Outline
(Reading from Romans 6)
Intro: Faith and Works
- Union with Christ in Philippians 3
- Righteousness by law is rubbish (2-7)
- Knowing Christ (8a)
- Gaining Christ (8b)
- Being in Christ (9a)
- Righteousness through faith in Christ (9b)
- Living in Christ (10-11)
- What is Union with Christ?
- Fundamental
- To be loved by God as Sons
For strictly speaking, the love with which God loves us is none other than that with which he loved his Son from the beginning, so as to make us acceptable and lovable to him in Christ. . .
we are (so far as we are concerned and apart from Christ), hated by God and he only begins to love us when we are united to the body of his beloved Son
It is an inestimable privilege of faith that we know that Christ was loved by the Father for our sake, that we may be made partakers of the same love and that for ever. . .
For as the Father cannot look upon his Son without at the same time having before his eyes his whole body, so, if we wish to be beheld in him, we must truly be his members
Calvin, Commentary on John 17:26
- To be righteous
- To be a new creation
- To have a sure hope of our bodies being raised
- To be saved from judgment
- What Union with Christ isn’t
- A mystical experience
- A credit union
- Imitation
- How does Union with Christ happen?
- The Holy Spirit
- The Word of the Gospel
- Faith
We embrace Christ, crucified for us and raised from the dead… I maintain that it is only after we obtain Christ himself that we come to share in the benefits of Christ. And I further maintain that he is obtained, not just when we believe that he was sacrificed for us, but when he dwells in us, when he is one with us, when we are members of his flesh, when, in short, we become united in one life and substance (if I may say so) with him. For Christ does not offer us only the benefit of his death and resurrection, but the self-same body in which he suffered and rose again.
Calvin, True Partaking
- What does Union with Christ involve?
- Repentance
- Prayer
- Hope
- Joy
- Faith, works and union with Christ
We do not, therefore, contemplate [Christ] outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ are engrafted into his body—in short, because he deigns to make us one with him.
Calvin, Institutes 3.11.7
- Are you in Christ?
From the Sola Panel
One of the aims of the Sola Panel is to go back to basics, to remind ourselves of the importance of the ‘solas’ (i.e. scripture alone, faith alone, Christ alone, grace alone, glory to God alone). This post will look at one way in which these solas all fit together.
I’m currently reading through Timothy Ward’s very helpful book Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God (Inter-Varsity Press, Nottingham, 2009). It’s a good and highly accessible exposition of the Reformed doctrine of Scripture, which avoids many of the petty caricatures that are sometimes thrown about, and deals well with a number of modern objections. I highly recommend it as a book to put near the top of your reading list this year.
Early on in the book, Ward seeks to ground our doctrine of Scripture in the even more fundamental doctrine of the ‘word of God’ (or the ‘speech of God’). Ward points out that God’s speech is, and always has been, exceedingly powerful. This is seen especially when it comes to God’s justification of the ungodly. In this very significant case, God’s speech doesn’t just inform us about God’s salvation; it actually brings salvation to us:
God establishes, by his own declaration, a fundamental change in our standing before him, before he brings about, by the sending of the Holy Spirit, a real change to our sinful state… he spoke, making us by that declaration to be justified in our relationship with him… Thus a fundamental aspect of God’s redemptive work occurs when he chooses to speak, and in so doing unilaterally brings us to share here and now in the right standing with him that Jesus Christ has. (pp. 27-28)
This is a pretty good exposition of some of the important connections between God’s word/speech and our salvation. But it’s important to remember that God’s ‘speech-act’ of justification is only one part of the story of salvation.1
We must always remember that when the Bible talks about God justifying us, it never talks about this justification as a mere declaration that occurs all by itself. It’s not the case that God simply says to us out of the blue, “I deem you to be justified”, and that act of speech alone brings about our salvation. Of course, God’s speech is mightily powerful. But when it comes to our salvation, God’s justifying speech-act is connected to other highly significant powerful actions of God.
The first aspect of God’s saving work that we must always remember when we think about justification is the atonement. God’s justification of sinners is based squarely on the death of Jesus Christ for our sins—that one supreme act of love and grace whereby Jesus paid for our sins and satisfied the wrath of God. Paul, who of all the biblical authors spells out the idea of justification most fully, never talks about justification in a vacuum. Paul brings the concepts of justification and atonement together. He tells us that we “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom 3:24). The purpose of Jesus’ atoning work (Rom 3:25) is to enable God to be ‘just’ and to be the “justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26). Without the atonement, God could not remain true to his own just standards as creator and judge, and therefore could not justify us. You see the same thing in Galatians—Paul’s strong defence in Galatians is that God’s justification of sinners doesn’t stand alone, but it is based on the fact that Jesus “gave himself for our sins” (Gal 1:4). Justification and the atonement go together; justification without atonement would be nothing and would mean nothing.
