The Whole Christ

I keep hearing that justification is only a part of salvation and so falls short of yielding the “whole Christ.” I understand the desire to do justice to all the benefits that believers receive in this life from Christ – including adoption and sanctification.. But I wonder if this concern for all of Christ recognizes just how total his work is in the benefit known as justification and received by faith alone. Here is what the Belgic Confession says in Article 22, “The Righteousness of Faith”:

We believe that for us to acquire the true knowledge of this great mystery the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts a true faith that embraces Jesus Christ, with all his merits, and makes him its own, and no longer looks for anything apart from him.

For it must necessarily follow that either all that is required for our salvation is not in Christ or, if all is in him, then he who has Christ by faith has his salvation entirely.

Therefore, to say that Christ is not enough but that something else is needed as well is a most enormous blasphemy against God– for it then would follow that Jesus Christ is only half a Savior. And therefore we justly say with Paul that we are justified “by faith alone” or by faith “apart from works.”

However, we do not mean, properly speaking, that it is faith itself that justifies us– for faith is only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness.

But Jesus Christ is our righteousness in making available to us all his merits and all the holy works he has done for us and in our place. And faith is the instrument that keeps us in communion with him and with all his benefits.

When those benefits are made ours they are more than enough to absolve us of our sins.

I don’t know about others, but that sounds like a whole lot of Christ being affirmed in justification and our righteous standing before God. It also sounds like the Reformation’s insistence on justification as the material principle of our protest with Rome was precisely to do justice to the “whole Christ.”