the-heart-of-the-gospel-september-october-2003 by Modern Reformation

WHY THE FUSS? ❘ NEW PERSPECTIVE ❘ GRACE OR WORKS?

MODERN REFORMATION

THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL: PAUL’S MESSAGE OF GRACE IN GALATIANS VOLUME

12, NUMBER5 , SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003, $5.00

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THE HEART OF THE GOSPEL: PAUL’S MESSAGE OF GRACE IN GALATIANS

13 Why All the Fuss? Are we surprised that an attack on the gospel he loved and proclaimed would anger the Apostle Paul? The executive editor starts the conversation with a review of the issues. by Mark R. Talbot

18 What God Requires, Christ Provides What benefit does Christ’s death have for you? Do not only think of his substitionary atonement, the authors argue, remember also the double benefit of Christ’s death: the imputation of his righteousness. by John Piper with Justin Taylor

26 Luther on Galatians Can you ignore the law? You must, the author states, to be captivated fully by the grace of God in Christ. by David R. Andersen

31 The Law in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians How did the law function within the Judaism of Paul's day? The author helps us understand Paul's deep concern for the Galatian Christians who were led astray by explaining the nature and purpose of the law. by Donald A. Hagner Plus: Paul and Covenantal Nomism

37 Justification in Galatians: New and Old Perspectives Has traditional Protestant interpretation misunderstood Paul’s primary concern in Galatians? Have they made too much of a Western individual sensibility and ignored the social and ethical dimensions of the Christian’s covenant identity? The author guides the way back to the doctrine of justification as the central motif of Galatians. by C.E. Hill

COVER PHOTO BY CORBIS

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton

God’s Shout

Executive Editor Mark R. Talbot

n the early sixteenth century, the German reformer Martin Luther rediscovered the great good news that we stand justified before God, not at all because of anything we have done or will do, but only through our faith in what Christ has done. This rediscovery of

a message obscured by the abuses and excesses of medieval Roman Catholicism spawned the Protestant Reformation and is at the root of our current use of the word “evangelical.” The word “evangel,” Luther declared in his preface to the New Testament, “is a Greek word meaning glad tidings, good news, welcome information, a shout, or something that makes one sing and talk and rejoice.” The New Testament, he went on to say, contains God’s evangel, God’s good news, God’s “shout.” This is the joyous “shout” that we are justified before God simply by believing his promise that he will accept us as righteous because of Christ’s righteousness. The first evangelicals, by interpreting Galatians in the way that I do in our lead-off article, took that book as defending this “shout.” Indeed, this great truth that we become justified before God by faith alone (“sola fide,” as it is known in Latin) was designated during Reformation times as the doctrine on which Christ’s church either stands or falls. Lutheran theologian David R. Andersen’s piece explains why Luther thought we so easily compromise the gospel, as well as why we must resist such compromises at all costs. Yet, as Baptist pastor John Piper notes in his article, today the evangel that Paul defended in Galatians is under serious attack, in part by some who insist that they are evangelical Protestants. Piper spells out more fully exactly what God’s good news in Christ is—what God requires regarding human law-keeping, Christ provides, through becoming our substitute in two senses. Next Issue: November/December 2003: Trinity: God in Three Persons Is the doctrine of the Trinity biblical? Is it important? How can we begin to understand this mystery, which is vital to our faith? Contributors R. Scott Clark, Andrew Trotter, and Korey Maas point us in the right direction.

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He then seeks to show us how this great truth impacts every area of our lives. It is easy to be intimidated by being told that scholars have shown that what we believe is wrong. Currently, there is a group of scholars holding to what is known as “the new perspective on Paul.” These scholars claim that the traditional Protestant interpretation of Galatians is wrong. They claim that Luther misread Paul and that Paul is not as unutterably opposed to the law and Jewish law-keeping as he may at first seem. In short, they claim that our standing justified before God is indeed, at least in part, dependent on our keeping the law. If these scholars are right, then the gospel is not what great Christians like Martin Luther and John Calvin and John Bunyan and John Owen and Charles Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd-Jones thought it was. It is not the overwhelmingly good news that, from the moment we first believe, we are justified before God because of Christ. The challenge of the new perspective needs to be answered, then, by careful biblical work that shows where it is inconsistent with the message of the Scriptures. Our pieces by Presbyterian New Testament scholars Donald A. Hagner and C. E. Hill and Reformed theologian Michael Horton sketch the beginnings of such an answer. We hope that these pieces will help all of those who are willing to work their way through them to be convinced, once again, of the glorious good news—the “shout,” as it were, that we will make again on that last day before the throne of the Lamb who was slain (Rev. 5).

Managing Editor Eric Landry Alliance Council Gerald Bray ❘ D. A. Carson Mark Dever ❘ J. Ligon Duncan, III W. Robert Godfrey ❘ John D. Hannah Michael Horton ❘ Rosemary Jensen Ken Jones ❘ John Nunes J. A. O. Preus ❘ Rod Rosenbladt Philip Ryken ❘ R. C. Sproul ❘ Mark R. Talbot Gene E. Veith ❘ Paul F. M. Zahl Department Editors Brian Lee, Ex Auditu Benjamin Sasse, Between the Times D. G. Hart, Reviews Staff ❘ Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Diana S. Frazier, Contributing Editor Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Celeste McGhee, Proofreader Contributing Scholars Charles P. Arand ❘ S. M. Baugh Jonathan Chao ❘ William M. Cwirla Marva J. Dawn ❘ Don Eberly Timothy George ❘ Douglas S. Groothuis Allen C. Guelzo ❘ Carl F. H. Henry Lee Irons ❘ Arthur A. Just Robert Kolb ❘ Donald Matzat Timothy M. Monsma ❘ John W. Montgomery John Muether ❘ Kenneth A. Myers Tom J. Nettles ❘ Leonard R. Payton Lawrence R. Rast ❘ Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie ❘ David P. Scaer Rachel S. Stahle ❘ David VanDrunen Cornelis Van Dam ❘ David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 2003 All rights reserved. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship and life. For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 ModRef@AllianceNet.org www.modernreformation.org ISSN-1076-7169

Mark R. Talbot Executive Editor

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Having withered on the Reformed vine over the past three years—scorched by the heat of neoPuritan, duty-preaching, parched and nutrient deprived forty weeks of the year (thanks to the availing Protestant counter-Reformation movement of withholding the Lord’s Supper from Christ’s covenant people)—Jerry Bridges’s article (May/June 2003) read as a gospel-feast for those of us plagued by the famine of the law and the repression of the Sacrament(s). “Gospel-Driven Sanctification” is Modern Reformation at its very best … and most sorely needed. I hope Reformed clergy were listening. For if ministers continue to reserve the proclaimed evangel only for the lost, then just point me to where Calvinists hide the “juice” and “Sunbeam” and I will help myself to the other means of gospel-grace. My covenant family is tired of asking the question, “Must we (Presbyterians) forfeit our covenantal birthrights for a conversionist or, worse still, pietist paradigm?” Show us historic Protestantism in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition and give us relief, give us the means of grace—all of them. Dr. John J. Bombaro The John Newton Int’l Center for Christian Studies Carlisle, Pennsylvania

Thank you for producing such an excellent magazine; I continue to learn a lot from each issue. However, I share Lee Salzman’s concerns about Modern Reformation possibly becoming market-driven. Warning flags of late have included: The recent interview with Lisa Beamer (while this overexposed woman is worthy of both our respect and

our sympathy, I saw little reason to find her in your magazine in addition to the myriad other places she appeared); the rather smug and ironic tone of the Between the Times feature in the May/June 2003 issue (i.e. “Say What?!”); and Korey D. Maas’s article in the same issue (“On Being WellDressed”). While this piece was theologically acute, well written and enjoyable, I couldn’t find much in it that deepened my understanding of confessional Protestantism. However, I devoutly hope that any dumbing-down-for-dollars at Modern Reformation is entirely in my disturbed imagination, and that you will continue to publish an enlightening and enjoyable magazine for many years to come. Peter Zolli Via Internet

I have been receiving Modern Reformation for the past few years and have found your magazine to be often stimulating and thought provoking. In the May/June 2003 issue, I was especially impressed with Jerry Bridges’s article, “Gospel Driven Sanctification.” I must confess, however, that I found the next article, “On Being Well-Dressed,” quite troubling. Not only was the article written in a cutesy style that is inconsistent with your publication but the implication the author makes that “some people simply refuse to let God fulfill his promise” appears to be bad theology. Reformed theology holds that God’s grace is irresistible and cannot be simply refused. If God offers it, we are, like Lazarus, compelled to accept it. Perhaps I am reading too much into the author’s words but it sounds pretty Arminian to me. Bruce Joslyn Madison, Connecticut

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I question Rod Rosenbladt’s generalization in the May/June 2003 issue about Reformation and non-Reformation perspectives on Romans 7 (“Christ Died for the Sins of Christians, Too”). In his commentary on Romans, conservative scholar Douglas Moo argues for Romans 7 being Paul’s preChristian experience. On this reading, as Paul views his past with Christian spectacles, he uses the present tense as a literary device to convey the immediacy of his vision. Dr. Moo suggests that in chapters 5-7 Paul moves through what Christ has conquered — death (ch. 5), sin (ch. 6), and the law (ch. 7)—culminating in the glorious news of chapter 8. This reading also explains why Paul can declare us set free from sin in chapter 6 and then revert to the vocabulary of slavery to sin in chapter 7. I doubt that Dr. Moo would deny that we are simul justus et peccator or say that what Paul describes does not resonate with Christian experience. He would simply note that Paul may have intended this section as part of a carefully crafted argument about Christ’s victories rather than an interjection about the difficulties inherent in the Christian life. Perhaps there is room at the Reformation table for more than one perspective on this passage after all. Paige Britton Quarryville, Pennsylvania

John Hannah’s “Knowing, Wanting, and Willing” (May/June 2003) was a real blessing as was the rest of your magazine. I can not help but make several observations about the interview with Jerry Walls. First, it is no great surprise that a person with a background from Notre Dame would find Purgatory a necessary thing. Second, his arguments in the interview clearly show that he has moved the idea of justification from a forensic reality to something that depends on the level of performance of a person as he walks on this earth. To assume that the truly justified person does not desire a holy walk nor seeks to live a holy life is clearly wrong but to suggest that our acceptance in the presence of God depends on our dealing with our sin rather than Christ’s having dealt with it once for all is a tragic misunderstanding of the gospel message. Rev. Glen Miller Calvary Bible Church Greencastle, Pennsylvania

box. As I near the bottom of the pile, I see that my copies of Modern Reformation are still intact. I have not gotten to all of them, but I think they will be worth the time I will eventually spend reading them! Thanks for your labors! Dr. Robert Pyne Dallas Theological Seminary Dallas, Texas

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Isaiah 45:1–7

What’s In a Name?

alph Ellison once quipped, “It is through our names that we place ourselves in the world.”

a check, it better be your own account and your own Celebrating the Sacrament of holy baptism, the following question is sometimes posed name, because by signing you are saying you are comto the parents: “How is this child to be named?” Names are about placement. mitted to paying. God is committed to his Often our given names are packed with meaning entire creation. This “uncreand history. They frequently carry forth a family ated and incompre-hensible” lineage; sometimes they attest to a hero of faith. My God (as the Athanasian Creed From name does both: John (obviously biblical and familsays), created everything out JOHN NUNES ial), and Nunes (my Jamaican-Portuguese surname). of nothing, setting limits and My son’s name is exactly the same as mine, except boundaries for us. “God saw for the attribution “junior.” And there’s also John all that he had made” (Gen. Nunes, my grandfather. He is with the Lord now, 1:31) and said, like the kids Pastor who both gives family and takes loved ones to himsay, “it’s all good!” But our St. Paul Luthern Church self. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” common ancestors, Adam and Dallas, Texax Eve, broke the boundaries, What’s in a name? When we are baptized, pushed past the limits, and according to the ordinance and promise of shattered the “all-good” creScripture, God bestows upon us a heavenly celebrity status, a supreme title of honor: we receive the ation into irreparable pieces. That’s the human famstrong name of the Lord. Baptism marks us with the ily name we inherit. The West Indian poet, Derek Walcott, points forgiveness of the cross forever, or as Martin Luther said “puts the stamp of Christ on me.” Our brows out one casualty in a strikingly understated verse: are unerasably anointed with the name “Jesus.” Then after Eden, Baptism, like that old Stevie Wonder song, signs, was there one surprise? seals, and delivers us from “the jaws of the devil,” O yes, the awe of Adam and makes us God’s own (The Large Catechism, Baptism: 83). In the name of the Father, the Son, at the first bead of sweat. and the Holy Spirit, signed, sealed, and delivered, I’m God’s! More than our sin-furrowed brows need redeeming, our whole rebellion-drenched selves God’s Signature on Nature do, as does the whole broken creation. Sin has Promising by one’s own name is an ultimate sign seemingly triumphed in our world, traveling an of commitment. A signature is a name written by accelerating course scarring every corner of crethe person whose name it is. Writing somebody ation: pain in childbirth, pain in work, pain in marelse’s name is at best just simply writing, and at ital relations, pain in race relations, pain in relating worst a crime—counterfeit forgery. When you sign to God. Consequences!

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But our providential God did not withdraw his name from his handiwork. “For every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle of a thousand hills are mine” (Ps. 50:10). “The sea is his for he made it and his hands formed the dry land” (Ps. 95:5). God says, “I form the light and create darkness” (Isa. 45:7). When God fixes his name to a thing, it’s fixed. And even more than the birds and the bees and the badgers and the rocks and the trees and the amoeba, God esteemed humanity to be the crown of his creative activity. You and I were specially made to be the apple of God’s eye. But again that corrupting collusion strikes. The devil, and our own sinful selves have done everything to smudge out the name of God. Do you ever wonder how even the best intentions don’t guarantee godly outcomes? Do you ever mull over why things do fall apart? Our crowns are irreparably cracked. The shine is gone. The apple is rotten—to the core. Like Martin Luther once said , “We are poisoned by the venom of original sin from the soles of our feet to the hairs on our head.” We betray the name of God. We wander away to faraway lands. We kill ourselves lusting for the passing thrill of false gods. We squander our inheritance on what cannot save. I can remember once as a teenager heading out the door with the car keys in hand, a few dollars in my pocket, and a mind full of mischief. “What time do you want me home, dad?” “No time in particular son. Just one thing—remember your name.” Honoring a name can “ruin” a night, but save a soul. Honoring God’s name means remembering who he made us when he saved us—we do not belong to the world. My father worked hard to acquire a good name at work, at church, and in the community. A name I must uphold. God completed the work of saving us and placed Jesus’ name on us. How do we do in upholding the name of the Most High? Human Shame in Denying God’s Name Back in biblical times, some Jewish leaders denied their faith in Christ for fear of losing social status, their perceived prestige or their privileged position in the synagogue (John 12:42). After publicly pledging never to desert Jesus like the others (John 6:68), Peter tripped on his own words, just as publicly, by denying the “Holy One of God” (John 6:69)—his Savior whom he knew personally. Then came that dreaded and third cock-a-doodle-doo! “And [Peter] went outside and wept bitterly” (Matt. 26:75). Denying God’s name has shameful consequences! One preacher put it like this: “And so confession by the lips is worth nothing without faith of the heart, and faith of the heart is worth nothing

