This article by Philip Ryken was posted on Reformatio21.  Some are redefining these two doctrines and putting the biblical view of salvation at risk.

If there is one thing I love in life, it is the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. This is the biblical truth that liberates me from the crushing burden of ever having to stand before God on my own merit, but covers me instead with the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.[1]

Justification by Faith

Stated simply, “Justification is an act of God’s free grace, in which he pardons all our sins, accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.”[2] In justification the believer rests on Christ alone for salvation, and by faith receives his righteousness. Or, to say much the same thing at greater length,
Those whom God effectually calls, He also freely justifies, not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God.[3]

These definitions are adapted from the Westminster Standards. They represent a broad consensus of Anglican, Baptist, and Presbyterian theology. And they use a very important verb to describe the justification of the ungodly: impute.

The vocabulary of justification comes from the law court, where “to justify” is a declarative verb. In its theological sense, justification is the legal declaration of my righteousness before God. But on what basis can sinners like me be justified? Not on the basis of our own merit, but only on the merit of Jesus Christ. And the way this merit becomes our own is by imputation, which is God’s declarative reckoning that the righteousness of Christ belongs to the one who has faith in Christ.

The traditional Roman Catholic doctrine of justification maintained that we do not stand righteous before God by imputation but by impartation—an infusion of divine grace. According to official Catholic teaching, “Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.”[4] Yet the Reformers maintained that justifying righteousness is not something inside of us, but rather outside of us: the righteousness of Christ himself—an “alien righteousness,” as Luther so often called it.
The distinctive dimension of the Protestant doctrine of justification is imputation, and inherent to the concept of imputation is the transfer of something from one person to another. To impute is to attribute or to ascribe; it is to count or to credit. In its theological sense, imputation is the legitimate transfer of the righteousness of Christ to my own account. This transfer is a lawful entailment of the doctrine of justification by faith, which is simply a shorthand way of saying that we are justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

As Thomas Oden has shown in his wonderful little book The Justification Reader, a theological emphasis on justification by free grace goes all the way back to the early church fathers.[5] But this great doctrine has been one of the main hallmarks of evangelical faith since the days of the Reformation. John Calvin said that “a man will be justified by faith when, excluded from the righteousness of works, he by faith lays hold of the righteousness of Christ, and clothed in it appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as righteous.” Calvin thus defined justification as “the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous men,” consisting in both “the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.”[6] We are acceptable to God on account of Christ, “inasmuch as he expiated our sins by his death, and his obedience is imputed to us for righteousness.”[7] And Calvin called this doctrine “the main hinge on which salvation turns.”[8] Similarly, the English Reformer and Oxford martyr Thomas Cranmer described justification as “the strong rock and foundation of Christian religion,” and went on to claim that “whosoever denieth it is not to be counted for a true Christian man . . . but for an adversary of Christ.”[9]

Lest anyone think that this doctrine has only been held by Anglicans and Presbyterians, the words of John Wesley are also worth quoting at length:

If we take the phrase of imputing Christ’s righteousness, for the bestowing (as it were) the righteousness of Christ, including his obedience, as well passive as active, in the return of it, that is, in the privileges, blessings, and benefits purchased it; so a believer may be said to be justified by the righteousness of Christ imputed. The meaning is, God justifies the believer for the sake of Christ’s righteousness, and not for any righteousness of his own.[10]

Perhaps most famously of all, Martin Luther said that in justification Christ “has made His righteousness my righteousness, and my sin His sin. If He has made my sin to be His sin, then I do not have it and I am free. If He has made His righteousness my righteousness, then I am righteous now with the same righteousness as He.”[11] According to Luther, we have this righteousness of Christ because it is imputed to us by faith: “God reckons imperfect faith as perfect righteousness for the sake of Christ.”[12] Christian righteousness, therefore, “is a divine imputation or reckoning as righteousness or to righteousness, for the sake of our faith in Christ or for the sake of Christ.”[13] And this is the doctrine that “begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour.” “It is the chief article of Christian doctrine,” Luther said, so that “when the article of justification has fallen, everything has fallen.”[14]

The Protestant Reformers firmly believed that this doctrine of justification was taught in Holy Scripture. They saw it in Romans chapter 3, which promised “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe,” so that we “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:22, 24). They found it as well in Romans chapter 4, which said that “the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). Or consider Philippians 3:8-9, where the apostle Paul sought to “gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”

Until very recently, at least, there was a broad consensus about this doctrine in the evangelical church—not only about what justification meant, but also about how it important it was in Christian theology. Indeed, as recently as 1999, in “The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration,” a consensus statement of evangelical theologians appeared in the pages of Christianity Today, asserting that “the doctrine of the imputation (reckoning or counting) both of our sins to Christ and of his righteousness to us, whereby our sins are fully forgiven and we are fully accepted, is essential to the biblical gospel.”[15]

There is perhaps no clearer or fuller statement of the place of justification in evangelical theology than the one J. I. Packer made almost fifty years ago in his masterful introduction to James Buchanan’s classic work The Doctrine of Justification:
The doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas. It bears a whole world on its shoulders, the entire evangelical knowledge of God the Savior. The doctrines of election, of effectual calling, regeneration, and repentance, of adoption, of prayer, of the Church, the ministry, and the sacraments, are all to be interpreted and understood in the light of justification by faith, for this is how the Bible views them. Thus, we are taught that God elected men from eternity in order that in due time they might be justified through faith in Christ (Rom. 8:29f.). He renews their hearts under the Word, and draws them to Christ by effectual calling, in order that he might justify them upon their believing. Their adoption as God’s sons follows upon their justification; it is, indeed, no more than the positive outworking of God’s justifying sentence. Their practice of prayer, of daily repentance, and of good works springs from their knowledge of justifying grace (cf. Luke 18:9-14; Eph. 2:8-10). The Church is to be thought of as the congregation of the faithful, the fellowship of justified sinners, and the preaching of the Word and ministration of the sacraments are to be understood as means of grace because through them God evokes and sustains the faith that justifies. A right view of these things is possible only where there is a proper grasp of justification; so that, when justification falls, true knowledge of God’s grace in human life falls with it. When Atlas loses his footing, everything that rested on his shoulders collapses too.[16]

Among the many things that rest on this Atlas of a doctrine is our own eternal salvation. I was reminded of this recently when my mother asked me why her church had recently tightened its theological requirements for career missionaries by asking them to articulate their views on justification. My mother was unclear as to why this was necessary. When I explained to her that it was because of recent attacks on the claim that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to sinners by faith, she said, rather wistfully, and very wisely: “You know, I was really counting on that.”

I too am depending on the biblical doctrine of justification, counting on God’s promise that what Jesus did will count for me.

Union with Christ

As important as justification is, it is not the only fundamental doctrine of our salvation. And if there is any doctrine I love as much as justification, it must be the magnificent doctrine of union with Christ.

For me this doctrine was one of the marvelous discoveries of my seminary education. I had at least some familiarity with the several doctrines of soteriology—the so-called ordo salutis, or order of salvation. I had certainly heard of election and regeneration, of justification and sanctification, and perhaps of adoption and glorification. I had also read—or at least skimmed over—those two little words that appear so frequently together in the New Testament: in Christ. Yet no one had ever articulated for me the doctrine of union with Christ, the spiritual and theological reality that holds together the various benefits of salvation.

Many theologians view this doctrine as one of the keys to understanding the message of salvation. John Murray called union with Christ “the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.”[17] A. W. Pink said, “The subject of spiritual union is the most important, the most profound, and yet the most blessed of any that is set forth in sacred Scripture.”[18]
This was also the view of the Protestant Reformers, our forefathers in the evangelical faith. John Calvin considered union with Christ to be a matter of spiritual life and death. First Calvin asked this question: “How do we receive those benefits which the Father bestowed on his only-begotten Son—not for Christ’s own private use, but that he might enrich poor and needy men? Then he answered:

First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us. For this reason, . . . we . . . are said to be ‘engrafted into him’ and to ‘put on Christ’; for . . . all that he possesses is nothing to us until we grow into one body with him.[19]

When we are united to Christ—united to him by faith, the Reformers said, and also by the Holy Spirit, so that we are in him and he is in us—then all that is his becomes ours. This is true of every single doctrine of salvation. Union with Christ is not simply one step in salvation; it is the whole stairway on which every step is taken. Or perhaps it would be better to say that union with Christ is the prism through which all the other colors of salvation are refracted. Our election is in union with Christ, for it is in Christ that we were chosen before the creation of the world (Eph. 1:4). Our regeneration is also in union with Christ, for the Scripture says we are created in Christ; and this re-creation is for good works, which means that our sanctification is in union with Christ as well (Eph. 2:10). In short, everything up to and including the doctrine of glorification is in union with Christ, for those who share in his sufferings will also share in his glory (Rom. 8:17).

Whatever we have or need, therefore, we will find it in Christ. It really is true that “God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing” (Eph. 1:3). John Calvin expressed this in a marvelous way when he wrote:

If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects that he might learn to feel our pain. If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.[20]

We could also add justification to Calvin’s list, for this too is in union with Christ. If we seek to be justified before God, we will find it in Christ’s righteousness. Many of the same passages that speak to us about justification by imputation also declare that we receive this grace in Christ: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. . . . For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:19, 21). Or again, “You are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness” (1 Cor. 1:30 niv). By virtue of our faith-union with Jesus Christ we are declared righteous. This is why the apostle Paul wanted to “gain Christ and be found in him.” It was because he was not content having what he called “a righteousness of my own that comes from the law.” What he wanted instead was “that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil. 3:9). To put it most simply of all, as Paul puts it for the Galatians, we are “justified in Christ” (Gal. 2:17).

To summarize, the great doctrinal realities of justification and union with Christ are closely inter-connected. Justification is one of the leading benefits of being united to Christ. The faith that justifies does so only and precisely because it also joins us to Christ. The very people who are united to Christ are the ones who are also declared righteous. This is part of what prevents justification by faith alone from being merely a legal fiction, as it is so frequently and so inaccurately alleged. Union with Christ is logically prior to justification by imputation. The declaration of our righteousness has a proper juridical basis in our true and covenantal connection to Jesus Christ. Indeed, union with Christ is the matrix in which imputation occurs. It is on the basis of our spiritual and covenantal union with Christ that our sins are imputed to him and his righteousness is imputed to us.

