The Future Of Justification

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God’s Passion for His Glory

The Pleasures of God

Desiring God

The Dangerous Duty of Delight

Future Grace

A Hunger for God

Let the Nations Be Glad!

A Godward Life

Pierced by the Word

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ

The Legacy of Sovereign Joy

The Hidden Smile of God

The Roots of Endurance

The Misery of Job and the Mercy of

God

The Innkeeper

The Prodigal’s Sister

Recovering Biblical Manhood and

Womanhood

What’s the Difference?

The Justification of God

Counted Righteous in Christ

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals

The Supremacy of God in Preaching

Beyond the Bounds

Don’t Waste Your Life

The Passion of Jesus Christ

Life as a Vapor

A God-Entranced Vision of All Things

When I Don’t Desire God

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ

Taste and See

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die

God Is the Gospel

Contending for Our All

What Jesus Demands from the World

Amazing Grace in the Life of

William Wilberforce

Battling Unbelief

Suffering and the Sovereignty of God

(with Justin Taylor)

50 Crucial Questions

When the Darkness Will Not Lift

Books by John Piper

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CROSSWAY BOOKS

WHEATON, ILLINOIS

The Future of Justification

Published by Crossway Books

a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy,

recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided

by USA copyright law.

Italics in biblical quotations indicate emphasis added.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

Cover photo: Bridgeman Art Library

First printing, 2007

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English

Scripture quotations marked nasb are from The New American Standard Bible.®

1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piper, John, 1946–

The Future of Justification : a response to N.T. Wright / John

Piper.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-58134-964-1 (tpb)

1. Justification (Christian theology)—History of doctrines—20th century.

2. Wright, N. T. (Nicholas Thomas) II. Title.

BT764.3.P57 2007

234'.7—dc22 2007029481

BP 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07

15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of my father

William Solomon Hottle Piper

who preached the gospel of Jesus Christ

for seventy years

Contents

Acknowledgments 9

Introduction 13

On Controversy 27

Chapter One

Caution: Not All Biblical-Theological Methods and Categories 33

Are Illuminating

Chapter Two

The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery 39

for Justification

Chapter Three

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and the Meaning of 57

God’s Righteousness

Chapter Four

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and the Necessity of 73

Real Moral Righteousness

Chapter Five

Justification and the Gospel: When Is the Lordship of Jesus 81

Good News?

Chapter Six

Justification and the Gospel: Does Justification Determine Our 93

Standing with God?

Chapter Seven

The Place of Our Works in Justification 103

Chapter Eight

Does Wright Say with Different Words What the Reformed 117

Tradition Means by “Imputed Righteousness”?

Chapter Nine

Paul’s Structural Continuity with Second-Temple Judaism? 133

Chapter Ten

The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous 145

Root of “Ethnic Badges” and “Self-Help Moralism”

Chapter Eleven

“That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God” 163

Conclusion 181

A Note on the Purpose of the Appendices 189

Appendix One

What Does It Mean That Israel Did Not “Attain the Law” 191

Because She Pursued It “Not by Faith But as though

It Were by Works”?

Thoughts on Romans 9:30–10:4

Appendix Two

Thoughts on Law and Faith in Galatians 3 197

Appendix Three

Thoughts on Galatians 5:6 and the Relationship between 203

Faith and Love

Appendix Four

Using the Law Lawfully: Thoughts on 1 Timothy 1:5–11 207

Appendix Five

Does the Doctrine of the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness 211

Imply That the Cross Is Insufficient for Our

Right Standing with God?

Appendix Six

Twelve Theses on What It Means to Fulfill the Law: 215

With Special Reference to Romans 8:4

Works of N. T. Wright Cited in This Book 227

Scripture Index 229

Person Index 235

Subject Index 237

A Note on Resources: Desiring God 240

Acknowledgments

This is the year (2007) that my father died. Who can estimate

the debt we owe our fathers? Bill Piper preached the gospel of grace

for over seventy years, if you count the songs and testimonies at the

nursing home. He was an evangelist—the old southern, independent,

fundamentalist sort, without the attitude. He remains in my memory

the happiest man I ever knew.

In the last chapter of his ministry one of his favorite and most

fruitful sermons was titled “Grace for the Guilty.” As I read it even

today I realize again why, under God, my father must be acknowledged

first at the beginning of this book. That great sermon comes toward

its end with these simple words, “God clothes you with his righteousness

when you believe, giving you a garment that makes you fit for

heaven.” We all knew what he meant. He was a lover of the great, deep,

power-laden old truths. He wielded them in the might of the Spirit to

see thousands—I dare say tens of thousands—of people profoundly

converted. For my father, the gospel of Christ included the news that

there is a righteousness—a perfect obedience of Jesus Christ—that is

offered freely to all through faith alone. And when faith is given, that

righteousness is imputed to the believer once and for all. Together with

the sin-forgiving blood of Jesus, this is our hope. From the moment

we believed until the last day of eternity God is 100 percent for us

on this basis alone—the sin-bearing punishment of Christ, and the

righteousness-providing obedience of Christ. This my father preached

and sang, and I believed with joy.

O let the dead now hear Thy voice;

Now bid Thy banished ones rejoice;

Their beauty this, their glorious dress,

Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness.1

1John Wesley, “Jesu, Thy Blood and Righteousness.”

This book took its origin from the countless conversations and

e-mails with those who are losing their grip on this great gospel. This

has proved to be a tremendous burden for my soul over the past ten

years. But I thank God for it. And I acknowledge him for any clarity

and faith and worship and obedience that might flow from this

effort.

The book began to take shape while I was on sabbatical in the

spring and summer of 2006 at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England.

This is a very fruitful place to study, write, and interact with thoughtful

scholars. The book was put in its final form during a month-long writing

leave in May, 2007. Without the support of the Council of Elders

of Bethlehem Baptist Church I could not have done this work. I am

writing these acknowledgments on the first day of my twenty-eighth

year as pastor of Bethlehem, and my heart is full of thanks for a people

that love the great truths of the gospel and commission me to study and

write and preach these truths.

Also indispensable were my assistants David Mathis and Nathan

Miller. Reading the manuscript repeatedly, and making suggestions,

and finding resources, and tracking down citations, and certifying

references, and lifting dozens of practical burdens from my shoulders,

they made this work possible.

More than any other book that I have written, this one was critiqued

in the process by very serious scholars. I received detailed critical

feedback to the first draft from Michael Bird, Ardel Caneday, Andrew

Cowan, James Hamilton, Burk Parsons, Matt Perman, Joseph Rigney,

Thomas Schreiner, Justin Taylor, Brian Vickers, and Doug Wilson.

Most significant of all was the feedback I received from N. T. Wright.

He wrote an 11,000-word response to my first draft that was very helpful

in clarifying issues and (I hope) preventing distortions. The book

is twice the size it was before all of that criticism arrived. If it is not a

better book now, it is my fault, not theirs.

Thanks again to Carol Steinbach and her team for providing the

indexes. The only other person who has touched more of my books

more closely than Carol is my wife, Noël. Nothing of this nature would

happen without her support.

As usual it has been a deeply satisfying partnership to work

10 Acknowledgments

with Justin Taylor, Ted Griffin, Lane Dennis, and the entire team at

Crossway Books.

It should not go unmentioned that besides my father there are

other “fathers” who have shaped my understanding of the doctrine

of justification. Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan

Edwards, Daniel Fuller, George Ladd, John Murray, Leon Morris—not

that I have agreed with them all on every point, but I have learned so

much from them. I would be happy if it was said of this book what

John Erskine said in 1792 of Solomon Stoddard’s book, The Safety of

Appearing at the Day of Judgment, in the Righteousness of Christ: “The

general tendency of this book is to show that our claim to the pardon

of sin and acceptance with God is not founded on any thing wrought

in us, or acted by us, but only on the righteousness of Christ.”2

2Solomon Stoddard, The Safety of Appearing at the Day of Judgment, in the Righteousness of Christ

(Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1995, orig. 1687), vii.

Acknowledgments 11

Introduction

The Final Judgment feels too close for me to care much about

scoring points in debate. Into my seventh decade, the clouds of time

are clearing, and the prospect of wasting my remaining life on gamesmanship

or one-upmanship is increasingly unthinkable. The ego-need

to be right has lost its dominion, and the quiet desire to be a faithful

steward of the grace of truth increases. N. T. Wright is about three

years younger than I am, and I assume he feels the same.

The risen Lord Jesus sees through all our clever turns of phrase—I

am preaching to myself. He knows perfectly when we have chosen

words to win, but not to clarify. He has planted a banner on the pulpit

of every preacher and on the desk of every scholar: “No man can give

the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to

save.”1 We will give an account to the all-knowing, all-ruling Lord of

the universe in a very few years—or days. And when we do, what will

matter is that we have not peddled God’s word but “as men of sincerity,

as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ”

(2 Cor. 2:17).

The Fragrance from Death to Death and

from Life to Life

Those of us who are ordained by the church to the Christian ministry

have a special responsibility to feed the sheep (John 21:17). We have

been made “overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased

with His own blood” (Acts 20:28, nasb). We bear the burden

of being not only teachers, who “will be judged with greater strictness”

(James 3:1), but also examples in the way we live, so that our people

may “consider the outcome of [our] way of life, and imitate [our] faith”

(Heb. 13:7). The apostle Paul charges us: “Keep a close watch on your

1These are the words of James Denney, quoted in John Stott, Between Two Worlds: The Art of

Preaching in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), 325.

self and on the teaching” (1 Tim. 4:16). We are “servants of Christ and

stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards

that they be found trustworthy” (1 Cor. 4:1–2)—trustworthy in life,

“in step with the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:14), and trustworthy in

teaching, “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

The seriousness of our calling comes from the magnitude of what

is at stake. If we do not feed the sheep in our charge with “the whole

counsel of God,” their blood is on our hands. “I am innocent of the

blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole

counsel of God” (Acts 20:26–27). If we do not equip the saints by living

in a way that exalts Christ, and by teaching what accords with the

gospel, it will be laid to our account if our people are like “children,

tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of

doctrine” (Eph. 4:12, 14).

More importantly, eternal life hangs in the balance: “We are the

aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among

those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the

other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?”

(2 Cor. 2:15–16). How we live and what we teach will make a difference

in whether people obey the gospel or meet Jesus in the fire of judgment,

“when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in

flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on

those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thess. 1:7–8).

This is why Paul was so provoked at the false teaching in Galatia.

It was another gospel and would bring eternal ruin to those who

embraced it. This accounts for his unparalleled words: “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” (Gal. 1:8). Getting the good

news about Jesus right is a matter of life and death. It is the message

“by which you are being saved” (1 Cor. 15:2).

If Righteousness Were Through the Law,

Then Christ Died for No Purpose

Therefore, the subject matter of this book—justification by faith apart

from works of the law—is serious. There is as much riding on this truth

as could ride on any truth in the Bible. “If righteousness were through

the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal. 2:21). And if Christ

14 Introduction

died for no purpose, we are still in our sins, and those who have died

in Christ have perished. Paul called down a curse on those who bring a

different gospel because “all who rely on works of the law are under a

curse” (Gal. 3:10), and he would spare us this curse. “You are severed

from Christ, you who would be justified by the law” (Gal. 5:4). And if

we are severed from Christ, there is no one to bear our curse, because

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for

us” (Gal. 3:13). I hope that the mere existence of this book will raise

the stakes in the minds of many and promote serious study and faithful

preaching of the gospel, which includes the good news of justification

by faith apart from works of the law (Rom. 3:28; Gal. 2:16).