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without confession of the lips.” “You do not acknowledge me” is the warning from God through Isaiah. In our text, it was originally intended for the ancient ruler named Cyrus. To the human eye, Cyrus had a stellar battle record and compelling military credentials. He was the founder of the Persian empire. He handily defeated the Babylonians, cutting down enemy nations aided by the hand of the Lord. He liberated Israel from captivity. He was enthusiastically welcomed as a great peacemaker. He was popular among the people, but it’s the divine rating that counts most. Cyrus shamelessly promoted religious pluralism. Included in his reconstruction plans for the city of Jerusalem was the implicit destruction of the religion of one God, or monotheism, by accommodating the politically correct, but theologically incorrect, introduction of many gods, or polytheism. His design for the restoration of the temple included space to worship the false gods of Marduk, Bel, and Nebo alongside Yahweh, warranting this indictment: “Ignorant are those who carry about idols of wood, who pray to gods that cannot save” (Isa. 45:20). Cyrus was a good leader, even anointed by God as king, but never did he become great because he suffered from a crisis of commitment. He signed up with a false and foreign deity. Thus, we twice hear this judgment from the true God: “You have not acknowledged me” (Isa. 45:4, 5). And yet God, in his sovereignty, uses Cyrus to accomplish God’s purposes. This is God’s way of exerting his Godship—“I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God” (Isa. 45:5). Or, like some old church folk I know say it, “God is God all by himself, he don’t need nobody else.” There is ample evidence that Cyrus didn’t even realize he was being used. Sometimes God hides himself (Isa. 45:15). Sometimes we don’t even seek him (Isa. 55:6). Imagine how much better it would have been for Cyrus—how much more peace he would have had, how much more the pieces of his life would have fit together—had he intentionally sought the One with power to bring prosperity and create disaster (Isa. 45:7). This One deeply desires to be sought by us. He is a jealous God and will not tolerate us cavorting with the competition. God will not tolerate us flirting behind his back. God cannot abide us committing spiritual adultery, behaving in a religiously promiscuous manner. Where is our commitment? We dedicate our lives to sororities and fraternities and ethnicities and nationalities and denominations and alumni associations and unions and even those wretched lodges. Listen to the garbage and gossip we talk

about on the telephone! See the lame pastimes getting our disposable income. What we’re most committed to will always get the majority of our “free” time, our affection, and our attention. The old Burger King ad used to say, “Have it your way.” God, however, is not BK; it’s his way or the way of perdition—that means hell. The old Saab motorcar ad said, “Find your own road.” We obviously have forgotten that we were too lost to find even ourselves. We are the found ones. Lost, but located by the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Jesus. Lost, but located by God’s global positioning system, GPS—Grace, Peace, and Salvation—for Christ’s sake through faith. There is no half stepping in this one, no fence sitting on this one, no slick tricking around this one, and no moonlighting with this one. It’s either in Christ or out of Christ. You’re either pro-Christ or you’re anti Christ. You either serve Christ or you’re severed from Christ. There is no neutral ground in spiritual warfare. Sign up today by faith. Put your name on the line today, you’ve nothing to lose really, and eternity to gain. Get on board today by grace. Commit to the One who was committed to saving you from the time he formed you in your mother’s womb. To truly commit means to admit that we need to be acquitted by God our Father for refusing to submit to Jesus—whom he exalted to the highest place and gave the name that is above every name. The one who being in very nature is God, humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross (Phil. 2). To commit means to receive the righteous name of the “entire person of Christ” (Formula of Concord, Righteousness: 56) and to let him take away from us our lackluster commitment. God’s Autograph of Grace, Written in the Blood of Christ Listen to the words of Jesus from the cross, “into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). This word “commit” in biblical Greek means to make a deposit, to make an investment, to put oneself fully into something. Jesus was committed by blood to the creation he made. There’s a bloodstained cross to prove it. There’s this cry of total commitment, of total abandonment to the will of the Father: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Remember, this cry pierced a sun-eclipsed, sindarkened mid-afternoon sky as Christ poured out himself for us and for our salvation. Finally, there’s an empty grave to prove God’s commitment to us. Signed with God’s own hand, our names are now written down in glory, in the Lamb’s book of life (Rev. 21:27). As Isaiah says it, God will “bestow on you a title

of honor” even though you don’t deserve it. I don’t mean to be mean or morbid, but from the first gasp of air we gulp down, we begin to die. It’s downhill all the way through life. Without the Spirit’s intervention, sin will only gain on us, even as death daily creeps toward us. Praise God for summoning us by name. Praise God for calling us through the Word. Praise God for connecting ordinary water with the holy Word so that the downhill decline is reversed. Through nature we are born biologically. Through baptism we are reborn spiritually. Even though we still sin, even though we don’t deserve it, even though we have halfhearted commitments, even though we still must face death, God guarantees life (Rom. 4:16) in his name. Through nature sin taints us so deeply it tarnishes everything we touch, everything we think, indeed, everything we are. Through baptism sin is washed away and Christ shines through us. Saying “I was baptized” is okay, but it misses the point of God’s power and the Word’s promise. Was is in the past. Saying “I am baptized” better emphasizes God’s present tense power. “Is” is God’s name. Yahweh means I am—right now—not I was. “I am with you forever” is God’s promise given in three splashes of water. With you—a brand new, right now identity is yours. With you—making you “so fresh and so clean” in the Spirit that you are a spiritually new person. With you—dying daily to sin and resurrecting to a new self in Christ. With you— killing off old habits and growing up in a new lifestyle in Christ. With you—forever! That’s God’s promise. Nearly two millennia ago, Tertullian, an early North African church leader, commented about baptism. “We are little fishes called after our great fish, Jesus Christ. We are born in water and can only survive by staying in water.” Fish out of water will die. Christians who turn from baptism will die. Christians who jump out of the church’s faith will die. Christians who deliberately boycott Bible study will slowly die, like a beached fish. The answer is Jesus. Plunge back into the water of baptism. Return to the God who knows your name. “Come back to Jamaica” the travel ad invites you. “Come back to baptism every day” Jesus invites you. God not only knows our name, he knows our deepest shame. He truly knows our pain. And God’s grace says, “I love you just the same.” Not long ago I was speaking at a conference center near Jackson, Mississippi, in a town called Raymond. There I read about St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, the only remaining antebellum church in Raymond. After the Battle of Raymond it was used [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 4 7 ]

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Give Luther a Rest

“M

artin Luther used bar tunes for his hymns. Why shouldn’t we?” If this

While it has been assigned to Luther, the Wesley brothers, statement sounds familiar, you are not alone. It is one of the lead-ins Isaac Watts, and D.L. Moody, the source of this comment is to many disagreements over music in the church. The primary actually Rowland Hill, a nineteenth century London pastor, problem is that it is not true. In his article, “Martin who said, “The devil should not have all the best tunes” Luther, His Music, His Message,” Robert D. Harrel (V. J. Charlesworth, Rowland Hill, p. 156). In fact, Hill debunks this issue: “None of the works dealing was concerned over the lamentable quality of the music with Luther’s music can trace a single melody of his in his parish (Surrey Chapel), and he wanted to improve back to a drinking song” (34). Luther was, in fact, it (Lowell Hart, Satan’s Music Exposed, p. 171). “extremely cautious in protecting the word of God Lacking a reference, we may be able to confrom any admixture of worldly elements” (36). clude with some certainty that Luther never said, Of Luther’s thirty-seven chorales, nearly half were “Why should the devil have all the good tunes?” It newly composed by Luther himself, and only one is is more difficult to decide what Luther would have based on a secular folk song. That solitary secular done if he had to make the musical decisions factune (and it was not a drinking song) was replaced by ing our church. But it seems a stretch to imagine the reformer, because “Luther was embarrassed to that a man who considered music to be God’s crehear the tune of his Christmas hymn sung in inns and ation for the proclamation of the gospel and who understood the serious folk music of his day and dance halls” (Paul Nettl, Luther and Music, 48). Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes used it would be much impressed by the repetition, Luther’s hymns as “Noble words, closely wedded to structure, and glitz that characterizes much of noble music, severely simple, yet never trivial” (vol. today’s popular (and contemporary Christian) 2, 178). Eric Routley wrote, “The very last thing music or that he would have enjoyed its ambiance. Luther was, or could have been, was what we now That Luther would have been in the vanguard of call an adapter of popular styles. He had no use for those seeking the best of what is new there can be the ‘popular’ in the sense of the careless, or the no doubt. But given his theology and studying his standards of ignorance” (The Music of Christian art, one is inclined to believe that he would have Hymns, 21). been much more interested in serious contempo“Well, if Luther didn’t use bar tunes, where did the rary music than in the “music people like” on MTV rumor come from?” Perhaps the best explanation is and a thousand evangelical radio stations (James that a basic term has confused non-musicians. Tiefel, “The Devil’s Tavern Tunes,” in Wisconsin Melodies, particularly those used in hymns and folk Lutheran Quarterly). songs, can be broken down into categories of form, It has been said that a lie travels half way around the based upon their use of recurring melodic material. world while the truth is tying its shoes. Nowhere is For instance, the tune to “A Mighty Fortress Is Our this more evident than in this spurious and ill-founded God” follows the form AAB (or AABA1) otherwise argument. Let’s give Luther the rest he deserves! known to musicians as the “Bar Form.” It is likely that a misunderstanding of this term is the real source of the “bar tunes” controversy. Mark Nabolz is the National Coordinator for the Church Music “But Luther did say, ‘Why should the devil have all National Conference. He also serves as the music ministry directhe good tunes.’ What about that?” No, he didn’t. tor for First Presbyterian Church (PCA) of Augusta, Georgia.

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Speaking of... C

hristian freedom, in my opinion, consists of three parts. The first: that the consciences of believers, in seeking assurance of their justification before God, should rise above and advance beyond the law, forgetting all law righteousness…. Removing, then, mention of law, and laying aside all considerations of works, we should, when justification is being discussed, embrace God’s mercy alone, turn our attention from ourselves, and look only to Christ. For there the question is not how we may become righteous but how, being unrighteous and unworthy, we may be reckoned righteous. If consciences wish to attain any certainty in this matter, they ought to give no place to the law. Nor can any man rightly infer from this that the law is superfluous for believers, since it does not stop teaching and exhorting and urging them to good, even though before God’s judgment seat it has no place in their consciences…. Almost the entire argument of the letter to the Galatians hinges upon this point. For those who teach that Paul in this contends for freedom from ceremonies alone are absurd interpreters, as can be proved from the passages adduced in the argument. Such passages are these: That Christ ‘became a curse for us’ to ‘redeem us from the curse of the law’ [Gal 3:13]. Likewise, ‘Stand fast in the freedom wherewith Christ has set you free, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. Now I, Paul, say…that if you receive circumcision, Christ will become of no advantage to you…. And every man who receives circumcision is a debtor to the whole law. For any of you who are justified by the law, Christ has become of no advantage; you have fallen away from grace’ [Gal 5:1-4]. These passages surely contain something loftier than freedom from ceremonies! John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.19.2-3

he worst of it is that when the gospel is gone, the seeking follows; and when the good teachers and the world of today have passed away, preachers will come who will burden the people a hundred times more. Moreover, people will obey and follow with the performance of great works and at great expense. But all will be in vain. Now they do not want to have their salvation and life for nothing. The Son of God says: Your salvation has cost me my own body, life, blood, and death. If you will not accept salvation, accept the fact that without any cost to you I have purchased you with my death and with shedding of my blood. Then go and hire the devil to preach to you for a hundred thousand gulden. Since you do not want life presented to you for nothing, then go and buy death; and whoever does not want to inherit heaven through me may for money acquire and have hell with its infernal fire and great anguish. Martin Luther, Works, 33:576

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The Churches of the Old? ainline Protestantism is shriveling— literally. For decades now, students of American religion have understood that Evangelicalism was growing and the mainline was shrinking. To quote University of Chicago professor Martin Marty, “If I were buying stock [in religion], I would buy it first in Pentecostalism, second in Evangelicalism.” Until a series of recently completed surveys of American congregational life, however, no one grasped the degree to which the major mainline denominations have been losing members, not simply to more theologically conservative churches, but also increasingly to the grave. For new data shows that mainline congregations are home not only to august traditions, but also to surprisingly old congregants. The Presbyterian Church (USA), for instance, which has lost about two million members from its high of 4.3 million in the 1960s, now

includes a membership with an average age of 58. And in the non-evangelical segment of the denomination, the average is still higher, with a large percentage of congregations counting six retirees for each person under 25. Because many mainline assemblies have abandoned evangelism alto-gether, there is a sizable number of congregations that are experiencing not only more deaths, but also no conversions and no births—hardly a recipe for a future. Demographic studies paint a similar picture in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American (ELCA), where the average congregation is comprised of over twice as many people over 65 as is the national average. More importantly, the typical congregation counts less than half as many people, proportionally, under the age of 35 than does the nation as a whole. Hijacking a Congregation? Or Reforming It?

390,000 SUM + of the =

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onstruction industry reports confirm what drivers on the beltways looping American cities have been observing for a decade: suburban evan-gelical churches are in a building boom, and their average congregational size—not to mention parking lot size—is rapidly increasing. This suburban trend, however, masks a countervailing statistical reality, which is that city and smalltown church rolls tend to be quite small, and getting smaller. For as mainline denominations have been hemorrhaging members in the last four decades, they have not yet experienced a parallel decline in the number of congregations. Individual congregations have just gotten smaller. But now many of these congregations appear to be hovering at the edge of financial viability. The sudden appearance of so many congregations that already own their own facilities but barely have

Number of Britons affirming faith in the Jedi as their religion

in the recent national census. The email campaign that encour-

aged people to claim an intergalactic conversion to Star Wars (70,000 Australians and 20,000 Canadians gave similar responses in their censuses) seems not to highlight a New Age revival

so much as a backlash against ubiquitous polls and intrusive surveys.

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enough worshippers to pay a pastor raises an interesting question: What happens to an individual church— chiefly the people but the building as well—when it finally cannot meet its financial obligations? In many gentrifying neighborhoods, the sight of old church structures “going condo” is already becoming common. But is there another option? Is it possible that orthodox folks—themselves increasingly looking to plant confessional churches in cities—might over time be “taking over” and reforming more of the teetering, retiree-populated, urban mainline congregations? In a handful of cases familiar to MR editors—certainly not a tidal wave, but in what might fairly be called a growing trend—some Reformational Christians appear to be opting for exactly this radical option. (We should note that MR’s editors are neither encouraging nor condemning the strategy.) In all the cases MR has observed—and those convinced by congregational polity have an easier time with this than those of presbyterian persuasion—the original impetus behind such an effort was the distressing discovery by a group of confessing evangelicals, upon arriving in a new place, that the city lacked healthy churches. They encountered only a menu of undesirable

Say What! “Is Henry Kissinger the Antichrist?” — Debate being pursued on apocalyptic websites, which use bizarre alphanumeric calculations to reveal that the nine letters in the surname of the secretive former secretary of state supposedly sum to 666.

“If people start giggling when I give my phone number, I know they have at least read the Bible.” — Pastor Vaughn Rasor of First Baptist Church in Jackson, Kentucky, commenting on the “666” phone prefixes in his part of the state. After years of protest by Dispensationalists, the phone company finally allowed religious organizations like the Kentucky Mountain Bible School to change from numbers their constituents associate with the devil.

“There are people who refuse to travel the road…because of the fear that the devil controls events along U.S. 666.” — Unanimous resolution passed by New Mexico’s state legislature and approved by Gov. Bill Richards, urging that transportation officials change the name of Highway 666, the so-called “Devil’s Highway,” to Highway 491. All relevant officials have now signed off on the change in an attempt to keep so many Americans from driving on less safe roads rather than tempting fate on 666.

options: 1) Join a congregation of the same name but markedly different practice from their former denomination. 2) Drive a great distance to a solid church— which not only lessens the likelihood of attending evening service, but also makes inviting co-workers fairly prohibitive. 3) Get involved in planting a new church—which can be as consumeristic as the churchhopping practices they’ve previously criticized. 4) Switch to another tradition— we see a good deal of Presbyterian/Southern Baptist swapping. And then of course there is the old stand-by: Browbeat one’s spouse for not having explored more carefully the church situation in the new city before deciding to move.

Then, as a member of one “pioneer” group put it, it occurred to him and his friends that “Grace Baptist” [name has been changed] still affirmed its orthodox creeds and confessions on paper, and many of its older members were expressing a desire for more of “that old time religion.” Why should older congregations be abandoned to the heterodox clergy graduating from so many mainline seminaries? And as circumstance would have it, this congregation had a vacant pulpit, but had not yet agreed on whom to call, partly because it did not have sufficient attendance to offer a reasonable salary. To oversimplify, there appears to be a predictable moment in the last stages of a shriveling congregation’s

life where it is ripe for “refounding” as a vibrant orthodox body. The budgets of unstable congregations (either start-ups or those struggling to stay alive) include two major cost centers: the pastor’s salary and a meeting space. The death-knell for a shrinking congregation typically occurs either when they encounter an unanticipated maintenance expense (perhaps a new roof) or when a long-time pastor retires—at which point the congregation discovers it cannot afford to call a younger man who does not own a home and has a growing family to support. As in the case of Grace Baptist, the opportunity for reformation usually seems to present itself when a liberal congregation suddenly finds itself without a pastor. The new group begins attending the congregation and (partly because their donations make it possible to call a new pastor) strongly influences the decision of whom to call. In a few examples, there was surprisingly little congre-gational conflict, given that (sadly) many parishioners often leave both when there is a pastoral vacancy and when a new pastor arrives. Even where the new group succeeds in getting the congregation to call an orthodox man, however, the greatest challenge appears to be re-catechizing parish-ioners who so long sat under watered-down preaching. According to one pastor called into this type of congregational-mission field, changing the preaching is a great deal easier than persuading older members to

submit to cautious and loving church discipline. And yet, said this Reformed Baptist, a congregational reformation surely is not complete without it, for “an undisciplined church confuses sinners, discourages saints, and dishonors God.”

In Brief… The fight continues among American Roman Catholics—not to mention Vatican officials—over whether the country’s 235 Catholic colleges are sufficiently orthodox. The latest round in the donnybrook begins this fall as a new school, Ave Maria University, opens on a temporary campus near Naples, Florida. With a commitment of at least $200 million from Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, Ave Maria aims to field a Division I football team and enroll 5,000 students. But most notably, it intends to be a more traditional school for Catholic “students whose faith is central to their lives.” Says Monaghan, “The reason God created us was to earn heaven, so we could be with him, and my goal is to help more people get to heaven. You can’t follow the rules of God unless you know what they are and why they are there. At some Catholic universities, students graduate with their religious faith more shaky than when they arrive.”