Current Distortions of Biblical Justification

How disheartening it is to see both of these saving doctrines misunderstood or even denied in the evangelical church today. I refer in part to evangelical leaders who embrace a doctrine of justification that is hard to distinguish from the Roman Catholic position that we are accounted righteous by infusion rather than imputation. I refer also to advocates of the New Perspective on Paul who believe that the Reformation doctrine of justification was mistaken in fundamental ways. To use J. I. Packer’s analogy, Atlas has shrugged.
These distortions take a number of different forms, which I mention only briefly. Some evangelicals are simply saying that justification is by grace, and leaving it at that. By avoiding saying that justification is based on grace alone or received by faith alone, they are able to make common cause with Catholicism, which has always said that justification is by grace. Other evangelicals want to say the same thing about Judaism at the time of Christ. It was not a religion of legalistic works-righteousness, they say, but a religion of grace. Therefore, the Reformers were mistaken to see Paul as standing against a religion of works rather than faith. Others are saying that justification is not so much about our standing before God as it is about our relationship to the church as a covenant community. Or they say that justification does have something to do with our standing before God, but our real and ultimate justification will only take place on the last day, when our good works will serve as part of the basis for (and not simply the evidence of) our righteousness before God. Thus our present justification is only provisional, which has the unhappy result of turning salvation into probation.

It is sad that these misunderstandings of biblical justification are having an influence on the church, especially at the seminary level, where any theological confusion will be multiplied many times over. It is sad but also strange—strange because these theologians are setting justification in opposition to union with Christ, whereas the Reformation position has always been that these doctrines are inseparable.

As a case in point, consider John Calvin, who said that our union with Christ “makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed. We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body—in short, because he deigns to make us one with him. For this reason, we glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him.”[21] In other words, for Calvin it is the doctrine of union with Christ that provides the very context for justification by imputation. Calvin made this explicit when he said that God does not absolve us “by the confirmation of our own innocence but by the imputation of righteousness, so that we who are not righteous in ourselves may be reckoned as such in Christ.”[22] John Owen said the same thing more succinctly, but equally emphatically: “The foundation of imputation is union.”[23]
Yet today we are told that union and imputation stand directly in tension or even contradiction. Hence the title of a recent response to John Piper’s excellent little book Counted Righteous in Christ. The title asks: “Imputation or Union with Christ?” and then proceeds to argue that we must choose one doctrine or the other in articulating the theology of salvation.[24]

The argument usually goes something like this. First it is denied that the Bible teaches the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, or even that this is a coherent concept. Imputation is something we read into the New Testament, we are told, not something we legitimately read out of it. Righteousness is something God demonstrates about his own character by keeping the promises of salvation in Christ, but not something that he gives to us.

Inevitably, such denials of imputation fundamentally alter the doctrine of justification. Sometimes it is further denied that justification has very much to do with the law, or with sin and the judgment of God. Justification becomes a relational rather than a legal concept. It is no longer primarily addressed to the problem of human sin in relation to a holy God. But we are reassured that at this point union with Christ will come to the rescue. Even if the Reformation doctrine of justification is flawed in fundamental ways, the reality of our being in Christ will supply all of the righteousness that we need.

My main interest here is not to engage in personal polemics, but to be clear and to help others be clear in preaching the biblical doctrine of justification. But in order to show that these are real theological issues, it may be helpful to give a few specific examples.

Denials of imputation are becoming fairly commonplace. The doctrine is conspicuous by its deliberate omission from the theological statements signed by Evangelicals and Catholics Together, which tried to define the doctrine of justification in a way that was acceptable both to Catholics and to Protestants. Necessarily, then, imputation had to be left out, for Roman Catholics explicitly deny the doctrine of imputation. The same omission is conspicuous in the Joint Declaration of Lutherans and Catholics, in which Lutheran theologians somehow managed to make a statement on justification without including Luther’s doctrine of imputation![25]

Another well-known example is N. T. Wright, who denies that it is possible for anyone to receive imputed righteousness because the very concept is incoherent. Wright says that the doctrine of imputed righteousness is not found in the apostle Paul, and that although the Bible speaks of the believer’s righteousness, this righteousness is not the righteousness of God, or of Christ: “Paul does not say that he sees us clothed with the earned merits of Christ.”[26] Nor is righteousness “a quality or substance that can be passed or transferred from the judge to the defendant.”[27] According to Wright, “It makes no sense whatever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant.

Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas, which can be passed across the courtroom.”[28] Whatever righteousness we have must be our own; it cannot be God’s own righteousness, for this always remains God’s own property.[29]

Then there is the position of Rich Lusk, who denies that there is any imputation in justification and says further that the doctrine of union with Christ makes the notion of imputation redundant.[30] There is also the view of Robert Gundry, who accepts the imputation of sin, but not the imputation of righteousness.[31] Gundry believes that our sins are charged to Christ’s account. However, he denies that there is any imputation in justification, that Christ’s righteousness can be transferred to us in any way. This doctrine is unbiblical, Gundry says: in the New Testament “nothing is said about a replacement of believers’ sins with the righteousness of Christ.”[32] The only imputation involved in salvation is the imputation of our faith (see Rom. 4:5). Rather than serving as the instrument that enables us to receive righteousness, then faith itself is the righteousness that God requires. What is credited to our account is not Christ’s righteousness, but our faith (a view that runs the risk of turning faith itself into a work).

Here it must be said that when you deny imputation—when you ignore it or obscure it, when you argue that it is unnecessary or superfluous or incompatible with union with Christ—you end up with a very different doctrine of justification. Either the meaning of justification or the basis for justification has to change.

Sometimes justification itself is redefined. So for N. T. Wright, justification is not the doctrine that declares your standing with God—a vertical issue—but the doctrine that declares your standing in the covenant community—a horizontal issue.[33] Wright says that in Galatians, for example, the central issue is not how a sinner can have a right relationship with God, but “how you define the people of God.”[34] To use traditional theological vocabulary, justification isn’t “so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.”[35] What Paul means by justification “is not ‘how you become a Christian,’ so much as ‘how you can tell who is a member of the covenant family’.”[36] To be justified is to be “declared in advance . . . to be within God’s true family.”[37]

With these definitions, the meaning of justification has been redefined. We are no longer talking about justice but about belonging. And something very different is being declared: not that I am righteous before God, but that I belong to God’s people—the covenant community. It should be note that justification is redefined this way despite the fact that the dikaiosune word cluster refers to “righteousness” rather than “membership.” In its biblical sense, to justify does not mean “to declare that one is a member.” While these linguistic considerations are not decisive in themselves, they urge caution about redefining justification in terms of human relationships.

The other thing that happens when imputation is denied is that the basis for justification gets reestablished. According to the biblical doctrine of the Reformers, our justification is established in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, imputed by faith. Or to say this another way, our justification is established on the basis of the finished righteousness of Jesus Christ—his comprehensive obedience to the law of God, his complete atonement for sin through his sufferings and death on the cross, and his total triumph over sin and death by his glorious resurrection. But if there is no imputation of that divine righteousness, there must be some other basis for our justification. Christ’s own perfect righteousness has ceased to be the exclusive ground for our justification before God.[38] So N. T. Wright has said that we are justified on the basis of “the entire life a person has led in the power of the Spirit.”[39] After all, it is only the doers of the law who will be justified (see Rom. 2:13). But this has the unfortunate result of putting our justification in terms of what we offer to God (even if it is something that God does in us), instead of something that God gives to us in Christ. The only way we could agree that we are justified by the entire life a person has lived is if the life in question is the life of the perfect Son of God. Only then would we have a life that is good enough for God.

Nevertheless, many of the theologians and Bible scholars who urge a redefinition of justification think they still have a way of safeguarding the grace of God in salvation. Even though the Protestant Reformers got justification wrong, they say, we can still have a full and gracious salvation. The way we get it is by union with Christ—the doctrine that really does the work that some people think justification does.

On this view, how are we made righteous? Not by imputation, but by being united to Christ, so that it is a relationship that makes us righteous, not a declaration of God that is grounded in the finished work of Christ. This is essentially the thesis that Don Garlington advances in his response to John Piper: “The free gift of righteousness comes our way by virtue of union with Christ, not imputation.”[40] So Garlington intends to offer an exegesis that “will steer us away from imputation to union with Christ.”[41] Michael Bird says it more succiently: justification is by incorporation rather than imputation.[42] And Robert Gundry concludes that for justification Paul uses “the language of union . . . rather than the language of imputation.”[43] These and other writers thus propose justification without imputation—a non-imputational model of union with Christ.

ATheological Response

Given the close connection that evangelical theology has always made between justification and union with Christ, this proposal needs to be considered very cautiously, even suspiciously. Far from replacing the doctrine of justification, union with Christ historically has provided the proper context for imputation and thus for justification. There is no union without imputation and no imputation with union. To separate the two, therefore, is to defy the traditional logic of both doctrines.

Another reason to be cautious, or even suspicious, is that to my knowledge none of these theologians has given any clear doctrinal explanation of what it means for a Christian to be in Christ. They refer to union with Christ without clearly defining it. What kind of union are they talking about? Garlington says that “faith justifies because we are united to Christ and are ‘found in him’.”[44] But what does it mean to say that we are found in Christ? Presumably not by deification—by actually becoming Christ or being absorbed into the essence of God himself—for such participation in the substance of the divine being would be in contradiction to biblical and evangelical orthodoxy. But if not by deification, how then are we joined to Christ? What, exactly, is the theology of union with Christ? What is the Christology of union with Christ? What is the ontology of union with Christ?
One reason this matters is because the New Testament talks about union with Christ in several different ways. Sometimes the connection between Christ and the Christian is made simply by using the Greek preposition en, which often (although not always) means “in.” But the idea of union with Christ is also present in some of the memorable images of the New Testament. For example, what Jesus says about the vine and the branches in John 15 is a picture of union with Christ; we are in Christ the way a fruitful branch is in a living vine. Or, to take another example, being in Christ is like being part of a body—a body of which Christ himself is the Head (see 1 Cor. 12:12-27). The New Testament also depicts union with Christ as a love union between a bride and groom (Eph. 5:22-32), or as a building that is bound together by its cornerstone (Eph. 2:19-22). It should also be noted that many New Testament passages present union with Christ in terms of Christ being in the believer (e.g. John 15:4; 1 John 4:13).

These examples alert us to the fact that the idea of union with Christ is a flexible concept that the Bible uses in a variety of different ways. Furthermore, many of these uses are metaphoric. The New Testament does give us some propositions to define the doctrine of union with Christ, but for every proposition there is an image—a more symbolic description of our union with Christ. Given the scope of its biblical usage, therefore, the concept of union with Christ is always in need of theological definition. Historically, Reformation theologians have defined our union with Christ as vital (a living union), spiritual (a union joined by the Holy Spirit), indissoluble (an eternal union), and mystical (a union that is as mysterious as it is real).

A careful definition of union with Christ helps to preserve the identity of the Christian as distinct from the identity of Christ. Garlington says that personal union with the person of Christ “means we take up residence, as it were, within the sphere of the other’s existence.”[45] It is not entirely clear what this means, especially when Garlington uses the phrase “as it were.” But we need to be clear that our union with Christ does not mean our deification or divinization. It does not mean that we are joined to the divine being, or have a divine nature ourselves. Rather, our union is a spiritual union, established by the person and work of the Holy Spirit. And it is a covenantal union, established by the promises of God and the role of Christ as our representative.

