The Upper Register Blog

What is the righteousness that is imputed to the elect in justification?

Option 1

Some say it the righteousness of Jesus himself, that is, his lifelong moral perfection and obedience to the law. There are good arguments for this view.

First, it is not enough that we have a substitute who bears the curse brought upon us for our violation of the moral law; we also need a substitute who obeys the moral law in our place in order that we might be “righteous before God” (Rom 2:13) and thus have a positive right and title to eternal life (”justification that brings life,” Rom 5:18 [NIV]).

Second, Paul relies heavily on Gen 15:6 for his teaching on justification (Rom 4:3-11; Gal 3:6), focusing particularly on the verb “it was reckoned” and the noun “righteousness” (ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ εἰς δικαιοσύνην). Note that Paul changes the passive into the active form*, supplies the implicit subject (”God”) and paraphrases it as “God credits righteousness” (ὁ θεὸς λογίζεται δικαιοσύνην, Rom 4:6). [*Technically, it is middle in form, but active in meaning.] Paul also speaks of “the righteousness of/from God” (Rom 1:17; 3:21-22; 2 Cor 5:21; Phil 3:9), “the righteousness of faith” (Rom 4:13; 9:30; 10:6) and “the free gift of righteousness” (Rom 5:17). This language of “righteousness” seems to indicate that in Christ we have something more than the forgiveness of sins.

Third, the Adam-Christ typology of Rom 5:12-21 and 1 Cor 15:20-22, 45 seems to suggest that the obedience that Adam failed to render to God as the natural and federal head of the human race has now been supplied by the Second Adam. Where Adam disobeyed and brought condemnation and death upon his seed, Christ has obeyed and brought justification and life to his “seed,” that is, all those who are “in Christ” (1 Cor 15:22) or who “belong to Christ” (1 Cor 15:23).

Option 2

However, when asked, “What is the righteousness that is imputed to the elect in justification?” others answer differently. They say it is a righteous status that God legally confers on (or imputes to) the believer on the basis of the atonement, with the moral perfection of Christ as the necessary precondition qualifying him to offer himself as a sacrifice. There are good arguments for this view as well.

First, Paul never explicitly says that the righteousness of Christ, or his lifelong perfection and obedience to the moral law, is imputed to the elect.

Second, by contrast, Paul does repeatedly say that we are justified “by his blood” (Rom 5:9), “by the death of his Son” (Rom 5:10), that righteousness comes through the cross (Gal 2:21) and resurrection (Rom 4:25), and so on. The passages that mention Christ’s obedience (Rom 5:19; Phil 2:8; Heb 5:8) are probably referring to the obedience of Christ in going to the cross, as the immediate context suggests (e.g., “one act of righteousness,” Rom 5:18; “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross,” Phil 2:8; “he learned obedience through what he suffered,” Heb 5:8).

Third, the passages which speak of Christ’s sinlessness explicitly recall the Levitical requirement that a sacrificial animal must be “without blemish” before it can be sacrificed (Heb 9:14; 1 Pet 1:19), thus indicating that the sinlessness of Christ was what qualified him to be the perfect and final sacrifice for sin, not that his sinlessness is imputed to our account.

The truth in both options

Both options are credible. All of the above arguments are weighty in my mind. One set of arguments cannot be easily dismissed or suppressed in favor of the other set.

To begin with, we cannot deny the force of the arguments in support of Option 2. Just stand back and take a look at the whole teaching of Scripture. The emphasis is not on Christ’s own moral perfection and sinlessness being imputed to the elect; the emphasis is on the atoning death of Christ. That is so obvious it hardly needs to be stated. What is the theme of the saints in heaven? Worthy is the Lamb that was slain! What is Paul’s boast? That he determines to know nothing except Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 2:2; cp. Gal 6:14). The fact that Jesus was morally perfect is clearly taught in the Scriptures, but it is not the heart-beat of the church’s worship. It is hardly mentioned when the New Testament explains the redemptive work of Christ. The repeated formula is that “Christ died for our sins.” The resurrection is also sometimes mentioned, indicating that God’s verdict of judgment against Christ has been reversed, thus indicating that the judgment against us (borne by Christ) has been accepted. But the emphasis is on the saving power of the death of Christ.

Now, lest anyone think I have abandoned the traditional doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, let me say that we also cannot ignore the arguments in support of Option 1. It is not enough to have our bad record expunged; we also need a positive righteousness in the sight of God if we are to have a right and title to eternal life. This is Paul’s particular contribution to the New Testament interpretation of Christ’s atoning death. Why does Paul repeatedly use the language of “righteousness” and “justification” (which, remember, is merely the verb form, meaning “to declare and treat someone as righteous”) if he merely wanted to say that through Christ’s death our sins are forgiven? The New Testament writers know how to speak of “forgiveness” when they want to, using words like ἄφεσις and its cognates. Even Paul speaks of forgiveness as part of justification in Rom 4:7-8, but he does not reduce justification to forgiveness. His three-point outline of the gospel is: (1) God demands righteousness (Rom 2:13); (2) tragically, because of Adam’s sin, there is none righteous, no not one (Rom 3:10-20); (3) but now, apart from our moral efforts, a supernatural righteousness from God has been revealed in the cross of Christ, received as a gift, by faith alone (Rom 3:21-26). The gospel is that we are “righteous” before God, not by works, but by faith (Rom 1:16-17; Hab 2:4). This, for Paul, is something greater than God not counting our sins against us.