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T H E H E A RT O F T H E G O S P E L | Paul’s Message of Grace in Galatians

Why All the Fuss? The Apostle Paul’s Burden in Galatians Y

ou do not have to read far in Paul’s letter to the Galatians to realize that he is upset, even angry. After stating his credentials and offering a short greeting to the Galatian churches, he launches right in:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed! As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed! (Gal. 1:6–9; emphasis added) Further on, Paul reiterates his anguish and perplexity at what has happened to the Galatians as well as his anger at those who are troubling them. In the fourth chapter, he asks: Have I … become your enemy by telling you the truth? They [those who were troubling the Galatians] make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, … my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you. (4:16–20) And then in the fifth chapter he focuses on those who are unsettling the Galatians, once again: “I have confidence in the Lord that … the one who is trou-

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bling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is…. I wish that those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!” (5:10, 12). Finally, he closes his letter with the injunction, “From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (6:17). Paul, then, is really upset and perplexed by what is happening in Galatia. Something has made him

need to make immediate contact with Christ’s other apostles. After three years, he did go to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter, when he also met James (see 1:16–20). Then, after fourteen years of preaching to the Gentiles, another revelation led him to go up to Jerusalem again, taking Barnabas, a former Levite (see Acts 4:36), and Titus, a Greek convert to Christianity, with him (see Gal. 2:1–3). He went, he tells us, to set before the Christian Justification: The legal act whereby God graciously forgives leaders in Jerusalem the gospel that he was preaching us our sins and reckons us as forevermore righteous in his sight among the Gentiles, “in order to make sure that I was not because we have accepted by faith the gift of Christ’s perfect running or had not run in vain” (2:2). His gospel, as he earthly obedience and sacrificial death. sometimes calls it (see Rom. 16:25; 2 Tim. 2:8), did not very angry—indeed, the angriest we find him in force Gentile converts to undergo circumcision or any of his letters. But what is it? Why all the fuss? to conform to other Jewish “identity-markers” (such as only eating specific meats) in order to be An Attack on the Gospel accepted as Christians (see 2:11–14). When Paul he answer is already before us: Paul is upset told Peter and James and John—the reputed “piland perplexed and angry because the lars” of the Jewish Christian church—what he was Galatians are accepting “a different preaching, they did not object. They recognized gospel”—a gospel “contrary to the one we that God had entrusted him with the gospel to the preached to you,” a gospel that is not really a Gentiles, just as God had entrusted Peter with the gospel—not really “good news”—at all. Paul is so gospel to the Jews (see 2:6–9). As Paul notes, “even upset about this because the good news the Titus … was not forced to be circumcised” (2:3). Galatians had previously received from him was Thus Titus became a living symbol of the freedom not “man’s gospel” (1:11) but Christ’s gospel, believers have in Christ (see 2:4; 4:21–5:2). received “through a revelation of Jesus Christ” Paul takes the claim that Gentile believers must (1:12). The teaching the Galatians are now accept- be circumcised (and, perhaps, follow Jewish dietary ing is, then, only human and as such actually dis- laws and so on) to contradict the very “truth of the torts God’s good news in Christ. gospel” (2:5, 14; cf. 5:7). This is why he felt comSo we naturally ask, What exactly is this good pelled to confront Peter, when Peter came to news from God that was being distorted in Galatia? Antioch. When Peter came he ate with the Gentile But since Paul is writing to people who already Christians, but he stopped when “certain men came know what his divinely authorized message is, he from James” who represented “the circumcision does not need to repeat it; and so he never states in party” (2:12). This led all the Jewish Christians, Galatians what the Christian good news is, as such. including Barnabas, into the hypocrisy of requiring Consequently, we must read between the letter’s the Gentiles to live like Jews when they themselves lines to surmise exactly what the gospel is by not- were living like Gentiles (see 2:13–14 and 6:13 ing what Paul says it is not. along with Acts 10:1–11:18). When we do that, we discover that the distorThis hypocrisy existed despite the Jewish tions making Paul so angry are linked to Judaism Christians knowledge that no one—Jew or and circumcision. In recounting the history lead- Gentile—is justified before God by obeying the ing up to his letter, Paul refers to his “former life in Mosaic law but only through faith in Jesus Christ Judaism” and how he then “persecuted the church (see 2:16; 3:11). Yet the circumcision party was of God violently and tried to destroy it” (1:13). He claiming that, while Gentiles had become Christian tells us he was then “advancing in Judaism beyond through accepting the grace that God offered them many of [his] own age” because he was “extremely by hearing the gospel of the crucified Christ with zealous … for the traditions of [his] fathers” (1:14). faith (see 3:2, 5, 14; cf. Acts 10:44–11:18), they But then, he says, God was pleased to reveal Jesus now had to perform “works of the law” in order to Christ to him (see 1:16). be perfected in Christ (see 3:3–5). In other words, This revelation was so decisive that Paul felt no these Jewish Christians were acting as if, while

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becoming Christian is indeed a matter of accepting by faith Christ’s finished work (see Rom. 5:1–2), remaining Christian is a matter of behaving in specific ways and keeping the Mosaic law, including the portions of it requiring circumcision and dietary restrictions, and so on. Paul saw this posture as a frontal assault on the “freedom that [Christians] have in Christ Jesus” (2:4; cf. 5:1, 13). It attempts to put Christians back under the “slavery” that comes with trying to keep the Mosaic law (see 2:4; cf. 4:1–10, 21–31; 5:1). But any attempt to put Christians back under law— any law, Mosaic or otherwise (see 4:1–11)—is to be resisted at all costs: “Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you” (5:2). In fact, all attempts to be justified before God on the basis of any kind of law keeping are bound to fail because “by works of the law no one will be justified” (2:16; cf. 3:10–13). Indeed, “all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them’” (3:10, emphasis added; cf. Rom. 2:17–27). The law cannot give life (see 3:21); we cannot be justified before God by means of law keeping (see 2:21; Rom. 3:20–21; Heb. 7:11–19). Indeed, if we could, then “Christ died for no purpose” (2:21). The Spirit Gives Life n trying to bring the Galatians to their senses, Paul asks them this: “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” (3:2). The reason he asks is this: When God called Abraham to leave his country and his kindred for a land that he would show him, he promised to make of Abraham “a great nation,” in whom “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:2–3). And Abraham believed God, and God “counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; cf. Gal. 3:6). Through Isaac, Abraham became the father of the Jewish nation, to whom God gave the law 430 years later (see Gal. 3:17). That law had a condition attached to it; namely, if someone were to keep it—that is, keep it perfectly (see Deut. 27:26 with Gal. 3:10)—then that person would attain righteousness and live (see Lev. 18:5; Rom. 10:5). Yet Jewish history in the Old Testament establishes that no one gained life in this way (see Acts 7:1–53). So, through his prophets, God began to predict what he would accomplish through the work of his Son, Jesus Christ. Through Jeremiah, he promised to make a new covenant with his people, a covenant unlike the broken Mosaic covenant (see Jer. 31:31–34; cf. Heb. 8). Through Ezekiel, he promised to gather his people from among the

nations, to make them clean, to give them new hearts, and to send his Spirit to live within them and thus cause them to do his will (see Ezek. 36:26–28; cf. Joel 2:28–29). Thus God’s people would gain life through the indwelling of his Spirit, rather than through keeping Moses’ law (see Ezek. 37:14; cf. John 6:63; 2 Cor. 3:3–6). During his earthly ministry, Jesus began to clarify the relation between his work and this promise of the Spirit. Shortly before his crucifixion, he told his disciples that he would not leave them as orphans but that he would ask his Father to send the Holy Spirit to them, to dwell with them and to be in them (see John 14:16–18). After his resurrection he told the apostles to wait in Jerusalem “for the promise of the Father”—that is, the gift of the Holy Spirit (see Acts 1:4–8; 2:1–4, 14–21, 32–38). Then, through Christ’s apostles, God made it clear that those who put their faith in his Son’s redemptive work are given the right to become children of God (see John 1:12; Rom. 8:16). It is to these, his adopted sons and daughters (see Gal. 4:5), that God sends his Holy Spirit—the “Spirit of adoption” (Rom. 8:15)—who then dwells within them (see 2 Tim. 1:14) and leads them to cry out, “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:15; cf. Gal. 4:6). When God then poured out his Spirit on new Gentile believers, even Jewish Christians agreed with Peter that these Gentiles could not be denied baptism, which is the Christian initiatory rite (see Acts 10 with Matt. 28:19–20 and Rom. 6:3–11). And on being told about this, even the initially skeptical circumcision party were won over and then glorified God by proclaiming that “to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life” (Acts 11:1–18). Now it was clear that the Galatians had also received God’s Spirit and that God was working supernaturally among them (see Gal. 3:2, 5). Yet— and here is the crucial question—how had this come about? “Did you receive the Spirit,” Paul asks them, “by works of the law or by hearing with faith? … Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith—just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness?” (3:2, 5–6). The answer is “by hearing with faith.” The promised Holy Spirit is received, not by doing works of the law, but through faith (see 3:14). For the Galatians, just as for Abraham, it was by believing God that they became justified before him (see 3:6, 8, 22). The righteousness that results in life does not—indeed, cannot—come by obeying the law but only through faith in the finished work of God’s crucified Son, Jesus Christ (see 3:1, 13). And

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this is made evident by the fact that those who put their faith in Christ receive his life-giving Spirit.

Christ” through baptism (3:27), and so we “are Christ’s” and thus “Abraham’s offspring” and consequently “heirs according to promise” (3:29; cf. It Is the Flesh or the Spirit, Works or Faith, 3:15–22). But those who live by the Spirit must the Law or the Promise walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh or by works he Galatians had come to receive the gift of or by law (see 5:25). God’s Holy Spirit by hearing with faith the It is the stark opposition of these principles— gospel message that Paul had preached to flesh or Spirit, works or faith, law or promise—that them. They thus became sons and daughters of has Paul fearing whether he has labored over the God. As such, Paul stresses, they are no longer to Galatians in vain (see 4:11). He knows it is imposbe slaves to the law (see 4:1–5:1). In other words, sible to begin the Christian life by the Spirit and they are not to succumb to the circumcision party’s then perfect it by the flesh (see 3:3). We must rely claim that their justification before God depends wholly on God’s grace (see Eph. 2:8–9). A little of on their obeying any part of the law (see 5:2–6). the leaven of the circumcision party will ruin the Righteousness cannot be achieved by observing whole lump (see 5:9). And so the Galatians’ flirta“days and months and seasons and years” (4:10). tion with the demands of the circumcision party And righteousness cannot be achieved by submit- means that Paul must start all over again. The ting to circumcision. Indeed, to cut off one’s fore- Galatians have missed the point of God’s good skin as a way to be justified before God is in fact to news so completely that Paul is once again “in the cut oneself off from the grace God offers in Christ anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (see 5:4, ESV), the grace that circumcises our (4:19). He knows he must argue again, as he does hearts (see Rom. 2:25–29). throughout his letter, that the very heart and center of God’s good news is that Flesh: The active principle of sinfulness in human beings, our acceptance by God is wholly a matter of our inherited from Adam and involving all aspects—mental and accepting by faith Christ’s earthly work. For the physical—of human nature. Galatians to have turned so quickly to a different gospel—a gospel that is not In Paul’s eyes, the issue is black and white. To good news at all because it throws those who perform works of the law in order to be justified accept it back under slavery to the law—shows involves relying on our flesh (see 3:2–3); and rely- that their life in the Spirit has, at best, hardly ing on our flesh inevitably leads to death rather begun. than to eternal life (see 6:7–8). The flesh and the Spirit are irreconcilably opposed (see 5:17). From Plight to Solution y stepping back a little, we can put Paul’s Similarly, there can be no compromise between argument in Galatians into its proper conrelying upon works of the law or relying on the text. As Paul clarifies in his letter to the work of Christ through faith: “the law is not of faith” (3:12). To accept circumcision—or any Romans, all of us, both Jews and Gentiles, know other part of the Mosaic law—as something that that God exists and that we ought to give him we must fulfill in order to be or to remain righteous honor and praise (see Rom. 1:18–21, 28; cf. Ps. in God’s sight, obligates us to keep the whole law, 19:1–4; Acts 14:15–17). Yet none of us has done as which means that we are then no longer relying we ought (see Rom. 1:24–32; 3:9–20; cf. Acts upon faith and thus have “fallen away from grace” 17:22–30); and so we all deserve God’s wrath (see (5:2–6). It is the same with the categories of law John 3:36; Eph. 2:1–3). We also know, deep down and promise: if the inheritance promised to inside ourselves, that we deserve God’s wrath. Abraham comes by obeying the law, then it no Whether or not we acknowledge it, we know that longer comes by believing the promise; “but God we are “without excuse” and “deserve to die” (Rom. gave it to Abraham by a promise” (3:18). “Christ 1:20, 32; cf. 2:1–29; Heb. 2:15). We are, then, in a terrible plight that we may try came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (3:24). This means that we who have believed are to remedy in various ways: we may turn to idols no longer under the law, no longer subject to the (see Lev. 19:4; Deut. 29:16–18), perhaps even law like a minor child is subject to a guardian (see harming ourselves in order to get our gods to hear 3:24–25; 4:1–7). We are now, through faith, incor- when we pray (see 1 Kings 18:20–29); we may porated “in Christ Jesus” (3:26); we have “put on erect altars, even to unknown gods (see Acts

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17:16–23); we may drone on and on in prayer, thinking that this entitles us to be heard (see Matt. 6:7); we may pursue some hypocritical, false “righteousness” (see Matt. 23:1–36); or we may pledge to reform and do exactly what God commands, which amounts to trying to “earn” our way into God’s good favor, legalistically (see Rom. 4:4; 9:30–32; Eph. 2:8–9). None of this works: idolatry and false worship provoke God (see Deut. 32:21; 2 Kings 16:7–18; Jer. 18:12–17); he rejects vain words and hypocritical righteousness (see Ps. 4:2–3; Matt. 15:1–9); and we inevitably fall far short of doing what he commands (see Isa. 64:6–7; Rom. 3:20; Gal. 3:10). Left to ourselves, there is literally no hope for us (see Eph. 2:12). But into this hopeless situation the gospel comes as the good news that, although sinful human beings can do nothing to remedy their plight before God, yet “now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Rom. 3:21–22; cf. 5:6–11). Our plight is solved “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Rom. 3:24–25). In presenting Christ as the Redeemer, God offers to us a great and gracious exchange (see 2 Cor. 5:21): If we will put our faith in his Son’s earthly work, then God will place our sins upon Christ, so that he may bear God’s righteous wrath by dying in our place (see 1 John 2:1–2), and he will clothe us in Christ’s perfect obedience (see Rom. 5:18–19), so that we may stand forevermore righteous before him (see 1 Cor. 1:30 with Rom. 5:1–2). This exchange rests on Christ’s having fulfilled, during his earthly life, his role as the “second” or “last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45) who, by his perfect obedience, has merited life for those who belong to him by faith (see Rom. 5:12–19; Heb. 5:7–8). We can stand justified before God, then, by trusting wholly in Christ’s finished work rather than by boasting in our own work (see Rom. 3:27–28; 1 Cor. 1:18–31; Eph. 2:1–10). I think it is his grasp of this great and gracious exchange that led Paul to make such a fuss about the circumcision party’s claim that, although the Galatian Gentiles had become Christian through accepting the grace that God offered them by hearing the gospel of the crucified Christ with faith, they now had to perform works of the law in order

Propitiation: A righteous God must necessarily be angry against sin but his wrath has been propitiated—that is, appeased or turned away—by his Son offering himself as a sinless sacrifice for sin.

to be perfected in Christ. Christ’s own perfect obedience is the only solution to the plight of sinful human beings before a righteous God. His earthly work allows God to display his righteousness, both in justly requiring death for sin and in being the justifier of those who believe in Jesus (see Rom. 3:26). By his own perfect law keeping, Jesus has won for us complete freedom from our need to keep the law in order for us to be eternally accepted by God. We no longer have to do works of the law to stand justified before God because Christ has done all that is needed. All that we must and can do is to trust in him. But if this is in fact true, then it is such gloriously good news that it is indeed, above all else, worth making a fuss about. ■

Mark R. Talbot (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is associate professor of philosophy at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, and vice-chairman of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. He is the author of Signs of True Conversion (Crossway, 2000). Dr. Talbot is also executive editor of Modern Reformation magazine.

SPEAKING OF

his evil is planted in all human hearts by nature: If God were willing to sell his grace, we would accept it more

quickly and gladly than when he offers it for nothing. — Martin Luther, Works, 43:423

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T H E H E A RT O F T H E G O S P E L | Paul’s Message of Grace in Galatians

What God Requires, Christ Provides f justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. (Gal. 2:21)

Historically, Protestants have believed that the Bible teaches that our salvation depends on what Christ has accomplished for our pardon and our perfection. We accept by faith his substitution for us in two senses: in his final suffering and death, he was condemned and cursed so that we may be pardoned (see Gal. 3:13; Rom. 8:3); and in his whole life of righteousness culminating in his death, he learned obedience so that we may be saved (see Heb. 5:8–9). His death crowns his atoning sufferings that propitiate God’s wrath against us (see Rom. 3:24–25; 5:6–9), but it also crowns his life of

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For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” … Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. (Gal. 3:10, 13)

perfect righteousness—God’s righteousness—that is then imputed to us who believe (see 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 3:21–22; 4:6, 11; 5:18–19). God provided in Christ what God demanded from us in the law. But today this good news that Christ is not only our pardon but also our perfection is under serious attack. Here I hope to show not only that the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is biblical but why we should defend it.