This is where imputation fits in. In imputation, something that does not inherently belong to us (namely, the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ) becomes our own possession. It is reckoned to be ours. It is credited to our account. This transfer takes place on the basis of the legally legitimate relationship we have with Christ by virtue of our union with him. We do not become Christ, but we are identified with Christ and incorporated into his life by the bond of the Holy Spirit. To say this in another way, we are united to Christ by a faith union. Now, on the basis of his meritorious work on the cross and out of the empty tomb, in the context of our union with him, his righteousness is imputed to us. Union with Christ thus provides the proper framework for receiving justifying righteousness, and it does so by way of imputation. To say this in yet another way, justification is “derivative and aspectival” of union with Christ; it is “an aspect of the union with Christ, and is also derivative of that union.”[46]

Now that we are spiritually and covenantally in Christ, this has implications for our legal standing as sinners before a holy God. A transaction takes place—the double imputation that theologians have often called “the wonderful exchange.” Because we are in Christ, God imputes to Christ the guilt of our sin. And because we are in Christ, God also imputes or attributes the very righteousness of Christ to us, and justifies us on that basis, declaring that we are righteous in Christ. Our sins become his and his righteousness becomes ours, and this is all because of union with Christ.

This description of justification preserves the proper distinction between Christ and the Christian—without mixture or confusion—while at the same time bringing us into full possession of the saving benefit of his perfect righteousness.[47] Rather than setting justification in opposition to union with Christ, therefore, we should view the two doctrines in their proper theological relationship. It is not either/or, but both/and. To separate justification from union with Christ is to end up with doctrinal distortion. For as D. A. Carson wisely comments, “If we speak of justification or of imputation (whether of our sins to Christ or of dikaiosune being credited to us) apart from a grasp of this incorporation into Christ, we will constantly be in danger of contemplating some sort of transfer apart from being included in Christ, apart from union with Christ.”[48] And by the same token, if we are said to be justified by union without imputation, we no longer have a proper theological basis for distinguishing Christ from the Christian. It is imputation that safeguards a sound Christology and ontology of union with Christ; the believer is united to Christ but does not become Christ.

We ought therefore to think of justification and imputation in terms of our union with Christ. As Carson goes on to say, the terminology of union with Christ “suggests that although justification cannot be reduced to imputation, justification in Paul’s thought cannot long be faithfully maintained without it.”[49] This is not a theological abstraction, but a gospel reality that emphasizes our real connection to Christ. Justification is not a blessing we have apart from the Christ himself, but a benefit that flows from our life-giving union with him. The Scottish theologian Thomas Boston explained this well:
The believer is accepted as righteous in God’s sight. For he is “found in Christ, not having his own righteousness, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil. 3:9). . . . Thus the person united to Christ is justified. . . . From this union with Christ results a communion with him in his unsearchable riches, and consequently in his righteousness. . . . Thus the righteousness of Christ becomes his; and because it is by his unquestionable title, it is imputed to him; it is reckoned his in the judgment of God, which is always according to truth. And so the believing sinner, having a righteousness which fully answers the demands of the law, he is pardoned and accepted as righteous.[50]

Biblical Support

What are some of the Bible passages that are most frequently discussed in connection with imputation? The biblical terminology for imputation—chiefly the verb logizomai, “to count” or “to reckon”—is only used in some of these passages (which are briefly considered here, giving only the broad outlines of a full exegesis). However, the concept of imputation is logically present in all of them. In each case God declares sinners to be what they are not in themselves, namely, righteous in his sight. In other words, God justifies them. He does this on the basis of the saving work of Jesus Christ, which is imputed to them by faith.

To begin with, consider the closing verses of Romans chapter 3. Don Garlington says that imputation is not present here at all.[51] For N. T. Wright, the issue in these verses is covenant membership, not our standing before God. To be justified, he says, “means that those who believe in Jesus Christ are declared to be members of the true covenant family.”[52] However, for Paul the issue from the beginning of Romans has been our unrighteousness before God, and not simply who is inside and who is outside his covenant community. Our fundamental problem is that “by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight” (Rom. 3:20).

But now God offers us saving righteousness in Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:21-22), on the basis of his propitiation and redemption—the offering of a blood sacrifice that turns away the wrath of God and secures our release through the payment of a price. This righteousness is not something we have or deserve in and of ourselves. Rather, it is something we receive, something that comes to us as a gracious gift. Indeed, the whole thrust of the argument is that when God justifies us, he is declaring something we do not deserve. Nevertheless, God does justify us, and he does so justly (Rom. 3:26), because he has credited us with his own righteousness, which we receive through faith in Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:22). Furthermore, there is a strong emphasis in these verses on the instrumentality of faith. It is not by any works that we are declared righteous, but only by faith (Rom. 3:26, 28). Righteousness imputed by faith is a logical entailment of the passage as a whole.[53]

This argument is confirmed in chapter 4 by way of example. Abraham, too, was justified by faith instead of works. As the Scripture says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3). Here we do have the very language of imputation. Business terminology is used to make the calculation of salvation. Because Abraham believed, something was credited to him, or charged to his account, or reckoned to him—in a word, imputed to him: namely, righteousness.

Here in chapter 4 we also notice an important parallel. In verse 5 God is described as someone “who justifies the ungodly.” This is a curious combination because it is virtually a contradiction. To justify is to declare righteous. Yet here God is said to justify those who are not righteous at all (including Abraham). In the following verse God is further described as someone who “counts righteousness apart from works” (Rom. 4:6). Once again, the language of crediting, or reckoning, or imputing is used.

This justification of the ungodly is by the imputation of righteousness. God is justifying the ungodly (v. 5) and at the same time counting them righteous (v. 6). Yet this righteousness cannot be their own righteousness, for they are ungodly, and the reckoning of righteousness is explicitly said to be apart from works. What righteousness is it, then? It is the righteousness that God reckons to the believer by faith. Not that faith itself is the righteousness, of course. No, it is righteousness that is counted to the believer, as Paul makes clear in verse 11, where faith is presented rather as the instrument by which we receive righteousness (see also Rom. 3:28, 30). To say that “faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5, 22), then, is really a shorthand way of saying that righteousness is reckoned to belong to the believer by faith. This righteousness is not reckoned on the basis of anything in the believer, for Paul has already thoroughly established that he is ungodly. Instead, it is an unmerited righteousness that is declared as a gift—the righteousness of God, as offered in the atoning death and justifying resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 4:24-25). Believing in Christ is thus portrayed as the instrument of the imputation of righteousness. And this preserves the graciousness of God in salvation. “That is why it depends on faith,” the apostle says, “in order that the promise may rest on grace” (Rom. 4:16).

Imputation is also entailed in the argument of Romans 5. Here Paul draws a contrast between Adam and Christ—the first Adam and the last Adam. The disobedience of the first Adam brings condemnation, which is a declaration of guilt and punishment (Rom. 5:16). It does this by the imputation of Adam’s sin to all his descendants: “one trespass led to condemnation for all men” (Rom. 5:18). The antithesis of condemnation is justification, and this too entails an imputation—in this case an imputation of righteousness. Paul thus speaks of “the free gift” that “brought justification,” and also “the free gift of righteousness” that comes through the life of Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17).

“Therefore,” the apostle concludes, “as one trespass lead to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:18-19). Whereas our union with Adam condemns us, our union with Christ justifies us. And it does so because God gives us his righteousness as a gift—imputing it to us, to use the language of chapter 4. Indeed, that is virtually the language he uses here in chapter 5 as well, for to be “made righteous” may also be rendered to be “appointed righteous,” and this appointment is by imputation. According to the progression of Paul’s argument, it is righteousness that leads to justification. And we have this righteousness, for our justification is based on the active righteousness of Jesus Christ. Similarly, in chapter 10 Paul speaks of “the righteousness that comes from God.” By faith we are beneficiaries of the very righteousness of God—“righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:3-4).

Passages outside of Romans also illuminate the doctrine of imputation, including two critical passages in Corinthians. According to 1 Corinthians 1: 30, God “is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” Here we certainly find the doctrine of union with Christ, for our life is said to be in Christ. Here there is also a clear affirmation that Christ is our righteousness, which we could readily understand to mean that he is our righteousness by imputation. Yet N. T. Wright insists that if we maintain the imputation of righteousness in this verse then “we must also be prepared to talk of the imputed wisdom of Christ; the imputed sanctification of Christ; and the imputed redemption of Christ.”[54]

This does not follow, however. Paul is simply listing the several benefits of our union with Christ, each of which bears its own connection to his saving work. We receive sanctification by the Spirit setting us apart for the holy service of God. We receive redemption by the purchase of blood. How then do we receive righteousness? To be more specific, How do we receive Christ’s righteousness? (for that is the righteousness in view). It is clear from the context that we receive this righteousness from God himself. And it is clear from other places in Paul that this righteousness is not something God works into us by infusion, but something he imputes to us on the basis of faith. All of that is not fully spelled out here in 1 Corinthians 1. What is spelled out, however, is that we have possession of the very righteousness of Christ.

The same point is established in 2 Corinthians 5:21. There we read that God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him [that is, in Christ] we might become the righteousness of God.” Some theologians quibble that “the righteousness of God” should not be equated here with the righteousness of Christ. But this is to ignore the union with Christ that is affirmed in the verse itself: it is in Christ that we become the righteousness of God.

Others, such as Robert Gundry, claim that Paul only uses the language of union in 2 Corinthians 5, and not the language of imputation.[55] But notice that imputation language does appear in verse 19, where it is our sins that are counted or reckoned or imputed to Christ. And notice further that verse 21 plainly refers to a transaction—a transaction that takes place on the basis of our union with Christ. First God made Christ to be sin, not in the sense that Christ was infused with our sinful nature, surely, or that he somehow participates in our sin, but rather by imputation. Our sins were credited to Christ’s account, and in this sense he was made to be sin. The transaction becomes complete when we become righteous. By parallel logic, this cannot mean that we are infused with his righteousness, but rather that it is imputed to us.

Then, finally, we should consider Philippians 3:8-9, where the apostle does some accounting of his own: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”

Once again, the coherence of the passage depends conceptually on imputation. Paul is describing a righteousness that is not his own, but rather a righteousness that comes through faith and depends on faith. Where does this righteousness come from? It comes from God himself. How does Paul obtain it? By the instrumentality of faith. On what basis? Ultimately it is on the basis of his union with Christ in his saving work, of course, which is why Paul says he wants to be “found in Christ.” But in the context of that union, the saving righteousness of Christ must somehow be credited to his account—in a word, it must be imputed. It is only by imputation that a believer “has” a righteousness that is at the same time “not his own.”