How, then, do we resolve the dilemma?

I believe the best resolution to the dilemma is to define the righteousness of Christ in a covenantal context. The righteousness that is imputed to us is Christ’s obedience to the point of death (Phil 2:8; Rom 5:17-19) within the context of the pactum salutis or covenant of redemption. The obedience of Christ is not a separate phase of Christ’s life prior to his death but the totality of Christ’s voluntary submission to the Father’s will, beginning with his incarnation and humiliation, and climaxing in his act of laying down his life for us on the cross. Since this obedience took place within the context of a covenant (incidentally, the covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son was a covenant of works for Christ), the obedience of Christ to the point of death is acknowledged and rewarded by the Father, thus constituting a covenantal “righteousness” that is then imputed to the elect. So it is not the moral perfection or obedience of Christ itself that is imputed, but the righteousness that arises from the Father’s recognition of the Son’s fulfillment of the terms of the pactum salutis. But since the Son’s fulfillment of the pactum salutis included his lifelong keeping of the moral law, this too is included in the obedience of Christ, not merely as that which qualified him to be the final sacrifice for sins, but neither simply as the righteousness imputed to us, as if it were a straightforward transfer from one bank account to another. Rather, it is the total obedience of Christ, from the incarnation to the cross, that fulfills the covenant and which, with the Father’s approval and vindication, achieves a covenantal status of “righteousness” that is imputed to the elect in justification.

I would suggest that it is precisely because of the Father’s role in sending the Son on his mission as the Second Adam, as well as the Father’s role of recognizing, approving, vindicating, and rewarding Christ’s obedience once his mission was completed (the reward being granted at the resurrection and exaltation of Christ), that the righteousness that is imputed to the elect is not called “the righteousness of Christ” but “the righteousness of God.” My covenantal interpretation also explains why Paul says that Christ “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25). God’s act of vindicating Christ played a necessary role in constituting the covenantal righteousness that is now reckoned to our account by grace.

Unidentified Scripture quotes are from the ESV.

Check out this great post by Paul Helm showing the structural similarities between Richard Baxter and N. T. Wright on justification.

HT: Between Two Worlds

Some additional thoughts regarding my incipient dissertation.

NPP scholars often cite verses where the terms “righteousness” and “faithfulness” (or “salvation”) occur in parallelism. Such verses are common in the OT. Here are just three of the texts that can be cited:

Ps 143:1: “Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications! Answer me in Your faithfulness, in Your righteousness!”

Isa 56:1: “My salvation is about to come; and my righteousness is about to be revealed.”

Hos 2:19-20: “I will betroth you to me forever; yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in lovingkindness and in compassion, and I will betroth you to me in faithfulness.”

Those following in the Cremer line would then argue that the term “righteousness” can itself denote “salvation” or “covenant faithfulness,” and that this OT background has influenced Paul’s usage. On this reasoning, Dunn and Wright argue that “the righteousness of God” means “God’s saving activity as an expression of God’s covenant faithfulness.”

But consider the poetic parallelism in Isaiah 3:8:

“Jerusalem has stumbled,
and Judah has fallen.”

Clearly the parallelism here does not mean that “Jerusalem” and “Judah” are synonymous terms. It only indicates that there is a close relationship – Jerusalem is the main city within Judah. But it would be a mistake for a lexicographer to write an entry on “Jerusalem” in which he cited this verse as if it proved that in some cases the word “Jerusalem” means ”Judah.” 

Likewise, faithfulness is an important sub-category within righteousness. As Mark Seifrid argues in Justification and Variegated Nomism, faithfulness is covenant-righteousness. The way God is “righteous” within the terms of a (promissory) covenant is by being faithful to keep his promises and delivering his people. But this does not mean that the lexical denotation of “righteousness” is “faithfulness to a promissory covenant.”

Just as everyone who is in Jerusalem is in Judah but not everyone who is in Judah is in Jerusalem, so all instances of faithfulness to a promissory covenant may be termed ”righteousness,” but not all ”righteousness” is faithfulness to a promissory covenant.

This is important, because von Rad argued that “righteousness” (when applied to God) in the OT never has a penal meaning. Von Rad (following Cremer) thought God’s righteousness always means God’s saving activity as an expression of his covenant faithfulness.

But von Rad’s claim is easy to disprove. For example, Psalm 7:11:  “God is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day.”

Hebrew parallelism does not always mean that the two members of the parallelism are synonymous. The relationship can be more nuanced. In this case, “righteousness” is the broader category, of which “faithfulness” is a non-exhaustive subset. God is righteous when he keeps his promises. He is also righteous when he judges the wicked.