The Problem of the Law hree times in Galatians 2:16, Paul tells us that no one can be justified—no one can be made right with God—by “works of the law.” In context, this phrase refers most naturally to deeds done to obey Moses’ law. (Note the parallels between “the Book of the Law” and “works of the law” in Gal. 3:10, and between “the law” in Rom. 3:19, 20 and “works of the law” in Rom. 3:20. In both Gal. 3:10 and Rom. 3:19–20, the term “law” refers to the Mosaic law; so the phrase “works of the law” naturally picks up that meaning.) In its narrow, short-term design, the law that

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God gave to the Israelites through Moses demanded perfect obedience of the Pentateuch’s more than 600 commandments in order for the Israelites to receive eternal life (see Lev. 18:5; Deut. 32:45–47; Rom. 10:5; Gal. 3:10, 12). In this way, it upheld an absolute standard of childlike, humble, Godreliant, God-exalting perfect obedience that is in fact due from all of us—and thus provided the moral backdrop without which the Pentateuch’s sin-atoning provisions (and ultimately Christ’s sacrifice) would be unintelligible. Yet the Israelites were uniformly sinful and hostile to God (see Exod. 33:1–3; Acts 7:51). They did not—and indeed could not (see Rom. 8:7)—submit to him. Consequently, the law’s effect on sinful Israel, when she was confronted with its hundreds of commandments, was awareness of latent sin (see Rom. 7:7), increased sin through deliberate violation of God’s holy, righteous, and good commandment (see Rom. 7:12–13), and the multiplication of transgressions (see Rom. 5:20; 4:15). All of this was part of God’s design for the law: “[The law] was added for the sake of transgressions” (Gal. 3:19); “The law came in so that the transgression would increase” (Rom. 5:20). The law cannot give life (see Gal. 3:21); rather it kills by multiplying sin (see Rom. 7:5, 8–13). The law’s deadly design and effects are sufficient to warrant Paul’s statement in Galatians 3:12— “The law is not of faith”—especially in view of what he says eleven verses later: “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law . . . . But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” (vv. 23, 25). This does not mean that there was no faith before Christ (see Rom. 4) but, rather, that there was no faith explicitly in Christ before Christ came. The law’s function, in the long view, is to prepare God’s people for Christ’s work, even as its short-term function is to imprison its recipients in sin (see Gal. 3:22–23). The narrow, short-term aim of the law is to kill those who come in contact with it because it is primarily “commandments” (see Rom. 13:8–9; Eph. 2:15) that require perfect obedience but that cannot themselves produce this obedience independently of the Spirit who “gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6). What God Requires, Christ Provides ustification cannot come through the law (see Gal. 2:21; Acts 13:38–39). Each of us—every single human being (see Rom. 3:10–12, 19–20)—has failed to do what God’s law requires of us (Gal. 3:10; 6:13; cf. James 2:10). But to understand what God requires, we must see what Christ provides. In his mercy, God has provided his Son as a twofold substitute for us. Both facets of Christ’s

substitution are crucial for our becoming right with God. These facets are grounded in the twin facts that (1) we have failed to keep God’s law perfectly, and so we should die; but (2) Jesus did not fail—he alone has kept God’s law perfectly (see Heb. 4:15)—and so he should not have died. Yet in his mercy God has provided in Christ a great substitution—a “blessed exchange”—according to which Jesus can stand in for us with God, offering his perfect righteousness in place of our failure and his own life’s blood in place of ours. When we receive the mercy God offers us in Christ by faith (see Acts 16:31; 1 Tim. 1:15–16; 1 Pet. 1:8–9), his perfection is imputed—or credited or reckoned—to us and our sinful failure is imputed—or credited or reckoned—to him. And thus Jesus’ undeserved death pays for our sin (see Mark 10:45; 1 Tim. 2:5–6; Rev. 5:9); and God’s demand for us to be perfectly righteous is satisfied by the imputation or crediting of Christ’s perfect righteousness to us. “If justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal. 2:21). But “God has done what the law … could not do” (Rom. 8:3). 2 Corinthians 5:21 is one of Scripture’s most powerful affirmations of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the account of those who believe in him: “For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” There is a great deal that can be said about this verse but, when all is said and done, perhaps Charles Hodge has summed up its import best: There is probably no passage in the Scriptures in which the doctrine of justification is more concisely or clearly stated than [this]. Our sins were imputed to Christ, and his righteousness is imputed to us. He bore our sins; we are clothed in his righteousness…. Christ bearing our sins did not make him morally a sinner … nor does Christ’s righteousness become subjectively ours, it is not the moral quality of our souls…. Our sins were the judicial ground of the sufferings of Christ, so that they were a satisfaction of justice; and his righteousness is the judicial ground of our acceptance with God. All of this then means, as Hodge goes on to say, that “our pardon is an act of justice”—an act based on Jesus having borne our sins (see 1 Pet. 2:24)— and yet it “is not mere pardon, but justification alone”—that is, our forevermore standing as righteous before God because we are clothed with Christ’s perfection—“that gives us peace with God.”

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This Doctrine Is Under Attack oday, this precious doctrine that Christ’s perfect keeping of the law is imputed to those who have faith in him is under attack in unexpected places. I have recently written a book, entitled, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness?, that attempts to explain and defend it exegetically. But why would a pressured pastor with a family to care for, a flock to shepherd, weekly messages to prepare, a love for biblical counseling, a burden for racial justice, a commitment to see abortion become unthinkable, a zeal for world evangelization, a focus on local church planting, and a life goal of spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ, devote time and energy to the controversy over the imputation of Christ’s righteousness? And why should you— pastor, elder, schoolteacher, engineer, accountant, firefighter, computer programmer, and homemaker—take the time to work through an issue like this? In the rest of this article, I will explain why I have taken up this issue. My reasons are personal, but in fact they apply to all who wish to glorify Christ, contend for the faith, and edify the saints.

trine so masters our souls that we begin to bend it from the vertical to the horizontal and apply it to our marriages? In our own imperfect efforts in this regard, there have been breakthroughs that seemed at times impossible. It is possible, for Christ’s sake, simply to say, “I will no longer think merely in terms of whether my expectations are met in practice. I will, for Christ’s sake, regard you the way God regards me—complete and accepted in Christ— and thus to be helped and blessed and nurtured and cherished, even if, in practice, you fail.” I know my wife treats me this way. And surely this is part of what Paul calls for when he says that we should forgive “one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). There is more healing for marriage in the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness than many of us have begun to discover.

For the Sake of My Family: Children hen there are our children. Four sons are grown and out of our house but not out of our lives. Every week there are major personal, relational, vocational, and theological issues to deal with. In every case, the fundamental question is, What are the great biblical truths that can give stability and guidance here? Listening and For the Sake of My Family: Marriage loving are crucial. But if they lack biblical substance, have a family to care for. My marriage must sur- my counsel is hollow. Touchy-feely affirmation vive and thrive for the good of our children and will not cut it. Too much is at stake. These young the glory of Christ. God designed marriage to men want rock under their feet. display the holy mercy of Christ and the happy My daughter Talitha is six years old. Recently submission of his church (see Eph. 5:21–25). Here she decided that we as a family would read through the doctrine of justification by faith and the imput- Romans together. She is just learning to read and I ed righteousness of Christ can be a great marriage was putting my finger on each word. At the beginsaver and sweetener. ning of chapter five she stopped me in mid-senMarriage seems almost impossible at times tence and asked, “What does ‘justified’ mean?” because both partners feel so self-justified in their What do you say to a six year old? Do you say, expectations that are not being fulfilled. There is “There are more important things to think about so a horrible emotional dead end in the words, “But it’s just trust Jesus and be a good girl?” Or do you say that it is very complex, and even adults are not able to Substitution: Any situation where one person takes understand it fully, so wait to deal with it when you are the place of another and thus receives what is due to older? Or do you say that it simply means that Jesus died that other person. in our place so that all our just plain wrong for you to act that way,” followed sins might be forgiven? What I did was to tell a by “That’s your perfectionistic perspective” or “Do story, made up on the spot, about two accused you think you do everything right?” or by hopeless, criminals, one who actually did the bad thing, and resigned silence. The cycle of self-justified self- the other who did not. The one who didn’t do pity and anger can seem unbreakable. anything bad is shown, by all those who saw the But what if one or both partners becomes over- crime, to be innocent. So the judge “justifies” whelmed with the truth of justification by faith him—he tells him he is a law-abiding person and alone—and especially with the truth that in Christ so can go free. But the other accused criminal, who Jesus God credits me, for Christ’s sake, as fulfilling really did a bad thing, is shown to be guilty, all of his expectations? What happens if this doc- because all the people who saw the crime saw him

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do it. But, then, guess what? The judge “justifies” him, too! He says, “I regard you as a law-abiding citizen with full rights in our country” (and not just as a forgiven criminal who may not be trusted or fully free in the country). Here Talitha looked at me, puzzled. She couldn’t put her finger on the problem, but she sensed that something was wrong. So I said, “That’s a problem isn’t it? How can a person who really did break the law and do something bad be told by the judge that he is a law keeper, a righteous person, with full rights to the freedoms of the country and that he doesn’t have to go to jail or be punished?” She shook her head. Then I went back to Romans 4:5 and showed her that God “justifies the ungodly.” Her brow furrowed. I told her that she has sinned and I have sinned and we are all like this second criminal. And when God “justifies” us he knows we are sinners who are ungodly and law breakers. And I asked her, “What did God do so that it’s right for him say to us sinners: you are not guilty; you are law keepers in my eyes; you are righteous; and you are free to enjoy all that this country has to offer?” She knew it had something to do with Jesus and his coming and dying in our place. That much she has learned. But what more did I—or would you—tell her now? How we answer that question depends on whether we believe in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. If we do, then we will tell her that Jesus was the perfect law keeper and never sinned, but did everything the judge and his country expected of him. We will tell her that when Jesus lived and died, he was not only a punishment bearer but also a law keeper. We will say that, if she will trust Jesus, then God the Judge will let Jesus’ punishment and Jesus’ righteousness count for hers—Jesus will have been punished for her and he will have obeyed the law for her. So when God “justifies” her—says that she is forgiven and righteous, even though she was not punished and did not keep the law—he does it because of Jesus. Jesus is her righteousness and Jesus is her punishment. Trusting Jesus makes Jesus so much her Lord and Savior that he is her perfection as well as her pardon. Thousands of Christian families never have conversations like this. Not at six or sixteen. We do not have to look far, then, to explain the church’s weakness and the fun-oriented superficiality of many youth ministries and the stunning drop-out rate after high school. But how will parents teach their children if the weekly message

Pardon: An act releasing someone from the penalty for wrongdoing. Death is the appropriate penalty for sin but God pardons believers from that penalty because Christ died for them.

they get from the pulpit is that doctrine is unimportant? So, yes, I have a family to care for. And because I do, I must understand the central doctrines of my faith—and understand them so well that they can be translated to fit children of any age. As G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “It ought to be the oldest things that are taught to the youngest people.” And There Are Weekly Messages to Prepare his also explains why this issue matters to me when I have weekly messages to prepare and a flock to shepherd. My messages need to be saturated with biblical truth—brimming with radical relevance for the hard things in life—and they must help my people to be able to preach the gospel to themselves and their children day and night—the full, rich, biblical gospel, as it unfolds in the New Testament, and not as it is quickly and simply summed up in a pamphlet. My people need to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus (see 2 Pet. 3:18) so that they have strong roots for radical living, sweet comfort in troubled times, and serious answers for their children.

Justification and Biblical Counseling love biblical counseling. There is so much brokenness and so much sin that seems intransigently woven together with forms of failing family life and distorted personal perspectives. This does not yield to quick remedies. After several decades of watching the mental health care system at work, I am less hopeful about the effectiveness of even Christian psychotherapy than I used to be. No one strategy of helping people possesses a corner on all wisdom. But more than ever I believe that the essential foundation of all healing and all Christ-exalting wholeness is a soul-penetrating grasp of the glorious truth of justification by faith, distinct from and yet grounding the battle for healthy, loving relationships. Good counseling patiently builds the “whole counsel” of God (Acts 20:27) into the heads and hearts of sinful and wounded people. At its center is Christ our righteousness.

Justification and a Passion for Evangelism hy devote time to defending the imputation of Christ’s righteousness when there are so many unreached groups

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Imputation: The act of attributing something to someone. In

planted by means of music, drama, creative scheduling, Scripture, there are three primary acts of imputation: (1) sprightly narrative, and marketing savvy. And there are Adam’s sin is imputed to all of his descendents and so all human too few that are God-centered, truth-treasuring, Biblebeings are reckoned guilty because of his guilt; (2) the sins of believers are imputed to saturated, Christ-exalting, cross-focused, Spirit-dependChrist, so that he may receive their penalty with his death; and (3) Christ’s perfect law- ent, prayer-soaked, soul-winning, and justice-pursuing, keeping is imputed to believers, so that they may stand righteous before God. that have a wartime mindset that makes them ready to lay down their lives for the salvaand millions of individuals who have never heard tion of nations and neighborhoods. A blood-earnest the gospel? I mention two things. joy sustains churches like these—and it comes only First, over the past twenty years of leading a by embracing Christ crucified as our righteousness. missions-mobilizing church it has become increas- As William Wilberforce said, “If we would … rejoice ingly clear that “teacher-based” church planting in [Christ] as triumphantly as the first Christians did, and not just “friendship-based” church planting is we must learn like them to repose our entire trust in crucial among people with no Christian history. In him and to adopt the language of the apostle, ‘God other words, doctrinal instruction is utterly crucial forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus in planting the church. Christ’ (Gal. 6:14), ‘who of God is made unto us wisThis is unsurprising, since embedded in the dom and righteousness, and sanctification, and Great Commission is the command to teach new dis- redemption.’” (1 Cor. 1:30) ciples to observe all that Christ has commanded us (see Matt. 28:20), and since Paul planted the church The Truth That Makes the Church Sing in Ephesus by reasoning daily for two years in the hall f course, the question of whether we of Tyrannus, “so that all the residents of Asia heard should believe in the doctrine of Christ’s the word of the Lord” (Acts 19:10). Doing missions imputed righteousness must finally be without deep doctrinal transfer through patient answered exegetically from biblical texts and not teaching will not only wreck on the vast reefs of because of its practical value or historical preceignorance, but will, at best, produce weak and ever- dent. That is what the major part of Counted dependent churches. Therefore, pastors who care Righteous in Christ attempts. But we would be about building, sending, and going churches must myopic not to notice that abandoning this doctrine give themselves to building sending bases that would massively revise Protestant theology and breed doctrinally deep people who are not emo- Christian worship. It would eliminate a great tionally dependent on fads but who know how to theme from our worship of Christ in song. feed themselves on Christ-centered truth. Recognizing this at least clarifies the issue and Second, Paul develops the doctrine of justifica- shows its magnitude, even if it cannot settle it. tion in Galatians and Romans in ways that show its The imputed righteousness of Christ has absolutely universal relevance. It crosses every cul- inspired much joyful worship over the centuries and ture. It is not a tribal concept. In Galatians he informed many hymns and worship songs. It has writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the cut across Calvinist/Arminian, Lutheran/Reformed, law by becoming a curse for us … so that in Christ and Baptist/Presbyterian divides. For example, Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles” (Gal. 3:13–14). Christ’s obedience is uni“And Can It Be” (Charles Wesley) No condemnation now I dread; versal in its scope and significance. It is not just for Jesus and all in him, is mine! Abraham’s posterity but also for Adam’s posterity— Alive in him, my living head, in other words, for everyone. This is also the point And clothed in righteousness divine, of comparing Adam to Christ in Romans 5:12–19. Bold I approach the eternal throne, Truth-Treasuring Church Planting And claim the crown through Christ my own. f I want to see local churches planted from our church and others, why invest so much time and “The Solid Rock” (Edward Mote) energy in defending and explaining this docWhen he shall come with trumpet sound, trine? Because there are enough churches being

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O may I then in him be found, Dressed in his righteousness alone, Faultless to stand before the throne.

“We Trust in You, Our Shield” (Edith Cherry) We trust in you, O Captain of salvation— In your dear name, all other names above: Jesus our righteousness, our sure foundation, Our prince of glory and our king of love.

“O Mystery of Love Divine” (Thomas Gill) Our load of sin and misery Didst thou, the Sinless, bear? Thy spotless robe of purity Do we the sinners wear?

“Thy Works Not Mine O Christ” (Isaac Watts) Thy righteousness, O Christ, Alone can cover me: No righteousness avails Save that which is of thee. Let Christ Receive All His Glory! y overarching life goal is to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. More specifically, the older I get the more I want my life to count in the long term for the glory of Christ. In America, there is an almost universal bondage to the mindset that we can only feel loved when we are made much of. Yet the truth is that we are loved most deeply when we are helped to be free of that bondage so that we find our joy in treasuring Christ and making much of him. I long to see our joy—and the joy of the nations—rooted in God’s wonderful work of freeing us to make much of Christ forever. This was Paul’s passion: “It is my eager expectation and hope that … now as always Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20). This is my passion, and I pray it will be my passion until I die, which means that I am jealous for Christ to get all the glory he deserves in the work of justification. I am consequently concerned that recent challenges to this doctrine rob him of a great part of his glory by denying that he has become for us not only our pardon but our perfection, that he is not only our redemption from sin but our righteousness, and that he not only bears the punishment for our disobedience but also performs and provides our perfect obedience. Current challenges to justification obscure (not to put it too harshly) half of Christ’s glory in the work of justifi-

cation by denying the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and claiming that the Bible does not teach this great doctrine. Recognizing this, Francis Turretin wrote that imputation “tends to the greater glory of Christ and to our richer consolation, which they obscure and lessen not a little who detract from the price of our salvation a part of his most perfect righteousness and obedience and thus rend his seamless tunic.” Jonathan Edwards echoed this: “To suppose that all Christ does is only to make atonement for us by suffering, is to make him our Savior but in part. It is to rob him of half his glory as Savior.” I do not believe for a moment that any of those who represent the challenge I am opposing aim to dishonor Christ. I believe they love him and want to honor him and his Word. But I believe the mistake they are making will have the opposite effect. The doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ bestows on Jesus Christ the fullest honor that he deserves. He should be honored not only as the one who died to pardon us, and not only as the one who sovereignly works faith and obedience in us, but as the one who provided a perfect righteousness for us as the ground of our full acceptance and endorsement by God. I pray that these “newer” ways of understanding justification that deny the reality of the imputation of divine righteousness to sinners by faith alone will not flourish and thus that the fullest glory of Christ and the fullest pastoral helps for our souls will not be dimmed. ■

John Piper (D. Theol., University of Munich) is the Pastor for Preaching and Vision at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis. Justin Taylor (M.A.R. cand., Reformed Theological Seminary) Director of Theology and Executive Editor at Desiring God Ministries, condensed this material from Piper’s book Counted Righteous in Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003) and from his other unpublished writings. John Piper’s quotation of Charles Hodge comes from Hodge’s commentary on 2 Corinthians (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, n.d.), pp. 150–151. His quotation from William Wilberforce is from Wilberforce’s A Practical View of Christianity, ed. Kevin Charles Belmonte (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), p. 66. His quotation from Francis Turretin is found in Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1993), Vol. 2, p. 452; and the quotation from Jonathan Edwards is found in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), Vol. 1, p. 683.