Implications of Imputation

This formulation of our justification brings clarity to our understanding of theology. It also brings deep assurance of our salvation. It is not enough for us to know that our sins are forgiven through Christ’s death on the cross. We also need to know that we are fully accepted by God—even after everything we have done and failed to do in our relationships and our service to God. The people in our churches also need this assurance, that they are fully accepted by God.

During devotions at a recent pastoral staff retreat, one of my colleagues asked us to consider where we are finding the greatest encouragement for pastoral ministry. I find greatest encouragement from knowing that I do not have to be accepted on my own merit, but that by grace I am as a fully accepted as God’s own Beloved Son. Only a perfect righteousness can bring this kind of assurance, especially in the aftermath of sin and in the face of death. No one ever finds deathbed consolation on the basis of one’s own righteousness, but only by faith in the righteousness of Christ, imputed in all its perfection.

The biblical doctrine of justification, in which righteousness is imputed to us by faith, on the basis of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in the context of our union with him, secures our full acceptance before God. What joy this righteousness brings to the heart of the justified sinner. Listen to how Richard Hooker celebrated the gift of imputed righteousness:

Christ hath merited righteousness for as many as are found in him. In him God findeth us, for by faith we are incorporated into him. Then, although in ourselves we be altogether sinful and unrighteous, yet even the man who in himself is full of iniquity, full of sin; him being found in Christ by faith, and having confessed his sin in hatred through repentance; him God beholdeth with a gracious eye, putteth away his sin by not imputing it, taketh quite away the punishment due thereto, by pardoning it; and accepteth him in Jesus Christ, as perfectly righteous, as if he had fulfilled all that is commanded him in the law: shall I say, more perfectly righteous than if himself had fulfilled the whole law? I must take heed what I say; but the Apostle saith, “God made him which knew no sin, to be sin for us; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Such we are in the sight of God the Father, as is the very Son of God himself. . . . We care for no knowledge in the world but this, that man hath sinned, and God hath suffered; that God hath made himself the sin of men, and that men are made the righteousness of God.[56]

But there is another, deeper reason for finding joy in justification by imputation. There is a joy even deeper than our own salvation. The deepest joy this doctrine brings is full honor to Jesus Christ. We honor him for his humble, servant-hearted incarnation. We honor him for his suffering, atoning death. We honor him for his triumphant, glorious resurrection. But we also honor Jesus for this: his perfect, obedient life. “For it is not enough to say that we are not guilty,” said the great Puritan theologian John Owen:

We must also be perfectly righteous. The law must be fulfilled by perfect obedience if we would enter into eternal life. And this is found only in Jesus (Rom. 5:10). His death reconciled us to God. Now we are saved by his life. The perfect actual obedience that Christ rendered on earth is that righteousness by which we are saved. His righteousness is imputed to me so that I am counted as having perfectly obeyed the law myself.[57]

Having this perfect righteousness, we praise Jesus for it, as Paul does in Romans, where it is just because God justifies the ungodly as a free gift of grace (Rom. 4:5) that he alone deserves the glory forever (Rom. 11:36). Praise is also what Paul gives to God in 1 Corinthians 1, where it is just because Christ is our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30) that our boast is in the Lord (1 Cor. 1:31). And this is what Paul does in Philippians as well, where the surpassing worth of knowing Christ and his righteousness by faith is what enables the apostle to “glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:3). This is our glory as well: justification by imputation, in which, by faith, God reckons us perfectly righteous in Christ.

________________________________________
[1] This talk was first given at the 2007 meeting of The Gospel Coalition at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. It is not intended to break new theological or exegetical ground, but to help people in pastoral ministry understand current issues in historical perspective. D. A. Carson and Mark Garcia made many helpful suggestions that have been incorporated into the final manuscript.[2] Adapted from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, A. 33.[3] Adapted from the Westminster Confession of Faith, XI.1. [4] The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 482. [5] Thomas C. Oden, The Justification Reader, Classic Christian Readers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002).[6] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. by John T. McNeill, trans. by Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics, 20-21 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), III.xi.2.[7] John Calvin, Commentary on 1 Corinthians, in Calvini Opera, 49:331-32.[8] Calvin, Institutes, III.xi.1.
[9] Thomas Cranmer, “Sermon on Salvation” in First Book of Homilies (1547; repr. London: SPCK, 1914), 25, 26.
[10] John Wesley, Treatise on Justification (1764), as quoted by John Piper in Counted Righteous in Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), 38.
[11] Martin Luther, “Lectures on Romans,” in Luther’s Works, ed. by Hilton C. Oswald (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1972), 25.188.
[12] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, ed. by Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963), 26:231-32.
[13] Luther, Works, 26.233-34.
[14] Martin Luther, What Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active Christian, ed. by Ewald M. Plass (St. Louis: Concordia, 1959), 705, 704, 715.
[15] “The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration” Christianity Today, Vol. 43, No. 7 (June 14, 1999), 49.
[16] See J. I. Packer’s introduction to James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification (1867; repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1961).
[17] John Murray, Redemption—Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955), 161.
[18] Arthur W. Pink, Spiritual Union and Communion (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1971), 7.
[19] Calvin, Institutes, III.i.1.
[20] Calvin, Institutes, II.xvi.19.
[21] Calvin, Institutes, III.xi.10.
[22] Calvin, Institutes, III.ii.4.
[23] John Owen, Works, 5. 209.
[24] Don Garlington, “Imputation or Union with Christ? A Response to John Piper,” Reformation and Revival, Vol. 12, No. 4 (2003), 45-112.
[25] See D. A. Carson, “The Vindication of Imputation,” in Justification: What’s at Stake in the Current Debates, ed. by Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 72.
[26] N. T. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 10th Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference (Rutherford House, Edinburgh, August 25-28, 2003).
[27] N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 51.
[28] Wright, Saint Paul, 98.
[29] Wright, Saint Paul, 99.
[30] Rich Lusk, “Response to ‘Biblical Plan of Salvation’,” in The Auburn Avenue Theology Pros and Cons: Debating the Federal Vision, ed. by E. Calvin Beisner (Fort Lauderdale, FL: Knox Seminary, 2004), 141, 142.
[31] See Robert H. Gundry, “The Nonimputation of Christ’s Righteousness,” in Justification: What’s at Stake in the Current Debates, ed. by Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 17-45
[32] Robert H. Gundry, “Why I Didn’t Endorse ‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration’ . . . Even Though I Wasn’t Asked to,” Books and Culture, Vol. 7, No. 1 (January/February, 2001), 6-9.
[33] Note that in some of his more recent publications, Wright sometimes tries to merge the vertical with the horizontal (e.g. Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 121). However, he does this without giving up his more dominant emphasis on justification as membership in the covenant community or making the sinner’s guilt before God the main issue in justification.
[34] Wright, Saint Paul, 120.
[35] Wright, Saint Paul, 119.
[36] Wright, Saint Paul, 122.
[37] N. T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2005), 57.
[38] See Richard Gaffin, “Union with Christ: Some Biblical and Theological Reflections,” The Always Reforming: Explorations in Systematic Theology, ed. by A. T. B. McGowan (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 271-88 (pp. 286-7).
[39] N. T. Wright, “New Perspectives.”
[40] Garlington, 1.
[41] Garlington, 38.
[42] Michael F. Bird, “Incorporated Righteousness: A Response to Recent Evangelical Discussion concerning the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness in Justification,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Vol. 47, No. 2 (June 2004).
[43] Gundry, “Why I Didn’t Endorse,” 7.
[44] Garlington, 7.
[45] Garlington, 35.
[46] Mark A. Garcia in “Imputation and the Christology of Union with Christ: Calvin, Osiander, and the Contemporary Quest for a Reformed Model,” Westminster Theological Journal, Vol. 68 (Fall 2006), 219-51 (pp. 222, 228).
[47] This point is fully developed in Garcia, “Imputation and Union with Christ.”
[48] Carson, “Vindication,” 72.
[49] Carson, 77.
[50] Thomas Boston, Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, in The Complete Works of the Late Rev. Thomas Boston of Ettrick, ed. by Samuel M’Millan, 12 vols (London, 1853; repr. Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, 1980), 8:205-206.
[51] Garlington, 8.
[52] Wright, Saint Paul, 129.
[53] See also D. A. Carson, “Atonement in Romans 3:21-26,” in The Glory of the Atonement, ed. by Charles E. Hill and Frank A. James III (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 119-39 (p. 134).
[54] Wright, Saint Paul, 123.
[55] Robert H. Gundry, “Why I Didn’t Endorse,” 6-9.
[56] Packer, in Buchanan.
[57] John Owen, Communion with God (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), 94-95.

Don Matzat writes for Modern Reformation Magazine

Could Christianity survive without the gospel? In some quarters, including some fairly close to home, the answer seems to be in the affirmative. We still hear the laity using the lingo from the past, but the theological language of scripture is being increasingly replaced with psychological terminology. Of course, language is not as important as the concepts language conveys, but those concepts themselves are often little more than biblical glosses on psychological motifs.

In this article I want to persuade the reader to consider the gospel as the answer to what people are looking for when they say they need “self-esteem,” rather than seeing the gospel as a supplement to the secular illusions. Theology isn’t practical–at least, that’s what people tell you, even Christian people. Nevertheless, I intend to demonstrate just how practical and essential is a recovery of the fundamental teaching of justification by grace alone through faith alone to our deepest psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs.

The Breakthrough of a Tormented Conscience

Like many today who live in anxiety, fear, guilt, and the shame which are common to our fallen condition, Martin Luther was a confused man whose conscience was tormented until he was able to understand Paul’s explanation of the gospel in the Epistle to the Romans. His superiors in the monastery counseled him to relax and ease up on his conscience, but Luther was driven by an implacable logic: If God is just, holy, and righteous, and demanded exact conformity to his moral character, with failure being met with certain punishment, then “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place?” The Psalmist’s answer was clear: “He who has clean hands and a pure heart” (Ps. 24). If that did not describe the hands and heart of a precise and obedient monk, “Who then can be saved?”

Like many today who are turned off to words like “righteousness” and “holiness” because they just remind us of how unrighteous and unholy we really are, Luther was ready to give the whole thing up until the gospel finally made sense:<blockquote>Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the righteousness of God and the statement that “the just shall live by his faith” (Rom. 1:17). Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a different meaning, and whereas before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in great love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven. (1) </blockquote>

Dubbed “the accusative case” by his classmates, John Calvin was another reformer who was revolutionized by this realization. “You see that our righteousness is not in us but in Christ, that we possess it only because we are partakers in Christ; indeed, in him we possess all its riches.” (2) Thus, the Reformation gave renewed focus to the “alien righteousness” of Christ. While the monks were busy trying to find the good within, the reformers were pointing believers to the Christ outside of them in history who lived, died, and rose again to give freely what none of us has or can create on the inside.