N. T. Wright

My conviction concerning N. T. Wright is not that he is under the curse

of Galatians 1:8–9, but that his portrayal of the gospel—and of the

doctrine of justification in particular—is so disfigured that it becomes

difficult to recognize as biblically faithful. It may be that in his own

mind and heart Wright has a clear and firm grasp on the gospel of

Christ and the biblical meaning of justification. But in my judgment,

what he has written will lead to a kind of preaching that will not

announce clearly what makes the lordship of Christ good news for

guilty sinners or show those who are overwhelmed with sin how they

may stand righteous in the presence of God.

Nicholas Thomas Wright is a British New Testament scholar and

the Anglican Bishop of Durham, England. He is a remarkable blend

of weighty academic scholarship, ecclesiastical leadership, ecumenical

involvement, prophetic social engagement, popular Christian advocacy,

musical talent, and family commitment.2 As critical as this book is of

Wright’s understanding of the gospel and justification, the seriousness

and scope of the book is a testimony to the stature of his scholarship and

the extent of his influence. I am thankful for his strong commitment to

Scripture as his final authority, his defense and celebration of the resurrection

of the Son of God, his vindication of the deity of Christ, his belief

in the virgin birth of Jesus, his biblical disapproval of homosexual conduct,

and the consistent way he presses us to see the big picture of God’s

2An abundance of information about Dr. Wright—as well as written, audio, and video materials by

him—are available at http://www.ntwrightpage.com.

Introduction 15

universal purpose for all peoples through the covenant with Abraham—

and more. In this book, my hope, most remotely, is that Wright might

be influenced to change some of what he thinks concerning justification

and the gospel. Less remotely, I hope that he might clarify, in future writings,

some things that I have stumbled over. But most optimistically, I

hope that those who consider this book and read N. T. Wright will read

him with greater care, deeper understanding, and less inclination to find

Wright’s retelling of the story of justification compelling.

“This Whole Thing Is Going to Fly”

For the last thirty years, Wright has been rethinking and retelling the

theology of the New Testament. He recalls an experience in the mid-

seventies when Romans 10:33 became the fulcrum of a profoundly new

way of looking at Paul’s theology. He was trying to make sense of Paul

on the basis of the inherited views of the Reformation but could not.

I was reading C.E.B. Cranfield on Romans and trying to see how it

would work with Galatians, and it simply doesn’t work. Interestingly,

Cranfield hasn’t done a commentary on Galatians. It’s very difficult.

But I found then, and this was the mid-seventies before E. P. Sanders

was published, before there was such a thing as a “new perspective,”

that I came out with this reading of Romans 10:3 which is really the

fulcrum for me around which everything else moved: “Being ignorant

of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own.”

In other words, what we have here is a covenant status which is for

Jews and Jews only. I have a vivid memory of going home that night,

sitting up in bed, reading Galatians through in Greek and thinking, “It

works. It really works. This whole thing is going to fly.” And then all

sorts of things just followed on from that.4

What he means by “this whole thing” is a top-to-bottom rethinking

of Paul’s theology in categories largely different from the way most

people have read their New Testament in the last fifteen hundred years

(see chapter 1, note 6). When someone engages in such a thorough

reconstruction of New Testament theology, critics must be extremely

3“For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not

submit to God’s righteousness.”

4Travis Tamerius, “An Interview with N. T. Wright,” Reformation & Revival Journal 11, Nos.

1 and 2 (Winter and Spring 2003). Available online at http://www.hornes.org/theologia/content/

travis_tamerius/interview_with_n_t_wright.htm.

16 Introduction

careful. Their job is almost impossible. The temptation is to hear a

claim about justification or about the gospel that sounds so wrongheaded

that a quick critical essay contrasting the “wrongheaded” claim

with the traditional view seems like a sufficient response. Wright is

understandably wearied with such rejoinders.

When Global Paradigms Collide

However, in Wright’s reconstruction, he has recast the old definitions

and the old connections. This may or may not mean that the old reality

is lost. It may or may not mean that the new way of saying things is

more faithful to the apostles’ intentions. It may or may not mean that

the church will be helped by this new construction. But what is clear

is that criticism of such global reconstructions requires a great deal of

effort to get inside the globe and see things from there. Whether I have

succeeded at this or not, I have tried.

We all wear colored glasses—most wear glasses colored by tradition;

some wear glasses colored by anti-tradition; and some wear

glasses colored by our emerging, new reconstruction of reality. Which

of these ways of seeing the world is more seductive, I don’t know. Since

they exist in differing degrees, from one time to the next, probably any

of them can be overpowering at a given moment. I love the gospel and

justification that I have seen in my study and preaching over the last

forty years. N. T. Wright loves the gospel and justification he has seen

in that same time. My temptation is to defend a view because it has

been believed for centuries. His temptation is to defend a view because

it fits so well into his new way of seeing the world. Public traditions

and private systems are both very powerful. We are agreed, however,

that neither conformity to an old tradition nor conformity to a new

system is the final arbiter of truth. Scripture is. And we both take courage

from the fact that Scripture has the power to force its own color

through any human lens.

What Is Behind This Book?

For those who wonder what Wright has written that causes a response

as long and as serious as this book, it may be helpful to mention a few

of the issues that I will try to deal with in the book. These are some of

those head-turners that tempt the critic to say, “He can’t be serious.”

Introduction 17

But remember, the shock may only be because we are, as he would say,

looking at things in the old way and not in the way he has redefined

them. On the other hand, there may be real problems.

The Gospel Is Not about How to Get Saved?

First, it is striking to read not just what Wright says the gospel is,

but what he says it isn’t. He writes, “‘The gospel’ itself refers to the

proclamation that Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, is the one,

true and only Lord of the world.”5 For Paul, this imperial announcement

was “that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from

the dead; that he was thereby proved to be Israel’s Messiah; that he

was thereby installed as Lord of the world.”6 Yes. That is an essential

announcement of the gospel. But Wright also says, “‘The gospel’ is not

an account of how people get saved.”7 “Paul’s gospel to the pagans

was not a philosophy of life. Nor was it, even, a doctrine about how to

get saved.”8 “My proposal has been that ‘the gospel’ is not, for Paul,

a message about ‘how one gets saved.’”9 “The gospel is not . . . a set

of techniques for making people Christians.”10 “‘The gospel’ is not

an account of how people get saved. It is . . . the proclamation of the

lordship of Jesus Christ.”11

These are striking denials in view of 1 Corinthians 15:1–2, “Now

I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you . . . by

which you are being saved.” But be careful. Perhaps this only means

that salvation results from believing the gospel, not that the gospel message

tells how to be saved. Perhaps. But one wonders how the death

and resurrection of Jesus could be heard as good news if one had spent

his life committing treason against the risen King. It seems as though

one would have to be told how the death and resurrection of Christ

actually saves sinners, if sinners are to hear them as good news and

not as a death sentence. There is so much more to say (see especially

chapter 5). I am only illustrating the flash points.

5N. T. Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1: Starting Points and Opening Reflections,”

at the Pastors Conference of Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church, Monroe, Louisiana (January 3,

2005). Accessed 5-11-07 at http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Auburn_Paul.htm.

6N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 46.

7Ibid., 133.

8Ibid., 90.

9Ibid., 60.

10Ibid., 153.

11Ibid., 133.

18 Introduction

Justification Is Not How You Become a Christian?

Second, Wright says, “Justification is not how someone becomes a

Christian. It is the declaration that they have become a Christian.”12

Or again, “‘Justification’ in the first century was not about how

someone might establish a relationship with God. It was about God’s

eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in fact,

a member of his people.”13 “[Justification] was not so much about ‘getting

in’, or indeed about ‘staying in’, as about ‘how you could tell who

was in’. In standard Christian theological language, it wasn’t so much

about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as

about the church.”14 So the divine act of justification does not constitute

us as Christians or establish our relationship with God. It informs

or announces. “The word dikaioø [justify] is, after all, a declarative

word, declaring that something is the case, rather than a word for making

something happen or changing the way something is.”15

This is startling because we are used to reading Romans 5:1 as if

justification had in fact altered our relationship with God. “Therefore,

since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through

our Lord Jesus Christ.” We thought that justification had brought

about this fundamentally new and reconciled relationship with God.

(For further discussion, see especially chapter 6.)

Justification Is Not the Gospel?

Third, it follows then that Wright would say that the message of justification

is not the gospel. “I must stress again that the doctrine of

justification by faith is not what Paul means by ‘the gospel.’”16 “If we

come to Paul with these questions in mind—the questions about how

human beings come into a living and saving relationship with the living

and saving God—it is not justification that springs to his lips or pen.

The message about Jesus and his cross and resurrection—‘the gospel’

. . . is announced to them; through this means, God works by his Spirit

upon their hearts.”17

12N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 125.

13Ibid., 119.

14Ibid.

15N. T. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments

and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,

2006), 258.

16Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 132.

17Ibid., 116.

Introduction 19

This is astonishing in view of the fact that Paul brought his sermon

in Pisidian Antioch to a gospel climax by saying, “Let it be known

to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins

is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is justified

[dikaiou'tai] from everything from which you could not be justified

[dikaiwqh'nai] by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38–39, my translation).

And again it is difficult to know how a sinner could hear the announcement

of the cross and resurrection as good news without some explanation

that by faith it makes a person forgiven and righteous before God.

(See more on this in chapter 6.)

We Are Not Justified by Believing in Justification?

Fourth, part of the implication of what Wright has said so far is that

we are not justified by believing in justification by faith but by believing

in Jesus: “We are not justified by faith by believing in justification by

faith. We are justified by faith by believing in the gospel itself—in other

words, that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.”18

This sounds right. Of course, we are not saved by doctrine. We are

saved by Christ. But it is misleading, because it leaves the meaning of

“believing in the gospel” undefined. Believing in the gospel for what?

Prosperity? Healing? A new job? If we are going to help people believe

the gospel in a saving way (not the way the demons believe, and not

the way Simon the magician believed, James 2:19; Acts 8:13, 21–23),

we will have to announce the good news that Christ died for them; that

is, we will have to announce why this death and resurrection are good

news for them.

There is more than one way to say it. Many people have been saved

without hearing the language of justification. The same is true with

regard to the words and realities of “regeneration” and “propitiation”

and “redemption” and “reconciliation” and “forgiveness.” A baby

believer does not have to understand all of the glorious things that have

happened to him in order to be saved. But these things do all have to

happen to him. And if he comes to the settled conviction, when he hears

about them, that he will not trust Christ for any one of them, there is

a serious question mark over his salvation. Therefore, it is misleading

to say that we are not saved by believing in justification by faith. If we

18Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 261.

20 Introduction

hear that part of the gospel and cast ourselves on God for this divine

gift, we are saved. If we hear that part of the gospel and reject it, while

trying to embrace Christ on other terms, we will not be saved. (There

is more on this in chapter 5.)

The Imputation of God’s Own Righteousness Makes No Sense At All?

Fifth, Wright’s construction of Paul’s theology appears to have no place

for the imputation of divine righteousness to sinners.

If we use the language of the law-court, it makes no sense whatever to

say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise

transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant.

Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be

passed across the courtroom. . . . If and when God does act to vindicate

his people, his people will then, metaphorically speaking, have the

status of ‘righteousness’ . . . . But the righteousness they have will not

be God’s own righteousness. That makes no sense at all.19

But Wright would protest that if we leave it there, we quibble

with words and miss the substance. With his new definitions and

connections, he believes he has preserved the substance of what the

Reformation theologians meant by imputation:

[Jesus’] role precisely as Messiah is not least to draw together the identity

of the whole of God’s people so that what is true of him is true of

them and vice versa. Here we arrive at one of the great truths of the

gospel, which is that the accomplishment of Jesus Christ is reckoned to

all those who are “in him”. This is the truth which has been expressed

within the Reformed tradition in terms of “imputed righteousness”,

often stated in terms of Jesus Christ having fulfilled the moral law and

thus having accumulated a “righteous” status which can be shared

with all his people. As with some other theological problems, I regard

this as saying a substantially right thing in a substantially wrong way,

and the trouble when you do that is that things on both sides of the

equation, and the passages which are invoked to support them, become

distorted.20

I doubt that this is the case. But we will save the argument for chapter 8.

19Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 98–99.

20Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.” Emphasis in original.

Introduction 21

Future Justification Is on the Basis of the Complete Life Lived?

Sixth, Wright makes startling statements to the effect that our future

justification will be on the basis of works. “The Spirit is the path by

which Paul traces the route from justification by faith in the present to

justification, by the complete life lived, in the future.”21 “Paul has . . .

spoken in Romans 2 about the final justification of God’s people on the

basis of their whole life.”22 “Present justification declares, on the basis

of faith, what future justification will affirm publicly (according to

[Rom.] 2:14–16 and 8:9–11) on the basis of the entire life.”23 That he

means future “justification by works” is seen in the following quote:

This declaration, this vindication, occurs twice. It occurs in the future,

as we have seen, on the basis of the entire life a person has led in the

power of the Spirit—that is, it occurs on the basis of “works” in Paul’s

redefined sense. And near the heart of Paul’s theology, it occurs in

the present as an anticipation of that future verdict, when someone,

responding in believing obedience to the call of the gospel, believes that

Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.24

Again, beware of thinking this means what you might think it means.

Remember that Wright has redefined “justification.” It is not what

makes you a Christian or saves you. Therefore, it may be that Wright

means nothing more here than what I might mean when I say that our

good works are the necessary evidence of faith in Christ at the last day.

Perhaps. But it is not so simple. (I return to this topic in chapter 7.)

First-century Judaism Had Nothing of the Alleged Self-Righteous and

Boastful Legalism?

Seventh, Wright follows the New Perspective watchword that Paul

was not facing “legalistic works-righteousness” in his churches. The

warnings against depending on the law are not against legalism but

ethnocentrism. Wright is by no means a stereotypical New Perspective

scholar and goes his own way on many fronts. But he does embrace

the fundamental claim of the New Perspective on Paul as articulated

by E. P. Sanders:

21Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 148. Emphasis added.

22Ibid., 121. Emphasis added.

23Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 129. Emphasis added.

24Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 260. First two emphases added.

22 Introduction

[Sanders’s] major point, to which all else is subservient, can be quite

simply stated. Judaism in Paul’s day was not, as has regularly been

supposed, a religion of legalistic works-righteousness. If we imagine

that it was, and that Paul was attacking it as if it was, we will do great

violence to it and to him. . . . The Jew keeps the law out of gratitude,

as the proper response to grace—not, in other words, in order to get

into the covenant people, but to stay in. Being “in” in the first place

was God’s gift. This scheme Sanders famously labeled as “covenantal

nomism” (from the Greek nomos, law).25

When Wright did his own research, for example, into the mind of

the Qumran sect represented in 4QMMT, he concluded that these

documents “reveal nothing of the self-righteous and boastful ‘legalism’

which used to be thought characteristic of Jews in Paul’s day.”26

In chapters 9 and 10, I will examine whether 4QMMT sustains this

judgment. More importantly, I will try to dig out the implications of the

fact that a common root of self-righteousness lives beneath both overt

legalism and Jewish ethnocentrism. Something was damnable in the

Galatian controversy (Gal. 1:8–9). If it was ethnocentrism, it is hard to

believe that the hell-bound ethnocentrists were “keeping the law out of

gratitude, as a proper response to grace.” But again, I will have much

more to say on this in chapters 9 and 10.

God’s Righteousness Is the Same as His Covenant Faithfulness?

Eighth, I will mention one more thing that I think should be startling

but no longer is. Wright understands “the righteousness of God”

generally as meaning God’s “covenant faithfulness.” It does include

“his impartiality, his proper dealing with sin and his helping of the

helpless.”27 But chiefly it is “his faithfulness to his covenant promises

to Abraham.”28 I am going to argue in chapter 3 that these descriptions

stay too much on the surface. They denote some of the things

righteousness does, but do not press down to the common root beneath

these behaviors as to what God’s righteousness is. When Paul says,

25Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 18–19.

26N. T. Wright, “4QMMT and Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and Eschatology,” in History and

Exegesis: New Testament Essays in Honor of Dr. E. Earle Ellis for His 80th Birthday, ed. Aang-Won

(Aaron) Son (New York and London: T&T Clark, 2006), 106.

27N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh:

T&T Clark, 1991), 36.

28Ibid.

Introduction 23

“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), one must

break the back of exegesis to make this mean, “We become the covenant

faithfulness of God.” This is exactly what Wright does—in one

of the most eccentric articles in all his work.29 Chapter 11 is my effort

to show that this unprecedented reinterpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:21

does not stand.

The Future of Justification

For these eight reasons, and more that will emerge along the way, I am

not optimistic that the biblical doctrine of justification will flourish

where N. T. Wright’s portrayal holds sway. I do not see his vision as

a compelling retelling of what Saint Paul really said. And I think, as it

stands now, it will bring great confusion to the church at a point where

she desperately needs clarity. I don’t think this confusion is the necessary

dust that must settle when great new discoveries have been made.

Instead, if I read the situation correctly, the confusion is owing to the

ambiguities in Wright’s own expressions, and to the fact that, unlike his

treatment of some subjects, his paradigm for justification does not fit

well with the ordinary reading of many texts and leaves many ordinary

folk not with the rewarding “ah-ha” experience of illumination, but

with a paralyzing sense of perplexity.30

29N. T. Wright, “On Becoming the Righteousness of God,” in Pauline Theology, Vol. II: 1 & 2

Corinthians, ed. David M. Hay (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 203.

30I do not infer Wright’s defective view of justification to mean that he is not himself justified.

Jonathan Edwards and John Owen give good counsel on this point even if the debates then were

not identical to ours. Edwards wrote during one of his controversies:

How far a wonderful and mysterious agency of God’s Spirit may so influence some men’s

hearts, that their practice in this regard may be contrary to their own principles, so that

they shall not trust in their own righteousness, though they profess that men are justified

by their own righteousness—or how far they may believe the doctrine of justification by

men’s own righteousness in general, and yet not believe it in a particular application of

it to themselves—or how far that error which they may have been led into by education,

or cunning sophistry of others, may yet be indeed contrary to the prevailing disposition

of their hearts, and contrary to their practice—or how far some may seem to maintain

a doctrine contrary to this gospel-doctrine of justification, that really do not, but only

express themselves differently from others; or seem to oppose it through their misunderstanding

of our expressions, or we of theirs, when indeed our real sentiments are the

same in the main—or may seem to differ more than they do, by using terms that are

without a precisely fixed and determinate meaning—or to be wide in their sentiments

from this doctrine, for want of a distinct understanding of it; whose hearts, at the same

time, entirely agree with it, and if once it was clearly explained to their understandings,

would immediately close with it, and embrace it: — how far these things may be, I will

not determine; but am fully persuaded that great allowances are to be made on these

and such like accounts, in innumerable instances; though it is manifest, from what has

been said, that the teaching and propagating [of] contrary doctrines and schemes, is of

a pernicious and fatal tendency. (Jonathan Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in

24 Introduction

The future of justification will be better served, I think, with older

guides rather than the new ones.31 When it comes to the deeper issues

of how justification really works both in Scripture and in the human

soul, I don’t think N. T. Wright is as illuminating as Martin Luther or

John Owen or Leon Morris. But that remains to be shown.

I end the Introduction where I began. My little earthly life is too

far spent to care much about the ego gratification of scoring points in

debate. I am still a sinner depending on Christ for my righteousness

before God. So I am quite capable of fear and pride. But I do hope that,

where I have made mistakes, I will be willing to admit it. There are far

greater things at stake than my fickle sense of gratification or regret.

Among these greater things are the faithful preaching of the gospel,

the care of guilt-ridden souls, the spiritual power of sacrificial deeds of

love, the root of humble Christian political and social engagement, and

the courage of Christian missions to confront all the religions of the

world with the supremacy of Christ as the only way to escape the wrath

to come. When the gospel itself is distorted or blurred, everything else

is eventually affected. May the Lord give us help in these days to see

the word of his grace with clarity, and savor it with humble and holy

zeal, and spread it without partiality so that millions may believe and

be saved, to the praise of the glory of God’s grace.

Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 19 [New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001], 242)

Owen wrote: “Men may be really saved by that grace which doctrinally they do deny; and they may

be justified by the imputation of that righteousness which in opinion they deny to be imputed.” But

I would add: the clearer the knowledge of the truth and the more deep the denial, the less assurance

one can have that the God of truth will save him. Owen’s words are not meant to make us cavalier

about the content of the gospel, but to hold out hope that men’s hearts are often better than their

heads. John Owen, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, chapter VII, “Imputation, and the Nature

of It,” Banner of Truth, Works, Vol. 5, 163-164.

31In a sobering review of Mark A. Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, Is the Reformation Over? An

Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism, Scott Manetsch wisely writes,

“Now more than ever, there is urgent need for evangelical Protestants in North America to ‘protest’

against theological superficiality, to eschew cultural faddishness and myopic presentism, and recover

their historic roots, not only in the religious awakenings of colonial America, but in the Christian

renewal movements of sixteenth-century Europe. Evangelicals who make this journey to Wittenberg

and Geneva, to Zurich and Edinburgh and London will discover a world of profound biblical and

theological insight, a rich deposit of practical wisdom, a gift given by God to his church for life and

ministry in the twenty-first century.” Scott Manetsch, “Discerning the Divide: A Review Article,” in

Trinity Journal, 28NS (2007): 62–63.

Introduction 25

On Controversy

I am a pastor first. Polemics are secondary and serve that. Part

of our pastoral responsibility is what Paul calls “the defense and confirmation

of the gospel” (Phil. 1:7). Virtually all of Paul’s letters serve

the church by clarifying and defending doctrinal truth and its practical

implications.

The reason I take up controversy with N. T. Wright and not, say,

J. D. G. Dunn or E. P. Sanders (all notable for their relationship to the

so-called New Perspective on Paul) is that none of my parishioners has

ever brought me a thick copy of a book by Dunn or Sanders, wondering

what I thought about them. But Wright is a popular and compelling

writer as well as a rigorous scholar. Therefore, he exerts significant influence

both in the academic guild and among the wider public. If he is mistaken

on the matter of justification, he may do more harm than others.

In addition, Wright loves the apostle Paul and reverences the Christian

Scriptures. That gives me hope that engaging with him will be fruitful. I

know I have learned from him, and I hope that our common ground in

Scripture will enable some progress in understanding and agreement.

How Then Shall We Conduct the

Controversy?

In his essay called “Polemic Theology: How to Deal with Those Who

Differ from Us,” Roger Nicole begins,

We are called upon by the Lord to contend earnestly for the faith (Jude

3). That does not necessarily involve being contentious; but it involves

avoiding compromise, standing forth for what we believe, standing

forth for the truth of God—without welching at any particular

moment.1

1Roger Nicole, “Polemic Theology: How to Deal with Those Who Differ from Us,” http://www.

founders.org/FJ33/article3.html.

When we are arguing about the meaning of the gospel, it is important to

do it “in step with the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:14). If Bible-believers

are going to disagree about the meaning of the Bible, we should try to

do so biblically. To that end, I offer the following encouragements.2

Wise Words from Old Times

In 1655 John Owen published The Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated

and Socinianism Examined. It contains one of my favorite exhortations,

namely, that “we have communion with God in the doctrine we

contend for.” In other words, arguing for the truth of God should never

replace enjoyment of the God of truth.