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In Print September/October Book Recommendations Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? James M. Boice Can “doctrine” renew our heart’s zeal for God? James M. Boice explores the church’s desperate need to reexamine and return to the foundational truth of God’s grace. B-WHGG, $18.00 Justified By Faith Alone R.C. Sproul What is the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls? In this short booklet—a perfect resource for a new Christian—R.C. Sproul explores the meaning and significance of the Reformation doctrine of justification. B-SPR-42, $5.00 Commentary on Galatians Martin Luther A remarkable book that presents the gospel in a pure and concentrate form. If you will understand the Christian life, you must understand Galatians and Martin Luther is an able teacher. B-LUT-5, $17.00 Reformation Sketches: Insights Into Luther, Calvin, and the Confessions W. Robert Godfrey Who were the reformers and why does the Protestant Reformation matter? Alliance Council member W. Robert Godfrey introduces you to the people and ideas that mattered then and are returning to prominence today. B-GO-3, $11.00 Putting Amazing Back Into Grace Michael Horton What does it mean to say that we are saved by grace? Michael Horton re-introduces us to the gospel, and explains to us why God’s grace is so amazing. B-HO-7, $15.00 Right With God: Why Justification Still Matters That which should unite all Protestants is again coming under attack, albeit in lessnoticeable ways. But whether by our own apathy or by the skilled nuances of scholars, the doctrine of justification is at risk. In this issue of Modern Reformation the importance and necessity of justification are explained. Contributors include J.A.O. Preus, Richard Gaffin, Ken Jones, and W. Robert Godfrey. MR-3/02, $5.00

To order, complete and mail the order form in the envelope provided. Or, use our secure e-commerce catalog at www.AllianceNet.org. For phone orders call 215-546-3696 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. ET (credit card orders only).

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On Tape From the Alliance Archives The Gospel for Christians In this White Horse Inn series, Michael Horton, Ken Jones, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenbladt explore the meaning and importance of the gospel…for Christians! Is the gospel being presented today different than that which the church has confessed since the Reformation? Can the gospel change the way you think? Join the hosts of the White Horse Inn and enjoy their wit and wisdom as you learn about this most important topic. C-TGFC-S, 2 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $13.00 Justification by Faith The recovery and propagation of the doc- A L L I A N C E trine of justification by faith is one of the central tenets of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelical’s mission. Periodically, in conferences and on our radio broadcast we explore this theme in more depth. Choose from among the single tapes below for a fuller treatment of this important doctrine. C-80-5, JUSTIFICATION: STANDING BY GOD’S GRACE by Roger R. Nicole, $5.00 C-84-14, JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH by John H. Gerstner, $5.00 C-91-4, JUSTIFICATION AND ADOPTION by Joel Nederhood, $5.00 C-96-P3, SOLA FIDE by R.C. sproul, $5.00 C-99-P2, JUSTIFICATION BY GRACE ALONE by James M. Boice, $5.00 C-MH-30, MARTIN LUTHER AND JUSTIFICATION by Michael Horton, $5.00 C-WHI-220, SOLA FIDE: JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ALONE by the White Horse Inn, $5.00 O F

C O N F E S S I N G

E VA N G E L I C A L S

What Still Divides Us? Justification This, the second video cassette of a two-cassette set, records the debates between Protestant and Catholic theologians on the issue of justification by faith alone. Michael Horton, Rod

Rosenbladt, and W. Robert Godfrey present the Protestant side. Pat Madrid, Robert Sungenis, and William Marshner represent the Roman Catholic side. V-WSD-V2, JUSTIFICATION (1 VIDEO), $25.00 V-WSD-VS, JUSTIFICATION AND SCRIPTURE (2 VIDEOS), $45.00 Galatians In this White Horse Inn series, Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenbladt help us to understand the basic message of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Included in this series are discussions of justification, the heart of the gospel, sanctification, Christian liberty, and many other important issues. C-WHG-S, 11 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $58.00 The Law and the Gospel: Understanding the Most Important Distinction in the Bible Charles Spurgeon once declared, “There is no point on which men make greater mistakes than on the relation which exists between the law and the gospel.” In this two-tape lecture series, Michael Horton and Rod Rosenbladt help us to understand the most important distinction in all of Scripture. LG-S, 2 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $13.00 The Alliance Resource Catalog In each issue of Modern Reformation the editors suggest tape and book resources relevant to the topic. For more selections of tapes, videos, books, and booklets (some of which are only available through the Alliance) please visit the Alliance website at: www.AllianceNet.org or call 215-546-3696 to request a copy of the resource catalog.

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T H E H E A RT O F T H E G O S P E L | Paul’s Message of Grace in Galatians

Luther on “I

t is a marvelous thing and unknown to the world to teach Christians to ignore the Law and to live before God as though there were no Law whatever. For if you do not ignore the Law and thus direct your thoughts to grace as though there were no Law … you cannot be saved.” (6)

Thus the German reformer Martin Luther provocatively sets the tone for his 1535 lectures on Galatians. His argument is based on the fact that in Galatians the Apostle Paul draws, in effect, a crucial distinction between two kinds of righteousness: active and passive. Active righteousness involves our relying on our own fulfillment of the law for our ultimate justification before God (see Gal. 3:3, 12; 5:2–4). Passive righteousness consists in our permitting someone else—namely, God—to bring about our salvation. Active righteousness consists in our actively working to appease God’s wrath. Passive righteousness involves our passively accepting by faith a gift we in no way deserve because God has acted in Christ to justify us (see Gal. 1:3–4; 2:15–16, 20–21; 3:2–14). This distinction is easy to understand, but it is incredibly difficult to practice. Why? Because, Luther argues, a natural connection exists between sinful human reason and the law. We know the law by nature (see Rom. 1:18–2:16), so in the terrors of conscience and danger of death we naturally look to our own works of the law for eternal hope. Because the connection is so natural, Satan’s primary goal in effecting human destruction lies in aggravating our hopeless devotion to the law and thus ensuring that our minds remain turned in upon themselves (see 2 Cor. 11:1–12:10 and especially 11:12–15). But the trouble with such an inward turn is that there is nothing within us except sin and death, so we cannot find solace by looking there. This continuous battle between the law and

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Christ’s work to redeem us from the law’s curse forms the framework for many of Luther’s Galatian lectures. For him, the battle must be waged by all of us, because if we stray away from passive righteousness we necessarily relapse into active righteousness. There is no middle ground. We either look to ourselves or we look to Christ for our justification before a holy God. Religion, whether medieval or modern, always succeeds in focusing attention on our worthiness and the law. It always triumphs in focusing attention on individual sins and thus ignoring completely the depth of our sinful predicament. Luther stresses that, according to Scripture, we are radically corrupt from the inside out. Focusing on individual sins only draws us down into despair, in the same way that Peter sank as he began to focus on the individual waves instead of on Christ. Sin erupts from the human heart with infinitely more force than water from behind a ruptured dam, so preoccupation with this or that sin is not only useless, it ultimately drags the sinner down to the deadly rocks below. The solution must be as radical as the problem— and Luther finds it in the wounds of the crucified God. At that haunting scene of suffering and death there is no room for human self-sufficiency, no room for trivializing sin and death. Recognizing human weakness in a way unique in Christian history, Luther turns our attention with piercing clarity to the flesh of Christ. To that end, he highlights in his Galatian lectures two temptations that both believer and unbeliever battle daily. The first involves our

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Galatians tendency to speculate about God’s naked being; and the second involves our hopeless devotion to our own self-sufficiency. We prize both of these. To human reason, with its preconceptions about holiness and its preoccupation with itself, Christ could hardly be more offensive. So what does reason do to remove the offense? It remakes Christ according to its own notions. Thus we are led away from God by turning our gaze away from Christ, and Satan is successful in keeping us in sin and death. Speculation and Its Devastating Consequences rom Luther’s perspective, Adam’s fall had two devastating consequences: (1) we lost knowledge of God; and (2) our wills became perverted and hopelessly turned in upon themselves. Before the fall, Adam had by nature a proper understanding of God, but now without that correct understanding we tend to run amuck in our imaginations as to who God is and what he desires. In other words, our tendency is to speculate about God’s naked being rather than focus on God as he reveals himself in Christ and Scripture. We are incapable of knowing God apart from what he reveals about himself; and, of course, we must first come to know what something is like before we can offer theories about it. Yet we are much happier offering theories about God before we take the time to understand what God reveals about himself. We are passionately committed to our own wisdom. Human reason wants to flatter itself about what it knows in any and every situation; and so it becomes its own worst sycophant. But such egocentricity produces idolatry rather than true worship. Sinful human beings naturally put the cart before the horse and refuse to stay on the road that God himself has paved. We always

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must know that there is no other God than this Man Jesus Christ. medieval Catholic scheme of works-righteousness. (A “tonsure” Take hold of Him; cling to Him with all is a head shaved on its crown as part of the rite of admission of your heart, and spurn all speculation about Roman Catholics into the clerical orders. A “cowl” is a hooded cloak worn by monks.) the Divine Majesty; for whoever investigates the majesty of God Expiate: To pay the penalty for sin. will be consumed by want to have and to do something unusual. Luther His glory. I know from experience what I sees this as an enormous problem, for we cannot am talking about. But these fanatics, who grasp our salvation if we fail to understand what deal with God apart from this Man, will not our salvation actually involves. He explains: believe me …. Take note, therefore, in the doctrine of justification or grace that when [T]rue Christian theology, as I often warn we all must struggle with the Law, sin, death, you, does not present God to us in His and the devil, we must look at no other God majesty, as Moses and other teachings do, than this incarnate and human God. (28–29) but Christ born of the Virgin as our Mediator and High Priest. Therefore when For Luther, this point cannot be expressed too we are embattled against the Law, sin, and often: There is no other God than the One who death in the presence of God, nothing is presents Himself in the dereliction of the cross. more dangerous than to stray into heaven Why does he make such an absolute statement? with our idle speculations, there to investiBecause, as he read in Genesis, the fall wiped out a gate God in His incomprehensible power, saving knowledge of God; and this disaster is only wisdom, and majesty, to ask how He created compounded by the fact that we are incurably relithe world and how He governs it. If you gious by nature. So in the absence of a clear, simattempt to comprehend God this way and ple word from God as to his nature and will, we want to make atonement to Him apart from naturally create a god to our own liking—i.e., one Christ the Mediator, making your works, that conforms to our own twisted views of holiness fasts, cowl, and tonsure the mediation and salvation. In other words, we create our own between Him and yourself, you will religions with their strict moral rules and guidelines inevitably fall, as Lucifer did (Is. 14:12), and for earning salvation. The law, already written on in horrible despair lose God and everything. our hearts (see Rom. 2:15), becomes our hope for For as in His own nature God is immense, eternal bliss. Our perverted inwardness causes us incomprehensible, and infinite, so to man’s to believe the false claim that if the law exists, then nature He is intolerable. Therefore if you it must be capable of being fulfilled. So fulfilling want to be safe and out of danger to your the law becomes the key to pleasing God and conscience and your salvation, put a check inheriting the kingdom of heaven. on this speculative spirit. Take hold of God In opposition to this, Luther argues that our as Scripture instructs you…. Therefore only hope is found in the Christian message—a begin where Christ began – in the Virgin’s message rooted in history and not in some superwomb, in the manger, and at His mother’s sensible, metaphysical reality. Christianity has a breasts. For this purpose He came down, fleshly point of departure: was born, lived among men, suffered, was crucified, and died, so that in every possible It does not begin at the top, as all other reliway He might present Himself to our sight. gions do; it begins at the bottom…. He wanted us to fix the gaze of our hearts Therefore whenever you are concerned to upon Himself and thus to prevent us from think and act about your salvation, you must clambering into heaven and speculating put away all speculations about the Majesty, about the Divine Majesty…. all thoughts of works, traditions, and philosTherefore whenever you consider the docophy—indeed, of the Law of God itself. trine of justification and wonder how or And you must run directly to the manger and where or in what condition to find a God the mother’s womb, embrace this Infant and who justifies or accepts sinners, then you Virgin’s Child in your arms, and look at

FYI

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Works, fasts, cowl, and tonsure: Terms alluding to the late-

Him—born, being nursed, growing up, going about in human society, teaching, dying, rising again, ascending above all the heavens, and having authority over all things. In this way you can shake off all terrors and errors, as the sun dispels the clouds. (30) For Luther, the historic Christ is the key who unlocks our preoccupation with ourselves and frees us from bondage to sin, death, and the devil. Our only hope is in that which is outside us, in Christ; to fasten our gaze on the One who was crucified for the world’s sins is the only hope for unbeliever and believer alike. As Paul Althaus has put it: Jesus does not point us to God; he presents the eternal God himself in his very person. So to gaze upon that scene of total desolation where God in Christ bears in his own body the sins of the world is to gaze directly into God’s fatherly heart. Here the human mind must subdue all of its own ideas about who God is and what he wills for humankind. But what if we fail to fix our attention on that bronze serpent (see Num. 21:8–9 with John 3:14)? From Luther’s perspective, this failure can produce nothing other than despair and eternal death. This is why the bulk of the devil’s efforts are focused on drawing us toward the contemplative life and away from knowing “Christ and him crucified.” But Jesus in the flesh is the only profitable object of contemplation. Those who forsake it and speculate about the naked God by self-invented “spiritual” means are swallowed by the Divine Majesty. The incarnate Son is the covering in which the Divine Majesty presents himself to us with the gift of salvation. Our Sense of Self-Sufficiency Versus Christ’s Sufficiency or Luther, we can hardly submerge Jesus in the human situation too much. The union of the divine and human natures in one person is what assures us that Christ’s work stands secure. This union is so wondrous that the angels descend as though there were no God in heaven to come to Bethlehem to adore and worship him as he lies in the manger at his mother’s breast. The incarnation makes Jesus’ humanity subject to death and hell, yet in that very humiliation it devours them both in itself. As incredible as this is, the Christian church in every generation manages to place humanity at the center of the religious relationship. As Luther saw it, our self-love produces a Jesus in our own image, one who conforms to our inward sense of self-sufficiency. It does so by making Jesus our great example. He becomes, in effect, our role model. It is claimed that, by daily patterning our lives after his, we can produce the godly lives that God wants us to live. In this way we achieve the synthesis we

want between our love for ourselves and our reading of certain New Testament passages, and our lives give off an appearance of piety. But this synthesis has a horrible price. It segregates Christ from sins and sinners. Christ, as a mere example to be imitated, becomes useless to us. He also becomes a judge and tyrant who is angry at our sins and who damns us on their account. Such a perverted view of Jesus can only be achieved by disregarding God’s self-revelation at the cross. At the cross, Luther argues, we must conclude that, just as Christ is wrapped up in our flesh and blood, so he is also wrapped up in our sins, our curse, and our death. Whatever sins we have committed or will commit must be seen as Christ’s own, as if he himself had committed them. In other words, our sin must become Christ’s own or we shall perish eternally. And so Luther comments: “And this is our highest comfort, to clothe and wrap Christ this way in my sins, your sins, and the sins of the entire world, and in this way to behold Him bearing all our sins. When He is beheld this way, He easily removes all the fanatical opinions of our opponents about justification by works” (279). When we make Jesus our example, we direct the human race toward the very thing that holds it captive—namely, the law. For fallen humankind, the law is a judge and tyrant that justly pronounces a curse on everything we are and do. We may misunderstand the law’s true intent—thinking it has been given to us for us to fulfill—but it nevertheless rightfully condemns the human heart. And, from Luther’s point of view, the solution to our plight must be as radical as the curse. He finds the heart of the solution to our predicament in the apostle’s words, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). We must, Luther insists, distinguish carefully Christ from the law. For all who do not keep the law are under a curse, and since no one keeps the law, it follows that all human beings are under a curse (see Gal. 3:10 with Deut. 27:26 and Rom. 3:9–20). Therefore, the law and works of the law do not redeem us from the curse. “On the contrary,” Luther concludes, “they drag us down and subject us to the curse.” Christ is entirely different from the law and its works; and so redemption in him is different than merit based on works of the law. Only Christ himself could redeem us from the law’s curse, bearing in his own body our sins, our curse, and our death. “By this fortunate exchange with us He took upon Himself our sinful person and granted us His innocent and victorious Person” (284). So, in his characteristic language, Luther explains: When the merciful Father saw that we were being oppressed through the Law, that we were being held under a curse, and that we

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could not be liberated from it by anything, He sent His Son into the world, heaped all the sins of all men upon Him, and said to Him: “Be Peter the denier; Paul the persecutor, blasphemer, and assaulter; David the adulterer; the sinner who ate the apple in Paradise; the thief on the cross. In short, be the person of all men, the one who has committed the sins of all men. And see to it that You pay and make satisfaction for them.” Now the Law comes and says: “I find Him a sinner, who takes upon Himself the sins of all men. I do not see any other sins than those in Him. Therefore let Him die on the cross!” And so it attacks Him and kills Him. By this deed the whole world is purged and expiated from all sins, and thus it is set free from death and from every evil. But when sin and death have been abolished by this one man, God does not want to see anything else in the whole world, especially if it were to believe, except sheer cleansing and righteousness. (280) Wise men indeed find the highest God lying in a lowly manger. But he descends to that manger, to the level of our suffering and pain, for only one purpose: that by bearing our curse and death in himself we might find a gracious God, a God for us. Thus Luther rightly concludes: With gratitude and with a sure confidence, therefore, let us accept this doctrine, so sweet and so filled with comfort, which teaches that Christ became a curse for us, that is, a sinner worthy of the wrath of God; that He clothed Himself in our person, laid our sins upon His own shoulders, and said: “I have committed the sins that all men have committed.” Therefore He truly became accursed according to the Law, not for Himself but, as Paul says, for us. (284) Why We Must Heed Luther’s Words oes Luther highlight a battle for faith that is culturally bound to the medieval church, with its devotion to shrines and saints, or do his words have applicability in our contemporary situation? For him, human nature remains constant this side of heaven, and consequently the tendencies toward trying to know God outside Christ and to love ourselves dominate all human history. Modern movements such as Pietism and some manifestations of American and European Evangelicalism serve to confirm our abiding inward focus. While they differ in particulars, the result is always the same: Jesus becomes

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our example, and salvation—despite the constant language of grace—ultimately rests with us. Luther constantly warned against remaking Jesus to our own liking. In fact, he could hardly stress it too often, because we all without exception cling to the law and resist Jesus’ insistence that we are the broken reeds and smoldering wicks of Isaiah’s text—the very reeds and wicks he promises not to break off and snuff out (see Matt. 12:17–21). So Luther’s fervent call to behold Christ’s flesh is as necessary today as it was in his day. Our only consolation is to be found in an ignominious death two thousand years ago and in our appropriation of that death in Word and Sacrament, by which the forgiveness of sins is distributed to beggars who have nothing to offer but sin and death. And so Luther urges us to fight our natural inclination to make Jesus an angry lawgiver. We must learn to regard him as Paul portrays him: He is the God who pays the penalty of our sin with his own blood. It is only with this objective view of God in mind that we can begin to comprehend the unqualified freedom that the Father provides in the bloody death and Resurrection of the Son. It is only by clinging to this picture that we can finally, in our struggles against the law and the accusations of our conscience and the devil and in the face of our own mortality, declare with steady confidence: Law, you have no jurisdiction over me; therefore you are accusing and condemning me in vain. For I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whom the Father sent into the world to redeem us miserable sinners who are oppressed by the tyranny of the Law. He poured out His life and spent it lavishly for me. When I feel your terrors and threats, O Law, I immerse my conscience in the wounds, the blood, the death, the resurrection, and the victory of Christ. Beyond Him I do not want to see or hear anything at all. (369) ■ David Andersen (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and Coventry University), has taught for several universities including Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne, Eastern Michigan University, and Concordia University, Ann Arbor. Dr. Andersen is the author of the forthcoming book Luther and Reason (Bonn). All of the quotations identified only by a page number are from Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, translated by Jaroslav Pelikan (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), Volume 26. The reference attributed to Paul Althaus is found in his Theology of Martin Luther, translated by Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), p. 182.