Once more today, there are those who, on the one hand, call believers to obey, surrender, and yield their way to God’s righteousness and acceptance, and on the other hand, those who urge us to stop torturing our conscience and simply ignore the realities of our moral condition. An example of the latter is Robert Schuller, television pastor of the Crystal Cathedral in southern California, who writes, “Reformation theology failed to make clear that the core of sin is a lack of self-esteem. The most serious sin is the one that causes me to say, ‘I am unworthy. I may have no claim to divine sonship if you examine me at my worst.’ For once one believes he is an ‘unworthy sinner’ it is doubtful if he can really honestly accept the saving grace God offers in Jesus Christ.” (3) Further, he says, “I don’t think anything has been done in the name of Christ and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality, and hence counterproductive to the evangelistic enterprise, than the unchristian, uncouth strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition.” (4)

The terror of the law without the gospel is bad news; the denial of total depravity and the sinner’s desperate need of salvation from outside of himself or herself is no news. But the answer of the reformers, with our Lord and his apostles, was that sinners can have their consciences relieved, not by the false hopes of those who, like the prophets in Jeremiah’s day, are constitutionally incapable of telling the truth when it hurts.

This forms the background, therefore, for our alternative to soul-killing legalism on the one hand, and false hopes on the other. I do not intend in this article to survey the complete landscape of Christian psychology and its implications. Rather, I wish to focus on one important issue in the integration of psychology and theology which in our estimation demands immediate attention.

Is Self-Esteem an Unbiblical Concept?

First of all, any Christian criticism of this approach must clearly distinguish between what the reformers called life coram Deo (before God) and coram homnibus (before humans).

This means, for instance, that we ought to affirm our child for getting a “B” on an exam, even when we really were hoping for an “A”; we ought not to attach destructive labels to our children, as parents or teachers; we should encourage the unemployed and unskilled person to discover and cultivate his or her talents instead of contributing to a defeatist posture which withholds the dignity of being human. James, presumably including non-Christians in his view of those to whom we have a responsibility, complains that with the same tongue “we praise our God and Father, and curse men who have been created in God’s image” (James 3:9).

Thus, every person possesses dignity and value as an image-bearer of God. From this bedrock evaluation we derive the dignity of work, the family, and so on. If one does not view himself or herself as created in God’s image, it will create a defective personality in these other arenas.

If I met my friends at the golf course and muttered to myself, “You’re no good at this. You’re a horrible golfer–what are you doing out here with people who really know what they’re doing?”, I wouldn’t last the first nine holes! There is nothing unchristian or unscriptural about having a positive view of one’s abilities, talents, personality traits, and so on, so long as we, as believers, acknowledge God as the giver of all good things. Even a Christian salesperson would never (or should never) introduce himself or herself by saying, “I know that you won’t buy this car from me because I am a poor, miserable salesperson.”

Before the doctrine of self-esteem became a buzz word and point of controversy among Christians, the necessity for self-confidence and a positive self-image in the arena of normal, daily human activity was taken for granted. Many Christian parents have read to their children the story of The Little Engine That Could. When our children took their first steps or attempted to ride their first bicycle did we not bolster their self-confidence? “C’mon, Johnny, you can do it!,” parents shout at Little League baseball games. It has never been considered inappropriate for Christians, any more than for non-Christians, to encourage their children or boost their self-esteem in this way. The Bible nowhere expects Christians to tell their children, “Johnny, realize that you are a poor, miserable shortstop.” And yet, we are all poor, miserable sinners.

That is what brings us to this other matter–our value coram Deo or “before God.” The Scriptures declare that “our righteousness is like filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6), that “there is no one righteous, no not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all gone out of the way; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10-12). Before God we are regarded as “dead in trespasses and sins,…by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:1, 5). This is not because God is less forgiving than our friends and family on earth, but because God is holy. Therefore, whatever the basis of our relationship with God is to be, it cannot be in the slightest measure dependent on anything which we have to offer in this relationship; all of our righteousness must be found in someone else’s moral perfection.

This, therefore, is where much of the current debate gets confused. On one side, there are those who argue that any inculcation of a positive self-image is idolatry, while others insist that this is the gospel. By creation, we are endowed with God’s image and possess dignity, but the Fall marred that image and we ourselves invent new ways of effacing it. Thus, in the matter of redemption God will tolerate no self-esteem, no self-assertion, but only self-despair as the believer turns to Christ for his or her righteousness and worth before God.

It is therefore a legitimate exercise for psychology to observe these obvious behavioral differences which exist among natural human beings, Christians and non-Christians alike, and seek to understand and promote these virtues.

Rejecting the determinism of Freud and the conditioning of Behaviorism, humanistic psychology, as the result of extensive research, teaches that our self-image or the manner in which perceive ourselves to a great extent influences our success. If this assessment is accurate and humanistic psychology is successful in fostering more responsible behavior within society, this would be pleasing to God inasmuch as it serves civil righteousness. God might commend the State of California for wanting employees to be more productive, urging teenagers to be less destructive, and wanting to see fewer crimes and welfare recipients move toward financial self-sufficiency. The apostle Paul, for instance, instructed us to pray for the success of human government so that the church of Jesus Christ could live in peace and security (1 Tim. 2:2). But is self-sufficiency and self-confidence in the workplace the same as self-confidence before God? Does the gospel promise greater self-confidence?

While the Scriptures commend civil righteousness, they also clearly affirm that the virtues produced by human nature can contribute nothing to our righteousness before God. Calvin points out that such human virtues are motivated by “ambition, or self-love, or some other sinister affection.” (5) Luther states that civil righteousness “contributes no more to a Christian’s righteousness than do eating, drinking, sleeping, etc.” (6) He compares civil righteousness to hay and straw required by cattle,<blockquote>A cow must have hay and straw. This is a law for her, a rule without which she cannot exist. But through this law she does not become a child, a daughter, or an heiress in the house; she remains a cow. (7) </blockquote>

Even though a sense of self-worth and a positive self-image might be helpful if we are to successfully interact in society, before God such success is nothing but hay and straw. Martin Luther commended human civil righteousness and applauded the virtue often found among the heathen, but when it came to one’s standing before God, his words were rather different:<blockquote>You hear your God speaking to you how all your life and deeds are nothing before God, but that you, together with everything in you, must perish eternally. If you believe this aright– that you are guilty–you must despair of yourself….But in order to come out of and away from yourself, that is, out of your doom, he puts before you his dear Son, Jesus Christ, and has him speak to you his living, comforting Word: You should surrender yourself to him in firm faith and trust him boldly. (8) </blockquote>

The Real Problem

The controversy in the church today over the issue of self-esteem has not been created by secular psychologists, many of whom have no intention of having their theories underwritten by Christianity. The problem has been created out of the tension Christian psychologists discover between the secular theories of their profession and the biblical revelation. However, when psychology is the professional’s first and primary interest, theology can often be used to justify rather than to critique one’s professional conclusions. One should not doubt the honesty or integrity of Christians who wrestle with the integration between the two disciplines, but distinctions such as the one we have made in this chapter between “civil righteousness” (before man) and “divine righteousness” (before God) are absent from such discussions. Hence, it is impossible to entirely affirm civil righteousness as sufficient, but we feel compelled to affirm the basic human value of individuals. So what often happens is a blending of civil and divine righteousness. We feel uneasy giving unequivocal support to the idea of self-esteem (even before man), but we cannot believe that “worm theology” any longer, so we steer a middle course. What I am suggesting is that we resist that temptation, affirming the full dignity, self-worth, and grandeur of humans as created in the image of God, encouraging our children in their self-image, and at the same time pointing out the fact that before God we are worthy only of condemnation apart from Christ’s worth.

Therefore, to take the position that we ought to not only remove destructive labels from children in the classroom, but that we ought to remove the biblical references such as “sinner,” “wretch,” “miserable,” and “unworthy” from our hymnody and from Christian discussion seriously misunderstand and, in fact, undermines the biblical gospel.

Thus, the doctrine of creation (all humans bearing the divine image) may be used as the basis for self-esteem before man (civil righteousness), but the gospel may not. The gospel comes to those who feel miserable about themselves, not to those who think of themselves as “basically good” (Mark 2:17).

Even within secular psychology there is opposition to the confusion of psychology and theology. Witness Dr. Karl Menninger’s famous diatribe asking the church, “Whatever Became of Sin?” Then there is Jewish psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl’s insistence that “any fusion of the respective goals of religion and psychotherapy must result in confusion.” He correctly states that while the effects of psychotherapy and religion might seem to overlap at points, the intentions are different. (9) One must ask those who are engaged in Christian psychology where integration ends and this confusion begins. And they cannot answer this without an abundant appeal to theology.

A Controversial Intruder

Here is where the church is afraid of making waves. Services are often created to minimize discomfort for the unbeliever so that he or she begins to accept Christianity as an affirming influence. People ought to leave church feeling good about themselves, instead of being called to self-examination, sincere repentance, and faith toward God.

While the church must affirm human dignity before man, it must equally report the biblical facts concerning human depravity before God. When Robert Schuller writes that “the most serious sin is the one that causes me to say ‘I am unworthy,’” he confuses self-worth before man and self-worth before God. Did Jesus not affirm the very opposite in his illustration of the tax-collector and the Pharisee? “And the tax-collector, standing far off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’” While the Pharisee was affirming himself and nurturing himself with positive, uplifting “self-talk,” the tax-collector was committing Robert Schuller’s cardinal sin: calling himself “unworthy.” “I tell you the truth,” Jesus concluded, “this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be abased, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:14).

The intrusion of the secular concept of self-esteem, therefore, faces us with the temptation to create new gospels that offer solutions to whatever the world has decided is humanity’s fundamental problem…this week, while the timeless revelation of human despair and hope waits to be reappropriated and reapplied in each new generation.

Christians are urged to draw from knowledge, whatever its source. Following Augustine’s famous dictum, “All truth is God’s truth,” we can expect to learn things from the social sciences that the Bible is not concerned to tell us. But what we see today in so much of the literature and preaching of Christian pop-psychology is not integration of biblical-theological and natural-scientific knowledge, but a replacement of biblical views of humans, God, and salvation with purely secular notions, baptized with non-contextual verses from the Bible.

If “all truth is God’s truth” and God has seen fit to lead humanistic psychologists to discover something about God, man, and salvation which Christians have overlooked, under-emphasized, or ignored altogether, we should expect such insights to fit nicely with biblical revelation. The Holy Spirit would not provide us with conflicting truths; therefore, where the Bible clearly addresses any issue or concept it is the final authority, regardless of how impressive rival theories might appear.

The Cross: Grace or Merit?

