About a year ago, Joseph Epstein, one of (all about) my favorite writers, produced a piece on the value of liberal learning. It is smart and clever, as Epstein’s essays always are, and this one helps me try to convince freshmen in Western Heritage of the value of Greek philosophy (during a wee peek at the Epicureans and Stoics; truth be told, it also allows the philosophically challenged like me to find a network time killer in the third week of classes).
But it occurred to me this morning while preparing for class that Epstein is also useful for exposing the posturing of transformationalists as either theonomists, fundamentalists, or both.
Epstein talks about the value of a liberal education in ways that seem impermissible to many neo-Calvinists who employ the language of w-w:
The death of liberal arts education would constitute a serious subtraction. Without it, we shall no longer have a segment of the population that has a proper standard with which to judge true intellectual achievement. Without it, no one can have a genuine notion of what constitutes an educated man or woman, or why one work of art is superior to another, or what in life is serious and what is trivial. The loss of liberal arts education can only result in replacing authoritative judgment with rivaling expert opinions, the vaunting of the second- and third-rate in politics and art, the supremacy of the faddish and the fashionable in all of life. Without that glimpse of the best that liberal arts education conveys, a nation might wake up living in the worst, and never notice.
Notice that Epstein makes these assertions without any reference to God, special revelation, or regeneration. (Why would he? He is not pretending to be a Christian.) He is thinking entirely as a human being. Some might say he is doing so — gasp — autonomously. But can anyone who is serious about literature and learning (Christian or no) really take issue with Epstein’s notion of a liberal education and its value? Someone like Bill Smith has questioned the idea of Christian math or Christian pedagogy with all the sense that common sense yields. But when it comes to a liberal education, are Calvinists really supposed to say that Christians know a liberal education better than non-Christians? Even though the liberal arts and their derivation from classical languages and letters by Christians predated Reformed Protestantism, we are now supposed to conclude that only faculty with a biblical or Reformed w-w will be the ones to yield a genuinely liberal education?
This is complete nonsense and amazingly smug, as if regeneration somehow gives Christians insights into tragedy, epistemology, or historical contingency. I have been around lots of Christians where those awarenesses have never shown the slightest signs of presence. And that’s because an education comes through lots of long hours of reading and reflection, and even then doesn’t necessarily take hold. You need a certain natural acumen for such things; regeneration cannot make a Christian intelligent (only God can and he does it through nature, not supernature).
And yet, transformationalists continue to opine that 2kers are the ones who are rocking the boat and upsetting the consensus of Reformed churches, as if a hyper-antithesis is not far more radical than anything 2k advocates are saying. Just yesterday I heard a podcast which described the Christian scholar’s task as one of bringing secular universities into conformity with biblical truth. The reason is that secular learning is illegitimate since it denies the fountain of all truth. Well, if secular universities are illegitimate, then what of secular governments? And if secular governments are illegitimate, what of secular persons? Is there a place in this world between the advents of Christ for non-Christian learning, non-Christian governments, and non-Christian persons (like Joseph Epstein)? If Epstein is wrong about sound learning and informed aesthetic judgments, if persons can only know good from bad literature by reading the Bible first, or can only form valid political arrangements by having Christians perform the political founding, or persons are not worthy of reading or hearing unless they are first regenerate, then Christians are in the same position as some forms of political Islam.
But Reformed Protestantism has never insisted on such a construction of the antithesis because it never questioned the legitimacy of contributions from non-Christians. Once you accept that people who do not know Christ, along with the institutions they found, are legitimate and reflect in some measure of the image of God in man along with the truths of general revelation, then you can aspire to be learned the way that Epstein is, or try to follow constitutional republicanism the way the founders of the U.S. did, or even read Plato and Thucydides for profit the way most college students in the West for centuries have (if you were rich and smart enough). If you appeal to common grace to free you from the polarities of such hyper-antithesis, by all means, go right ahead. That means you have to stop bellyaching about secular learning, secular governments, and secular persons because common grace is a way of affirming that all of those institutions and people have a legitimate role in God’s gracious ends. It also means giving up transformationalism because common grace has already done what you seemed to think transforming the culture would do.
But if you draw a line between the regenerate and unregenerate and extend it to intellectual life, or institutions, whether political or educational, you have removed yourself from the history of the West and taken a harder line than even some popes were prepared to go. You have not gone to the Land of Chocolatebut to the Twilight Zone.
