Tag: priority

The Reason to Be Thankful

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

apostle paul

. . . what was the difference between the teaching of Paul and the teaching of the Judaizers? What was it that gave rise to the stupendous polemic of the Epistle to the Galatians? To the modern Church the difference would have seemed to be a mere theological subtlety. About many things the Judaizers were in perfect agreement with Paul. The Judaizers believed that Jesus was the Messiah; there is not a shadow of evidence that they objected to Paul’s lofty view of the person of Christ. Without the slightest doubt, they believe that Jesus had really risen from the dead. They believed, moreover, that faith in Christ was necessary for salvation. But the trouble was, they believed that something else was also necessary; they believed that what Christ had done needed to be pieced out by the believer’s own effort to keep the Law. From the modern point of view the difference would have seemed to be very slight. Paul as well as the Judaizers believed that the keeping of the law of God, in its deepest import, is inseparably connected with faith. The difference concerned only the logical – not even, perhaps, the temporal – order of three steps. Paul said that a man (1) first believes on Christ, (2) then is justified before God, (3) then immediately proceeds to keep God’s law. The Judaizers said that a man (1) believes on Christ and (2) keeps the law of God the best he can, and then (3) is justified. The difference would seem to modern “practical” Christians to be a highly subtle and intangible matter, hardly worthy of consideration at all in view of the large measure of agreement in the practical realm. What a splendid cleaning up of the Gentile cities it would have been if the Judaizers had succeeded in extending to those cities the observance of the Mosaic law, even including the unfortunate ceremonial observances! Surely Paul ought to have made common cause with teachers who were so nearly in agreement with him . . .

Paul saw very clearly that the difference between the Judaizers and himself was the difference between two entirely distinct types of religion; it was the difference between a religion of merit and a religion of grace. If Christ provides only part of our salvation, leaving us to provide the rest, then we are still hopeless under the load of sin. . . . Such an attempt to piece out the work of Christ by our own merit, Paul saw clearly, is the very essence of unbelief; Christ will do everything or nothing, and the only hope is to throw ourselves unreservedly on His mercy and trust Him for all.

From J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (1923)

When Easy Obeyism becomes Hard

Published on by D. G. Hart36 Comments

sisyphusAs long as the call for an obedient faith or the assertion that good works are necessary for salvation has justification to fall back on, the demand for a “real” and personal holiness among those who trust in Christ is not a threat but a comfort. The reason is that the perfect righteousness of Christ satisfied all the claims of the law and justice upon the elect. Christians no longer face condemnation, not only for original sin, sins committed prior to faith in Christ, sinful acts while a Christian, or even for the wickedness that clings to their good works that are the fruit and evidence of saving faith. All their sins in all aspects of their lives have been blotted out by Christ’s work on the cross.

As the Heidelberg Catechism so helpfully puts it:

Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all God’s commandments and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner, as if I had beeen as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. [60]

In other words, God looks upon me as really perfect and he looks at my good works which are filthy rags as a spotless raiment only because of Christ’s righteousness imputed to me by faith alone.

As long as this understanding of justification is the basis for considerations of obedience, good works, and sanctification (i.e. the logical priority of justification), we are fine. Obeying is easy because we know that despite our weakness and infirmity we are clinging to the cross of Christ, not to our own efforts, as the source of our real and personal holiness that makes us, as the Heidelberg Catechism also puts it, “right with God.”

But that’s generally not the way it goes when people consider their good works and faithfulness. After all, faith is awfully close to faithfulness, and so maybe my faithfulness is not simply evidence of my faith but also proof of my own goodness. Of course, going all the way back to the Garden, humans want to justify themselves before God. This is the way we are wired because the Covenant of Works is so deeply rooted in our who we are as divine image bearers. We want to believe that if we do good works, we will live eternally because of our goodness, or at least because we tried hard. But to bring faithfulness close to faith is like pointing an addict to dope.

Yet, some like Norman Shepherd didn’t recognize the attraction of self-righteousness for the works-addicted. He feared that an overly forensic conception of salvation would encourage moral laxity among Christians, as if an overemphasis on justification would yield a neglect of good works. Mind you, simply making sanctification a distinct but simultaneous benefit of union with Christ won’t fix the problem of potential moral laxity. Definitive sanctification, for instance, merely heightens the problem of antinomianism – if I am simultaneously justified and sanctified, then I’m all good all the time. There’s no need for improvement.

This problem may have been responsible for the efforts of Norman Shepherd to find biblical and confessional reasons to get Christians to live better. But unfortunately, like all moral nudging it ended up making Christians who, stood guiltless before God because of Christ, feel guilty.

In the twentieth and twenty-first of his thirty-four theses, Shepherd asserted:

The Pauline affirmation in Romans 2:13, “the doers of the Law will be justified,” is not to be understood hypothetically in the sense that there are no persons who fall into that class, but in the sense that faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ will be justified (Compare Luke 8:21; James 1:22-25). The exclusive ground of the justification of the believer in the state of justification is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, but his obedience, which is simply the perseverance of the saints in the way of truth and righteousness, is necessary to his continuing in a state of justification (Heb. 3:6, 14).

The righteousness of Jesus Christ ever remains the exclusive ground of the believer’s justification, but the personal godliness of the believer is also necessary for his justification in the judgment of the last day

A natural response to these assertions is “have I been obedient enough”? Or “have I been sufficiently faithful”? After all, if I’m not obedient, then it sounds like I’m going to compromise my state of justification. And if I’m not personally obedient, then I need to worry about judgment day. At the same time, if the truth of my justification is linked to my own goodness and godliness, and if my good works are tainted with sin, I’m in a heap of trouble. Which is another way of saying that linking faith and obedience closely, even if the aim is to get people to be holier, is to destroy the comfort of a clear conscience that comes with justification by faith alone.

The Reformers saw this problem and addressed it directly when explaining justification and good works. According to the Belgic Confession, Article 23, the obedience of Christ:

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.”

The problem of a plagued conscience was also pertinent to the consideration of the Christian’s obedience and faithfulness. In the next article (24) the Belgic Confession affirms:

[A]lthough we do good works we do not base our salvation on them; for we cannot do any work that is not defiled by our flesh and also worthy of punishment. And even if we could point to one, memory of a single sin is enough for God to reject that work.

So we would always be in doubt, tossed back and forth without any certainty, and our poor consciences would be tormented constantly if they did not rest on the merit of the suffering and death of our Savior.

The great advantage of justification by faith alone and its priority to sanctification and good works, then, is that it calms a sinner’s conscience. It could be my problem alone, since I may have more dirt to plague my conscience than others. But then again, if perfection is the standard, all are condemned and should be haunted by God’s holy standard. That is all the more a reason for highlighting justification by faith alone as the solution to a guilty conscience, and rejecting any formulation that prompts sinners to wonder if they have done enough to be saved.