The central focus of Christianity is the grace of God bestowed upon sinful human beings through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the gospel and its proclamation justifies the existence of the church as an institution. In order to preach God’s grace, one must also clearly explain the hopeless condition of sinful humanity. To believe in grace, one must be convinced that there is nothing in himself or herself which merits or deserves God’s favor or makes the person worthy of God’s fatherly care. “If it is by grace, it is not of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace” (Rom. 11:6).

However, the self-esteem craze has popularized a theory within Christian circles which claims the very opposite. One popular speaker, for instance, tells people, “You are ‘worth Jesus’ to God because that is what he paid for you.” (10) I have heard more than one pastor declare in a sermon that Christ’s death proves our self-worth. The impression is given that if we had absolutely nothing to offer and no merit, God would not have wasted his time and energy on us. Christ died for us, we are told, because we were worth it. One writer argues, “It is as if Christ had said, ‘You are of such worth to me that I am going to die; even experience hell so that you might be adopted as my brothers and sisters.” (11) But is this what we find in Scripture? “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son….” (John 3:16). It was something in God, not something in us, which moved him to compassion. We are worthy before God after Christ’s sacrifice, but not apart from it. He died not because we are worthy, but in order to give us worth before him.

Another popular writer states, “Of course, the greatest demonstration of a person’s worth to God was shown in giving us his Son.” (12) Again, this confuses the issue. The cross is a demonstration of God’s love, mercy, compassion, justice, and goodness–not ours.

The Bible clearly defines the death of Christ as a vicarious act. He died in our place. He took the punishment which was rightfully ours. We were worthy, to be sure–worthy of eternal death, but he took our unworthiness upon himself and gave us his worth, his merit in our place. He did not give his life for us because we were worthy, but in order to render us worthy before the Father. The cross reveals the depth of our sin, not the height of our worth before God. The Apostle Paul declared, “If one died for all, then were all dead” (2 Cor. 5:14). In other words, the cross is a demonstration of the spiritual bankruptcy of humanity before God: “They have all gone out of the way; they have together become worthless” (Rom. 3:12).

In addition, the death of Christ was a judicial act. It was a divine sentence leveled against sinful humanity and carried out against the Son of God. How, therefore, can one suggest that the severity of the judicial sentence against us for our sins and assumed by another reminds us our self-worth? If it were possible for the death of Jesus Christ to have been even more cruel and horrible would we be thereby granted even greater self-worth?

A recent television newscast reported the arraignment of a serial killer who has admitted responsibility for at least nine murders. The judge set his bail at five million dollars! Would we use the same sort of reasoning to conclude that this man should feel good about himself and regard himself as a very valuable human being, since the judge set his bail so high? After all, he is worth five million dollars to society!

The five million dollar bail obviously does not reflect the value of the murderer, but the severity of his crime. Similarly, the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross is not a statement of our worth, but indicates the depth of our sin and guilt before God. Again, if Jesus died for us because he saw something in us worth dying for, then there was something in us which merited his death somehow. But we are saved because of something good in God, not because of something good in us.

I have often heard it said, “If I had been the only person on the earth, Jesus would still have died for me.” While our Lord may have given his life for just one person, it is most certainly not because this person is so valuable, but because God is so gracious. It is hardly, therefore, a source of pride or self-esteem. For me to argue that Jesus would have died for me if I were the only person on the earth simply indicates that my sins alone, without the rest of you contributing your share, were sufficient to demand the severe punishment which Jesus Christ vicariously assumed in my place. When faced with that reality, we ought to weep for the selfless sacrifice of our Lord instead of finding in it one more opportunity for feeling good about ourselves.

And yet, this very approach which I am suggesting, which has been characteristic of evangelical preaching and teaching for centuries and lies at the heart of the biblical revelation, is anathema in many evangelical circles today. Dr. Ray Anderson, who teaches a course on the integration of self-esteem and theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, complains about the psychological battering of the cross:<blockquote>If our sin is viewed as causing the death of Jesus on the cross, then we ourselves become victims of a “psychological battering” produced by the cross. When I am led to feel that the pain and torment of Jesus’ death on the cross is due to my sin, I inflict upon myself spiritual and psychological torment. (13) </blockquote>

There is no doubt that the cross of Jesus Christ does inflict upon us a “psychological battering.” Theologically, we have considered this as part of the process leading to repentance. The Law reads like a series of algebra problems we have failed and the failing grade is read aloud: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). It is a measure of just how these secular concepts have revolutionized our daily discourse as Christians when evangelical seminary professors can look at the cross of Christ and his suffering, his physical and spiritual battering, and then warn Christians about the danger of being psychologically battered by the event.

Consider rather Martin Luther’s attitude toward the cross:<blockquote>The main benefit of Christ’s passion is that man sees into his own true self and that he is terrified and crushed by this. Unless we seek that knowledge, we do not derive much benefit from Christ’s passion….He who is so hard-hearted and callous as not to be terrified by Christ’s passion and led to a knowledge of self has reason to fear. (14) </blockquote>

Those who seek a righteousness (whether it goes by the name “self-esteem,” “merit,” “self-confidence,” “self-worth”) in themselves before God are refusing a gift that makes the self-flattery they have embraced pale by comparison. God has promised to clothe the believer with the perfect righteousness and worth of Christ himself. Who would want to settle for anything less?

Does Justification Still Matter? by Michael Horton (White Horse Inn / Modern Reformation)

“A revival is not a miracle,” Finney declared. In fact, “There is nothing in religion beyond the ordinary powers of nature.”

Once upon a time, the label evangelical identified those who were committed not only to historic Christianity but to the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. In our day, however, that can no longer be taken for granted. Increasingly, evangelical scholarship is challenged by trends in biblical studies (especially the New Perspective on Paul) to abandon the Reformation’s understanding of justification. Recent ecumenical rapprochements (such as the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Joint Declaration on Justification and “Evangelicals and Catholics Together”) have revised and relativized this key article. (1)

Remarkably, in a new book with essays by mainline Protestants (Lutheran and Reformed) and Roman Catholics on justification, the former reject the Reformation doctrine (by appeal to the New Perspective on Paul) while leading Roman Catholic New Testament scholar Joseph Fitzmeyer demonstrates the technical accuracy of the Reformation’s exegesis of the relevant passages. In his book Is The Reformation Over?, leading evangelical scholar Mark Noll seems to be speaking for a lot of conservative Protestants in answering yes.

Outright criticism of the doctrine of justification as it is defined in our Reformed confessions and catechisms has become common even in conservative churches. Although the church courts of these sister denominations have exhibited a heartening solidarity in standing for the confessional position and prosecuting ministers who oppose it, it is tragic that controversies over this cardinal doctrine should arise in our own circles.

Most people in the pew, however, are simply not acquainted with the doctrine of justification. Often, it is not a part of the diet of preaching and church life, much less a dominant theme in the Christian subculture. With either stern rigor or happy tips for better living, “fundamentalists” and “progressives” alike smother the gospel in moralism, through constant exhortations to personal and/or social transformation that keep the sheep looking to themselves rather than looking outside of themselves to Christ. Even in many churches formally committed to Reformation teaching, people may find the doctrine of justification in the back of their hymnal (in the confessions section), but is it really taken seriously in the teaching, preaching, worship, and life of the congregation? The average feature article in Christianity Today or Christian best-seller is concerned with “good works”-trends in spirituality, social activism, church growth, and discipleship. However, it’s pretty clear that justification is simply not on the radar. Even where it is not outright rejected, it is often ignored. Perhaps the forgiveness of sins and justification are appropriate for “getting saved,” but then comes the real business of Christian living-as if there could be any genuine holiness of life that did not arise out of a perpetual confidence that “there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).

Of course, it’s impossible to track down all the reasons for the attitude toward this doctrine that lies at the heart of the gospel itself. However, in this article I will point out a couple of the dominant sources.

Culture-Christianity as Self-Help Moralism

Although it had been said in various other ways by the reformers, it was the early seventeenth-century Reformed theologian J. H. Alsted who identified the doctrine of justification as “the article of a standing or falling church.” Yet by the next century, Protestant denominations that had sealed this confession with martyr’s blood were gradually surrendering it to various forms of moralism that were rife in the era of the Enlightenment-and in many cases worse than the distortions that provoked the Reformation in the first place. Even in pietist circles, where a vital faith in Christ was preserved, the scales increasingly tipped in favor of subjective piety and obedience, so that justification was made subordinate to sanctification.

As Arminianism gathered strength, a new legalism (identified by Reformed critics as “neo-nomianism”) entered churches formally committed to evangelical doctrine, breeding a suspicion of the preaching of election and justification as a motivation for “antinomianism” (anti-law-ism). After reading William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, John Wesley became convinced that the residual Calvinism in the Church of England stood in the way of a genuine revival of inner piety and committed discipleship. Although he eventually came to embrace the doctrine of justification, he remained concerned that it would lead to license unless it was subordinated to sanctification.

In the American colonies, the Great Awakening, under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, heralded the good news of God’s justifying grace in Christ. However, by the Second Great Awakening an antithetical theology became the working theology of many Protestant bodies in the new republic. The church is a society of moral reformers, said its leading evangelist Charles Finney. How could there be any genuine transformation of society if Calvinism were true?

Finney’s critics charged him with Pelagianism-the ancient heresy that essentially taught that we are not born inherently sinful and that we are saved by following Christ’s moral example. Going well beyond Rome’s errors, Finney’s Systematic Theology explicitly denied original sin and insisted that the power of regeneration lies in the sinner’s own hands, rejects any notion of a substitionary atonement in favor of the moral influence and moral government theories, and regarded the doctrine of justification by an imputed righteousness as “impossible and absurd.” (2)

Concerning the complex of doctrines that he associated with Calvinism (including original sin, vicarious atonement, justification, and the supernatural character of the new birth), Finney concluded, “No doctrine is more dangerous than this to the prosperity of the Church, and nothing more absurd.” “A revival is not a miracle,” he declared. In fact, “There is nothing in religion beyond the ordinary powers of nature.” (3) Find the most useful methods, “excitements sufficient to induce conversion,” and there will be conversion. “A revival will decline and cease,” he warned, “unless Christians are frequently re-converted.” (4) Toward the end of his ministry, as he considered the condition of many who had experienced his revivals, Finney wondered if this endless craving for ever-greater experiences might lead to spiritual exhaustion. (5) In fact, his worries were justified. The area where Finney’s revivals were especially dominant is now referred to by historians as the “burned-over district,” a seedbed of both disillusionment and the proliferation of various cults. (6) Ever since, Evangelicalism has been characterized by a succession of enthusiastic movements hailed as “revivals” that have burned out as quickly as they spread. Paul could as easily say today of American Protestantism what he said of his brethren according to the flesh:<blockquote> I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. (Rom. 10:3-4)</blockquote>There are two religions, says Paul: “the righteousness that is by works” and “the righteousness that is by faith.” While the former feverishly pursues its schemes of self-salvation, trying to bring Christ down or raise him up from the dead, as it were, the latter simply receives the word of Christ and rests in it alone (vv. 5-8). “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? . . . So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ” (v. 17).