Thus, when we encounter Paul’s phrase “the righteousness of God,” we cannot assume that it means God’s covenant faithfulness. It could. But it could also have other meanings. The OT usage is not uniform. How do we decide which OT passages Paul has in mind? As Francis Watson argues in Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith, a good place to start would be to look at the OT passages Paul himself quotes when using the phrase.

The phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ occurs several times in Paul’s letters, but the key occurrence is the first: Romans 1:17 (together with 3:21ff):

(a) δικαιοσύνη γὰρ θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ ἀποκαλύπτεται ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν, (b) καθὼς γέγραπται, Ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται.

“(a) For in it [viz., the gospel], the righteousness of God is revealed by faith to faith; (b) as it is written, ‘But the one who is righteous by faith shall live.’” [translation mine]

I’ve emphasized the words “righteousness” and “righteous” because this is the key to understanding the verse. Once the connection between the two parts of the verse — (a) and (b) — is grasped, it is difficult to see how the NPP interpretation can be made to fit the sense of the verse as a whole. Whatever “the δικαιοσύνη of God” means, it must relate in some way to the quotation of Hab 2:4 concerning the one who is δίκαιος by faith, since Paul quotes Hab 2:4 in support of his claim in the first half of the verse. Clearly, Paul is relating the term δίκαιος (righteous) in 17b back to the term δικαιοσύνη (righteousness) in 17a.

And how does part a (”for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed”) relate to part b (Hab 2:4)? Paul seems to be saying that the gospel reveals the righteousness of God because it reveals a way for sinners to be δίκαιος before God by faith (and, as he will explain later, ”by faith” means ”not by works”).

If “the righteousness of God” is God’s saving activity or God’s covenant faithfulness, it is difficult to see how this relates to the concept of being δίκαιος by faith (Hab 2:4). Why would Paul cite Hab 2:4 to support the notion that God keeps his promises and saves his people? These things are true but not germane. The logical connection between 17a and 17b on the Cremer/NPP view is strained. I doubt Paul intended to be heard as saying that in the gospel is revealed the covenant faithfulness of God, just as it is written, he who is faithful by faith shall live.

Against the NPP, I would argue that “the righteousness of God” refers to the righteousness of Christ which is received as a gift, by faith. It is not a divine attribute or activity, but a gift from God, as Rom 5:17 and Phil 3:9 make clear. Also Rom 10:3 and Phil 3:9 contrast “the righteousness of God” with one’s own righteousness, thus indicating that it is a righteousness that comes from God. Thus, I interpret the genitive “of God” as a genitivus auctoris, not a subjective genitive. This is the traditional Reformation view, and it also has roots in the Greek and Latin fathers.

As I’ve mentioned before, I passed my comps last August and now I’m entering the dissertation phase of my Ph.D. work at Fuller. When I last blogged about this, I said that I wanted to do something in the whole area of the New Perspective on Paul (NPP), but that I needed time to do more reading and narrow down my topic to one particular aspect of the NPP. I think I’ve finally zeroed in on my topic, and I will explain what it is in a minute. But first, let me say that I’m convinced that the NPP is fundamentally a distortion of Paul’s gospel. Although the Reformation tradition certainly is not perfect and has areas that need sharpening and refinement in light of modern biblical scholarship, I am in agreement with Stephen Westerholm when he famously said that any NT scholar who thinks they have nothing to learn from Martin Luther should consider a career in metallurgy. The Old Perspective on Paul is not without its imperfections and blind spots at certain points, but it is far closer to the truth than the New Perspective.

What is needed is a rehabilitation (and, where necessary, refinement) of the Old Perspective on Paul on a solid foundation of painstaking, objective exegetical labor informed by deep knowledge of Paul’s first century Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts. As I have been immersing myself in the literature of the NPP, I have come to think that there are two main issues that need to be addressed if we are to accomplish this goal. First, we must answer E. P. Sanders’s claim that the Judaism of Paul’s context was not a legalistic religion that taught salvation by works of merit. Second, we must investigate the notion, defended by James Dunn and N. T. Wright, that Paul’s “righteousness” language (verb, noun, and adjective) is informed primarily by a relational or covenantal significance due to its origin within an OT/Jewish matrix.  

Some very good work has already been done in response to Sanders and critiquing his notion that the Judaism of Paul’s day was “covenantal nomism” (e.g., Elliott, Das, Gathercole, and many others), but to my knowledge little has been done on the second issue which has more to do with lexical semantics. Therefore, I have chosen to tackle the second problem by writing a dissertation that will subject the Hebraic/relational interpretation of Paul’s “righteousness” terminology to critical examination.

The Hebraic/relational view goes back to a seminal treatise by Hermann Cremer published in 1899 (second edition, 1900) titled Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre im Zusammenhange ihrer geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen. I translate this as The Pauline Doctrine of Justification in the Context of its Historical Presuppositions. By “historical presuppositions,” Cremer means primarily the usage of “righteousness” in the Old Testament and in post-biblical Jewish literature. Cremer was one of the first to argue that Paul’s usage of “righteousness” is not governed by standard Greek usage but by its usage in the OT, where it has a relational or covenantal meaning as opposed to the alleged abstract, ethical meaning in secular Greek. The idea is that “righteousness” does not signify conformity to an abstract norm but the fulfilling of one’s obligations as defined within a particular relationship. When applied to “the righteousness of God,” God’s righteousness is his faithfulness to the covenant. In German theology, scholars tend to speak of God’s Gemeinschaftstreue (faithfulness to the community, i.e., Israel) or his Bundestreue (covenant faithfulness). 