Old Life 
If he is, I’ll have to get rid of two shelves worth of his books, plus multiple copies of “The American Scholar”.
His essay about how he organized his life so he could stay up all night reading for enjoyment when he was a student at the University of Chicago is one of the most influential things I have ever read.
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“The loss of liberal arts education can only result in replacing authoritative judgment with rivaling expert opinions, the vaunting of the second- and third-rate in politics and art, the supremacy of the faddish and the fashionable in all of life.”
Sounds like a trip to the Christian bookstore at the mall.
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“And that’s because an education comes through lots of long hours of reading and reflection, and even then doesn’t necessarily take hold. You need a certain natural acumen for such things; regeneration cannot make a Christian intelligent (only God can and he does it through nature, not supernature).”
Golden.
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This is perhaps the best post that you have ever written that I am aware of,
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I have a review of a recent “demonization” of Two Kingdom theology. I think it’s pertinent here. Misplaced antitheses may result in drawing unnecessary lines of orthodoxy within Reformed theology.
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Astute observation. Though am surprised there has been no previously written reflection on Epstein’s writing on American snobbery. One would think DGH would find that to be a natural fit!
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A truly “liberal arts” education (in the classical sense Dr. Hart is speaking of) is a great thing, but it seems to me that much of what passes for “liberal arts” at secular and state universities today is nothing less than radical leftist ideology and blatant propaganda, masquerading as broad-mindedness. As a college student in the 80s I attended your typical secular “liberal arts” college (one with loose ties to the PCUSA), but even back then many of my professors and their classes were geared toward propagandizing students and molding them into compliant ideological leftists incapable of thinking critically on their own. To be blunt, I had to endure a number of communist professors whose life goal was to convert their students into young commies. If memory serves correctly, in one of my history classes I once witnessed a student who didn’t toe the professor’s line (the student dared to speak up in defense of Ronald Reagan’s policies in El Salvador) being openly ridiculed (perhaps in the name of “re-education”?) by the professor and by his conformist, brown-nosing students.
Bottom line: A “liberal arts” education can mean different things, depending upon the institution one is considering. If we want our young people to get a truly liberal arts education, rather than having them finish their college careers as brain-dead, ideological zombies incapable of critical thinking, then let us make sure we send them to universities where they will get a truly “liberal arts” education in the classical sense of that term.
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Geoff, I was more or less in the same place at the same time, but I’m not so sure I’d characterize the situation quite so cynically. Nor would I be as quick to recommend what seems like a form of educational consumerism. That’s not to be Pollyanna about the complications, but it is to wonder about the atomization and consumerism that afflicts these days (speaking of cultural tides) and to wonder if there still isn’t something to be said for encouraging believers against world-flight and to remain in the wider world as much as possible, as well as to resist the cultural cynicism that marks so much of worldviewry.
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Geoff, which is the point of Epstein’s piece — liberal education is being killed by educators. It’s not doing so well at Christian colleges either.
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Some professors do still teach in a way that is intended to help their students develop the ability to think for themselves and understand the size of the world. To pick a close example, I try simply to show my students I am a more experienced student than they (Hart’s long hours in the library, etc. from above), not a sage.
Have any of you read Stanley Fish’s “Save the World on Your own Time”? I haven’t yet, but it’s on my list. Should it be?
The treatment I received from the secular U. of Iowa and its professors was in many ways far better than from some Christian institutions.
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From the original article…
“Paul Goodman, one of the now-forgotten gurus of the 1960s, used to argue that what finishing college really meant is that one was willing to do anything to succeed in a capitalist society. In getting a college degree, ”
That’s what it said on my grade 1 report card. They had me pegged at the age of 6.
It didn’t say I’d be one of those braying acolytes of Hart though…
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I enjoyed reading that Epstein article- the frankness, candor and humor of it followed by some serious conclusions on what education should do:
1) Humor: “A great many of my fellow students in the College at the University of Chicago seemed to come from New York City, several others from academic families. They appeared to have been reading the Nation and the New Republic from the age of 11. Their families argued about Trotsky at the dinner table. A few among them had the uncalled-for candor of psychoanalysands. I recall a girl sitting next to me at a roundtable in Swift Hall volunteering her own menstrual experiences in connection with a discussion of those of the Trobriand Islanders.”