It does not seem wide of the mark to regard Finney’s theological assumptions as Pelagian and his influence remains with us today, in both mainline and evangelical Protestantism. Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw this clearly in his visit to the United States, describing American religion as “Protestantism without the Reformation.” (7) In spite of the influence of a genuinely evangelical witness, the rapid spread of Arminian revivalism, especially in the developing West, proved more effective in producing “results.” Doctrine in general, and Calvinism in particular, just got in the way of building a Christian America. “Deeds, not creeds!” has a long pedigree in the movement’s history.

Americans are “pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps” kind of people anyway. That is what accounts in part for the enormous vitality of American business and industry. However, it also became a religion. Those who worked their way from rags to riches could hardly be told that before God at least they were helpless sinners who needed to be rescued. In today’s climate, American Protestantism on the left and the right is committed to Finney’s legacy, whether it knows it or not. It can be recognized in the “social gospel” of the left and in the moralistic jeremiads of the right; in the “how-to” pragmatism of the church growth movement and the vast self-help literature and preaching that have become the diet in the Christian subculture; and in the therapeutic obsession with inner spirituality and social activism that one finds in the Emergent movement. Even if the gospel is formally affirmed, it becomes a tool for engineering personal and public life (salvation-by-works) rather than an announcement that God’s just wrath toward us has been satisfied and his unmerited favor has been freely bestowed in Jesus Christ.

I say all of this with deep regret at having to say it, because it is the worst thing that can ever be said of a church. Paul spoke sharply to the Corinthians concerning their immorality, but he never questioned whether it was a church. However, when the Galatian church was confusing the gospel of God’s free justification in Christ through faith alone, he warned them that they were on the verge of being cut off-excommunicated, “anathema.”

And this concern I have expressed is hardly limited to a few grumpy Calvinists and Lutherans. “Self-salvation is the goal of much of our preaching,” according to United Methodist bishop William Willimon. (8) Willimon perceives that much of contemporary preaching, whether mainline or evangelical, assumes that conversion is something that we generate through our own words and sacraments. “In this respect we are heirs of Charles G. Finney,” who thought that conversion was not a miracle but a “‘purely philosophical [i.e., scientific] result of the right use of the constituted means.’”<blockquote> [W]e have forgotten that there was once a time when evangelists were forced to defend their “new measures” for revivals, that there was once a time when preachers had to defend their preoccupation with listener response to their Calvinist detractors who thought that the gospel was more important than its listeners. I am here arguing that revivals are miraculous, that the gospel is so odd, so against the grain of our natural inclinations and the infatuations of our culture, that nothing less than a miracle is required in order for there to be true hearing. My position is therefore closer to that of the Calvinist Jonathan Edwards than to the position of Finney. (9) </blockquote> Nevertheless, “The homiletical future, alas, lay with Finney rather than Edwards,” leading to the evangelical church marketing guru, George Barna, who writes,<blockquote>Jesus Christ was a communications specialist. He communicated His message in diverse ways, and with results that would be a credit to modern advertising and marketing agencies. . . . He promoted His product in the most efficient way possible: by communicating with the “hot prospects.” . . . He understood His product thoroughly, developed an unparalleled distribution system, advanced a method of promotion that has penetrated every continent, and offered His product at a price that is within the grasp of every consumer (without making the product so accessible that it lost its value). (10) </blockquote> The question that naturally arises in the face of such remarks is whether it is possible to say that Jesus made anything new. “Alas,” adds Willimon, “most ‘evangelistic’ preaching I know about is an effort to drag people even deeper into their subjectivity rather than an attempt to rescue them from it.” (11) Our real need, whether we feel it or not, is that we systematically distort and ignore the truth. This is why we need “an external word.” (12) “So in a sense, we don’t discover the gospel, it discovers us. ‘You did not choose me but I chose you’ (John 15:16).” (13) “The story is euangelion, good news, because it is about grace. Yet it is also news because it is not common knowledge, not what nine out of ten average Americans already know. Gospel doesn’t come naturally. It comes as Jesus.” (14)

The evangelical faith and practice proclaimed in the Scriptures is always unnatural to us. Born in sin, curved in on ourselves, we natively assume that we are good people who could be better if we just had a good plan, environment, and examples. When visiting people on their death-bed, it is always disconcerting to encounter lifelong members of confessional Reformed churches express the hope that they have been good enough for God to accept them. We’re born Pelagians, trusting in ourselves rather than in God, and this is our default setting even as Christians. That’s why we can never assume the gospel; it has to be the staple diet not only for the beginning, but for the middle and the end of the Christian pilgrimage. When things fall apart in our personal or corporate faith, the direction is always the same: we fall back on works-righteousness.

Periods of genuine health and vitality are always the consequence of rediscovering the gospel of grace; eras of decline are always associated with the eclipse of the gospel of a one-sided divine rescue in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Since Satan lost the war at Golgotha and the tomb, he has turned his assault to the faith of believers in the gospel and the progress of that gospel to the ends of the earth. He knows our weak spot and he exploits it. If he cannot destroy the church by persecution, he will weaken it through heresy. And “Pelagianism”-self-salvation in all its forms-is his best-seller. After conducting numerous studies over the last several years with his team, University of North Carolina sociologist Christian Smith concluded that the religion of America’s youth can be characterized as “moralistic, therapeutic deism.” When we interviewed him for the White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation recently, he said that there was no difference between the churched and unchurched or even between the unchurched and young people raised in evangelical churches today.

Who Needs Justification?

God justifies the wicked. That’s pretty radical. It is more radical than the claim that God heals the morally sick or gives grace to those who are willing to cooperate with it or that he rewards those who try to do their best. We don’t even have to deny justification outright. It’s just irrelevant when we stop asking the most important question. Having trouble with the marriage or kids? Sure. Not living up to our expectations? Doesn’t everybody? Not really getting the most out of life and need some fresh advice? I’m all ears. But we don’t care about being “sinners in the hands of an angry God” if we have never encountered a holy God. And if we do not sense a great need, we do not cry out for a great Savior.

While Roman Catholics and Protestants used to debate how those born in original sin are saved by grace, these theological categories themselves are becoming replaced across the Roman Catholic-Protestant and liberal-evangelical divides with therapeutic, pragmatic, and consumerist categories that seem to render gospel-speech itself irrelevant. The question “How can I be accepted by a holy God?” is replaced with the quest for self-fulfillment, self-respect, self-esteem, and self-effort. And there are plenty of preachers who will cater to our narcissism, dressing our wound as though it were not serious and telling us how we can have our best life now.

When God is no longer a problem for humanity, but a domesticated icon of either an irrelevant transcendence or a usefully immanent source of therapeutic well-being and moral causes, justification becomes an empty symbol. No longer lost, we are more like somewhat dysfunctional but well-meaning victims who simply need “empowerment” and better instructions. Our experience is remote from that of the Israelites assembled at the foot of Mount Sinai when they heard God’s terrifying voice and begged for a mediator.

The holiness of God obscured, the sinful human condition is adjusted, first, to the level of sins-that is, to particular acts or habits that require scolding and reform. Weary of brow-beating that actually trivializes the sinful condition, the next generation takes a more positive, therapeutic approach, offering “tips for living” that will make life happier, healthier, and more fulfilling. Finally, the vertical dimension is all but lost. That which makes sin sinful is the fact that it is first of all an offence against God (Ps. 51:3-5). As a result, it is no longer conceivable that God became flesh to bear his own just wrath. The purpose of the cross is to move us to repentance by showing us how much God loves us (the moral influence theory of the atonement), to display God’s justice (the moral government theory), or to liberate the oppressed from unjust social structures (Christus Victor). But the one thing that it cannot be is the means by which “we have been justified by his blood [and] . . . saved through him from the wrath of God” (Rom. 5:9).

In fact, mainline Lutheran theologian George Lindbeck recently explored the inseparable relationship between justification and atonement, concluding that even where the former is formally affirmed, the widespread lack of interest in our outright rejection of traditional atonement language leaves it without sufficient specificity. At least in practice, Abelard’s view of salvation by following Christ’s example (and the cross as the demonstration of God’s love that motivates our repentance) now seems to have a clear edge over Anselm’s satisfaction theory of the atonement. “The atonement is not high on the contemporary agendas of either Catholics or Protestants,” Lindbeck surmises. “More specifically, the penal-substitutionary versions (and distortions) of Anselm’s satisfaction theory that have been dominant on the popular level for hundreds of years are disappearing.” (15) This is as true for evangelicals as for liberal Protestants. (16)

Those who continued to use the sola fide language assumed that they agreed with the reformers no matter how much, under the influence of conversionist pietism and revivalism, they turned the faith that saves into a meritorious good work of the free will, a voluntaristic decision to believe that Christ bore the punishment of sins on the cross for me, for each person individually. Improbable as it might seem given the metaphor (and the Johannine passage from which it comes), everyone is thus capable of being “born again” if only he or she tries hard enough. Thus with the loss of the Reformation understanding of the faith that justifies as itself God’s gift, Anselmic atonement theory became culturally associated with a self-righteousness that was both moral and religious and therefore rather nastier, its critics thought, than the primarily moral self-righteousness of the liberal Abelardians. In time, to move on in our story, the liberals increasingly ceased to be even Abelardian. (17)

“Our increasingly feel-good therapeutic culture is antithetical to talk of the cross” and our “consumerist society” has made the doctrine a pariah. (18) “A more puzzling feature of this development as it has affected professedly confessional churches is the silence that has surrounded it. There have been few audible protests.” (19) Even most contemporary theologies of the cross fit the pattern of Jesus-as-Model, but justification itself is rarely described in accordance with the Reformation pattern even by conservative evangelicals, Lindbeck suggests. Most of them, as has already been indicated, are conversionists holding to Arminian versions of the ordo salutis, which are further removed from Reformation theology than was the Council of Trent. (20) “Where the cross once stood is now a vacuum.” (21) Evangelicalism today sounds a lot more like Erasmus than Luther.

Justification Feeds Rather Than Starves the Passion for Genuine Renewal

Today, a growing number of evangelical theologians and leaders repeat the charge of Pelagius against Augustine, Rome against the reformers, and Protestant liberalism against evangelicalism: namely, that, in the words of Albert Schweitzer, “There is no place for ethics in the Reformation doctrine of justification.” Following evangelical theologians like Stanley Grenz, Brian McLaren and other leaders of the “Emergent Church” movement explicitly challenge sola fide as an obstacle to the main point of Christianity: following the example of Jesus. While authentic living brings tribute to the gospel, the former is increasingly becoming the gospel.