[More important than all is] a diligent endeavor to have the power

of the truths professed and contended for abiding upon our hearts,

that we may not contend for notions, but that we have a practical

acquaintance within our own souls. When the heart is cast indeed

into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth—when the

evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us—when not the sense

of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the thing abides in

our hearts—when we have communion with God in the doctrine we

contend for—then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against

all the assaults of men.3

But is it really necessary? Must we contend? Cannot we not simply

be positive, rather than trying to show that others are wrong? On June

17, 1932, J. Gresham Machen delivered an address before the Bible

League of Great Britain in London titled “Christian Scholarship and

the Defense of the Faith.” In it he said,

Men tell us that our preaching should be positive and not negative, that

we can preach the truth without attacking error. But if we follow that

advice we shall have to close our Bible and desert its teachings. The

New Testament is a polemic book almost from beginning to end.

2What follows is not new. The fullest statements I have made about controversy among Christians

are found in “Charity, Clarity, and Hope: The Controversy and the Cause of Christ,” in Recovering

Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, ed. John Piper and

Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1991; 2006), 403–422, and Contending for Our

All: Defending Truth and Treasuring Christ in the Lives of Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham

Machen (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), especially the Introduction and Conclusion.

3John Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae; or, The Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated and Socinianism

Examined, Vol. 12, The Works of John Owen, ed. William Goold (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth,

1966), 52.

28 On Controversy

Some years ago I was in a company of teachers of the Bible in the

colleges and other educational institutions of America. One of the most

eminent theological professors in the country made an address. In it he

admitted that there are unfortunate controversies about doctrine in the

Epistles of Paul; but, said he in effect, the real essence of Paul’s teaching

is found in the hymn to Christian love in the thirteenth chapter of

I Corinthians; and we can avoid controversy today, if we will only

devote the chief attention to that inspiring hymn.

In reply, I am bound to say that the example was singularly ill-

chosen. That hymn to Christian love is in the midst of a great polemic

passage; it would never have been written if Paul had been opposed

to controversy with error in the Church. It was because his soul was

stirred within him by a wrong use of the spiritual gifts that he was able

to write that glorious hymn. So it is always in the Church. Every really

great Christian utterance, it may almost be said, is born in controversy.

It is when men have felt compelled to take a stand against error that

they have risen to the really great heights in the celebration of truth.4

Machen also reminds us that not just the heights of celebration in

the truth but also the salvation of souls may well come through controversy

for the cause of the gospel:

During the academic year, 1924–25, there has been something like an

awakening. Youth has begun to think for itself; the evil of compromising

associations has been discovered; Christian heroism in the face

of opposition has come again to its rights; a new interest has been

aroused in the historical and philosophical questions that underlie the

Christian religion; true and independent convictions have been formed.

Controversy, in other words, has resulted in a striking intellectual and

spiritual advance. Some of us discern in all this the work of the Spirit

of God. . . . Controversy of the right sort is good; for out of such controversy,

as Church history and Scripture alike teach, there comes the

salvation of souls.5

Longing for the Day of Unity in the Truth

The heart-wrenching truth of our day, and every day, is that Christians

often disagree with each other—sometimes about serious matters.6

4J. Gresham Machen, “Christian Scholarship and the Defense of the Faith,” in J. Gresham Machen:

Selected Shorter Writings, ed. D. G. Hart (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2004), 148–149.

5J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith? (1925; reprint Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), 42–43.

6This sentence and the remainder of this note on controversy are adapted from the Conclusion of

Contending for Our All (cited in note 2).

On Controversy 29

Therefore, we rejoice that it is God himself who will fulfill his plan

for the church: “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my

purpose” (Isa. 46:10). We take heart that, in spite of all our blind spots

and bungling and disobedience, God will triumph in the earth: “All

the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the

families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs

to the Lord, and he rules over the nations” (Ps. 22:27–28).

Yet one of the groanings of this fallen age is controversy, and most

painful of all, controversy with brothers and sisters in Christ. We resonate

with the apostle Paul—our joy would be full if we could all be “of

the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one

mind” (Phil. 2:2). But for all his love of harmony and unity and peace, it

is remarkable how many of Paul’s letters were written to correct fellow

Christians. One thinks of 1 Corinthians. It begins with Paul’s thanks

(1:4) and ends with his love (16:24). But between those verses he labors

to set the Corinthians straight in their thinking and behavior.7

The assumption of the entire New Testament is that we should

strive for peace. Peace and unity in the body of Christ are exceedingly

precious. “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in

unity!” (Ps. 133:1). “Seek peace and pursue it” (1 Pet. 3:11). “So then

let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Rom.

14:19). But just as clear is that we are to pursue peace by striving to

come to agreement in the truth. “The wisdom from above is first pure,

then peaceable” (James 3:17). It is first pure. Peace is not a first thing.

It is derivative. It comes from hearty agreement in truth.

For example, Paul tells us to set our minds on what is true, and

honorable, and just; and the God of peace will be with us (Phil. 4:8–9).

Peace is a wonderful by-product of heartfelt commitments to what is

true and right. Hebrews speaks of the “peaceful fruit of righteousness”

(12:11). Paul tells Timothy to “pursue righteousness . . . and peace”

(2 Tim. 2:22). The unity we strive for in the church is a unity in knowledge

and truth and righteousness. We grow up into the one body

“joined and held together” as we “attain to the unity of the faith and of

the knowledge of the Son of God” (Eph. 4:13, 16). “Grace and peace”

7He addresses the danger of boasting in leaders (1:10–3:23), the limits of sexual freedom (5:1–8), the

extent of true separation (5:9–13), the proper handling of lawsuits (6:1–8), the goodness of sexual

relations in marriage (7:1–16), the nature of Christian freedom (8:1–13), the proper demeanor for

men and women in worship (11:2–16), how to behave at the Lord’s Supper (11:17–34), the use of

spiritual gifts (chaps. 12–14), and the nature and the reality of the resurrection (chap. 15).

30 On Controversy

are multiplied to us “in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord”

(2 Pet. 1:2). And paradoxically, the weaponry with which we wage war

for “the gospel of peace” begins with “the belt of truth” (Eph. 6:14–15)

and ends with “the sword of the Spirit,” the Word of God (6:17).

Why True Unity Flows from Truth

The reason for this is that truth frees us from the control of Satan,

the great deceiver and destroyer of unity: “you will know the truth,

and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32; cf. 2 Tim. 2:24–26). Truth

serves love, the bond of perfection. Paul prays for the Philippians that

their “love [may] abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment”

(Phil. 1:9). Truth sanctifies, and so yields the righteousness

whose fruit is peace: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth”

(John 17:17; cf. 2 Pet. 1:3, 5, 12).

For the sake of unity and peace, therefore, Paul labors to set the

churches straight on numerous issues—including quite a few that do

not in themselves involve heresy. He does not exclude controversy from

his pastoral writing. And he does not limit his engagement in controversy

to first-order doctrines, where heresy threatens. He is like a parent

to his churches. Parents do not correct and discipline their children

only for felonies. Good parents long for their children to grow up into

all the kindness and courtesy of mature adulthood. And since the fabric

of truth is seamless, Paul knows that letting minor strands continue to

unravel can eventually rend the whole garment.

Thus Paul teaches that elders serve the church, on the one hand, by

caring for the church without being pugnacious (1 Tim. 3:3, 5), and, on

the other hand, by rebuking and correcting false teaching. “He must hold

firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give

instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it”

(Titus 1:9; cf. 1:13; 2:15; 1 Tim. 5:20). This is one of the main reasons

we have the Scriptures: they are “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for

correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16).

“By the Open Statement of the Truth

We Commend Ourselves”

Faithful Christians do not love controversy; they love peace. They love

their brothers and sisters who disagree with them. They long for a

On Controversy 31

common mind for the cause of Christ. But for this very reason they are

bound by their conscience and by the Word of God to try to persuade

the church concerning the fullness of the truth and beauty of God’s

word.

We live in a day of politicized discourse that puts no premium on

clear assertions. Some use language to conceal where they stand rather

than to make clear where they stand. One reason this happens is that

clear and open statements usually result in more criticism than ambiguous

statements do. Vagueness will win more approval in a hostile

atmosphere than forthrightness will.

But we want nothing to do with that attitude. Jesus refused to converse

with religious leaders who crafted their answers so as to conceal

what they thought (Mark 11:33). Our aim (if not our achievement) is

always to be like Paul when he said, “But we have renounced disgraceful,

underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with

God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend

ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Cor. 4:2).8

8These final paragraphs are based on what I wrote earlier in “Clarity, Charity, and Hope,”

404–406.

32 On Controversy

Chapter One

Caution: Not All

Biblical-Theological Methods

and Categories Are Illuminating

A Common Caution

Most scholars are aware that methods and categories of thought taken

from historical and systematic theology may control and distort the

way one reads the Bible. But we don’t hear as often the caution that the

methods and categories of biblical theology can do the same. Neither

systematic nor biblical theology must distort our exegesis. But both

can.

For example, suppose one took the category of “eschatology”

from a traditional systematic theology textbook. It typically would be

treated in a final chapter as “the doctrine of last things”—events that

are yet future and will happen during and after the end of this age. If

someone takes that understanding of eschatology and makes it the

lens through which one reads the New Testament, it is possible that it

would conceal or distort the truth that in the New Testament the end

of the ages has already arrived in the coming of Jesus the Messiah, so

that the “end times” began with the first coming of Christ.1

1See 1 Corinthians 10:11: “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written

down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.” Hebrews 1:1–2a: “Long ago,

at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days

he has spoken to us by his Son.” First Peter 1:20: “He was foreknown before the foundation of the

world but was made manifest in the last times for your sake.” This emphasis on the eschatological

nature of the whole New Testament is expressed in the title and substance of George Ladd’s book,

The Presence of the Future (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974).

i

34 The Future of Justification

Biblical theology, as over against systematic theology, is sometimes

acclaimed as the discipline that has set us free from these possible

distortions of systematic theology. Biblical theology aims to read

the authors of Scripture along the trajectory of redemptive history in

light of the authors’ own categories that are shaped by the historical

milieu in which they lived. Done properly, this is an essential part of

responsible exegesis and theology. Those who submit their minds to the

authority of Scripture, as N. T. Wright readily confesses that he does,2

will want to understand what the authors originally intended to say—

not what they can be made to say by later reinterpretation.

A Not-So-Common Caution

But, as far as I can see in these days, a similar caution about the possible

distorting effect of the categories of biblical theology is not commonly

sounded. The claim to interpret a biblical author in terms of the first

century is generally met with the assumption that this will be illuminating.

Some today seem to overlook that this might result in bringing

ideas to the text in a way that misleads rather than clarifies. But common

sense tells us that first-century ideas can be used (inadvertently)

to distort and silence what the New Testament writers intended to say.

There are at least three reasons for this.

Misunderstanding the Sources

First, the interpreter may misunderstand the first-century idea. It is

remarkable how frequently there is the tacit assumption that we can

be more confident about how we interpret secondary first-century

sources than we are of how we interpret the New Testament writers

themselves. But it seems to me that there is a prima facie case for

thinking that our interpretations of extra-biblical literature are more

tenuous than our interpretations of the New Testament. In general,

2“Out of sheer loyalty to the God-given text, particularly of Romans, I couldn’t go back to a

Lutheran reading. (Please note, my bottom line has always been, and remains, not a theory, not

a tradition, not pressure from self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy, but the text of scripture.)”

N. T. Wright, “The Shape of Justification” (2001), accessed 6-24-06 at http://www.thepaulpage.

com/Shape.html. For a fuller statement of Wright’s view of Scripture, see also N. T. Wright, The

Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture (San

Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), which has been helpfully reviewed and critiqued by D. A.

Carson in Trinity Journal, Spring (2006): 1–63. Carson’s review also was made available at http://

www.reformation21.org/Past_Issues/2006_Issues_1_16_/2006_Issues_1_16_Shelf_Life/May_2006/

May_2006/181/vobId__2926/.

this literature has been less studied than the Bible and does not come

with a contextual awareness matching what most scholars bring to the

Bible. Moreover, the Scripture comes with the added hope that there

is coherency because of divine inspiration and that the Holy Spirit will

illumine Scripture through humble efforts to know God’s mind for the

sake of the glory of Christ.