T H E H E A RT O F T H E G O S P E L | Paul’s Message of Grace in Galatians

The Law in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians ittle in the Apostle Paul’s writings has been debated as intensively in recent years as his understanding of what he calls “the law” (see Rom. 3:21, 31; 1 Cor. 9:8–10, 20–21; Gal. 3; Eph. 2:15; among other verses). This topic is inherently and notoriously difficult because Paul makes equally strong positive and negative statements about “the law.” It is hard to know how to reconcile these seemingly opposing statements. And this problem has recently become more difficult because some scholars now claim that first-century Judaism was a religion of grace and not of works-righteousness and then emphasize the continuing Jewishness of Paul’s perspective. These new developments have prompted many scholars to present a “new perspective” on Paul that stands in marked contrast to the traditional or “Lutheran” understanding of him. This new perspective concludes that Paul had no real quarrel with the law and made no fundamental break with Jewish law-keeping, except where it focused on Jewish identity markers—like circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, and dietary restrictions—that by definition excluded the Gentiles. Paul’s only problem with the law, it is claimed, was with those features of it that made it hard to evangelize the

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Gentiles. I will argue, to the contrary, that Paul’s polemic against the law has to do with how someone is brought into a right relationship with God— in other words, Paul opposed specific views of the law because he was concerned about the basis of salvation, which in his view is necessarily the same for both Jews and Gentiles. The Word “Law” (Nomos) in Galatians he word nomos (“law”) occurs 32 times in Galatians. This gives Galatians the densest usage of nomos in the New Testament, even though the much longer Romans uses nomos 79 times. In Paul’s letters, the word “law” has several meanings. It can mean Scripture in general, or the books of Moses, or the Mosaic commandments, or even law in the sense of a principle. Context often clarifies how the word is to be understood, although there are times when the exact meaning is debatable. The different meanings of the word can occasionally help us in reconciling Paul’s positive and negative statements about the law.

The Positive Use of “Law” in Galatians ven in Galatians, Paul continues in some sense to think highly of the Mosaic law. In 5:14 he is happy to say that “the whole law”—that is, the Mosaic law—“is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” The Mosaic law, as Paul here quotes it from Leviticus 19:18, is apparently still valued as a fundamental description of righteousness. Those who are circumcised are faulted because they “do not themselves keep the law” (6:13; cf. 5:3). After listing the fruit of the Spirit, he again appeals to the law as the standard of what is good and evil: “against such things there is no law” (5:23), which is an indirect, understated way of saying that the fruit of the Spirit is in accord with the Mosaic law. Granted, Galatians lacks the sort of statement made in Romans 3:31: “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.” Yet Galatians clearly testifies to Paul’s ongoing commitment to the righteousness of the Mosaic law. In both Romans and Galatians, it is

Paul and Coven

n advancing what has come to be called “the new perspective on Paul,” E. P. Sanders argues strenuously that the Judaism in Paul’s day was not “legalistic,” as traditional Protestant readings maintain, but that it was characterized by “covenantal nomism.” Legalism claims that we can become righteous simply by choosing to obey God’s commandments. Covenantal nomism holds, in contrast, that righteousness is a matter of being part of God’s covenant people, which is initially a matter of grace—“getting in” to God’s covenant is a matter of God’s “electing” or choosing—but then becomes a matter of obedience—“staying in” God’s covenant requires obeying the stipulations that come with it, which make Torah, God’s law. Sanders concludes that if Paul was in fact reacting against legalistic works-righteousness, then he was wrong to take Judaism as his target. Other “new perspective” theologians, such as James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright, think Sanders is right about first-century Judaism not being legalistic, but they then attempt in varying degrees to reconcile Paul with “covenantal nomism” against the classic “Reformation” reading of Paul. Covenantal nomism also holds that the average Jewish person may sin and yet remain in the covenant through repentance, renewed obedience to the law, and (according to some major rabbinical sources) the “merit of the fathers”—the faithful deeds of

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the patriarchs. The condition for remaining in the covenant is not, then, successfully fulfilling all of God’s commandments—it is not legalistic perfectionism—but freely intending to obey them. The fact that covenantal nomism provides for transgressions and does not require perfect obedience means, for Sanders and others, that it was after all a religion of grace. It is unclear how such “covenantal nomism” is significantly different from the medieval system that the reformers rejected, even if we grant many of Sanders’s points about first-century Judaism. To be sure, the Judaism of Paul’s day was not simply pull-yourselfup-by-your-own-bootstraps Pelagianism; and it has been a travesty of Protestant interpretation to suggest as much. Yet late medieval Roman Catholic teaching was not such a raw Pelagianism, either. However great the differences between them, early Judaism and late medievalism shared a similar hunch about how salvation works: God’s mercy is not absent, but it is conditioned upon our obedience. Sanders’s summary of early Judaism as “getting in by grace, staying in by obedience” parallels the medieval view that “first justification” through baptism is by grace alone while increase in grace and final justification depends on human cooperation. No one can be “saved by works,” plain and simple, according to the medieval scheme of things, contrary to the pop-

the Mosaic law’s purpose and the question of how we become righteous that are at issue. The righteousness of the Mosaic law is corroborated in Galatians, as in Romans, by appealing to Jesus’ teaching. Paul’s words in Galatians 5:14 parallel his claim at Romans 13:9–10—all the commandments “are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ . . . love is the fulfilling of the law.” This reiterates our Lord’s teaching at Matthew 22:34–40. Paul also calls his readers to “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2). The “law of Christ” refers to Jesus’ teaching, considered as the uniquely authoritative exposition of Moses’ law. It is not a matter of Jesus’ teaching becoming a new law; it is Moses’ law as now interpreted by Jesus. And, crucially, Paul does not say that we are “under” the law of Christ, as if we are still under a law and only its content has changed (nor does he use the word “under” in 1 Cor. 9:21, in spite of most English translations). In other contexts in Galatians, when Paul speaks

positively of “the law,” he is referring to Scripture (e.g., the second occurrence of the word in Gal. 4:21; cf. 1 Cor. 14:21). Elsewhere, he can also speak positively of the law in the sense of the righteousness that was its goal (see Rom. 8:2–11). The paradox for Paul is that it is only when we are freed from the law that we are able to live out the righteousness that is at the heart of the law. We will return to this point later. The Negative Use of “Law” in Galatians y far the majority of the occurrences of the word “law” in Galatians bears a negative connotation. In particular, Paul criticizes what he refers to as “works of the law.” With the first three occurrences of the word “law” in the letter, Galatians 2:16 presents one of Paul’s fundamental assertions: “we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”

nantal Nomism ular but ill-informed polemics of many Protestants. For human works are never truly meritorious in and of themselves, and thus they are always insufficient to gain God’s favor. Yet God has provided a covenant, say the later medieval theologians, in which he promises to accept as meritorious the believer’s virtuous attitudes and actions. This softening of the strictness of the law at Sinai (“Do this and you shall live”) is called “good news.” These medieval theologians developed a distinction between merit de condigno (strict merit), which no human being can attain after the fall, and merit de congruo (proportionate merit), which involves good works that God accepts as if they merit salvation. The common saying was this: “God will not deny his grace to those who do what lies within them.” So while my works cannot earn salvation in the strictest sense, God will accept them as meritorious if, after all, I do my best. This is “getting in by grace, staying in by obedience;” and as such, it was precisely the view of salvation that the reformers attacked on biblical grounds. Galatians was a gold mine for such resistance. Paul’s letters—and specifically Galatians—show that Sanders and the “new perspective on Paul” are basically right in their identification of first-century Judaism as “covenantal nomism.” But even if we grant that covenantal nomism rather than perfectionistic legalism was the broad consensus formula for first-century

Judaism, it is precisely this that Paul opposes as the Galatian heresy: “O foolish Galatians! . . . Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by the hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal. 3:1–4). This confusion is substantially the same as the one the Protestant reformers faced. It crops up throughout church history whenever Scripture’s clear distinctions between law and gospel, faithfulness and faith, get confused concerning the way we receive the inheritance promised to Abraham. Michael Horton’s citation of E. P. Sanders comes from Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977). For more recent exploration along these lines, but with some variations, see also James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990); N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992); and What St. Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997). The literature of the new perspective is vast and still growing.

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Recently, there has been considerable debate over the meaning of this phrase “works of the law.” What does Paul mean by it? Traditionally, Protestants argued that it referred to a legalistic perversion of the law that falsely implied that one could earn one’s salvation by works of righteousness. “Works of the law” thus referred to legalism; and so the problem for Paul was not the law itself—“the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Rom. 7:12)—but a distortion of the law that maintained that righteousness could be attained through keeping the law (see Gal. 2:21; 3:10–14; 5:1–6). Yet now some are claiming that first-century Judaism was nonlegalistic—that it was a religion of grace and not of works-righteousness—and so Paul seems to be

phrase “by works of the law” is contrasted with “by hearing with faith” in 3:2 and 5. Yet perhaps 3:12 is at once clearest and most striking: “But the law is not of faith [lit. “is not from (or of) faith”], rather ‘The one who does them shall live by them.’” For Paul, the law is a matter of performance, but a performance that is beyond human possibility. Righteousness cannot come by means of the law. This is unmistakable in 3:11: “Now it is evident that no man is justified before God by the law; for ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” Consequently, to “rely on works of the law” is to be “under a curse” (3:10), as Paul’s quotation of Deuteronomy 27:26—“Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them”—in 3:10 is supposed to make clear. But by his work on the cross, “Christ Jewish thinking in Paul’s day did take obeying the law to be the means redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a to righteousness. curse for us” (3:13). Christ’s entire work is summarized by Paul in these words: “But arguing against an imaginary opponent. No Jews, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth this new perspective claims, were obeying the law his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we in order to earn acceptance with God. According to this new perspective, the phrase might receive adoption as sons” (4:4–5). Christ’s “works of the law” refers to those observances that death on the cross delivers those who believe from were ordinarily identified as marking out Jews from being “under the law.” Being under the law is bad Gentiles, namely the laws regarding circumcision, news. Once we were under the law, but now, the Sabbath, and dietary matters. Since Paul was a thanks to Christ’s work, we no longer are. Only self-designated “apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom. Christ’s death makes possible the new situation. 11:13; cf. Gal. 2:7–9) and these laws were exactly Thus Paul writes: “I do not nullify the grace of God; what excluded the Gentiles from membership in for if justification [that is, righteousness] were God’s people, it was only insistence upon these through the law, then Christ died to no purpose” laws that Paul opposed. Apart from this use of the (2:21). Mosaic law to maintain Jewish exclusivity, this new This raises the questions, What is the law’s purperspective argues, Paul had no problem with the pose?, and, in particular, How does the law relate law. It is only reading Paul through the lens of to God’s covenant promises? Paul himself poses Martin Luther’s personal struggle with righteous- the first question in 3:19: “Why then the law?” His ness that leads people to believe that Paul fought answer is that the law “was added because of transagainst the law itself. gressions, till the offspring should come to whom But didn’t Paul have a more basic problem with the promise had been made.” He does not spell out the law—and not merely with its exclusivity? What here what he means by the words “because of transis the most natural meaning of the Pauline texts? gressions,” but in Romans 5:20 he says that “the law Although the new perspective has gained a number came in to increase the trespass.” As he says in of adherents, many do not find it convincing. Paul Romans 4:15, the law brings transgression and mounts a polemic against the law that can only be wrath. described as weighty—and he does so in a strange Jewish thinking in Paul’s day, then, did take way if his only concern is that Gentiles are being obeying the law to be the means to righteousness. excluded by the law’s emphasis upon Jewish identi- In contrast, Paul argued that the law is not at all the ty markers. If that were really the problem, then means to righteousness; it only multiplies sin and why did he not simply say so in so many words? provokes God’s wrath. Paul makes this unmistakInstead, we repeatedly encounter texts that ably clear: “if a law had been given that could give oppose the law to righteousness and faith. In addi- life, then righteousness would indeed be by the tion to this contrast as we have seen it in 2:16, the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under

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sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe” (3:21–22). Consequently, the law became in effect a curse rather than a blessing. But this was only temporary, “until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made” (3:19)—that is, until the coming of Jesus Christ. Paul carefully explains this in 3:15–29. Let us reconstruct the argument. Salvation history begins with the covenant promise to Abraham and his “offspring.” Reasoning like a rabbi, Paul observes that the word “offspring” (sperma; literally, “seed”) is singular rather than plural and thus concludes that it refers to a specific descendant of Abraham, namely, Christ. The law, however, came 430 years after the promise to Abraham; and it does not—indeed, cannot—annul the earlier Abrahamic covenant (see 3:17). The inheritance, then, will come not by the law but by the earlier promise (see 3:18). The law is not against the promises (see 3:21). It simply had a temporary role to play, and with the coming of Christ, that role was accomplished. Paul employs two metaphors to describe the law’s function in the period between its deliverance at Sinai and Christ’s coming. First, the law was like a prison; second, the law was like a person in charge of a child (which is the literal meaning of paidagogos in 3:24–25). “Now before faith came,” Paul says, “we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed” (3:23). Then he adds, “So then, the law was our guardian [or, better, “disciplinarian”] until Christ came” (3:24). Most modern commentators conclude that this “child guide” should be understood negatively, parallel to the idea of imprisonment in the preceding verse, rather than positively in the sense of “tutor” or “instructor.” This temporary period of restraint under the law lasted only to Christ’s coming, and so it has now come to an end: “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” (3:25). It is as though our childhood is past and therefore we are no longer under “guardians and managers” (4:2). With Christ’s coming, the time has fully come and we who believe now move into full sonship and become mature heirs (see 4:4–7). Paul is adamant about our consequent freedom from the law: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (5:1). To attempt to gain righteousness by the law is to fall away from grace (see 5:4).