Cremer further argued that not only does God’s righteousness refer to God’s covenant faithfulness, but that in many instances, particularly in the Psalms and Deutero-Isaiah, it refers specifically to God’s saving activity (Heilshandeln) by which he intervenes in history to redeem his people, thus fulfilling his obligations to the covenant. Taking this concept and applying it to Paul, Cremer argued that in the key Pauline texts that speak of “the righteousness of God” (Rom 1:17; 3:5, 21ff; 10:3; 2 Cor 5:21) the “of God” is a subjective genitive and that the whole phrase refers to God’s covenant faithfulness as manifested in his saving or justifying activity in Christ.

Cremer’s revolutionary argument has had a deep and lasting impact on theological and biblical studies throughout the 20th century. His ideas were well received by OT scholars, in particular Gerhard von Rad and Walther Eichrodt, both of whom devote sections in their OT theologies to the Cremer theory. On the NT side, Adolf Schlatter wrote a commentary on Romans titled The Righteousness of God (1935) which relied on Cremer’s interpretation. The next major appropriation of Cremer’s theory by a major NT scholar was the brilliant contribution of Ernst Käsemann in his famous 1961 essay, “‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul.” Käsemann argued that the righteousness of God must not be reduced to the gift-aspect, which is the dominant theme in Luther’s interpretation, i.e., the gift of imputed righteousness given to the believer. Rather, Käsemann spoke of “the power-character of the gift” (der Machtcharakter der Gabe) and argued that the righteousness of God is his covenant faithfulness, not merely to Israel but to the entire creation, by which he engages in his saving activity to reclaim the world for himself and to bring it under his lordship. Salvation is not merely a reception of a divine gift but a change of lordship (Herrschaftswechsel) by which we are transferred out of the lordship of sin under the reign of the first Adam into the lordship-realm of Christ the second Adam. Justification and sanctification are therefore indistinguishable, merely two sides of the same coin.

All of this flows from his fundamental presupposition that the phrase “the righteousness of God” was a technical term or fixed formula in apocalyptic Judaism that Paul radicalized and universalized in light of the Christ event. Käsemann himself did not spend a whole lot of energy trying to prove this point, but his student, Peter Stuhlmacher, filled in the lacuna by writing his dissertation on the subject in 1965 (second edition, 1966), although Stuhlmacher would later admit that he had overstated his claim that δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ was a fixed formula. 

There are many other lesser scholars to be noted along the way, but I think you get the picture. There is a more-or-less direct line from Cremer to Käsemann to the NPP as articulated by Dunn and Wright. There are, of course, some important differences where the NPP takes the Cremer theory in new directions. For example, Dunn and Wright not only argue that “the righteousness of God” is his covenant faithfulness, but they interpret the verb “to justify” to mean “to declare someone to be a member of the covenant.” This is a new application or extension of the Cremer theory but it is perfectly consistent with it. Furthermore, both Dunn and Wright have added the new twist that “the works of the law” refers to Jewish boundary markers. In so doing, they interpret Paul’s slogan that “one is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Christ” to mean that one is not reckoned as a member of the covenant people by the badge of Jewish practices. This is what leads the NPP to reinterpret Paul’s Rechtfertigungslehre as a fundamentally social doctrine calling the church to be radically inclusive.

(In my view this is dangerous because it denies or at least downplays the soteriological and eschatological significance of justification as God’s act - on the basis of Christ’s atoning obedience unto death - of reckoning individual sinners as righteous in God’s sight and thus worthy of attaining eternal life in the age to come. In the NPP, and despite recent attempts to have their cake and eat it too, sociology and ecclesiology have trumped soteriology and eschatology. The fundamental human problem has switched from guilt before a holy God to the problems of racism, social exclusion, and ecumenical relations. This plays right into the hands of the renewed social gospel that we are now seeing in the emergent community.)

My dissertation, then, will be a critique of the Hebraic/relational interpretation of Paul’s righteousness terminology from Cremer to the NPP, with a special focus on the underlying lexical semantics of the question. Can the word “righteousness” mean “covenant faithfulness”? Can the word “to justify” mean “to reckon someone as a member of the covenant”? I don’t think they can bear these meanings, and that, in fact, the traditional understanding does a much better job of explaining all of the data, including the usage of these terms in Paul’s OT and Jewish context.

I have spent most of my time discussing the issue of Adamic merit in the pre-fall arrangement. But of course we are vitally interested in Adamic merit not for its own sake but in relation to Christ’s merit. The key is that, for the sake of systematic coherence and internal consistency, merit must be defined in terms of a covenant of works.

Just as the covenant of works between God and Adam is the legal foundation of Adam’s merit, so the covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son (the pactum salutis) is the legal foundation of the merit of Christ. Merit must never be defined in abstract terms, as if a specific deed could have an intrinsic value in God’s eyes, apart from a covenantal arrangement that preceded the deed. Merit is an inherently covenantal concept.

