, Justification by Faith (Philadelphia, 1983), page 22.
Ray Ortlund

Moo on Justification in Galatians

Crossway has made available Doug Moo’s essay, “Justification in Galatians” (PDF) from
Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of D. A. Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Köstenberger and Yarbrough.
An excerpt:

Paul’s teaching on justification in Galatians strongly endorses the traditional Reformation emphasis on justification by faith alone.
In contrast to some recent reconfigurations of this doctrine, the Reformers did not mean by this teaching that a person gains only initial entrance into the state of salvation by faith alone—the ultimate verdict being based on faith plus works.
They intended to assert that the eschatological gift of justification, at whatever “time” or in however many stages it might be manifested, came by faith alone.
Paul seems to be saying just this in Galatians. Faith is the means not only of entering into relationship with God but also of maintaining that relationship and of confirming that relationship on the day of judgment.
Of course, it is not faith in itself that has this power; it is because faith connects the believer to Christ, in whose vindication (see 1 Tim. 3:16) the believer shares.
My brief overview confirms those who find a monergism in Paul’s teaching about salvation that stands in contrast to the synergism of covenant nomism. Justification, not only in its initial phase, but in its totality, is sola fide—and, though it has not been a focus of this study, in light of Galatians 2:21 and 5:4, sola gratia also.

Justin Taylor

Justification, a Daily Experience

Puritan pastor William Fenner:

We must use the assurance of faith in applying the blood of Christ; we must labour to purge and cleanse our consciences with it.

If we find that we have sinned, we must run at once to the blood of Christ to wash away our sin. We must not let the wound fester or exulcerate, but immediately get it healed. . . . As we sin daily, so he justifies daily, and we must daily go to him for it. . . . We must every day eye the brazen serpent. Justification is an ever-running fountain, and therefore we cannot look to have all the water at once. . . .

O let us sue out every day a daily pardon. . . . Let us not sleep one night without a new pardon. Better to sleep in a house full of adders and venomous beasts than sleep in one sin.

--William Fenner, A Treatise of Conscience, in Works, 108f.; quoted in J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Crossway, 2010; repr.), 115
Dane Ortlund

Are You Appropriating Christ's Justifying Work In Your Life?

Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so light an apprehension of God's holiness and of the extent of the guilt of their sin that consciously they see little need for justification, though below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure. Many others have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine (of justification through imputed righteousness) but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for their justification, in the Augustinian manner, drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience.

Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther's platform; you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude.

Richard Lovelace - Dynamics Of Spiritual Life, pg 101

No Matter What One Says

The problem lies in the fact that the Old Being will not and cannot hear gospel no matter what one says. The Old Being will only use whatever is said as part of the protection, solidification in the causa sui project, and translate it into or see it as a ratification of the legal system. That is, the Old Being will turn whatever one says into law.

--Gerharde O. Forde, Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life (Fortress, 1982), 92; emphasis original (causa sui = cause of itself, i.e. self-salvation)

Resurrection, Justification, and Union

A nice statement on the connection between Christ's resurrection and our justification from Cornelis Venema's The Gospel of Free Acceptance in Christ, which engages the New Perspective from the angle of historical and systematic theology. Venema is president of Mid-America Reformed Seminary and did his PhD on Calvin at Princeton. Commenting on Romans 4:25, Venema says:

[T]he resurrection of Christ represents the justification and vindication of believers. Since Christ bore the consequences of sin on behalf of his people on the cross, his resurrection was God's declaration of both his and his people's righteousness. The great and complex event of Christ's death and resurrection constitutes the basis for the positive verdict of justification for all who are in union with him through faith. In the death of Christ, the trespasses of his people were punished; in the resurrection of Christ, the justification of his people was declared. The justification of believers occurs by virtue of their participation in the reality of Christ's death and resurrection on their behalf.

--Cornelis Venema, The Gospel of Free Acceptance in Christ: An Assessment of the Reformation and New Perspectives on Paul (Banner of Truth 2006), 44
Dane Ortlund

Are Future Sins Forgiven in a Believer's Justification?