Yet there seems to be an overweening confidence in the way some

scholars bring their assured interpretations of extra-biblical texts to

illumine their less sure reading of biblical texts. Thankfully, there

always have been, and are today, competent scholarly works that call

into question the seemingly assured interpretations of extra-biblical

sources that are sometimes used to give biblical texts meanings that

their own contexts will not bear.3

We all need to be reminded that the last two hundred years of biblical

scholarship is the story not just of systematic categories obscuring

the biblical text, but, even more dramatically, of a steady stream of

first-century ideas sweeping scholarship along and then evaporating in

the light of the stubborn clarity of the biblical texts.4

Assuming Agreement with a Source When There Is No Agreement

A second reason why an external first-century idea may distort or

silence what the New Testament teaches is that while it may accurately

reflect certain first-century documents, nevertheless it may reflect only

one among many first-century views. Whether a New Testament writer

embraced the particular way of thinking that a scholar has found in

3For example, specifically in regard to matters relating to justification, see especially D. A. Carson,

Peter O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, eds., Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Complexities

of Second Temple Judaism, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001); see also Simon

Gathercole, Where Then Is Boasting? Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul’s Response in Romans 1–5

(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002); Mark Elliott, The Survivors of Israel: A Reconsideration

of the Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000); A. Andrew Das,

Paul, the Law, and the Covenant (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001); Friedrich Avemarie, Tora

und Leben: Untersuchungen zur Heilsbedeutung der Tora in der frühen rabbinischen Literatur

(Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1996); Timo Laato, Paul and Judaism: An Anthropological Approach

(Atlanta: Scholars, 1996).

4N. T. Wright documents this story in part with regard to the interpretation of Paul. What Saint Paul

Really Said: Was Saul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,

1997), 12–19. The same story can be told of the ever-changing interpretation of the quest for the

historical Jesus. For example, see the surveys in Ben Witherington III, The Jesus Quest: The Third

Search for the Jew of Nazareth (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995); Larry Hurtado, “A

Taxonomy of Recent Historical-Jesus Work,” in Whose Historical Jesus? ed. William E. Arnal and

Michel Desjardins (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997), 272–295; Jonathan

Knight, Jesus: An Historical and Theological Investigation (London: T&T Clark International,

2004), 15–56; The Historical Jesus in Recent Research, ed. James D. G. Dunn and Scot McKnight

(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005).

Not All Biblical-Theological Methods and Categories Are Illuminating 35

the first century is not obvious from the mere existence of that way of

thinking.

As an analogy, one may only think about all that flies under the

banner “evangelical” in our own day—and hope that no historian

in a thousand years will assign any of those meanings to us simply

because we bore that label. Therefore, one must be cautious in saying

on the basis of one’s interpretation of extra-biblical texts that this is

“how first-century Jews understood the world.”5 Sweeping statements

about worldviews in first-century Judaism are precarious.

Misapplying the Meaning of a Source

A third reason why external first-century ideas may distort or silence

what the New Testament teaches is that while the New Testament

writer may embrace the external idea in general, a scholar may misapply

it to the biblical text. For example, Paul may agree that one important

meaning for gospel (eujaggevlion) is the announcement that God

is king over all the universe (Isa. 52:7) but not intend for this meaning

to govern or dominate what he means by the gospel in every context.

Indeed, Paul (or any other biblical writer) may also intend to go precisely

beyond the common use of any term and expand its meaning in

light of the fuller revelation of God in Christ Jesus.

It will be salutary, therefore, for scholars and pastors and laypeople

who do not spend much of their time reading first-century literature to

have a modest skepticism when an overarching concept or worldview

from the first century is used to give “new” or “fresh” interpretations

to biblical texts that in their own context do not naturally give rise to

these interpretations.

5N. T. Wright gives his understanding of the covenant and the law-court images of Israel’s future

judgment and then says, “Learning to ‘see’ an event in terms of two great themes like these is part of

learning how first-century Jews understood the world.” What Saint Paul Really Said, 33. This seems

too sweeping. He gives the impression that there was a monolithic standpoint. But Wright does agree

with the principle that the biblical context of the New Testament writer must confirm any interpretation

suggested by external sources. Yet his esteem for the importance of the extra-biblical context

seems to give it a remarkably controlling role for his interpretation of the New Testament. Within

this context, the New Testament writers may build in “nuances and emphases.” He writes, “We can

never, in other words, begin with the author’s use of a word; we must begin with the wider world he

lived in, the world we meet in our lexicons, concordances, and other studies of how words were used

in that world, and must then be alive to the possibility of a writer building in particular nuances and

emphases of his or her own.” “The Shape of Justification.” The problem with that emphasis is that

it obscures the facts (1) that “the author’s use of the word” is the most crucial evidence concerning

its meaning and (2) that all other uses of the word are themselves other instances that are as vulnerable

to misunderstanding as is the biblical use. There is no access to “how words were used in that

world” other than particular uses like the one right there in the Bible.

Energized by What Is New

N. T. Wright is explicitly energized by finding “new” and “fresh”

interpretations of Paul. But one does not find in Wright an appreciation

and celebration of the insights of older interpretation that glows

with similar exuberance. It is sobering to hear him say, for example,

“The discussions of justification in much of the history of the church,

certainly since Augustine, got off on the wrong foot—at least in terms

of understanding Paul—and they have stayed there ever since.”6

Wright’s confidence that the church (Catholic, Protestant, and

Orthodox) has not gotten it right for fifteen hundred years explains in

part his passion for seeing things in a fresh way. Thus he says:

It is, I think, a time for exploration and delighted innovation rather

than simply for filling in the paradigms left by our predecessors. . . . I

have to say that for me there has been no more stimulating exercise,

of the mind, the heart, the imagination and the spirit, than trying to

think Paul’s thoughts after him and constantly to be stirred up to fresh

glimpses of God’s ways and purposes with the world and with us

strange human creatures. The church and the academy both urgently

need a new generation of teachers and preachers who will give themselves

totally to the delighted study of the text and allow themselves

to be taken wherever it leads, to think new thoughts arising out of the

text and to dare to try them out in word and deed.7

That last sentence is a way of writing that summons us to something

good while in the same breath commending something that may

not be good. To be sure, we need preachers who (1) give themselves to

the text and (2) allow themselves to be taken wherever it truly leads.

But when Wright continues the sentence by saying we need pastors

who “think new thoughts” and “dare to try them out,” he implies

that this will be the result of allegiance to the text. In fact, allegiance

to the text may as often awaken joyful gratitude and worship over and

confirmation of insights that have been seen clearly and cherished for

centuries.

My own assessment of the need of the church at this moment in

history is different from Wright’s: I think we need a new generation of

preachers who are not only open to new light that God may shed upon

6Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 115.

7Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, ix–x.

Not All Biblical-Theological Methods and Categories Are Illuminating 37

his word, but are also suspicious of their own love of novelty and are

eager to test all their interpretations of the Bible by the wisdom of the

centuries.8 Of course, Wright and I would agree that the final authority

must be the biblical text itself, not novelty or tradition, but there is in

our time a profound ignorance of the wisdom of the centuries and a

facile readiness to be “fresh.” N. T. Wright is certainly not facile. He

is a disciplined, thoughtful, rigorous handler of biblical texts and lover

of the church. The point here is simply to caution that his celebration

of “delighted innovation” may confirm a neophilia of our culture that

needs balancing with the celebration of the wisdom of the centuries

precisely for the sake of faithfulness to the biblical text.9

Do the Large Frameworks Illumine

Justification?

One of the impressions one gets in reading N. T. Wright is that large

conceptual frameworks are brought to the text of the New Testament

from outside and are providing a lens through which the meaning is

seen. Wright would say that these larger frameworks illumine the text

because they are faithful to the historical context and to the flow of

thought in the New Testament. That is possible. But I have offered the

caution above so that there may be a careful weighing of this claim.

This book exists because of my own concern that, specifically in the

matter of justification by faith, Wright’s approach has not been as illuminating

as it has been misleading, or perhaps, confusing. I hope that

the interaction that follows will help readers make wise judgments in

this regard.

8See John Piper, “Preaching as Expository Exultation for the Glory of God,” in Preaching the Cross,

ed. Mark Dever et al. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007), 103–115.

9Wright would want it pointed out that this assessment of his bent toward newness would be news to

most of his colleagues in the Church of England who see him as “a dyed-in-the wool traditionalist on

everything from the Trinity to sexual ethics” (his own words from personal correspondence). Indeed

we may be thankful that Wright has defended great doctrines of the historic Christian faith. That is

not inconsistent with our observations of the new way he has constructed Paul’s teaching—new, he

would say, over against tradition, not over against Paul.

Chapter Two

The Relationship between

Covenant and Law-Court Imagery

for Justification

Justification: Declaring One to Be a

Member of the Family

For N. T. Wright, God’s covenant with Israel is the dominant concept

for understanding Paul and justification.1 This covenant is part of an

even larger picture of the fallenness of creation and God’s glorious

purpose to rescue his creation from sin and its effects.

The point of election always was that humans were sinful, that the

world was lapsing back into chaos, and that God was going to mount

a rescue operation. That is what the covenant was designed to do, and

that is why “belonging to the covenant” means, among other things,

“forgiven sinner”.2

Justification must be seen in this larger picture. “Justification, for Paul,

is a subset of election, that is, it belongs as a part of his doctrine of the

people of God.”3 Wright is recognized for his unusual definition of

justification as the declaration that a person is in the covenant family.

1What he means by “covenant” is not any particular manifestation of covenant (Mosaic, Davidic,

New, etc.) over against the others, but rather the Creator’s purpose to make a people his own (beginning

with the family of Abraham) for the sake of the entire broken world. In other words, when he

speaks of “covenant,” he speaks of the reason for why there is a chosen Israel at all—namely, finally

to deal with sin and to set the whole world right. “The covenant was there in the first place to deal

with the sin of the world.” What Saint Paul Really Said, 33.

2Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 121.

3Ibid.

i

For example, he says, “Those who hear the gospel and respond to it

in faith are then declared by God to be his people. . . . They are given

the status dikaios, ‘righteous’, ‘within the covenant.’”4 Or again, and

more sweepingly, “‘Justification’ in the first century5 was not about

how someone might establish a relationship with God. It was about

God’s eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was,

in fact, a member of his people.”6

Is Wright true to the apostle Paul’s thought when he makes covenant

membership the denotation (as opposed to implication) of the

divine act of justification? It seems to stretch Paul’s language to the

breaking point. We will deal with Wright’s use of the concept of justification

more fully in later chapters, but it may be helpful to register

an initial objection7 here. Will Paul’s use of dikaiovw (I justify) bear the

weight of Wright’s meaning? I doubt it for at least two reasons.

One reason is that there are uses of dikaiovw in Paul where the

meaning “declaring one as a covenant member” does not work. For

example, it does not work in Romans 3:4 where God is the one who is

justified: “Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,

‘That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are

judged.’” The usual meaning of “reckon one to be just or innocent” fits

4Ibid., 122.

5Here is one of those statements about the “first century” that seems too sweeping (see chapter 1).

6Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 119. This statement (and others like it) make it difficult to

see how Wright’s way of saying things can be described as a fresh and helpful way of preserving

the essence of the historic view of justification as the imputation of God’s righteousness in Christ

as some have suggested to me. (Chapter 8 is a response to this objection.) Wright’s way of speaking

about justification will be virtually unintelligible to the average person in the pew as he or she tries

to conceive how the word justify corresponds to family membership. They can certainly grasp that

the justified sinner is also in the family and that only justified sinners are in the family, and that being

in the family is an implication of being justified. But to say that justification was about who was

a member of God’s family is going to mislead. It will obscure the denotative meaning of the word

justify by calling one of its attendant implications a denotative meaning.