Christ’s obedience and sufferings in the flesh, if considered absolutely and in themselves, would not have been good, or meritorious, nor would they have brought glory to God. Of what possible intrinsic value would it be to cause an innocent person to suffer the penal sanction and curse of the law? However, when considered not abstractly but covenantally, that is, when considered in the context of the eternal covenant of redemption, the obedience of Christ has a particular purpose in terms of that covenant, and so in light of that covenantal purpose, the obedience of Christ is good and meritorious and brings glory to God.

To paraphrase John Owen (whom Alan Gomes of Talbot Seminary calls ”the hammer of the Socinians”), in his awesome treatise defending the atonement, Vindiciae Evangelicae (1655):  This covenant and compact between the Father and the Son is the great foundation of the merit and satisfaction of Christ. Here lies the ground of the righteousness of what Christ did. Paul tells us what merit is in Romans 4:4:  “Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due.” God having proposed unto Christ a law for obedience, with promises of such and such rewards upon condition of fulfilling the obedience required, and Christ having performed that obedience, Christ’s wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. Christ righteously merited the reward. He deserves it. That he should be exalted, that he should be the head of his church, that he should see his seed, that he should justify, save, sanctify and glorify them – all of these things were promised to him, and all were merited by him. (Works, vol. 12, pp. 507-8)

One of may favorite chapters in the Westminster Confession is the chapter on Christ the Mediator (ch. VIII). Note in particular paragraphs 1 and 5:

1. It pleased God, in his eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only begotten Son, to be the Mediator between God and man, the Prophet, Priest, and King, the Head and Savior of his church, the Heir of all things, and Judge of the world: unto whom he did from all eternity give a people, to be his seed, and to be by him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified …

5. The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience, and sacrifice of himself, which he, through the eternal Spirit, once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of his Father; and purchased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him.

The merit of Christ, then, has purchased your justification, that is, your right and title to eternal life. It is so easy to forget this, and to think that justification is simply having one’s sins forgiven and being restored to a right relationship with God. This is true, but it is only half the story. Justification means “being declared and treated as righteous.” And how does God treat the righteous? He grants them entrance into eschatological glory (Rom 2:6-13). As Second Temple Judaism uniformly taught, only the righteous are worthy of obtaining a share in the world to come. Thus, Paul’s teaching that we are righteous in God’s sight by faith in Christ, not by the doing what the law requires, is a radical teaching. It takes Second Temple Judaism and turns it on its head. Yes, we must be righteous to obtain a share in the world to come, but the righteousness by which we are qualified to do so is not “the righteousness of the law” (the righteousness that comes from obeying the law) but “the righteousness of faith” (the righteousness of Christ, achieved by his obedience unto death, and received by faith as a gift).

That this imputed righteousness is the basis for our right to eternal life is taught by Paul repeatedly:

“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God,” that is, we exult in the confident assurance (”hope”) that we will share in “the [eschatological] glory of God” (Rom 5:1-2 NASB).

“Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life [dikaiosis zoes] for all men” (Rom 5:18 NIV).

“If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom 8:10 translation mine).

“… and may be found [at the last day, before God’s judgment throne] in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:9-11 NASB).

“… giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light” (Col 1:12 NASB).

Earlier, I quoted Francis Turretin as a bad example, but here he is on the right side. In spite of what I consider to be his error in watering down Adamic merit, he is crystal clear in affirming Christ’s heaven-earning merit:

The obedience of Christ has a twofold efficacy, satisfactory and meritorious; the former by which we are freed from the punishments incurred by sin; the latter by which (through the remission of sin) a right to eternal life and salvation is acquired for us. For as sin has brought upon us two evils - the loss of life and exposure to death - so redemption must procure the two opposite benefits - deliverance from death and a right to life, escape from hell and an entrance into heaven. (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 2, p. 447)

And Jonathan Edwards:

I would explain what we mean by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness … By that righteousness being imputed to us, is meant no other than this, that that righteousness of Christ is accepted for us, and admitted instead of that perfect inherent righteousness that ought to be in ourselves: Christ’s perfect obedience shall be reckoned to our account so that we shall have the benefit of it, as though we had performed it ourselves: and so we suppose that a title to eternal life is given us as the reward of this righteousness. (Quoted by Charles Hodge in his Systematic Theology, vol. 3, p. 148)

Isn’t that wonderful! Christ has merited heaven for you as if you had merited it yourself. Here’s the practical, assurance-heightening pay-off of all this intricate discussion of merit. If Christ has fulfilled the covenant of works on our behalf by his meritorious obedience to the point of death, then the eschatological reward offered in the covenant of works itself is guaranteed for us. We are no longer on probation under that covenant. It is not unclear whether or not we will be accepted before a righteous and holy God. It not up in the air whether or not we will be saved at the last day.