The second thing that must not be forgotten when it comes to justification is that those who are justified are united to Christ through faith. This isn’t to say that our own faith is itself some wonderful meritorious action that secures a reward from God. What it means is that when God justifies us he’s not issuing some arbitrary declaration that makes no sense of the reality of our own personal sin. It’s not the case that God one day decides to say to us, “You are righteous”, when patently we are, in fact, miserable sinners. No, God’s declaration of us as ‘righteous’ is based on the fact that he, by his Holy Spirit acting through his word which brings about faith, has actually united us to his righteous Son. This means that our own sins are truly cancelled by Jesus’ death, and that we truly share in the righteousness that by rights only belongs to Christ. For example, Paul speaks about being “found in him [i.e. Christ], not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil 3:9).
In other words, the Reformation ‘solas’ all go together. God, through the supreme authority of Scripture alone, addresses us, speaks the gospel to us, declares that we are justified, and so brings salvation to us sinners. But this can only be true because Christ alone has performed that once-for-all atoning sacrifice for sins. By faith alone, the sacrifice of Christ is applied to our own reality. All of this is an act of God’s grace alone—to the glory of God alone. You can only go so far talking about one or the other of the solas in isolation. They really are a package deal.
1 I’m not disagreeing with Timothy Ward here, just clarifying a possible misunderstanding. I’m pretty sure that he would agree with what I have to say here, since in the passage I’ve quoted, he cites Romans 5:8 (about Jesus’ death), and goes on to discuss the “effectual calling” whereby God’s word creates saving faith.
Comments on the Sola Panel
On the Sola Panel:
How do you react when you notice that you or your church has a dull, dry, inactive faith, even though you are committed to God’s word? Elvis, in his song, A Little Less Conversation, gives us a model for one way that we could try to solve the problem:
A little less conversation, a little more action,
All this aggravation ain’t satisfaction in’ me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
Yes, I know that Elvis wasn’t talking about his relationship with God. But his solution to his own relationship problems is similar, in some ways, to one common reaction we can have to our own spiritual or church problems. Elvis thought about his relationship with his baby as a kind of balancing act between talk and action. Conversation and action were competing with each other for Elvis’ valuable relationship time. The problem, according to Elvis, was that there was just too much talking … and therefore, by definition, not enough action. In fact, the talking itself was bad, because it just led to arguments. So, Elvis’ simple solution: to get more action, he really had to tell his baby to shut up.
I suspect that Elvis’ baby didn’t hang around for long. But when it comes to our own relationship with God, Elvis’ approach might seem to make some sense, mightn’t it? We can look at our dull, dry, inactive spiritual or church life and we can conclude that the problem is that we’re just spending too much time with God’s word. We’re full of head-knowledge, we hear lots of sermons all the time, we study the Bible together, but we don’t actually live for God. We’re not loving each other, we don’t care for the lost, we’re not passionate about worship; instead our Bible-focus is just leading to useless arguments about doctrine. And the solution seems obvious. The Bible has a place, but it’s competing with our valuable God-time. We need less Bible, less doctrine, less knowledge, and more action.
I want to suggest that this solution, attractive as it may sound, in the end is going to be just as useless as Elvis’ approach to his baby. Because it assumes that God’s word is something that competes with our obedience and our fellowship. But that’s not how it works at all. God’s word is the living source and foundation of our active obedience to God and our fellowship. A dull, dry, dead faith actually needs God’s word more, not less.
Take James, for example. James wrote a letter to people who were in great danger of having a dead and useless faith. Their problems included too much empty talking (Jas 1:26), lack of concern for the vulnerable (Jas 1:27), envy and prejudice (Jas 2:1-4), fighting and quarrelling (Jas 4:1), etc. But James never tells his readers off for being too ‘word-focused’. In fact, James does the opposite. He tells them off for not being word-focused enough! Very early on in his letter, he speaks of God’s word as the thing that created us anew and saves us:
Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures … Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
(Jas 1:18, 21)
Because the word is the source of our life and our salvation, James urges his readers, not to put the word aside, but to receive it humbly, to listen to it, and to take it so seriously that they actually put it into practice (Jas 1:22-25).