7An objection that was pointed out to me by Andrew Cowan, who makes every effort to be fair to

Wright, is expressed here in a quote from personal correspondence, with permission:

Defining “righteousness” as “covenant membership” seems inadequate. “Covenant

membership” only implies that one is bound by the stipulations of a covenant. In terms

of the Mosaic covenant, it seems that all Jews were covenant members, but on the basis

of their conduct they either received the blessings promised in the covenant or the curses

threatened by the covenant. Covenant membership was never a guarantee that one

would participate in the covenant’s blessings. “In the covenant” as a salvific category is

inadequate. Of course, to be in the new covenant is salvific; but . . . Wright rarely makes

a clear distinction between the covenants, and this can hardly be what God meant when

he counted Abraham’s faith for righteousness. Perhaps Wright’s claim that justification

is a declaration of “covenant membership” is simply shorthand for being credited as

one who has been covenantally faithful (this would fit with his understanding of the

justification of God in Romans 3), but he is not very forthright about this, and this way

of speaking is misleading at best. He does, though, usually offer a number of parallel

terms (i.e., Abraham’s true family) that make his point more understandable.

in Romans 3:4, but “declare to be a member of the covenant” does not.

Similarly, in 1 Timothy 3:16, Christ himself is said to be justified: “He

was manifested in the flesh, vindicated [ejdikaiwvqh = justified] by [or

in] the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed

on in the world, taken up in glory.” That is, Christ was shown to be,

or declared to be, in the right, just, vindicated.

Another reason that dikaiovw will not bear the weight of Wright’s

meaning is that Paul’s use of the word regularly signifies a definite

action that accomplishes something now. It is not simply a declaration

of a person’s covenant membership that came about decisively through

another prior action (e.g., God’s effectual call).8 This is contrary to

Wright’s construal. He explains his view of justification in relation to

how a person passes from unbelief to renewal of life:

The point is that the word ‘justification’ does not itself denote the

process whereby, or the event in which, a person is brought by grace

from unbelief, idolatry and sin into faith, true worship and renewal of

life. Paul, clearly and unambiguously, uses a different word for that,

the word ‘call’. The word ‘justification’, despite centuries of Christian

misuse, is used by Paul to denote that which happens immediately

after the ‘call’: ‘those God called, he also justified’ (Romans 8:30). In

other words, those who hear the gospel and respond to it in faith are

then declared by God to be his people, his elect, ‘the circumcision’, ‘the

Jews’, ‘the Israel of God’. They are given the status divkaio~, ‘righteous’,

‘within the covenant’.9

One of the problems with this is that it does not come to terms

with the possibility that the divine act of justification, which Wright

admits is “immediately after the call,” is, along with the call, determinative

and constitutive of the new relation to God. This can be

true without defining justification as “the event in which a person is

brought by grace from unbelief, idolatry and sin into faith.” I’m not

sure who has ever taught that. The historic teaching is that justifica

8Wright says that dikaiovw is “a declarative word, declaring that something is the case, rather than a

word for making something happen or changing the way something is.” Wright, “New Perspectives

on Paul,” in Justification in Perspective, 258. “‘Justification’ is not about ‘how I get saved’ but ‘how

I am declared to be a member of God’s people.’ Paul in Fresh Perspective. “Justification is not how

someone becomes a Christian. It is the declaration that they have become a Christian.” What Saint

Paul Really Said, 122, 125. “Justification, for Paul, is not (in Sanders’s terminology) how one ‘gets

into’ God’s people but about God’s declaration that someone is in.” Wright, “New Perspectives on

Paul,” 261.

9Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 121–122.

The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery 41

tion is “by faith,” not the process of coming to faith. Wright does not

express an understanding of the historic view—namely, that immediately

upon the call of God and the awakening of faith God does something

essential to a person’s right standing with God—that is, essential

to their acceptance and their membership in the family. He counts

them as perfectly fulfilling all his requirements (= righteousness)

because by their call-awakened faith they are united to Christ who is

their righteousness. This counting as righteous—this justification—is

not the event by which a person moves from unbelief to faith. It is the

divine act without which a person cannot be a member of God’s family.

But Wright seems to want to limit the meaning of justification to a

declaration that a covenant membership has already come into being

because of something else, namely, God’s call. The act of justification

has no part in determining or constituting that new relationship with

God. But does this fit with what Paul says?

It has seemed to most interpreters of Paul that something decisive

and once-for-all happens at justification. Justification is not a mere

declaration that something has happened or will happen. For example,

in Romans 5:1, Paul says, “Therefore, since we have been justified by

faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” In other

words, something decisive happened that resulted in peace with God. It

does not say that since we have been justified we may “know” that we

have peace with God. A declaration that something (like God’s call) has

happened might result in our knowing that we have peace with God.

But Paul’s words more naturally mean that the justification does not

bring about our knowing but our having peace with God. In fact, it

seems that the divine act of justification actually establishes the peace

because in it God does not just declare but determines our new identity.

Thus Simon Gathercole writes, “God’s act of justification is not one of

recognition but is, rather, closer to creation. It is God’s determination

of our new identity rather than a recognition of it.”10

The meaning of justification is fleshed out by Paul in Romans

4 with the language of “counting” or “reckoning.” One simple and

very important insight about Paul’s meaning of justification by faith

apart from works of law is that he defines his own use of “justify”

10Simon Gathercole, “The Doctrine of Justification in Paul and Beyond: Some Proposals,” in

Justification in Perspective, 229.

(dikaiovw) by the use of the phrase “reckon righteousness” (logivzomai

dikaiosuvnhn). Thus, for example, Romans 3:28 is most naturally interpreted

in light of the parallel in Romans 4:6. “One is justified by faith

apart from works of the law” (dikaiou`sqai pivstei a[nqrwpon cwri;i

e[rgwn novmou, Romans 3:28) is explained by “God credits righteousness

apart from works” (oJ qeo;i logivzetai dikaiosuvnhn cwri;i e[rgwn,

Romans 4:6, nasb). Therefore, “to justify” (dikaiou/sqai, 3:28) is parallel

with “to credit righteousness” (logivzetai dikaiosuvnhn, 4:6). And

“apart from works of law” (cwri;i e[rgwn novmou, 3:28) is parallel with

“apart from works” (cwri;i e[rgwn, 4:6).

One is justified by faith

apart from works of the law

God credits righteousness

apart from works

This reckoning righteous (justification) is not synonymous with

declaring that one has already become a covenant member. It is larger

and deeper. It makes covenant membership possible. Thus, Gathercole

observes:

By divine decision, this [faith] is reckoned as righteousness. That is

to say, the believer is reckoned as having accomplished all that God

requires. Justification, then, is not merely a reckoning as being in covenant

membership. It is something bigger—God’s creative act whereby,

through divine determination, the believer has done everything that

God requires.11

This divine act of justification determines or constitutes an

essential aspect of the new relationship with God. Without it there

would be no saving covenant membership. Therefore, justification is

not a declaration that one has become a covenant member by virtue

of God’s prior call. Rather, together with the call, justification is an

essentially saving act. Wright seems to have things backward: first

covenant membership, then justification. In fact, justification is part

of the ground, not the declaration, of saving covenant membership.

Wright has a good bit more to say about the relationship between

11Ibid., 240.

The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery 43

justification and how one gets saved. (We will wrestle again with this

issue in chapter 5.)

So, on the face of it, Wright’s definition of justification as “God’s

eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in fact,

a member of his people” does not fit well with Paul’s use of justification

language. In and of itself, this may not be a devastating mistake,

because it may simply conflate denotation and implication. In other

words, justification does not denote or mean covenant membership,

but it does imply covenant membership. Indeed, justified people are

members of the covenant of grace. And, as we will see immediately

below, Wright also uses the word justification in more traditional ways.

He has his reasons for talking the way he does about justification,

which we will come to later.

Covenant and Law-Court, Not Either-Or

This unprecedented way of defining justification (as the declaration of

a believer’s covenant membership) has led some critics to accuse Wright

of missing or minimizing the forensic or “law-court” dimension of justification.

But this is not a fair accusation. Wright has labored hard to

clarify that it is both-and—covenant and law-court—not either-or. One

of the most important paragraphs for helping me see how he thinks is

the following:

The law-court metaphor was vital to the underlying meaning of the

covenant. The covenant was there in the first place to deal with the

sin of the world, and (to the Hebrew mind) you dealt with sin through

the law-court, condemning the sinner and “justifying”, i.e. acquitting

or vindicating, the righteous. It was therefore utterly appropriate that

this great event, the final sorting-out of all things, should be described

in terms drawn from the law-court. God himself was the judge; evil-

doers (i.e. the Gentiles, and renegade Jews) would finally be judged and

punished; God’s faithful people (i.e. Israel, or at least the true Israelites)

would be vindicated.12

The Covenant Is for the World

The first crucial thing we see in this paragraph is that Wright starts

with the global purpose of God’s covenant with Israel. From the very

12Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 33–34.

beginning in Genesis 12:3, the covenant that God made with Israel

was intended to bless the world: “I will bless those who bless you,

and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families

of the earth shall be blessed.” This insight has a profound effect on

Wright’s understanding of God’s covenant-keeping work in Christ and

his understanding of the gospel. The covenant, as he says, “was there

in the first place to deal with the sin of the world.” So the Jewish categories

of covenant and redemption turn out not to be limited, ethnic

categories but globally relevant categories for all peoples. God’s covenant-

keeping includes making the world right. This happens through

Jesus, the Jewish Messiah and Lord of the universe.13 “The death and

resurrection of Jesus were themselves the great eschatological events,

revealing God’s covenant faithfulness, his way of putting the world to

rights.”14

This British phrase, “putting the world to rights,” means for Wright

that “in Jesus of Nazareth [God] had overcome evil and was creating

a new world in which justice and peace would reign supreme.”15 The

global, social, and political note is often struck by Wright, who laments

“the disastrous dichotomy that has existed in people’s minds between

‘preaching the gospel’ on the one hand and what used to be called

loosely ‘social action’ or ‘social justice’ on the other.”16

Redemption: Global, Social, and

Personal

But it would be wrong to say that Wright stresses redemption as social

and political to the exclusion of redemption as the personal forgiveness

of sins. His way of saying this involves some provocative denials about

how the gospel relates to getting saved. For example, he says, “Paul’s

gospel to the pagans was not a philosophy of life. Nor was it, even, a

doctrine about how to get saved.”17 “[The gospel] is not . . . a system

13“[Paul’s] announcement was that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead;

that he was thereby proved to be Israel’s Messiah; that he was thereby installed as Lord of the

world.” Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 46. Emphasis added.

14Ibid., 37.

15Ibid.

16Ibid., 154.

17Ibid., 90. This way of understanding the gospel will be discussed further in chapter 4. What puzzles

me is that Wright seems to be able to speak of the gospel without explicitly showing what makes

it good news for me. If the death and resurrection and lordship of Jesus over the world is true, but

not good news for me (saving me from and for whatever I need saving from and for), then how is

it gospel?

The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery 45

of how people get saved.”18 “My proposal has been that ‘the gospel’

is not, for Paul, a message about ‘how one gets saved.’”19 “But ‘the

gospel’ is not an account of how people get saved. It is . . . the proclamation

of the lordship of Jesus Christ.”20 “The gospel is not . . . a set

of techniques for making people Christians.”21

Wright does not deny that God uses the gospel of Christ’s death and

resurrection and lordship over the world to save people. He wants to

stress that there is a difference between one of the effects of the gospel—

namely, personal salvation—and the proclamation of the gospel itself.