Your judicial standing before God – your justification – doesn’t depend on how well you are doing in being an obedient Christian. In other words, your justification doesn’t depend on your sanctification. It depends completely on the fact that Jesus has sufficiently obeyed God fully in your place! If you have come to the point in your life where you are no longer pretending that you are a good person. If you have come to the place where you now realize just how sinful you are in the sight of a holy God, and if you can say from the bottom of your heart that you are trusting in Christ and Christ alone for your righteousness before God, then you can have full assurance that you will go to heaven. As Luther rightly said, you are simul justus et peccator. In other words, you can have the assurance of heaven even though you continue to struggle with besetting sin.

In my final post, I’ll discuss how Christ has not only merited the right and title to eternal life, but our sanctification as well. Let no man think that the merit of Christ leads to license for sin. On the contrary, it is the only basis for true Christian obedience.

Scott Clark has a helpful post today:  For Those Just Tuning In:  What Is the Federal Vision?

“Here’s a gift and here’s what you have to do to keep it” isn’t good news for sinners who cannot do “their part,” not even with the help of grace. If “grace and cooperation with grace” is such good news, why not skip the FV and simply become Roman Catholic? Honestly? That’s been the consistent Roman doctrine since the early middle ages. It’s been the official Roman doctrine since the session 6 of the Council of Trent.

According to the Reformed understanding of Scripture, Jesus has kept the law for all his people fulfilling the promise he made to his Father.  Christ’s obedience in fulfilling Adam’s duty is the basis for God’s declaration to and about all those who trust in Christ alone and in his finished work: you are righteous. That’s good news and that’s the biblical covenant theology and doctrine of justification. The covenant of grace isn’t just another covenant of works with a little grace drizzled on top. No, the covenant of grace is really gracious. It’s free. You can’t earn anything with God. It’s unconditional. In justification, faith isn’t trusting and obeying. It’s only trusting in Christ and in his finished work for sinners.

Yes, we must obey God’s holy law, but we do so by grace and out of gratitude and only as evidence of the new life that God has given us in Christ by grace (HC 86-129). If we don’t get our covenant theology and our doctrine of justification right, however (HC 21, 60), we have no basis for a Christian life and we will find ourselves trapped again in the very sort of legalism from which the Reformation (and before then, the Apostle Paul!) set us free.

See also his links to resources responding to the FV from the standpoint of historic Reformed theology.

Denny Burk’s comments here. He concludes:

To say that the basis of the final judgment is instrumentally and exclusively good works is to render God’s grace null and void. The interpretation twists the ordinary meaning of so many Pauline texts that it’s difficult to imagine VanLandingham’s thesis winning many converts at all.

See my review here.

D. A. Carson has written a good review in RBL of Chris VanLandingham’s book, Judgment & Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul (Hendrickson, 2006). I’ve read the book and found it to be helpful and disappointing at the same time.

VanLandingham is helpful in responding to E. P. Sanders’s conception of Judaism as a religion characterized by ”covenantal nomism,” that is, the notion that nomism (Law keeping) is subordinate to the covenant (God’s gracious election of Israel). On Sanders’s construction, most Jews will be eschatologically saved by means of this “covenant/election” at the day of judgment except for those that consciously opt out by apostasy. If they sin, that is to be regretted, but they will not perish as long as they repent and renew their intention to be obedient. 

VanLandingham falls into a line of recent authors such as F. Avemarie, Andrew Das, Simon Gathercole, Mark Adam Elliott, and others, who have shown the inadequacies of Sanders’s construction of Second Temple Judaism. Although these authors do not all agree in the exact nuances of their positive model for describing the soteriology of Judaism in this period, they all agree that Sanders misses or downplays the eschatological role of obedience to the Law as the central soteriological mechanism in Judaism. In other words, while Judaism was not a religion devoid of grace, and while a very important role is ascribed to “covenant/election,” most Jews ultimately believed that one must be righteous and thus obtain a favorable verdict at the day of judgment by keeping the Law, repenting when needed, and recommitting oneself with even more zeal to the Law. By an examination of many Jewish texts like Enoch, the DSS, and so on, Van Landingham reminds us of the crucial role played by actual Law-keeping in Jewish soteriology. It is not sufficient, as Sanders would have it, to have the intention to obey. Judaism taught that one must be a Law-keeper in order to be eschatologically vindicated as “righteous” and thus in some sense worthy of entering eternal life.

Even here, though, VanLandingham is not totally helpful. For example, he goes too far in attributing this works-based soteriology to the religion of Israel as found in the pages of the Old Testament (e.g., even the Abraham narrative!). He even uses the terms “earn” and “merit” in this connection. Such language, when properly circumscribed so as to recognize the role of repentance and atonement, may be legitimate in describing the religion of Judaism in this period, but it must be used cautiously so as not to give the impression that Judaism denied the possibility of forgiveness and mercy granted to those who are repentant and who have re-committed themselves to Law-keeping.