Free to Be Righteous n Galatians, then, Paul argues that the law has come to an end, having now served its main purpose, and that Christians have been delivered from being “under” the law. In one of his most remarkable statements, he says, “For through the law I died to the law” (2:19). The purpose clause that immediately follows these words must be noted: “so that I might live to God.” This is perhaps the key paradox in the whole question of Paul and the law: we are no longer under the law—we are set free from it—precisely in order that we might pursue righteousness more effectively. Here is how Paul puts it: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (5:13–14). And so we come full circle back to the positive references to the law that I noted near the beginning of this article. The point is that, for all his strong arguments concerning the Christian’s freedom from the law, Paul still puts an extremely high premium on righteousness—and can even do so in terms of fulfilling the law. From his point of view, it is as though we are free from the law in order to do the law. Livedout righteousness is of bottom-line importance for Paul (see Eph. 2:10; 1 Thess. 4:1–8; Tit. 2:14). He is

FYI

Soteriology: The part of Christian theology that deals with how sinful human beings are saved. From the Greek word soteria, meaning deliverance or preservation or salvation.

thus careful to warn his readers against unrighteous works of the flesh, in words that may sound very “un-Pauline”: “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:21). A little further on, this gets emphasized again: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he or she also reap. For the one who sows to the flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (6:7–8; see, too, Rom. 2:6–10, 13). How are we to reconcile this emphasis with Paul’s resounding declaration that we are no longer under the law and are now free from that which held us captive until the coming of Christ? The answer is that we are free from law insofar as being in a right relationship with God is concerned. That relationship depends solely on grace. We are not free, however, from the call to righteousness. That Christians will live righteously is practically a given

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for Paul. He insists that “if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (5:18). But those led by the Spirit will manifest the appropriate and expected righteousness, for “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:22–24). Here is the paradox again in its fullness: We are set free from the law in order to produce a righteousness that corresponds to the righteousness that the law demanded. This is because the teaching that serves as our guide to righteousness—the teaching of Christ and his apostles—is in effect an exposition of the ultimate meaning of the Mosaic law— that is, the Torah. Jesus, by virtue of his identity as the Messiah who inaugurates the eschatological kingdom, is the authoritative interpreter of the meaning of the law. In his teaching, Jesus penetrates to the essence of the law. Understandably, the pattern of righteousness to which the Christian is called corresponds to that of the Torah; the content of the law, then, has not fundamentally changed. It is only the dynamic—the means by which we can arrive at righteousness— that differs dramatically. Living out the righteousness of the law does not result in a right relationship with God; rather, being in a right relationship with God through faith in Christ results in living out the righteousness of the law. The Christian—through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and not through the dynamic of his or her own efforts to be righteous by keeping the law—manifests a life of increasing growth in righteousness. So were there first-century Jews who were attempting to earn acceptance with God through their works of righteousness? Were there first-century Jews who did not realize that they were already in right relationship with God as the chosen people of God? Were there first-century Jews who did not recognize that the covenant was a matter of pure grace and not of works? It should not be surprising if we answer these questions affirmatively. There have always been Christian legalists who failed to understand that salvation is entirely a matter of grace and not of works. The strong inclination of post-exilic Judaism to focus upon doing the law made it difficult to keep the grace of the covenant uppermost in mind. The emphasis upon works was formidable, as can be seen in the well-known statement of Rabbi Akiba: “The world is judged by grace, and yet all is according to the amount of work” (Aboth 3:20). This emphasis, combined with our natural inclination to believe that we must earn our way with God, makes it easy to understand how many Jews

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fell into legalistic thinking, contrary to the actual soteriology of their scriptures. For both Jews and Gentiles, salvation always depends upon the grace of God, and free grace always has as its goal the righteousness that was at the heart of the Torah. ■

Donald A. Hagner (Ph.D., University of Manchester) is George Eldon Ladd Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA, where he has taught for 27 years. He is the author or editor of more than ten books, the latest of which is Encountering the Book of Hebrews: An Exposition (Baker, 2002).

T H E H E A RT O F T H E G O S P E L | Paul’s Message of Grace in Galatians

Justification in Galatians: New and Old Perspectives hristians dissatisfied with traditional formulations of the doctrine of justification have found a new alternative in N. T. Wright’s popular book, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity?, published by Eerdmans in 1997. Wright, currently Bishop of Durham, is a talented and prolific writer and speaker who has clarified many New Testament truths. His overall thought on Paul, however, belongs to what many have termed the “new perspective on Paul,” and his views on justification have created concern among some Christians. What is it about Wright’s teaching that is causing a stir? Very simply put, it is the question of whether justification by faith in Christ is or is not the solution to the problem of sin, whether it establishes in a legal sense the sinner’s acquitted status before a righteous God. I cannot begin to treat the matter fully

here, but I will try to get at the heart of the issue, with special reference to Paul’s teaching in Galatians. Wright contends that Christians—and Protestants, in particular—have misunderstood justification by taking it to be mainly concerned with the beginning of the Christian life for the individual believer. Traditionally, Protestants have understood justification to involve a divine pronouncement that the believer is forgiven of his or her sins on the basis of Christ’s finished work. Wright argues instead that in the first-century Jewish context justification had to do with the question of who belonged to God’s covenant people. And the doctrine of justification, he thinks, didn’t have to do with the question of “how one got in” to the covenant people but rather “how you could tell who was in”—it answered an ecclesiological rather than a soteriological question. Of course, if you belonged to the covenant people, Wright says, you could be

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FYI

Covenant theology: Theology that takes the key to Scripture

to do with the last judgment, or with something in the to be an understanding of its primary covenants, usually taken present that anticipates or approximates the last judgto include the eternal covenant of redemption among the three per- ment; and, as such, it concerned one’s standing before sons of the Trinity to save God’s elect, the covenant of works that God struck with Adam, and God in terms of sin. The Jews correctly viewed judgment as the covenant of grace between God and the people whom he redeems. universal—as something that would happen to all human assured of having your sins forgiven as a function of beings (see Rom. 2:1–11)—and thus as a universal covenant membership. But such assurance is not the human concern (see Rom. 3:9–20). The essential point of justification, in his view. question was, How could someone—and it is Wright’s view initially seems attractive because it invariably the individual, not the nation, that is in counters the individualism that plagues much of view—be found righteous before God so that he or Western Christianity. Many critics, particularly she would escape God’s just judgment? from the Reformed camp, have been trying to Yet beyond Greek lexicons and studies of ancient counter such individualism for many years. But the Judaism, what ultimately matters, of course, is what question whether Paul views justification as prima- Paul himself says about justification. Here is what rily a corporate thing, or as an individual thing with Wright says about Paul’s teaching in Galatians: corporate consequences, is a matter of exegesis, not of contemporary cultural analysis. Wright’s emphaDespite a long tradition to the contrary, sis on God’s covenant is also attractive; and, again, the problem Paul addresses in Galatians is this emphasis has always been at the heart of not the question of how precisely someone Reformed theology. But his understanding of the becomes a Christian, or attains to a relationcovenant as it relates to justification is not Reformed ship with God…. On anyone’s reading, but theology’s understanding. The covenant relationespecially within its first-century context, ship between God and Israel may indeed be the [the problem Paul addresses] has to do quite context in which Jews discussed justification, but it obviously with the question of how you was the context for their discussion of everything! define the people of God: are they to be Wright criticizes what he perceives to be the defined by the badges of Jewish race, or in Augustinian, Lutheran, and Calvinist understandsome other way? … ings of justification and asks us to adopt a different The question at issue in the church at understanding. How do we know who is right? Antioch, to which Paul refers in [Galatians Wright knows that there are no Greek lexicons 2], is not how people came to a relationship that define dikaiosune (righteousness) in terms of with God, but who one is allowed to eat “membership within a group” or dikaioo (justify) as with. Who is a member of the people of “to make or declare the member of a group.” He God? Are ex-pagan converts full members acknowledges that these words belong to the realm or not? … of the law court and that they have a legal or forenJustification, in Galatians, is the doctrine sic meaning, which seems to support the traditionwhich insists that all who share faith in al Protestant interpretation that justification has to Christ belong at the same table, no matter do with an individual being declared righteous what their racial differences, as together they before God. Yet he holds that the forensic overwait for the final new creation. tone of these words is no more than a metaphor designed to serve the deeper meaning of being part No one denies that justification has crucial implicaof God’s covenant people. Part of his argument is tions for defining the people of God. But it is not easy that in the Judaism of Paul’s day “justification” was to see how, even in Wright’s view, anyone can avoid all about defining who belonged to Israel, the the necessary connection between justification and covenant people. But this is quite contestable. coming to salvation in Christ. Suppose, for example, Students may check out passages like Sirach 7:5; someone claims that you and I do not meet the defi9:12; 18:22; 23:11; 2 Baruch 21:11; 24:1–4; 4 Ezra nition (whatever it is) for membership in God’s peo7:105; 12:7–9; 4QMMT (a fragment of the Dead ple. If that person is right, then we need to know how Sea Scrolls) for themselves. When Jews of the to enter the covenant community. But then the issue intertestamental and New Testament periods spoke does become, How do we become Christians and about justification of human beings by God, it had attain to a right relationship with God?

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The problem at Antioch reported by Paul in Galatians 2 concerned a temporary lapse by Peter, when he stopped eating with uncircumcised Gentile Christians. This may have occurred at the time reported by Luke in Acts 15:1, when certain Jews who claimed to be Christians came down from Judea to Antioch and taught the Gentile Christians, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” At any rate, the issue for the uncircumcised Gentile believers in Antioch certainly had to do with salvation—and not simply with membership in the covenant community or with the privilege of eating with Jewish Christians. The matter of who belongs at the same table is an implication of Paul’s doctrine of justification but not the doctrine itself. Otherwise, “justification” would be something that might have to take place over and over again, as many times as someone called into question your place at the table. If all—both Jews and Gentiles— had to come to Christ on the same terms, as sinners who first needed to be justified by faith in him (see Gal. 2:17), then all had the same status in God’s adopted family (see Gal. 3:28; 5:6; 6:15). There was, then, no room in the church for the kind of ethnic distinctions that Jews were used to and that had prevented them from eating with uncircumcised Gentiles (see Acts 10:28; 11:3; and outside the New Testament, Jubilees 22:6; Letter of Aristeas 139, 142). This does not empty justification of its forensic meaning. Justification establishes the Jewish or Gentile believer’s legal relationship to God and, therefore, his or her legal status as a child in the family of God. Paul writes, “We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified” (Gal. 2:15–16, rsv). Here Paul says that even he and Peter—who were both Jews by birth, Torah-keepers by profession, and by all supposed rights, heirs to the promises of Abraham—had come to see the futility of such credentials (see Phil. 3:3–9) and had placed their faith in Christ Jesus in order to be justified. This justification did not have to do primarily with the question of who should eat with whom; it had to do with their standing before a righteous God (see Gal. 3:11; cf. Rom. 2:13; 4:2), as a consequence of which, all justified believers enjoy tablefellowship with each other because they are all one in Christ (see Gal. 3:28). A passage in Acts gives us crucial background to the Galatian situation. At the climax of his speech

to the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch, Paul says, “Therefore, my brothers, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified [dikaioo] from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38–39, NIV). This shows that, in spite of Wright’s claims to the contrary, Paul did talk about justification when he was evangelizing. Here in fact he is preaching to residents of Galatia (Pisidian Antioch, not to be confused with Syrian Antioch, was in Galatia), to some who would later be among the recipients of his Galatian letter; and so the Galatians were already familiar with Paul’s vocabulary of justification when they received that letter. It also shows that justification has everything to do with the forgiveness of sins. We are told that the message preached by Paul that Sabbath was explicitly a “message of salvation” (13:26; cf. 13:47) through a “Savior, Jesus” (13:23) whom God had sent to them; and this message was addressed to “every one who believes” (13:39). It could not be otherwise, as individual Jews and Gentiles had to come into the church by faith (see 13:48; Gal. 3:1–14), and were not to be considered part of the church automatically, based on their previous membership in any race or cult. What is the upshot of this discussion? While it is always good to be reminded that the justified sinner is not an isolated believer but is part of God’s covenant community, the church must not abandon Paul’s forensic understanding of justification but must preserve and proclaim it. Justification is God’s declaration of forgiveness to every sinner who turns from sin and trusts in Jesus Christ, whose faith in Christ is credited to him or her as righteousness (see Gal. 3:6–8), all for the sake of Christ, “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). “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. 5:21). C. E. Hill (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) is Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. He is the author of Regnum Caelorum. Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity, second edition (Eerdmans, 2001) and The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Quotations are from N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans , 1997), pp. 120–22. For Wright’s claims that Paul did not speak of justification in his evangelism, see pp. 116–17.

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We Confess… T

he first and chief article is this, that Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins, and was raised again for our justification (Rom. 4:25). And He alone is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world (John 1:29); and God has laid upon Him the iniquities of us all (Is. 53:6). Likewise: All have sinned and are justified without merit [freely, and without their own works or merits] by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Rom. 3:23f). Now, since it is necessary to believe this, and it cannot be otherwise acquired or apprehended by any work, law, or merit, it is clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us as St. Paul says, (Rom. 3:28): “For we conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the Law.” Likewise (v. 26): “That He might be just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Christ.” Of this article nothing can be yielded or surrendered [nor can anything be granted or permitted contrary to the same], even though heaven and earth, and whatever will not abide, should sink to ruin. For there is none other name under heaven, given among men whereby we must be saved, says Peter (Acts 4:12). And with His stripes we are healed (Is. 53:5). And upon this article all things depend which we teach and practice in opposition to the Pope, the devil, and the [whole] world. Therefore, we must be sure concerning this doctrine, and not doubt; for otherwise all is lost, and the Pope and devil and all things gain the victory and suit over us. Part II, Article I, The Smalcald Articles (1537), “Christ and Faith”

e believe that our blessedness lies in the forgiveness of our sins because of Jesus Christ, and that in it our righteousness before God is contained, as David and Paul teach us when they declare that man blessed to whom God grants righteousness apart from works (Ps. 32:1, Rom. 4:6). And the same apostle says that we are justified “freely” or “by grace” through redemption in Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:24). And therefore we cling to this foundation, which is firm forever, giving all glory to God, humbling ourselves, and recognizing ourselves as we are; not claiming a thing for ourselves or our merits and leaning and resting on the sole obedience of Christ crucified, which is ours when we believe in him. That is enough to cover all our sins and to make us confident, freeing the conscience from the fear, dread, and terror of God’s approach, without doing what our first father, Adam, did, who trembled as he tried to cover himself with fig leaves. In fact, if we had to appear before God relying—no matter how little—on ourselves or some other creature, then, alas, we would be swallowed up. Therefore everyone must say with David: “Lord, do not enter into judgment with your servants, for before you no living person shall be justified” (Ps. 143:2). Article XXIII, The Belgic Confession (1561), “The Justification of Sinners”

hrist, by His obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are thus justified, and did make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to His Father’s justice in their behalf. Yet, inasmuch as He was given by the Father for them; and His obedience and satisfaction accepted in their stead; and both freely, not for anything in them; their justification is only of free grace; that both the exact justice, and rich grace of God, might be glorified in the justification of sinners. Chapter XI, The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), “Of Justification”

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BOOKS | Covenantal Worship: Reconsidering the Puritan Regulative Principle

Principles of Conduct

n light of the comparative dearth of historically and theologically informed studies of

element (sometimes called a “part” and sometimes “mode”) Reformed worship, one is inclined to welcome any contribution to the field that is char- of worship is a distinct and ordinary act of worship. acterized by both. R. J. Gore, Jr.’s most recent book is just that, although the book Prayer, singing praise, the ministry of the Word, the turns out to be more concerned with the ministry of the Sacraments, are all “elements” of subtitle than the title. He expends only worship. A “circumstance” is some consideration 26 pages on covenantal worship per se; the regarding a matter that is not religious in itself, what majority of the work is devoted to the the Westminster Confession (1:6) calls, “common unproven thesis that the Puritans to human actions and societies.” Such consideraembraced a different principle of worship tions include the time and place of the meeting, than Calvin did. amplification of the human voice, how best to proThe strongest aspect of the book is vide seating and lighting, and so forth. A “form” is the clarity with which Gore describes the the lexical (or, possibly, musical) content of a given differences between the worship prac- element. Thus, if one determines that prayer is an tices of the English Puritans and those of element of worship, the decision to employ the Calvin, and the historical occasions of “Lord’s Prayer” is a decision regarding “form;” not these differences due to Puritan fears of an element or circumstance. Finally, a “rubric” is a the (perceived or real) tyranny of the specific manner of conducting an element, such as Anglican Church. The most refreshing aspect of the rubric of kneeling, standing, or sitting for the book is the candor with which Gore repudiates prayer, or the rubric of breaking the bread (fracCovenantal the teaching of the Westminster Assembly on wor- tion) when administering the Lord’s Supper. Each Worship: ship: “All that has preceded has been helpful in of these four realities is governed differently. Reformed Christianity (Calvin and the Puritans) Reconsidering determining that the regulative principle of worthe Puritan ship, as formulated by the Puritans and as adopted has distinguished itself from the Lutheran and Regulative by the divines at the Westminster Assembly, is Anglican traditions by permitting only those eleunworkable. More importantly, it is simply not the ments that are warranted by Scripture; whereas the Principle teaching of Scripture” (137). While I disagree Lutheran view permits any element not prohibited by Ralph J. Gore, Jr. entirely with both aspects of this sentiment, its by Scripture. Thus, if an element is proposed as a Presbyterian and Reformed boldness contrasts refreshingly with the prevarica- particular act of religious worship, and if Scripture Publishing, 2002 tion usually found among less-candid Presbyterians says nothing about it, the Lutheran tradition con165 pages (paperback), $14.99 who have no more regard for the regulative princi- siders it permissible, and the Reformed forbids it. ple of worship than Gore does but who profess to Consequently, Scripture “regulates” the elements of agree with it. Bravo to Gore! worship by positive warrant; where a biblical justiTraditionally, students of Reformed worship fication is absent, such an element is impermissible. have recognized that four categories require care- Circumstances, by comparison, are not regulated ful attention in understanding the regulative princi- by the Word alone; to the contrary, the ple: element, circumstance, form, and rubric. An Westminster Confession states that circumstances

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are “governed by the light of nature and Christian prudence.” Thus, when determining whether to amplify the minister’s voice, or whether to set the chairs or pews in a certain arrangement, one has no recourse to Scripture, but only to those considerations common to other “human actions and societies.” “Forms” of worship, according to the Reformed tradition, are regulated by the teaching of Scripture (in the sense that whatever is said must accord with biblical truth), but are not restricted to the actual words of Scripture. Thus, while Reformed churches may employ the “Lord’s Prayer,” ministers may also pray specifically for Mr. Smith’s cancer surgery, which is not mentioned expressly in Scripture. Similarly, a sermon must accord with the teaching of the Word of God, but ministers are permitted to do more than merely read Scripture’s own words; they compose sermons using their own wisdom and judgment. “Rubrics” are governed by a combination of the considerations regarding forms and circumstances, because there are specific ways of performing certain acts that could either enhance or impinge upon the biblical realities contained therein. So, all the discussions regarding kneeling or standing in prayer appeal to more than that which is “common to human actions and societies” because such considerations need to grapple with how to perform an element in the most appropriate, most edifying, and most respectful manner. Although Gore eventually uses all four terms in the book, he employs only two in his discussion of the Puritan understanding of worship: element and circumstance. This removal of “form” and “rubric,” combined with his later redefinition of “circumstance” (to refer to “adiaphora”) is the fundamental flaw in this book. If there are only two considerations in making decisions about worship (element and circumstance), then everything that is not a circumstance must, by definition, be an element. Thus, for Gore, differences between Calvin and the Puritans on forms and rubrics turn into a full-blown disagreement on the elements of worship. Gore’s failure to do justice to all four aspects of corporate worship leads to his conclusion that the regulative principle of worship is “unworkable.” Although he never clarifies this point, what he apparently means is that the doctrine is either “difficult, or “not free from some difficulties,” because, as he demonstrates, Reformed Christians have never worshiped uniformly. But the trouble is that this judgment is analogous to saying that the doctrine of the authority of Scripture is “unworkable,” because some who profess the doctrine (e.g., Lutherans and Calvinists) arrive at different con-