I find this extremely liberating.

The justification of a sinner is instantaneous and complete. . . . [It] is an all-comprehending act of God. All the sins of a believer, past, present, and future, are pardoned when he is justified. The sum-total of his sin, all of which is before the Divine eye at the instant when God pronounces him a justified person, is blotted out or covered over by one act of God. Consequently, there is no repetition in the Divine mind of the act of justification; as there is no repetition of the atoning death of Christ, upon which it rests.

--William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, Volume 2 (New York: Scribner's, 1891), 545
Dane Ortlund

Why Believers Are More Insecure than Unbelievers

I find this statement from Lovelace illuminating, both of my own soul and of why playing hoops with non-Christians is more enjoyable than with Christians.

Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification.

Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons--much less secure than non-Christians, because they have too much light to rest easily under the constant bulletins they receive from their Christian environment about the holiness of God and the righteousness they are supposed to have.

--Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal (InterVarsity 1979), 211-212
Dane Ortlund

Thoughts On Justification (1)

The way we approach something determines, to some extent, what we find.  We approach food differently when we are hungry.  We approach people differently when we are lonely.  We approach sleep differently when we are tired.  Things are understood in a context, and our angle of approach is a part of that context.
From reading John Calvin on justification I’ve come to see that we approach the matter of justification differently when we have a sense of our sin in light of God’s holy character.  God is the context in which justification feels needed and makes sense.  And errors on justification are related to other more basic theological errors in our doctrine of God.
After his initial discussion of justification in the Institutes (3.11), Calvin has two further chapters which are extremely helpful at further teasing out what justification means and why it matters (3.12 and 3.13).  In 3.12.1 he writes:

“In the shady cloisters of the schools anyone can easily and readily prattle about the value of works in justifying men.  But when we come before the presence of God we must put away such amusements!  For there we deal with a serious matter, and do not engage in frivolous word battles.  To this question, I insist, we must apply our mind if we would profitably inquire concerning true righteousness: How shall we reply to the Heavenly Judge when he calls us to account?”

I wonder if part of the explanation for the prevalent confusion about justification today is that we don’t talk as much as previous generations did about God’s Law and God’s role as Judge.  We are more comfortable quoting “God is love” than “thou shalt not,” and we like to think of God as a Father but not as a Judge.  In Scripture, however, God is both Father and Judge, and there is both law and grace.  We must remind ourselves of the legal aspects of our relationship with God – the law, the final judgment, our guilt – in order to see justification rightly.  Only when we are in a place of despairing of our status before God are we able to approach the doctrine of justification properly, and receive it for what it is.  Only when we despair of human righteousness can we understand and receive “righteousness from God” (Romans 1:17, 3:21, 3:22).
Gavin Ortlund
Soliloquium

Justified

“Among all the realities of the invisible world, mediated to us by the disclosures and promises of God, and to which our faith responds, there is none that more strongly calls into action this faculty for grasping the unseen than the divine pronouncement through the Gospel, that, though sinners, we are righteous in the judgment of God. That is not only the invisible, it seems the impossible; it is the paradox of all paradoxes; it requires a unique energy of believing; it is the supreme victory of faith over the apparent reality of things; it credits God with calling the things that are not as though they were; it penetrates more deeply into the deity of God than any other act of faith.”
—Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory: Sermons Preached in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary (Reformed Press, 1922), 135.
Justin Taylor

Justification Sanctifies

[S]anctification is not a new thing, but simply the unfolding, by the operation of the Spirit, of something already present. It is God's justifying verdict itself which sanctifies. . . .

It is precisely because God waits for no guarantees but pardons out-and-out, because He dares to trust a man who has no claim or right to trust at all--it is because of this that forgiveness regenerates, and justification sanctifies.

--James S. Stewart, A Man in Christ: The Vital Elements of St. Paul's Religion (New York: Harper, 1935), 258, 259-60
Dane Ortlund