Whatever value we may see in his critique of Sanders, when it comes to VanLandingham’s interpretation of Paul, he becomes doubly disappointing and, to be blunt, even shocking in his radical deviation from the Pauline gospel as normally understood by Protestants. He thinks Paul essentially agreed with the works-based soteriology of his Jewish contemporaries! Appealing to Rom 2:6-16, he believes that Paul taught that eschatological deliverance from wrath and entrance into the age to come will be decided on the basis of one’s obedience or works. VanLandingham has little to say about the many passages in Paul’s letters (e.g., Rom 9:30-10:13; Gal 1:13-17; 2:15-21; Phil 3:1-11, to name just a few) where Paul seems to place his soteriology of grace in stark contrast with the works-based soteriology of his Jewish contemporaries. 

How does VanLandingham get around the passages where Paul teaches that a person is not justified by works, you ask? He explains these by redefining the verb ”justify” to refer to the initial act by which a person is forgiven of their past (not future) sins and is also made ontologically or ethically righteous by the Spirit. On this interpretation, Paul’s ”not by works” slogan simply means that a person cannot receive this initial transformation by doing good works but only by faith in Christ and by the Spirit. Once initially transformed, however, a person must continue to obey and persevere to the end, otherwise they will lose their salvation and perish at the day of judgment. Justification, so defined, does not secure eternal life. It only clears the past record of debt and puts one on the path of sanctification and good works necessary to obtain or even earn eternal life (again, VanLandingham is not shy about using the word “earn” in reference to the eschatological reward).

One lengthy section of the book that will need to be examined more closely is his argument, based on the LXX, that the verb “justify” means “to make righteous.” I suspect that his work relies on the previous work of John Ziesler, The Meaning of Righteousness in Paul (SNTSMS 20; Cambridge, 1972), who came to a similar conclusion, although not as extreme as VanLandingham. Ziesler argued that, “God’s saving righteousness does two things for men and does them simultaneously:  it restores their relationship with God, and it makes them new (ethical, righteous) beings” (p. 189). In coming to this conclusion, Ziesler was influenced by Käsemann. In any event, VanLandingham continues the tradition of confusing justification and sanctification, but turns it in an even more perverse direction by inserting notions of “merit” into the eschatological verdict — and this, not only in his description of the soteriology of Paul’s Jewish contemporaries, but in that of Paul himself. It just goes to show what great theological debates can hang on the lowly spadework of Greek lexicography.

Robert Godfrey and David VanDrunen have responded to Mark Garcia’s negative review of Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry. Their response covers two main issues:  (1) the question of whether there is a “pan-confessional” doctrine of justification, that is, whether the Reformed and Lutheran confessions are in basic agreement on this doctrine (Godfrey and VanDrunen answer “yes”); and (2) the question of whether justification is in some sense prior to sanctification (Godfrey and VanDrunen again answer “yes”). 

The first question is largely a question of historical theology in which the historians slug it out on their terrain. Garcia reads Calvin as much more critical of Lutheranism than Godfrey and VanDrunen. Although I disagree with the post-Reformation Lutheran dogmaticians who placed justification prior to union with Christ in their ordo salutis, I am suspicious of “Reformed” people who dislike Luther. Such people tend to be legalists who are afraid of what they perceive to be Luther’s antinomianism. I have no sympathy for those who want to read Calvin and Luther as if they were on totally different theological planets. Did they disagree on certain issues like Christology and the sacraments? Do we Reformed people disagree with the post-Reformation Lutheran dogmaticians’ placement of justification outside of and prior to union with Christ? Of course, but these disagreements pale in comparison with our agreement on sola fide and the manner in which justification is the engine that drives the train of sanctification. The best Reformed writers are the ones who have drunk deeply at the fountain of Luther.  

This leads me to the second question:  Is justification in some sense prior to sanctification? Garcia denies this, and he does so by appealing to a particular understanding of union with Christ. On his view, union with Christ is the matrix out of which all of the benefits of salvation flow. So far, no problem. But then he concludes from this that, because of union with Christ, there can be no logical prioritization within those benefits. This is where Godfrey and VanDrunen helpfully point out that Garcia has made the unwarranted assumption that union with Christ excludes any ordering in the ordo salutis. They write:

Union with Christ and the priority of justification to sanctification are not competing doctrines, but complementary doctrines … A sound biblical and Reformed understanding of union with Christ must include and support the idea that justification is prior to sanctification in the ordo salutis in a very important sense.

I think Lane Tipton is correct:  within the orbit of union with Christ, there are two main types of benefits - forensic and transformative. It is dangerous to place justification outside of union with Christ, otherwise we miss the very thing that we want to protect:  the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, which takes place by virtue of our forensic union with Christ, or to put it another way, by means of our being represented by Christ in his role as our federal head under the terms of the Father’s covenant of works with the Son (=the pactum salutis). But in saying this, we can still emphasize the priority of justification to sanctification, precisely because Christ’s objective work of atonement (the totality of his vicarious obedience in both its active and passive dimensions and including his resurrection-vindication) is the legal ground for the gift of the Spirit and all of the transformative benefits that we receive in union with Christ. 