2) Frankness and candor: “I mentioned earlier that the liberal arts were for a good while my second religion. Here let me add that I had never heard of them until my own undergraduate education had begun.
When I was about to graduate from high school as an amiable screw-off, ranked barely above the lower quarter of my class, my father, who had not gone to college, told me that if I wished to go he would pay my way, but he encouraged me to consider whether my going wouldn’t be a waste of time. He personally thought I might make a hell of a good salesman, which was a compliment, for he was himself a hell of a good salesman, and a successful one. I eschewed his advice, not because it wasn’t sound, but chiefly because I felt that, at 18, I wasn’t ready to go out in the world to work.
In those days, the University of Illinois was, at least for residents of the state, an open-enrollment school. If you lived in Illinois, the school had to take you, no matter how low in your high school class you graduated. Lots of kids flunked out, and my own greatest fear on the train headed from Chicago down to Champaign-Urbana, in white bucks and reading The Catcher in the Rye, was that I would be among them.”
3) What education should do: “What liberal education is supposed to do: “The contention in favor of a liberal arts education was that contemplation of great books and grand subjects would take students out of their parochial backgrounds and elevate them into the realm of higher seriousness. Disputes might arise from professor to professor, or from school to school, about what constituted the best that was thought and said—more Hobbes than Locke, more Yeats than Frost—but a general consensus existed about what qualified to be taught to the young in the brief span of their education. That consensus has split apart, and what gets taught today is more and more that which interests professors.”
4) He says a lot more about what liberal education should do but I am just whetting the appetite to read the whole article.
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Alison Brie’s liberal arts education:
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Epstein’s great essay on reading, “Waiter, There’s a Paragraph in My Soup!”, from his book “A Line Out for a Walk – Familiar Essays” (originally published in “The American Scholar”):
http://books.google.com/books?id=yUtUFjPe5VkC&pg=PA257&lpg=PA257&dq=joseph+epstein+waiter+there's+a+paragraph+in+my+soup&source=bl&ots=Rp9xhNLWEY&sig=KkK3_8Re8mLcM5GpWc17dAg1Qxg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QIU4UuWlOaLlyAHMq4C4BA&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=joseph%20epstein%20waiter%20there's%20a%20paragraph%20in%20my%20soup&f=false
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And if educators are killing education the vanguard of the putsch is in the teacher education department. I know this, having a rather close relative who teaches in such a place and regularly goes to conferences where the likes of Bill Ayers and Angela Davis are the keynote speakers.
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There was no liberal arts elective growing up.
Son, you are free to chose and will be fully supported for an undergrad in business, science, or engineering.
Takes a day or so to think it over…
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I would love to witness the dinner table conversations in the Weakly home.
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Erik, they rarely occur. And when they do they are short.
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Brevity being the soul of wit. And I’m full of…wit, or something that rhymes with it. That’s what she said.
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Darryl, instead of using words like illegitimate, how about calling Epstein what Jesus says he is apart from Christ; a fool. The Lord Jesus taught about highly intelligent people, with great educations having to build more barns to house their livestock and even bigger houses, yet Jesus assessment is “you fool”, tonight your life is required of you. God made King Nebuchadnezzar eat grass like an animal for years because he was so full of himself. I’m pretty sure that Nebuchadnezzar had an awesome education.
Pride, and a good education goes before destruction; and if Jesus isn’t at the center of it all, it will fall, and the damage will be great. If Jesus isn’t given preeminence in all areas, then the church still has much work to do. Christ must be our all in all, and not just our all in all; we all have the ministry of reconciling the world back to Christ. God has commanded all men to repent and bend their knee to the king of kings.
Just because one is a Christian doesn’t make him professor material, but it prevents him from being an abject fool, so I don’t understand your consternation.. Epstein thinking he is wise, has become very foolish.
You see, Jesus is the center of all knowledge, and the spirit of wisdom, rather men are prepared to admit or not. How about requiring a proper foundation for all professors? Let’s build societies house of the Rock of God’s Word. Don’t you love your neighbor? I know, as a society were not their now, but other societies in times past have. Let’s pray that God would change our societies collective priorities. Didn’t Paul pray like that for Israel?