My concern is that, in expressing this the way he does, he confuses people

because unless those great gospel announcements do in fact include

news about personal salvation, they are not good news. That Jesus died,

rose, and reigns as King of the universe may be terrible news in view of

my treason, unless that announcement includes some news about how

and why I personally will not be destroyed by the risen Christ.

But we will leave aside for the moment those provocative statements

about how the gospel is not “about how to get saved” and deal

with what he affirms. He affirms that the covenant is not only about

rescuing the cosmos from spiraling further into chaos, but about providing

forgiveness of sin through the death of Jesus.

The point of election [of a covenant people] always was that humans

were sinful, that the world was lapsing back into chaos, and that God

was going to mount a rescue operation. That is what the covenant was

designed to do, and that is why “belonging to the covenant” means,

among other things, “forgiven sinner.”22

Propitiation and Expiation

The forgiveness of the sins of the world is based on the death of Christ

who is both a propitiation of God’s wrath and an expiation of our sins

18Ibid., 45.

19Ibid., 60.

20Ibid., 133.

21Ibid., 153. It is not easy to discern whether the emphasis falls on the apparently pejorative words

“doctrine,” “system,” and “techniques” or whether he really means to say that the preaching of the

gospel does not herald the way of personal salvation from everlasting perishing. See more on the

relationship between the gospel and justification in chapter 5.

22Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 121. “‘Justification’, as seen in [Romans] 3:24–26, means that

those who believe in Jesus Christ are declared to be members of the true covenant family; which of

course means that their sins are forgiven, since that was the purpose of the covenant.” “Membership

in this family cannot be played off against forgiveness of sins: the two belong together.” Wright,

“The Shape of Justification.”

(Wright’s terms). Wright makes this foundation of forgiveness clear in

his exposition of Romans 3:25–26. To appreciate the boldness and significance

of what he says in these wishy-washy days when pastors and

scholars are afraid to teach with forthrightness and clarity the whole

truth of the work of Christ, we should quote the text and let Wright

interpret it for us:

God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received

by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine

forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness

at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier

of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Rom. 3:25–26)

We will come back later to the meaning of God’s righteousness in

this text. But for now, the focus is on the death of Jesus as the basis for

the forgiveness of sins. What God did in the death of Jesus, Wright says,

is “deal properly, i.e. punitively, with sins.”23 “Whatever Paul is saying

in the first half of v. 25, it must be such as to lead to the conclusion that

now, at last God has punished sins as they deserved.”24

In punishing sins as they deserve, God satisfied the demands of the

situation: he had passed over former sins in such a way that it looked

as if he were not a righteous judge. He seemed to be sweeping sins

under the rug. Indeed, the entire undertaking of justifying the ungodly

created an evident problem for the righteousness of God. This problem

was solved by God putting Jesus forward to die. “Whatever precisely

Paul intends to say, it must have to do with the means by which the

righteous God could, without compromising that righteousness, find

in favor of the ungodly”25 (Rom. 4:5).

A Regrettable Endorsement: Steve Chalke’s The Lost Message of Jesus

Wright realizes he is treading on very controversial ground. He wrote

a blurb26 for Steve Chalke’s book, The Lost Message of Jesus, even

23N. T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans, in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X (Nashville:

Abingdon Press, 2002), 476. Emphasis added.

24Ibid., 473. Emphasis added.

25Ibid.

26Quoted on the first page of the book (see next footnote) are his words: “Steve Chalke’s new book

is rooted in good scholarship, but its clear, punchy style makes it accessible to anyone and everyone.

Its message is stark and exciting: Jesus of Nazareth was far more challenging in his own day, and

remains far more relevant to ours, than the church has dared to believe, let alone preach.”

The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery 47

though Chalke makes the claim—which, at least on the face of it, is

blasphemous—that God the Father’s “punishing his Son for an offence

he has not even committed” would have been a form of “cosmic child

abuse.” Chalke goes on, “If the cross is a personal act of violence

perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then

it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and

to refuse to repay evil with evil.”27 These sentiments are tragically

widespread today and, if taken with full seriousness, amount to an

abandonment of the foundation of the gospel.

There is nothing unclear about Wright’s commitment to penal

substitution.

I am the author of the longest ever exposition and defense, certainly

in modern times, of the view that Jesus himself made Isaiah 53, the

greatest atonement-chapter in the Old Testament, the clearest statement

of penal substitution in the whole of the Bible, central to his own

self-understanding and vocation,28 and I have spelled out the meaning

of that, in the sustained climax of my second longest book, in great

detail. I have done my NT scholarship in a world where battle-lines

were drawn up very clearly on this topic: those who want to avoid

penal substitution at all costs have done their best to argue that Jesus

did not refer to Isaiah 53, and I have refuted that attempt at great length

and, I trust, with proper weight.29

On Eastertide, 2007, Wright published an article that explained

the circumstances surrounding the endorsement of Steve Chalke’s

book. In a review of Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the

Glory of Penal Substitution by Mike Ovey, Steve Jeffrey, and Andrew

Sach (Inter-Varsity [UK], 2007), Wright attempted to vindicate Chalke

from the charges of unbelief in penal substitution. However, it seems to

me that to rescue Steve Chalke from the denial of this basic Christian

doctrine, Wright obscured the way God’s wrath is expressed in the

27Here is the whole quotation in context: “The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic

child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed.

Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of

events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept

stands in total contradiction to the statement: God is love. If the cross is a personal act of violence

perpetrated by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own

teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil.” Steve Chalke and Alan Mann,

The Lost Message of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 182–183.

28He is referring primarily to his lengthy argument in Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis:

Fortress, 1996), 579–611.

29Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.”

atonement, with the result that the biblical doctrine of penal substitution

in Chalke’s understanding remains invisible. Nevertheless, we will

let Wright make his own case in the following excursus.

Excursus: N. T. Wright on Steve Chalke

In a 2007 Internet post Wright explains:

One of the most lively and effective Christian leaders in the UK in

recent years is Steve Chalke of Oasis Trust and Faithworks. When I was

myself working in London Steve came to see me a couple of times, with

an assistant. They had been reading my books on Jesus and wanted

to be sure they had understood what I was getting at; clearly they

were excited by the way I was reading the gospels and by the portrait

of Jesus and his kingdom-bringing work that I was advancing. Steve

then (together with Alan Mann) produced a short, sharp, clear and

challenging little book called The Lost Message of Jesus (Zondervan

2003). He sent me an advance copy. Since—almost embarrassingly at

times—the book follows quite closely several of the lines of thought I

have myself advanced, though giving them a good deal more energy

through shrewd use of anecdote and illustration, I could do no other

than write a strong commendation. What I said was this:

Steve Chalke’s new book is rooted on good scholarship, but

its clear, punchy style makes it accessible to anyone and everyone.

Its message is stark and exciting: Jesus of Nazareth was far

more challenging in his own day, and remains far more relevant

to ours, than the church has dared to believe, let alone preach.

Part of that was quoted prominently on the front cover. I stand by

every word I wrote.

Imagine my puzzlement, then, when I heard that a great storm had

broken out because ‘Steve Chalke has denied substitutionary atonement’.

After all, the climax of my book Jesus and the Victory of God,

upon which Steve had relied to quite a considerable extent, is the longest

ever demonstration, in modern times at least, that Jesus’ self-understanding

as he went to the cross was rooted in, among other Old Testament

passages, Isaiah 53, the clearest and most uncompromising statement

of penal substitution you could find. I shall return to this below, and

to the puzzle that many of the new right-wing (so-called ‘conservative’)

evangelicals have turned their back on the deepest and richest statement

of the doctrine they claim to cherish, namely the one lived and

announced by Jesus himself. But back to Steve Chalke. I was puzzled,

as I say, when I heard about the fuss, because I hadn’t remembered Steve

The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery 49

denying at that point something I had been affirming, and since I had

been strongly and deeply affirming the substitutionary (and, yes, penal)

nature of Jesus’ death I wasn’t sure whether I had missed something. I

was prepared to say, in effect, ‘Well, I obviously missed that bit when I

read the book, and if he said that I disagree with him,’ and to write it off

as a warning to read a book extremely carefully before commending it.

And so it might have rested, at least for me; I have been far too busy in

the last three years to take any part in what I gather have been ongoing

and at times acrimonious inter-evangelical discussions.

But, faced with the Oak Hill book, and its angry denunciation of

Steve Chalke (pp 25f., 327f.), I thought I ought to take another look.

(The show now runs and runs: on the day that I am writing this [April

20], the Church of England Newspaper has a letter from someone saying,

casually, that Steve Chalke, like Jeffrey John, ‘denies penal substitution’

and thus undermines more or less everything else in the Bible.) I

have just re-read Steve’s short chapter on the meaning of the cross within

the mission of Jesus. He says many things I agree with, and, though

he doesn’t actually make the main point that I made in Jesus and the

Victory of God ch. 12, drawing on Isaiah 53 in particular, he does say,

Just as a lightning-conductor soaks up powerful and destructive

bolts of electricity, so Jesus, as he hung on that cross, soaked

up all the forces of hate, rejection, pain and alienation all around

him. (The Lost Message of Jesus p. 179).

Earlier on in the chapter he had expressed puzzlement at how ‘basic

statements of the gospel’ in ordinary churches would focus mainly on

sin and judgment rather than with the love of God, and at the way in

which the cross, seen as the answer to the punishment due for our sin,

was becoming the sum and substance of the gospel to the exclusion

even of the resurrection (except in the sense of a ‘happy ending’). Steve

is not alone in this puzzlement, and with good reason. As we shall see,

the Bible and the gospel are more many-sided than that. It is in that

context that Steve makes his now notorious statement:

The fact is that the cross isn’t a form of cosmic child abuse—a

vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even

committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of

the Church have found this twisted version of events morally

dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is

that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement

that “God is Love”. If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated

by God towards humankind but borne by his Son, then

it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies

and to refuse to repay evil with evil. (p. 182f.)

Now, to be frank, I cannot tell, from this paragraph alone, which

of two things Steve means. You could take the paragraph to mean

(a) on the cross, as an expression of God’s love, Jesus took into and

upon himself the full force of all the evil around him, in the knowledge

that if he bore it we would not have to; but this, which amounts to a

form of penal substitution, is quite different from other forms of penal

substitution, such as the mediaeval model of a vengeful father being

placated by an act of gratuitous violence against his innocent son. In

other words, there are many models of penal substitution, and the

vengeful-father-and-innocent-son story is at best a caricature of the true

one. Or you could take the paragraph to mean (b) because the cross is

an expression of God’s love, there can be no idea of penal substitution

at all, because if there were it would necessarily mean the vengeful-

father-and-innocent-son story, and that cannot be right.

Clearly, Steve’s critics have taken him to mean (b), as I think it is clear

Jeffrey John and several others intend. I cannot now remember what I

thought when I read the book four years ago and wrote my commendation,

but I think, since I had been following the argument through in

the light of the arguments I myself have advanced, frequently and at

length, about Jesus’ death and his own understanding of it, that I must

have assumed he meant (a). I have now had a good conversation with

Steve about the whole subject and clarified that my initial understanding

was correct: he does indeed mean (a). The book, after all, wasn’t

about atonement as such, so he didn’t spell out his view of the cross in

detail; and it is his experience that the word ‘penal’ has put off so many

people, with its image of a violent, angry and malevolent God, that he

has decided not to use it. But the reality that I and others refer to when

we use the phrase “penal substitution” is not in doubt, for Steve any

more than for me. ‘There is therefore now no condemnation’ in Romans

8.1 is explained by the fact, as in Romans 8.3, that God condemned sin

in the flesh of his Son: he bore sin’s condemnation in his body, so we

don’t bear it. That, I take it, is the heart of what the best sort of ‘penal

substitution’ theory is trying to say, and Steve is fully happy with it.