G. C. Berkouwer’s observation is still relevant in our own day when he writes that “the problem of the renewal of life is attracting the attention of moralists.”<blockquote> Amid numberless chaotic and demoralizing forces is sounded, as if for the last time, the cry for help and healing, for the re-organization of a dislocated world. The therapy prescribed perhaps varies, the call for moral and spiritual re-armament is uniformly insistent. . . . These are the questions we must answer. For implicit in them is the intent to destroy the connection between justification and sanctification, as well as the bond between faith and sanctification. (22) </blockquote> Paul relates everything, including sanctification, the problems of ethics, and ecclesial harmony, to Christ’s cross and resurrection.

The other day I heard from a pastor who related to me that some of his fellow pastors expressed concern that too much preaching of grace, especially justification, was dangerous-especially if it is not immediately followed up with warnings to obedience. Knowing this pastor pretty well, I was surprised that they were pointing this concern at him. After all, he is perfectly sound in his theology. He affirms and preaches the third use of the law (as guide for Christian obedience). Sometimes we forget that Paul was accused of being an antinomian-that is, of inviting people to sin that grace may abound. But instead of retracting the doctrine of justification (Rom. 3-5) that he knew would provoke that question again, the apostle simply explained how the gospel is the answer to the tyranny of sin as well as its condemnation (Rom. 6). The gospel of free justification is the source of genuine sanctification, not its enemy. Yet that is counter-intuitive to us. It is gospel-logic, not the logic of works-righteousness.

Like its native culture, American evangelicalism is activistic. We’re used to being producers and consumers, but not receivers-at least, helpless and ungodly sinners who must acknowledge their salvation as a free gift, apart from their decision and effort (Rom. 9:16). Obsessed with what happens with us, evangelical spirituality has for a long time-at least in practice-obscured the good news of that which has happened once and for all outside of us. Justification may be relevant for avoiding God’s wrath (at least where this is still affirmed), but is it really as important for the Christian life? Wouldn’t it be more helpful and practical to learn steps for victory over sin in our lives and in our culture?

In Revisioning Evangelical Theology, Stanley Grenz argues that evangelicalism is more a “spirituality” than a “theology,” more interested in individual piety than in creeds, confessions, and liturgies. (23) Experience gives rise to-in fact, he says, “determines”-doctrine, rather than the other way around. (24) The main point of the Bible is how the stories can be used in daily living-hence, the emphasis on daily devotions. “Although some evangelicals belong to ecclesiological traditions that understand the church as in some sense a dispenser of grace, generally we see our congregations foremost as a fellowship of believers.” (25) We share our journeys (our “testimony”) of personal transformation. (26) Thus, “a fundamental shift in self-consciousness may be under way” in Evangelicalism, “a move from a creed-based to a spirituality-based identity” that is more like medieval mysticism than Protestant orthodoxy. (27) “Consequently, spirituality is inward and quietistic,” (28) concerned with combating “the lower nature and the world,” (29) in “a personal commitment that becomes the ultimate focus of the believer’s affections.” (30) Therefore the origin of faith is not to be attributed to an external gospel, but arises from an inner experience. “Because spirituality is generated from within the individual, inner motivation is crucial”-more important, in fact, than “grand theological statements.” (31) <blockquote> The spiritual life is above all the imitation of Christ. . . . In general we eschew religious ritual. Not slavish adherence to rites, but doing what Jesus would do is our concept of true discipleship. Consequently, most evangelicals neither accept the sacramentalism of many mainline churches nor join the Quakers in completely eliminating the sacraments. We practice baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but understand the significance of these rites in a guarded manner. (32) </blockquote> In any case, he says, these rites are practiced as goads to personal experience and out of obedience to divine command. (33) <blockquote> “Get on with the task; get your life in order by practicing the aids to growth and see if you do not mature spiritually,” we exhort. In fact, if a believer comes to the point where he or she senses that stagnation has set in, evangelical counsel is to redouble one’s efforts in the task of exercising the disciplines. “Check up on yourself,” the evangelical spiritual counselor admonishes. (34) </blockquote> We go to church, he says, but not in order to receive “means of grace,” but for fellowship, “instruction and encouragement.” (35) The emphasis on the individual believer is evident, he says, in the expectation to “find a ministry” within the local fellowship. (36) All of this is at odds with an emphasis on doctrine and especially, Grenz adds, an emphasis on “a material and a formal principle”-in other words, solo Christo and sola scriptura. (37)

When personal and social transformation become the main point of faith and practice, it is no wonder that the line between Roman Catholicism and Evangelicalism blurs. For Rome, of course, justification simply is sanctification: the moral transformation of the believer. Grace is offered, but we must cooperate with it if we are finally to be accepted and renewed. In fact, with its longer and more sophisticated history of cultural influence, Rome’s superiority in the arena of world-transformation is apparent. In fact, once our interest in improving ourselves and the world has rendered justification through faith alone irrelevant (or even problematic), why should evangelicals and Mormons remain divided? No longer dividing by doctrine, the “culture Protestantism” of America threatens completely to engulf Evangelicalism as it did the mainline denominations. Perhaps the only denominations left with any distinct identity will be the Republican and Democratic parties.

According to the account thus far, justification is not the first stage of the Christian life, but the constant wellspring of sanctification and good works. Luther summarizes, “‘Because you believe in me,’ God says, ‘and your faith takes hold of Christ, whom I have freely given to you as your Justifier and Savior, therefore be righteous.’ Thus God accepts you or accounts you righteous only on account of Christ, in whom you believe.” (38) Whatever other piece of good news (concerning the new birth, Christ’s conquest of sin’s tyranny and promise to renew us throughout our life, the resurrection of our body and freedom from the presence of sin), much less the useful exhortations that we may offer, the announcement that Luther here summarizes alone creates and sustains the faith that not only justifies but sanctifies as well.

Good works now may be freely performed for God and neighbors without any fear of punishment or agony over the mixed motives of each act. Because of justification in Christ, even our good works can be “saved,” not in order to improve either God’s lot or our own, but our neighbor’s. As Calvin explains,<blockquote> But if, freed from this severe requirement of the law, or rather from the entire rigor of the law, they hear themselves called with fatherly gentleness by God, they will cheerfully and with great eagerness answer, and follow his leading. To sum up: Those bound by the yoke of the law are like servants assigned certain tasks for each day by their masters. These servants think they have accomplished nothing and dare not appear before their masters unless they have fulfilled the exact measure of their tasks. But sons, who are more generously and candidly treated by their fathers, do not hesitate to offer them incomplete and half-done and even defective works, trusting that their obedience and readiness of mind will be accepted by their fathers, even though they have not quite achieved what their fathers intended. Such children ought we to be, firmly trusting that our services will be approved by our most merciful Father, however small, rude, and imperfect these may be. . . . And we need this assurance in no slight degree, for without it we attempt everything in vain. (39) </blockquote> “Because of justification,” adds Ames, “the defilement of good works does not prevent their being accepted and rewarded by God.” (40)

Not only does such a view properly ground works in faith, it also frees believers to love and serve their neighbors apart from the motive of gaining or fear of losing divine favor. It liberates us for a world-embracing activism that is deeply conscious that although our love and service contribute nothing to God and his evaluation of our persons, they are, however feebly, half-heartedly, and imperfectly performed, means through which God cares for creation.

Even with the medieval terminology, Reformed theology can maintain the following:<blockquote> The renewal is not a mere supplement, an appendage, to the salvation given in justification. The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on this justification. There is no contrast between justification as act of God and sanctification as act of man. The fact that Christ is our sanctification is not exclusive of, but inclusive of, a faith which clings to him alone in all of life. Faith is the pivot on which everything revolves. Faith, though not itself creative, preserves us from autonomous self-sanctification and moralism. (41) </blockquote> The real question, says Berkouwer, is whether justification is sufficient to ground all of the blessings communicated in our union with Christ. “The same Catechism [Heidelberg, Lord's Day 24] which denies us even a partial righteousness of our own mentions the earnest purpose with which believers begin to live” according to all the commandments. <blockquote> It is this beginning which has its basis solely in justification by faith. . . . It is not true that sanctification simply succeeds justification. Lord’s Day 31, which discusses the keys of the kingdom, teaches that the kingdom is opened and shut by proclaiming “to believers, one and all, that, whenever they receive the promise of the gospel by a true faith, all their sins are really forgiven them.” This “whenever” illustrates the continuing relevancy of the correlation between faith and justification. . . . The purpose of preaching the ten commandments, too, is that believers may “become the more earnest in seeking remission of sins and righteousness in Christ” [Heidelberg Catechism, Question 115]. . . . Hence there is never a stretch along the way of salvation where justification drops out of sight. (42) </blockquote> “Genuine sanctification-let it be repeated-stands or falls with this continued orientation toward justification and the remission of sins.” (43) When we talk about sanctification, we do not leave justification behind. “We are not here concerned with a transition from theory to practice. It is not as if we should proceed from a faith in justification to the realities of sanctification; for we might as truly speak of the reality of justification and our faith in sanctification.” (44) Paul teaches that believers are “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:2, 30; 6:11; 1 Thess. 5:23; cf. Acts 20:32; 26:18). As Bavinck puts it, “Many indeed acknowledge that we are justified by the righteousness of Christ, but seem to think that-at least they act as if-they must be sanctified by a holiness they themselves have acquired.” (45)

“The apostle Paul,” Berkouwer writes, “preaches holiness with repetitive fervor, but in no way does he compromise his unequivocal declaration: ‘For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified’ (1 Cor. 2:2).”<blockquote>Not for a moment would he do violence to the implications of that confession. Hence in every exhortation he must be relating his teaching to the cross of Christ. From this center all lines radiate outward-into the life of cities and villages, of men and women, of Jews and Gentiles, into families, youth, and old age, into conflict and disaffection, into immorality and drunkenness. If we would keep this center, as well as the softer and harder lines flowing from it, in true perspective, we must be thoroughly aware that in shifting from justification to sanctification we are not withdrawing from the sphere of faith. We are not here concerned with a transition from theory to practice. It is not as if we should proceed from a faith in justification to the realities of sanctification; for we might as truly speak of the reality of justification and our faith in sanctification. (46) </blockquote>Thus Berkouwer finds it “incomprehensible” that the Reformation view could have ever been criticized as having no bearing on sanctification or the life of holiness. It has everything to do with it because it brings everything back to faith in Christ. (47)

Therefore, sanctification is not a human project supplementing the divine project of justification, nor a process of negotiating the causal relations between free will and infused grace, but the impact of God’s justifying Word on every aspect of human life. It is time to get the horse before the cart again, first of all so that the church can once again be a place where God’s saving work will be known and experienced, and also for that genuine personal and corporate renewal that can only arise out of the continual wonder of the gospel: God’s free justification of the ungodly-even Christians.