Darryl, when are you going to understand that all societies, just like our personal lives are always in flux? Psssst, that means in the process of transforming. See Romans 12, you are either being conformed into the image of this world, or you will be transformed by the renewal of your mind. And renewal can only be accomplished by presenting yourself a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, (daily) which is your reasonable service.
Don’t shoot me, I was just repeating Romans 12
When are you going to understand that salt and light are agents that transform?
When are you going to admit, that the gospel transforms?
When are you going to admit that God transforms?
When are you going to understand that the kingdom of God starts out small, but then transforms the whole world?
What educated person doesn’t understand that all cultures and nations are always in a state of flux?
Don’t the kingdom parables teach slow transforming growth?
Real question DG what is your aversion to having a world view? I believe everyone has a world view rather they have thought about it or not.
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I don’t think Doug understands election, definitive atonement or imputation of righteousness at all. He is stuck in theonomist mode and can’t get out. He thinks he can bully and threaten people into repentance and “bending the knee” to Christ. You better know some Tae Kwon Doe or Shu Ron Ru if you challenge Doug’s theonomy or post-mill beliefs face to face. He might go violent on you or stick the theonomist mafia on you to harass and defame you for the rest of your life. You better not have any skeleton’s in your closet either. I never inhaled Doug.
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well, since I also can read hearts (minds), I always just assumed that people who claimed to have an epistemology didn’t really have one on the inside,> Also that their worldview was still in negotiation.
The one brother said–yes, I have a worldview but was not kind or honest with his neighbor. The other brother said— sorry for not having a worldview to enable him to “envision” how he could help his neighbor, and then mowed the yard for him.
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Bonhoeffer: “The claim of the congregation to build the world on Christian principles ends only with the total capitulation of the Church to the world, as can be seen clearly enough by a glance at the New York church registers. …Godlessness remains more covert. In this way triumphalism deprives the Church even of the blessing of suffering and of the possible rebirth which suffering may engender.” Ethics, p 41
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@John Yeazel, do you mean definitive sanctification? I am familiar with those concepts, so?
Ah John, it’s the Scripture that says we will either be conformed to the this world, or transformed more into Christ by the renewing of our mind. Do you still believe that Romans is part of Scripture?
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@John Yeazel: Do you realize that according to Paul, it’s God who has commanded all men to repent and bend the knee to Christ?
Do you think Paul was being a bully, for teaching that the gospel overture is first and foremost a command? Are you saying that definitive atonement negates the command of the gospel?
Or, are you saying that the command of God to repent negates election?
I don’t think I’m following you, bro.
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@Doug Sowers: do you mean definitive sanctification? I am familiar with those concepts, so?
John Y: No, I meant definite atonement or limited atonement, i.e. atonement for the elect alone; Norman Shepherd heavily influenced Gary North in regards to election and they chose to ignore the doctrine and endlessly proclaim the Mosaic Law while neglecting the question, What is the Gospel?
Doug Sowers: Ah John, it’s the Scripture that says we will either be conformed to the this world, or transformed more into Christ by the renewing of our mind. Do you still believe that Romans is part of Scripture?
John Y: I love the book of Romans Doug, in fact, it is my favorite book in the Bible. Before you get to Romans 12 you need to understand chapters 1 through 11. You can’t apply Romans 12 “in the flesh” which is what I think most theonomists do. Paul explains the purpose of the Law in about half of the first three chapters and then explains what the Gospel is in chapters 4 through 11. That’s about 8 chapters on what is the Gospel and about a chapter and a half on threats (more explanation than bullying and threatening) from the Law. Theonomists spend about 99.9 percent of their time with comments about the Mosaic Law. The Law does not bring life to the sinner, only the Gospel does Doug.
Repentance and faith are gifts given to the elect when they are placed into the death of Christ and declared just by the Holy God Himself. Hence, union with Christ, imputation of righteousness, the giving of the Holy Spirit, justification, definitive sanctification and promised glorification, if indeed you suffer with Him while eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
Theonomist usually do not follow any thinking about election because they chose not to think about election at all- it is irrelevant to them. Election is the love of God.
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Zrim wrote: “Geoff, I was more or less in the same place at the same time, but I’m not so sure I’d characterize the situation quite so cynically. Nor would I be as quick to recommend what seems like a form of educational consumerism. That’s not to be Pollyanna about the complications, but it is to wonder about the atomization and consumerism that afflicts these days (speaking of cultural tides) and to wonder if there still isn’t something to be said for encouraging believers against world-flight and to remain in the wider world as much as possible, as well as to resist the cultural cynicism that marks so much of worldviewry.”