If we have a dead faith, then the problem, according to James, is not that we’re spending too much time with God’s word. The problem is that, in our sinfulness, we’re not taking God’s word, God’s wisdom, seriously enough (Jas 3:14-17). We’re hearing, but we’re not taking it to heart. So the solution is not to put God’s word aside, or make it less central; we need to make it more central in our lives and our hearts and desires. Sometimes we do indeed need to close our mouths. But this isn’t just to give us more time to do stuff. Instead, our closed mouths should lead to listening more to God’s word (Jas 1:19-21), and then seriously going ahead and acting on it (Jas 1:26-27).
You can’t ‘balance’ God’s word against Christian action. God’s word is what creates our action. Our great sin doesn’t consist in spending too much time on God’s word. Our sin is about not taking God’s word seriously enough.
Comments on the Sola Panel
We have seen that the “seed” of Galatians 3:16 is referring to Genesis 17:8. In Galatians 3:16, Paul is explaining to the gentile Galatians that the “seed” of Genesis 17:8 is the “one” nation Israel, not the “multitude” of nations who will also have Abraham as their father (Genesis 17:5).
In Galatians 3:17, Paul goes on to explain that the covenant has already been ratified. When was this covenant to Abraham and his seed “ratified by God” and thus made inviolable (3:17)?
(This post is part of a series)
As we have seen in our survey of the Old Testament, a solemn oath or ceremonial act is needed to make a covenantal relationship of obligation legally binding. The covenant of land in Genesis 15 was ratified by the events recorded in the chapter—the passing of the flaming torch through the pieces, followed by solemn promises. But it is only after the Aqedah (binding) of Isaac that God finally makes a solemn oath that “in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice” (Gen 22:16–18). Almost paradoxically, the primary act of loyal devotion that made Abraham and his seed a fitting covenant partner with God—a fitting agent for blessing to the whole world—was the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice the seed himself. It is only when the seed is placed on the wood and a sacrifice is made that God ratifies his covenant, emphatically vowing to make Abraham’s seed numerous and victorious (Gen 22:17) and thereby to bless the world through Abraham’s seed (22:18).[1] Hahn presents a strong case that this is the “ratification” Paul has in mind, and that the Aqedah is the type for his exposition of Jesus’ crucifixion and the subsequent blessing to the nations in Galatians 3:13–14.[2] In Genesis, the covenant of international blessing is ratified after Abraham’s supreme act of loyalty in being willing to sacrifice the “seed” of the promise by binding him “upon wood”:
Thus, the sense of [Galatians 3:]13–14 is that the death of Christ ἐπὶ ξύλου allows the blessing of Abraham after the Aqedah (Gen 22:18) to flow to the ἔθνη through Jesus Christ (ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ).[3]
Hence it is “Christ” who is supremely the seed, the one in whom all nations are blessed (Gal 3:16).[4] This accords with the flow of biblical thought. Psalm 72 focusses the international scope of the promise to Abraham and his “seed” directly onto an ideal Davidic ruler (cf. 2 Sam 7). It is this Messiah-king “in whom all the nations will be blessed / bless themselves” (Psa 72:17, cf. Gen 12:3, 22:18).[5] Christ is the seed who fulfils the covenantal oath that God swore to Abraham by his obedience to death on the cross.
The larger import of this for Paul’s argument with his opponents is that the covenantal obligations laid upon Abraham (circumcision) and his national seed (the law) as a prerequisite for international blessing are not laid upon the nations as a prerequisite for their own blessing.[6] Abraham’s seed has fulfilled the covenantal obligations. The multitude of nations, therefore, are not called to enter this covenant, but to find blessing in the “seed”, to be “immersed” into Christ, to be “clothed” with Christ (Gal 3:27). This comes about by the Spirit and by faith in Christ (Gal 3:14). The blessings include justification (Gal 3:24), sonship (Gal 3:27) and unity with God and others in Christ (Gal 3:28). Hence it is faith in Christ, not covenant membership, that makes the Gentiles “seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:29). Being the “seed of Abraham” does not mean that the Gentiles are subject to the covenantal obligations, for these obligations have been fulfilled by Christ’s sacrifice. Rather, being the “seed of Abraham” means that the Gentiles are now sons of God in the fullest sense, heirs of the inheritance that has now come in Christ (Gal 4:1–7). Even the Jews who were members of the covenant must also be in the “seed” by faith (Gal 2:16, 3:11). Hence Abraham’s international fatherhood is not by means of common covenantal membership, but by means of a common faith in the God who achieves his astounding promises (Gal 3:7, 9), and a common blessing of righteousness; the characteristics that Abraham had before any of the covenants was made (Gal 3:6, Gen 15:6).
[1] Williamson, Abraham, 246–48.
[2] Hahn, “Covenant, Oath, and the Aqedah”, 90–94.
[3] Hahn, “Covenant, Oath, and the Aqedah”, 93.
[4] Hahn, “Covenant, Oath, and the Aqedah”, 96–97.