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clusions. Are the doctrines of the Trinity, or the two natures of Christ, “unworkable” because they are difficult or mysterious? Agreeing that worship is regulated by the teaching of Scripture does not guarantee entire unanimity on the relevant scriptural passages or their meaning. What Gore’s verdict shows, however, is a complete misunderstanding of the regulative principle. That is, what is “unworkable” for him is not the regulative principle itself, as articulated by Calvin or the Westminster Assembly. Instead, what is unworkable is a notion about Reformed worship that is divorced from the doctrine of church power; that confuses “worship as all of life” with “worship” as the first-day gatherings of God’s visible covenant people; that redefines “circumstance”; and that fails to appreciate the place of “forms” and “rubrics” alongside the elements of worship. Ironically, I agree with Gore in preferring Calvin’s worship to that of the Puritans. On almost every point where Calvin and the Puritans diverged on some formal issue, or some matter of rubric, I agree with Calvin. For nine years, I pastored a church where we used an order of service that differed only in small details from Calvin’s Strasbourg liturgy. I believe in weekly communion and in corporate prayers of confession, especially but not exclusively those found in the old Book of Common Prayer, followed by scriptural declarations of pardon. I believe it is wise to confess the faith weekly using either the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed; and I think the nonsacramental worship typical of the Puritans has tended to remove mystery from worship, and to make the Reformed tradition more ascetic than aesthetic. Yet none of these differences requires me to repudiate the fundamental principle of both Calvin and the Puritans: that when the Christian assembly gathers in the presence of God, it should approach him only by means of his own appointment. Dr. T. David Gordon Grove City College Grove City, PA

Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Rethinks Contraception

by Sam and Bethany Torode Eerdmans, 2002 144 pages (paperback), $12.00 In recent years, conservative Roman Catholics and Protestants have found themselves on the same side of many contentious social and moral issues, a convergence that has undoubtedly served as an important impetus to ecumenical discussions and even joint doctrinal statements. The use of contraception, however, remains one moral matter that has continued to divide most Protestants from conservative Catholics. Sam and Bethany Torode, finding little literature from fellow Protestants critical of contraception, present here their own case for what is often thought of as a distinctively Catholic position. Open Embrace is a short book and a quick, warm, and engaging read. The Torodes are a young couple (married only since 2000, when Bethany was 19) who investigated these matters and came to the conviction that all contraception should be avoided. While they are not professionally trained theologians or ethicists, the Torodes have evidently done a great deal of research and reflection on the subject. And, although their style is more informal and conversational than that of a sustained scholarly argument, they deal with a great number of the important issues crucial to moral debates about contraception and anticipate many of the obvious objections to their position. They are also perceptive in addressing a number of topics that cannot long be separated from discussions about contraception, such as the marriage relationship more generally, child-rearing, and attitudes and policies toward abortion. One weakness of this work is that its real purpose is left surprisingly unclear. Is the aim to argue against contraception because Christian couples should be having loads of children? In the opening chapter, the Torodes assure their readers that they will make no recommendations about how large families ought to be, and in several places throughout the book state that there are legitimate reasons to avoid pregnancy (at least temporarily). This is safe ground, and enables them to avoid proscribing all forms of “birth control“ (and not just so-called artificial means) or to neglect the difficult (but important!) details of just when it is responsible for couples to pursue pregnancy. Nevertheless, the Torodes do spend considerable time later in the work commending procreation and encouraging readers not to be afraid to have children. Hence, a certain degree of ambiguity: no moral demand to have large families is explicitly made, yet a desire to increase Christians’ rates of procreation seems quite high on the Torodes’ agenda. Maybe the purpose of this work is rather to

argue against contraception because it is evil per se. Again, the assurance at the beginning of the book does not exactly match the arguments as they unfold. The Torodes tell readers that they are unconcerned whether contraception is intrinsically sinful—they intend only to argue that it is “not ideal” and that there is a “better way.” However, it is difficult to imagine how one who is convinced by the Torodes’ arguments could not conclude that use of contraception is immoral. The Torodes argue that each sexual act ought to be uninhibited, open to procreation, and a complete self-giving of one spouse to the other. Use of contraception seems to be presented not as a less preferable though morally acceptable action, but as a practice that is a serious violation of the marriage relationship. A third alternative: is the purpose of the work to argue against contraception because there is a better form of birth control? This clearly is an argument that the Torodes wish to make. They prefer “natural family planning,” a method not to be confused with the infamous rhythm method. What seems to be the most important reason for favoring natural family planning over contraception is that the former honors women’s natural fertility cycle while contraception fights against it. It is interesting to observe that the principal arguments in this book, despite its subtitle, do not seem to be distinctively Protestant in any sense. Rather, they are largely recastings either of medieval arguments that centered around what is “natural” or contemporary Roman Catholic arguments that focus upon the sexual act in the light of personalist philosophy. In my judgment, the Torodes do not advance either of these arguments enough to overcome the deficiencies that they have displayed in Roman Catholic hue. Nor does the slippery-slope argument that the “contraception mentality” (never clearly defined) leads to permissiveness about abortion seal their case. Despite these drawbacks, this book is worth reading—with certain caveats—by those interested in moral questions related to contraception. Dr. David VanDrunen Westminster Seminary California Escondido, CA

Christian Faith and Modern Democracy: God and Politics in the Fallen World by Robert Kraynak

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University of Notre Dame Press, 2001 320 pages (paperback), $24.95 In this provocative and engaging work, based on his lectures at Loyola of Chicago, Robert Kraynak challenges the “end of history” thesis famously articulated by Francis Fukuyama—that is, the idea that liberal democracy in the West finally and permanently resolves the thorny and ancient question, Who should rule? Arguing from within the Augustinian framework of “limited government under God,” Kraynak responds, Not so fast. In doing so, he challenges Christians in particular to examine deep-seated presuppositions about the nature of politics and life in the “city of man.” Both Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians, Kraynak believes, have too easily succumbed to the allure of an admittedly dynamic combination—modern Western liberal democracy and the program of international human rights— confusing them with the imperative demands of Holy Scripture. The problem is that liberal democratic institutions and human rights ideals dovetail with traditional orthodox Christian teaching only through a modicum of Procrustean manipulation. The assertion of rights does not necessarily lead to godly character—indeed, in its strident insistence on individual autonomy, it is just as likely to produce the opposite. As for democracy, as T. S. Eliot warned in the 1930s, “the term does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike—it can easily be transformed by them.” To be sure, liberal democracy has nourished itself on the spiritual deposit provided by the heritage of biblical Christianity in the West, and thus can be said to require it as a kind of moral ballast. But this is a far cry from saying that Christian teaching requires democratic political arrangements. As Kraynak demonstrates, the churches of the West have allowed a modernist counterfeit, rooted in Kant’s teaching on the autonomous human will, to reshape the biblical conception of humanity made in God’s image. At the very least, this confusion of Enlightenment categories and Christian verities poses grave dangers to the integrity of Christian witness. To the extent that Christian concerns for the city of man allow the church to be co-opted by a political party or social activism, the body of Christ loses its salty distinctiveness, its transcendent orientation to its true home, the eternal city of God. As an antidote to the leveling spirit of autonomous “democratized Christianity” Kraynak argues for a return to a more modest “politics of prudence.” Here he has in mind a constitutionalism

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that recognizes the intransigence of human sin and that acknowledges real limits to politics in a fallen world. Certain details of Kraynak’s argument will raise objections from Protestants because his Roman Catholicism inevitably shapes the argument. But Kraynak’s essential contribution is one that American Protestants especially would benefit from hearing. His concluding words echo with the prudential wisdom of Augustine and the reformers: “Living with the tensions of dual citizenship is a more difficult task than assuming an inevitable convergence of Christian faith and modern democratic life, but it is the only honest course for the pilgrims of the earthly city.” Peter J. Richards Yale University Law School New Haven, Connecticut

SHORT NOTICES Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy for the 21st Century edited by Kenneth Tanner and Christopher A. Hall InterVarsity Press, 2002 280 pages (paperback), $25.00 Thomas Oden has taught for more than three decades at the Divinity School of Drew University. During that time he underwent a dramatic theological shift, transferring his energies from the construction of “new” (read: liberal) theology to the recovery of old Christian certainties, going all the way back to the early church fathers. This book is a fitting tribute to Oden’s accomplishments, including essays from distinguished theologians on themes important to his remarkable transformation and establishing the relevance of ancient truths for contemporary theology, Oden’s own Wesleyan tradition, and for evangelical Christians.

The Living Word: 10 Life-Changing Ways to Experience the Bible

and Good Works by Douglas D. Webster Moody Publishers, 2003 218 pages (paperback), $9.99 Douglas Webster, senior minister at First Presbyterian Church of San Diego, California, has written a helpful book that reminds readers of the centrality of Scripture to genuine Christian devotion. In ten accessible chapters, from “Eat the Word” to “Stay in the Word,“ Webster provides a variety of insights into the ways in which believers may and should feed upon the living Word of God, from prayer and song, to preaching and study. Webster‘s aim is not to make the Bible so common that its presence is taken for granted. Instead, the book is intended to demonstrate how radical and comprehensive the claims of Scripture are. This is a good book to counteract the self-help themes so common in popular Christian publishing.

Dying to Live: The Power of Forgiveness by Harold L. Senkbeil Concordia Publishing House, 2002 183 pages (paper), $14.99 Why no Wittenberg Trail? For the last twentyfive years or so, books and articles have documented and analyzed the phenomenon of born-again or low church Protestants, frustrated by evangelical informality and subjectivity, turning into spiritual lanes leading to liturgical traditions. These trails have typically wound up at the doors of Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches, rarely to Lutheran congregations. This book from Harold L. Senkbeil, a professor of pastoral ministry and missions at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, offers an important corrective to this neglect by revealing the liturgical resources available in the Lutheran tradition. For those who may be seeking a form of devotion rooted in the objective realities of the Incarnation, Word, and Sacrament, or others who desire an accessible guide to Lutheran devotion, this book is a good place to start.

Churches That Make a Difference: Reaching Your Community with Good News

by Ronald J. Sider, Philip N. Olson, and Heidi Rolland Unruh Baker Book House, 2002 334 pages (paperback), $19.99 For some, “holistic ministry” is a name for a vision of the church that “integrates discipleship, evangelism, and social action, and works toward both spiritual and social transformation.” For others, it is a distraction that prevents the church from simply being the church, that is, from providing the only services that no other institution or agency can or may. The authors of this book clearly fall into the former category. Its chapters are divided neatly into four sections: the church’s mission, dynamic spirituality, congregational life, and the practice of holistic ministry. Churches That Make a Difference comes complete with endorsements from the Republican senator Rick Santorum and the Democratic congressman Tony D. Hall. When politicians like the church, then the church may very well have lost the capacity to appear foolish or to offend. This is not a book where confessing evangelicals will want to look for tips on doing church better. But it is a useful introduction for those who are unaware of what becomes of the church and her ministry through the appeal of holistic Christianity once Word and Sacrament become merely parts of the whole.

The Lonely Way: Selected Essays and Letters, Volume 1 (1927–1939) by Herman Sasse, translated by Mathew C. Harrison Concordia Publishing House, 2001 502 pages (hardcover), $21.99 Those outside Lutheran circles may be unfamiliar with Herman Sasse (1895–1976) and even some Lutherans may be glad to be ignorant of the German theologian if they hope to avoid hard thinking about Lutheran identity. Sasse was steeped in liberal Protestantism as a student, having studied with Adolf Harnack and Gustav Deissmann. But a year in the United States at Hartford Seminary, which provided him with contacts to North American Lutherans, along with careful reflection on the church’s mission while holding a teaching post at Erlangen during the Third Reich, turned Sasse in self-consciously Lutheran directions. He was a firm advocate of

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ecumenism and cooperated with Dietrich Bonhoffer in opposing National Socialism. But at the time of the Barmen Declaration (1934) he broke with his Reformed allies because of unresolved differences between the Lutheran and Reformed churches. After World War II, Sasseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s defense of Lutheran confessionalism prompted him to withdraw from the German state church, a switch that made his move to Australia to teach at the seminary of the United Lutheran Evangelical Church of Australia more likely. There Sasse taught until his death in 1976. The essays collected in this volume are instructive not simply for the insight they provide into the German churches or Sasseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own understanding of Lutheranism; they also provide a model of reflection on the church, sacramental life, and ecumenism for confessionalists in other Protestant communions.

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Ex Auditu [ C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 7 ]

as a hospital by the Union army. To this day, there are still bloodstains in the floorboards as a testimony to the suffering. I was struck by two images here. First, like those floorboards, our lives bear the permanent mark of salvation—the indelible mark of the one who sacrificed his lifeblood for us. We are permanently “stained,” so to speak, with the name of Jesus. Second, how much like a hospital is the church. Come in diseased by sin. Leave healed by the Word of Christ. Come in dehydrated by the demonic stress and pace of life. Leave nourished by the body and blood of Christ. Come in limping under heavy burdens, leave leaping in the joy of the Lord. Come in nameless and orphaned, leave adopted by grace with a new name no one can take away. Come in full of cares and leave carefully following the Word, carefully revering the glorious and awesome name of the Lord your God (Deut. 28:58). Yes, come as you are, with your deepest doubts, leave as you’ve now become in Christ. Leave rejoicing, with this “trustworthy saying” on your heart: If we died with the Lord, we will also live with him; If we endure with the Lord, we will also reign with him; If we disown the Lord, he will also disown us; If we are faithless, the Lord will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself. (2 Tim. 2:11–12) Be faithful, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting, men, women, boys, and girls may know that God is God all by himself. He is the Lord—that’s his name—and there is no other (Isa. 45:6).

John Nunes (M.Div., Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary, St. Catherines, Ontario) is minister of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Dallas, Texas, and a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Rev. Nunes is the author of Voices from the City: Issues and Images of Urban Preaching (Concordia Publishing House, 1999).

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O R U M I N A T I O N S

N F R O M

A L L I A N C E

Y O F

C O N F E S S I N G

E V A N G E L I C A L S

N C O U N C I L

D M E M B E R S

Gene Edward Veith

Legalism Versus Christianity

ow is it that a church body that holds to the highest standards of sexual moral-

are saved by our good works produces neither salvation ity, requiring sexual purity, chastity, and even for its priests celibacy, has given nor good works. According to some puzzling passages in us one of the most grotesque sex scandals in history? Scripture, the law alone produces not virtue, but sin. How is it that the “Bible belt,” the southern states “Our sinful passions,” says St. Paul, “aroused by the that are the most conservative morally, theologically, law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for and culturally, have the highest divorce rates? It is as death” (Rom. 7:5, emphasis added). “Sin, seizing an if those who most profess “family values” have the opportunity through the commandment, produced hardest time putting them into practice. in me all kinds of covetousness” (Rom. 7:8). One can understand why non-Christians might We have really fallen a long, long way. have a high divorce rate, but studies show that Because faith without works is dead (James 2:17) Christians, for all of their high views of marriage, and good works are the fruit of faith (Rom. 7:15–20), divorce about the same rate. And “fundamentalists,” the essential problem underlying the moral corruption GENE EDWARD those who take the Bible most seriously, actually within the church is a lack of genuine, living faith. VEITH Sinners need forgiveness, cleansing, and a have a higher divorce rate than non-Christians. Examples of flagrant and often spectacular sin changed heart. Their only cure is the gospel—the among those with the reputation for piously staunch grace of God, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Professor of English moral righteousness can be multiplied: TV evangelists Holy Spirit creating a living faith through God’s Concordia University caught with prostitutes or arrested for elaborate finan- Word and the Sacraments of Christ. Legalists have a habit of self-righteousness, which Wisconsin cial scams; church treasurers embezzling money from the offerings; computers in the church office discov- only serves to rationalize away their guilt and to ered with hard drives loaded with pornography; pas- excuse their sins. God’s Word demolishes that selftors committing adultery with troubled women they righteousness through the law, creating repentance are supposed to counsel. Often these very sinners and a heart open to the life-changing gospel. The demonstrate the highest degree of self-righteousness, righteousness of faith changes the person on the both before and after they are caught. inside, so that, to the extent of his faith, he no longer Those who most emphasize the role of good wants to do what is bad, so that he loves and serves works in salvation are often the very ones who pro- his neighbor in a way as naturally as breathing. duce instead bad works. It is no doubt an overgenerContrary to popular opinion—among nonbelievalization to make this a general rule—there is plenty ers and many believers alike—Christianity is not just of sin across theological lines. But it is also worth not- another legalistic religion like Islam, in which a pering that those whose moral rectitude has becomes a son’s good deeds are weighed against his bad deeds, byword, a stereotype, and a mockery—the with heaven or hell depending on how the balance Puritans—would strenuously deny that their good tips. Christianity is about Christ—his works, not works, of which they had an abundance, had any ours; his sin-bearing, not our guilt; his changing our relationship to their salvation. Puritans believed they lives through his grace, which we receive by faith. were saved by grace alone and not by works, and yet Christianity is for sinners, including those who conthey had more good works than anyone. sider themselves Christians. At any rate, it seems clear that the belief that we

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