GW: Uh…say what? Speak in plain English, please. I’m the product of modern so-called “liberal arts” education, so I need you to make it really really simple for me. 🙂
I don’t understand your issue with “educational consumerism.” There are all kinds of higher educational institutions in the US competing for students, so “educational consumerism” is simply a fact of life in our nation. Would you rather the government choose which institution of higher education your children should attend, or would you rather have that choice left up to you, your wife and your college-bound children?
Here’s one reason why I think “educational consumerism” can be a good thing: http://www.humanevents.com/2013/09/18/student-indoctrination/
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Another good reason for “educational consumerism”: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/358880/sex-ed-ucla-alec-torres
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Geoff, I understand the times in which we live and that while it seems odd to think of education the way one thinks about groceries, choice and competition are here to stay. And I don’t mean that it’s necessarily a bad thing. We’ve taken advantage of the competition in ways that allowed us to avoid sub-par public schools as well as pious worldviewry. I get it.
But by educational consumerism, I simply mean what appears to be tailoring the type of education one receives along ideological lines. Is it really an education to be propped up in one’s own thinking and not engage ideas not necessarily one’s own? Is that a broad education or a narrow one? Maybe it’s hopelessly old-fashioned, but I’d rather see something closer to fewer schools where everybody has to live and learn with those not necessarily like themselves and getting a liberal education instead of an ideological one.
I did hear Rush the other day ranting about the MSU thing. Frankly, I toss all that stuff in the horror story bin, good for politainment but not much else.
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Geoff says: The Law does not bring life to the sinner, only the Gospel does Doug.
Me: Duh! Like everyone doesn’t know that?
Give me a little credit Geoff, I leaned systematic theology from Greg Bahnsen! One could hardly do better than that. And I realize, that just and wise laws will not save anyone, but they are far superior to wicked and foolish laws.
Back to the main point Geoff, while justification is a crucial positional truth, the Bible also teaches us that our lives are to be transformed more into the image of Christ day by day, form glory to glory. It’s called our sanctification. That’s has nothing to do with theonomy, that is basic Christianity 101.
So please understand that I embrace the WCF, in fact I am reading the G.I. Williamson’s WCF work book as I write this post.
God bless you, and keep pressing on!
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Speaking of the Liberal Arts, I highly recommend the 2012 movie, “Liberal Arts”, starring Josh Radnor, Elizabeth Olsen, Richard Jenkins, and Allison Janney.
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Doug,
I think you got Geoff and me confused; or, perhaps that was another Calvinist ignore tactic move but this time you changed the name. However, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and maybe contribute it to a mental blip or block.
You theonomists always appeal to the WCF when talk moves away from sanctification by law-keeping to extended dialog about the Gospel. Williamson’s commentary on the WCF is poor in regards to the question, What is the Gospel? Gordon Clarks is better but I still think there are nuanced problems with his commentary on the WSC too. But I no longer adhere to solo confessionalism of the WCF so I am a bad guy who is not worthy to dialog with. That is why I do not frequent here very often any more.
You really did not address the issues I brought up in my response to you either. But I have found that is typical of those who spend most of their time imbibing on theonomist theologians. I used to be one of them myself (from about 1980 to 1990) but then started reading other perspectives on the Gospel and found the theonomists to be frustratingly unclear on their views of the Gospel and evasive when confronted specifically on what they thought the Gospel was. Theonomists don’t speak clearly about the Gospel but ramble on and on about how they are being more obedient to the commands of the Gospel (which is a highly undefined phrase and can be interpreted in numerous ways) then anyone else in Christendom.
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One further comment to Doug:
Williamson sided with Shepherd and North during the Norman Shepherd controversy so it makes sense that you would read Williamson’s commentary on the WCF.
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I apologize John, I looked at the wrong post by calling you Geoff, which was not intended I assure you. Williamson wrote that workbook in 1961 long before there was a Norman Shepard controversy. It was written for Presbyterian churches to study the WCF.
What is the gospel? The good news that Jesus became man and died for the sins of his people, so that all who embrace him in faith, will be saved. Or just repeat the Apostolic creed, which Luther thought was the gospel.