The evidence is overwhelming that Paul viewed justification as something that takes place in union with Christ, not outside of it or before it. Here are just a few of the explicit statements in Paul’s writings that link justification and union with Christ:

“Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1)

“I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in him” (1 Cor 1:4-5) 

“By his doing you are in Christ Jesus, who has become to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor 1:30)

“He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor 5:21)

“But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ …” (Gal 2:17)

“Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph 1:3)

“I count all things to be loss … and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (Phil 3:8-9)

“… his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the remission/release [aphesis] of sins” (Col 1:13-14)

Godfrey and VanDrunen’s response to Garcia is worth reading in its entirety. The first part where they deal with historical theology and the debate over “pan-confessionalism” is pretty technical, but things get really good in the second section dealing with the priority of justification in relation to sanctification. They have some good quotes from Calvin. The also make some excellent exegetical points (Luke 7:47; Gal 5:13; Rom 6:14; 7:6) showing that we can only pursue sanctification when we have first received full assurance of our justification. I’ll close with another quote from their response:

Briefly put, then, one key problem with denying a priority of justification to sanctification is that it makes sanctification something other than what it is. The very character and identity of the Christian life are at stake. As Calvin has stated, when discussing the importance of justification, “For unless you first of all grasp what your relationship to God is, and the nature of his judgment concerning you, you have neither a foundation on which to establish your salvation nor one on which to build piety toward God.” [Institutes 3.11.1] There is such a thing as the moral life for the non-justified, non-Christian person. He is constantly confronted by God’s law (whether in nature or in Scripture) and everything he does is in anticipation of a judgment to come. His moral life can be nothing other than a striving by his own efforts to be right with God. For the Christian, the moral life is radically different. In his justification, the Christian has already passed through the judgment of God. He pursues holiness not in order to be right with God, but as a response to God’s gracious declaration that he already is right with him.

Amen!

I knew Lane Tipton when we were both seminary students at WSC in the early to mid 90s. In a recent helpful article, Professor Tipton argues that union with Christ is an umbrella soteriological category. But within union with Christ we must distinguish two types of benefits:  forensic/imputative (e.g., justification and adoption) and renovative/transformative (e.g., regeneration and sanctification). He then argues that these two broad types of benefits are distinct yet inseparable. (In my view, his thesis is stated most clearly on p. 48.)

Differing in some ways from post-Reformation Lutheran dogmatics, the Reformed tradition holds that justification takes place in union with Christ. This means that before we can be justified in union with Christ, Christ himself had to be justified. To provide biblical support for this important conclusion, Lane appeals to Paul’s quotation of an early Christian creed in 1 Tim 3:16 where it is affirmed that Jesus was “justified in the Spirit” (ἐδικαιώθη ἐν πνεύματι). Lane comments as follows (pp. 29-30):

The eschatology of Jesus’ resurrection sheds a great deal of light on the nature of his justification. Just as Jesus is raised to an eschatological order, never to return to the frail, provisional and transitory, so also with respect to the justifying aspect of his resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection as his justification places him as second Adam and Messiah permanently beyond probation and in full possession of eschatological righteousness.

Lane adds a footnote at this point that connects Jesus’ justification with ours (p. 30, n. 13):

Any attempt to allow the already/not-yet of justification to introduce a synthetic element into the formulation, so that covenant faithfulness or good works provide a ground for the future (second) justification, has missed the most critical point about the believer’s justification. Just as Jesus’ resurrection places him forever beyond probation as the justified second Adam and Messiah, so also believers in union with Christ are forever beyond probation and in possession of eschatological righteousness. Nothing in the not-yet can compete with the foundational gospel truth that the believer’s present justification in Christ is just as definitive and irreversible as the justification of Jesus Christ.

[Lane G. Tipton, “Union With Christ and Justification,” pages 23-49 in Justified in Christ: God’s Plan for Us in Justification, ed. K. Scott Oliphint. Ross-shire: Mentor, 2007.]

I think Lane is spot-on in his exegesis of 1 Tim 3:16 and the theological implications he draws from it. It is one of the points where, with Lane, I am happy to express my indebtedness to Richard Gaffin’s work.

I also like Lane’s critique of N. T. Wright’s view that union with Christ renders imputation unnecessary (pp. 45-48). Lane argues that Wright’s formulation is in danger of making a renovative category functionally equivalent to imputation, thus confusing the two main types of benefits which ought to be distinguished, even though they can never be separated since they both flow from union with the undivided Christ.

One final observation. I’m not sure if Lane would agree with this, but it seems to me that in this article he is blending together insights from Richard Gaffin (the emphasis on union with Christ) and Meredith Kline (Christ as second Adam who places us beyond probation). Lane studied under Kline at WSC for his Master’s work and then later with Gaffin when he was a Ph.D. student at WTS. So it’s fascinating to see him creatively blend the insights of his two teachers together. I also suspect that in recent years Gaffin himself may have inched a tad closer to Kline by distancing himself from Shepherd and more clearly affirming the irrevocable nature of justification and its grounding in the imputed righteousness of Christ. Was this, perhaps, a result of Lane’s influence on Gaffin? I don’t know; whatever the cause, we should be thankful.

Anyway, get the book. The opening chapter by Gaffin is a slightly revised selection from his recent book, By Faith, Not by Sight, where he defends his exegesis of Rom 2:13, an exegesis I disagree with, but Gaffin puts enough qualifications on it to make it within the bounds of orthodoxy.