[5] Williamson, Abraham, 167–70.
[6] If this were so, then Carol K. Stockhausen, “2 Corinthians 3 and the Principles of Pauline Exegesis”, in Paul and the Scriptures of Israel (ed. Craig A. Evans and James A. Sanders; Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 83; Sheffield: JSOT, 1993), 143–64 (esp. 158–61) would be correct in concluding that Paul saw a real contradiction between the unilateral covenant of Genesis 15 and the bilateral covenant of Genesis 17.
Full bibliography
From the Sola Panel:
I’ve been enjoying Paul’s series on lousy arguments. At the risk of stealing Paul’s thunder, I’ve got another argument to add to the mix: the Argument from Silence. The Argument from Silence is rather simple, often wrong, but sometimes spot-on. The Argument from Silence happens when you listen to a speaker, or read a blog or book or article, and notice that they don’t mention some particular topic. You conclude that, since they didn’t mention that topic, they are ignorant of it, or it’s not important to them. To give an example that I’ve been thinking about recently, what should you conclude when you don’t hear much about the Holy Spirit in your church’s preaching program, your Bible Study series, your favourite podcast, etc.?
You could, perhaps, conclude that the church/leader/speaker doesn’t really believe in the Holy Spirit: either they don’t know him, or he’s not important to them. This conclusion, however, might be quite wrong. The Apostle Paul wrote a whole letter to the Colossian church full of densely packed theology, urging them to stick to the truth of Christ crucified and risen. But Colossians only directly mentions the Holy Spirit once in an almost offhand phrase (Col 1:8). It would be quite wrong to conclude on the basis of this letter that Paul didn’t believe in the Holy Spirit. You only need to read his other letters to see references to the Spirit everywhere!
Indeed, this is in line with the reality of the Spirit’s own person. The Holy Spirit is not the Showbiz Department of the Trinity; according to the Bible, the Spirit points away from himself, glorifies the Father and the Son, and brings us to relationship with God through the word of the Father and Son (e.g. John 14:16, 14:26, 15:26, 16:7-11, 1 Cor 12:3, Rom 8:15). Where God the Father is being glorified (Col 1:3, 1:12, 3:17), where the word of God is faithfully spoken (Col 3:16, 4:3), where people are living in trusting, repentant, hope-filled submission to Jesus Christ (Col 1:4, 2:5-7), where love is reigning among our brothers and sisters (Col 3:14), there we can be sure that the Spirit is doing his work. We shouldn’t expect him to crave seeing his name up in lights.
However, there are times when our silence about the Holy Spirit may point to a deeper problem. This is especially the case when we are talking not about God or Christ or the gospel directly, but about ourselves, and about the way in which God’s truth is made real in our lives, our communities and our world. At times like this, we often need to acknowledge God’s Spirit somehow, or we may end up replacing the Spirit with something else.
For example, I recently had the opportunity to sit in and listen to a group of Bible College graduates from all over the USA and UK as they tried to formulate a list of eight important summary statements about the relationship between God, the Bible and modern Bible readers. They produced fascinating and often insightful statements about the way God can speak through human writings, the significance of narrative (or the ‘story’ nature of the Bible), the role of the church in reading Scripture, and the kinds of methodologies that readers of Scripture could or should use to understand the text better.
But none of these summary statements included any mention of the Holy Spirit. Of course, none of the participants, when asked, denied that they believed in the Holy Spirit or that he had some relationship to Bible reading. Nevertheless, there was still something wrong here. Why was the Holy Spirit completely absent from the discussion? Maybe it was because deep down, we prefer to think that the work of reading, living and applying God’s word is nothing more than an exercise in human wisdom, human industriousness or communal reflection. All of these are, of course, involved in Bible reading. However, a true understanding and application of God’s word will always involve God himself, who opens our blind eyes and brings us to know and trust the Father and the Son. This is, in fact, one of the key works of the Spirit (e.g. Rom 8:5-7, 1 Cor 2:12-14, Eph 6:17, 1 Thess 1:5, 2 Tim 1:13-14). Sometimes a failure to speak meaningfully about the Holy Spirit while we are talking about our reading and application of God’s word might point to a deeper problem: our own arrogance before God’s revelation. This caused me to reflect on myself (as I do a PhD in biblical studies), and to admit that sometimes I’m guilty of this implicit attitude, and that I need to repent.
There might be other instances where silence about the Spirit points to a deeper problem. Another recent observation I’ve had about this significant silence about the Spirit is less directly relevant to this Sola Panel article (which is long enough as it is), so you can check it out on my own blog if you’d like to read further.
Comments on the Sola Panel
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