Is that good enough? If you have any other questions I will be happy to answer them, with no dodging allowed.
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@John Yeazel: One other aside, theonomy has nothing to do with personal piety. It’s a theoretical question that deals with how society is to punish crime, and nothing more. Your personal piety could be much better than mine, but that has nothing to do with rather theonomy is right or wrong.
God bless you brother
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Doug says: “What is the gospel? The good news that Jesus became man and died for the sins of his people, so that all who embrace him in faith, will be saved. Or just repeat the Apostolic creed, which Luther thought was the gospel.
Is that good enough? If you have any other questions I will be happy to answer them, with no dodging allowed.”
John Y: You can do much better than that Doug. It took Paul 11 chapters in Romans with added commentary in Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, etc. etc. to get a clear picture of what Christ’s life, death, resurrection and ascension meant for those whom He died for. Paul had to discuss with Peter, John and James, for extended periods of time, just what was the meaning of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. The most systematic explanation of the meaning of Christ’s atonement was expounded upon in the first 11 chapters of Romans. So it seems that the Gospel is the Shema Israel for the New Testament church. It needs to be talked about day and night and put on the frontlets of our foreheads and posted on the walls of our houses. And needs to be defended against false Gospels which creep in unawares and distorts the Gospel in ways which take away its power for the elect. So the Gospel is much more than what you have stated Doug. The Gospel entails everything from election to the glorification of the saints. The main point of the Gospel is how and why Christ’s righteousness can be legally imputed to his elect and what results because of this imputation of righteousness and the transfer of the sins of the elect to Christ’s bloody death.
Doug says: One other aside, theonomy has nothing to do with personal piety. It’s a theoretical question that deals with how society is to punish crime, and nothing more. Your personal piety could be much better than mine, but that has nothing to do with rather theonomy is right or wrong.
John Y: I appreciate that explanation of theonomy Doug. I often do not make that connection that theonomy is “a theoretical question that deals with how society is to punish crime, and nothing more.” I am not sure if that is totally true though. Rushdoony’s INSTITUTES OF BIBLICAL LAW, made specific declaration that the Mosaic Law was the way of sanctification for the believer. If it is the way of sanctification it is more than just a theoretical question that deals with how society is to punish crime. It is a way to discipline and punish people in the church too. So theonomists have no separation of the elect and non-elect. This would cause problems for their “theoretical” question. Hence, they do not talk about election. It is irrelevant and a nuisance to their theory.
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John, yes we could probably go on for two thousand pages regarding Christ’s unspeakable gift, and all the aspects of his saving work, BUT all one need do to be saved is simply trust that his sinless life, and death and resurrection pay the price for our sin. Do you really think the thief on the cross understood imputation? But was he saved? Of course!
I believe in election, but is that the gospel? I think not, in fact one doesn’t even need to know about election to be saved. Did the thief on the cross understand election? No? Then why say election is the gospel, since many, many, believers don’t comprehend it?
BTW, I believe in election, effective calling, regeneration, imputation, forensic justification, union, sanctification, adoption, the passive and active obedience of Christ and finally one day glorification. But I think those concepts go far beyond the simple good news of the gospel. All one need do to be saved is have faith in Christ. I personally wasn’t aware of all those aspects of Christ’s saving work, until long after I was saved. The gospel simply means good news. John 3:16 sums it up quite nicely, God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes on him will be saved. Now that is a beautiful summation of the gospel. In other words we don’t need to know a full systematic recount of Christ’s saving work to believe the good news, imho.
God bless you, and keep pressing on!
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Doug says: “BUT all one need do to be saved is simply trust that his sinless life, and death and resurrection pay the price for our sin. Do you really think the thief on the cross understood imputation? But was he saved? Of course!
John Y: You are not saying anything about God’s just requirement of perfect law-keeping being met by Christ’s righteous death. I think the thief on the cross probably did understand the idea that Christ was dying for his lawlessness. I bet Jesus probably explained the Gospel to Him while they were hanging on their crosses together and the thief was imputed with Christ’s righteousness in his unrighteous place. So it is not only our sin which gets imputed to Christ but Christ’s righteous death gets imputed to the believer too. No more fulfilling of the law for the believer because the believer is now dead to the law and its condemning power. The believer is not under law but is justified and under grace and God accepts the believer as one legally united to Christ. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven whose sin the Lord will not take into account.
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