And this leads to the key point: there are several forms of the doctrine

of penal substitution, and some are more biblical than others. What

has happened since the initial flurry of debate about The Lost Message

of Jesus has looked, frankly, like a witch-hunt, with people playing the

guilt-by-association game: hands up anyone who likes Steve Chalke;

right, now we know who the bad guys are.30

30N. T. Wright, “The Cross and the Caricatures: A Response to Robert Jenson, Jeffrey John, and

a New Volume Entitled Pierced for Our Transgressions,” http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/

news/2007/20070423wright.cfm?doc=205.

The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery 51

Attempts like this to show Chalke as a believer in penal substitution

do not bode well for the firmness and clarity of Wright’s own

view. It seems to me to be wishful thinking to construe Chalke’s own

words in a way that would portray him as comfortable thinking of the

personal God making his own personal Son bear the Father’s own legal

retribution for my sin. It has not been shown that what Chalke rejects

in the “traditional” portrayals of penal substitution is not in part what

the Bible actually teaches. But N. T. Wright’s own words concerning

penal substitution seem clear and strong. Here is what we see:

The idea of punishment as part of atonement is itself deeply controversial;

horrified rejection of the mere suggestion has led on the part of

some to an unwillingness to discern any reference to Isaiah 40–55 in

Paul.31 But it is exactly that idea that Paul states, clearly and unambiguously,

in [Romans] 8:3, when he says that God “condemned sin in the

flesh”—i.e., the flesh of Jesus.32

Dealing with wrath or punishment is propitiation; with sin, expiation.

You propitiate a person who is angry;33 you expiate a sin, crime,

or stain on your character. Vehement rejection of the former idea

in many quarters has led some to insist that only “expiation” is in

view here. But the fact remains that in [Romans] 1:18–3:20 Paul has

declared that the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness and

wickedness and that despite God’s forbearance this will finally be

meted out; that in 5:8, and in the whole promise of 8:1–30, those who

are Christ’s are rescued from wrath.34

31Such as Isaiah 53:4–5, 10: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we

esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with

his stripes we are healed. . . . Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.”

Wright observes, “Although the attempt to read Paul, and particularly Romans, in the light of these

chapters [Isa. 40–55] has been controversial . . . there is a good deal to be said for such an allusion

as at least part of the explanation of the present passage.” He draws out the following allusions in

Paul: Romans 4:25 = Isaiah 53:6, 12; Romans 5:15, 19 = Isaiah 53:11–12; Romans 15:21 = Isaiah

52:15; Romans 10:16 = Isaiah 53:1. Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 475–476.

32Ibid., 476.

33In view of this assertion that God propitiated the anger of God, it is mystifying that Wright would

construct the following sentence in this context: “It should go without saying that this in no way

implies, what the start of the verse has already ruled out, that God is an angry malevolent tyrant who

demands someone’s death, or someone’s blood, and is indifferent as to whose it is.” Ibid., 476. What

is subtle and misleading about this sentence is that it starts with the denial of pejorative things about

God and then ends up denying, with no distinction, things that Wright himself has affirmed. The

sentence is written in such a way as to make Wright’s own true view almost unrecognizable. What

is to be denied and what is not? Is God angry? Yes. Is he malevolent? No. Is he a tyrant? No (too

many false connotations), but he is certainly totally in charge. Does he demand someone’s death?

Yes. Blood? Yes. Is he indifferent as to whose it is? No. This is not a helpful way to explain what

one thinks. It seems to me that he undercuts with this sentence the force of what he has spent great

effort defending from the text of Romans.

34Ibid. Emphasis added.

So God’s purpose in the covenant with Israel was to bring redemption

to the world, including not only global restoration of peace and

justice, but also the forgiveness of sins for all who are members of the

covenant by faith in Jesus.35 This forgiveness implies that the wrath of

God against us has been removed. This happened through God’s own

act36 in punishing our sin in the flesh of Jesus.

Law-Court Imagery Subordinate and

Integral to the Covenant

Now we return to the earlier point that it is a mistake to say Wright’s

stress on the covenantal context of justification overlooks the importance

of the forensic or law-court context. In other words, it is wrong

to claim that since Wright says justification is the declaration that we

are part of the covenant people, therefore he does not say that justification

is the declaration that we have the law-court status of being in the

right (i.e., acquitted). He is clear that it is both-and: “‘Justification’ is

thus the declaration of God, the just judge, that someone is (a) in the

right, that their sins are forgiven, and (b) a true member of the covenant

family, the people belonging to Abraham.”37

The reason Wright weaves covenant and law-court together is

because he believes the covenant is the overarching category for understanding

the great story of redemption, and the law-court metaphor is a

subordinate but integral part of it. The reason it is integral is that “the

covenant was there in the first place to deal with the sin of the world,”

but “you dealt with sin through the law-court condemning the sinner

and ‘justifying’, i.e. acquitting or vindicating, the righteous.”38 So the

law-court serves to accomplish the goal of the covenant—“putting the

world to rights.”

This explains why Wright speaks of justification as the declaration

that people are in the covenant.

35“‘The gospel’ is the announcement of Jesus’ lordship, which works with power to bring people into

the family of Abraham, now redefined around Jesus Christ and characterized solely by faith in him.

‘Justification’ is the doctrine which insists that all those who have this faith belong as full members

of his family, on this basis and no other.” Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 133.

36“Jesus’ self-giving faithfulness to death, seen as the act of God, not of humans operating toward

God, had the effect of turning away the divine wrath that otherwise hung over not only Israel but

also the whole world.” Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 477. Thus, God turned away the wrath

of God.

37Wright, “The Shape of Justification.”

38Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 33.

The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery 53

Justification is part of Paul’s picture of the family God promised (i.e.

covenanted) to Abraham. When God, as judge, finds in favor of people

on the last day, they are declared to be part of this family (Rom. 4; cf.

Gal. 3). This is why law-court imagery is appropriate: the covenant was

there, from Genesis onwards, so that through it God could deal with sin

and death, could (in other words) put his creation to rights.39

Justification was the means by which the covenant would accomplish

its goal—that sinners from all nations be justified, given the status

of a forgiven sinner40 and “in the right” before God,41 and welcomed

into the world-transforming family of faith in Christ.

“Cashing Out” Law-Court Images in

Covenantal Terms

Therefore, Wright feels warranted to “translate” law-court language

for justification back into covenantal categories. “To say that they are

‘righteous’ means that the judge has found in their favor; or, translating

back into covenantal categories, that the covenant God has

declared them to be the covenant people.”42 Or to put it another way,

Wright feels warranted to “cash out” law-court language in terms of

covenantal language: “They are given the status of being ‘righteous’ in

the metaphorical law-courts. When this is cashed out in terms of the

underlying covenantal theme, it means that they are declared, in the

present, to be what they will be seen to be in the future, namely, the

true people of God.”43

As I said above, even though this “translation” of law-court language

into covenantal language causes terminological confusion and

clouds the interpretation of specific texts and stretches the language of

justification (dikaiovw) to the breaking point, it is not in itself a devas

39Wright, “The Shape of Justification.”

40“That is what the covenant was designed to do, and that is why ‘belonging to the covenant’ means,

among other things, ‘forgiven sinner.’” Paul in Fresh Perspective, 121. You can already see what

I mentioned earlier: that Wright begins to use justification language in a more traditional sense

that seems in tension with membership language. How can “justified” mean “given the status of a

forgiven sinner” (emphasis added) if justification is the declaration that someone is a member of the

covenant? Does not forgiveness determine and constitute the passage from outside to inside the saving

covenant? So is justification God’s act of determining and constituting membership? Or is it the

subsequent declaration of the membership, which was constituted earlier by the call of God?

41“God’s justifying activity is the declaration that this people are ‘in the right,’ in other words,

announcing the verdict in their favor.” Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 473.

42Ibid., 473. If this sounds strange, read the first word covenant as an adjective modifying God: “that

the covenant God has declared them to be the covenant people.”

43Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 129.

tating mistake. It conflates implication and definition, but this is not

where the most serious criticism of Wright’s treatment of justification

should focus. We move closer to the heart of things if we go into the

law-court with him and hear him lay out the parameters for understanding

justification there.

The Relationship between Covenant and Law-Court Imagery 55

Chapter Three

The Law-Court Dynamics of

Justification and the Meaning of

God’s Righteousness

Indispensable in Wright’s explanation of the law-court understanding

of justification is the fact that the law-court scene in view is

the final judgment.

It’s best to begin at the end, with Paul’s view of the future. . . . The

one true God will finally judge the whole world; on that day, some

will be found guilty and others will be upheld (Rom. 2.1–16). God’s

vindication of these latter on the last day is his act of final ‘justification’

(Rom. 2.13).1

Wright’s assumption that “‘Justification’ . . . in its Jewish context . . .

refers to the greatest lawsuit of all: that which will take place on the

great day when the true God judges all the nations”2 seems a bit too

sweeping. He is aware that the term “justification” referred in Paul’s

day to more simple, diverse, and immediate realities without any connotation,

let alone denotation, of the final judgment.3

1Wright, “The Shape of Justification.”

2The quote goes on: “God will, at least, find in favor of his people: he will judge the pagan nations

and rescue his true people. ‘Justification’ thus describes the coming great act of redemption and

salvation, seen from the point of view of the covenant (Israel is God’s people) on the one hand and

the law-courts on the other (God’s final judgment will be like a great law-court scene, with Israel

winning the case).” Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 33.

3See his article on “Righteousness” in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. David F. Wright et al.

(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 590–592.

i

The term “justification” refers to what happens in ordinary courtrooms,

not just at the end of the age (Deut. 25:1; 1 Kings 8:32). It refers

to Elihu wanting to justify Job (Job 33:32); to the evil of justifying the

wicked for a bribe (Isa. 5:23; cf. 1:17); to the wisdom of God being

justified (Matt. 11:19); to God’s being justified now by the crowds

(Luke 7:29); to a man’s trying to justify himself and save face (Luke

10:29; cf. 16:15). And in the theological sense in the New Testament,

it far more often refers to the present reality of justification, not the

future. There are references in the future tense; however, not even all

these are obviously a reference to the last judgment (Rom. 2:13; 3:20;

Gal. 2:16; Matt. 12:37). The future tense may refer to the immediate

future or the distant future. Thus if I say, “Walk in the light and you

will be blessed,” I might mean you will be blessed now as you walk in

the light, or I might mean you will be blessed in heaven. It is misleading

to create the impression that when the word justification is used, the

first or main thought coming to anyone’s mind would be final, eschatological

judgment. That is not proved, and I think not likely for most

instances in Paul. This is not to deny the reality of a future court scene

in which God will judge on behalf of his people. It is rather a caution

that justification in the writings of Paul may not be as controlled by

the future, eschatological conception as Wright says it is. But let’s leave

that to the side and press on with his explanation.

The Judgment Has Already Happened

in Christ

Having pointed out that the climactic event of justification happens in

the future at the last judgment, Wright moves from the future to the

past and shows that in a profound sense the judgment has already happened

in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

God’s action in Jesus forms Paul’s template for this final justification.

. . . Jesus has been faithful, obedient to God’s saving purposes

right up to death (Rom. 5.12–21; Phil. 2.6–9); God has now declared

decisively that he is the Son of God, the Messiah, in whom Israel’s

destiny has been summed up (Rom. 1.3f.). . . . Jesus’ resurrection was,

for Paul, the evidence that God really had dealt with sin on the cross

(1 Cor. 15.12–19). In the death of Jesus God accomplished what had

been promised to Abraham, and ‘what the law could not do’ (Rom.

8.3): for those who belong to the Messiah, there is ‘no condemnation’

(Rom. 8.1, 8.31–9).4

Because God has already condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus (Rom.

8:3), it is possible for Jew and Gentile in the present to put their faith

in what Jesus has done and share in his vindication in advance of their

final vindication at the last judgment. “Justification in the present is

based on God’s past accomplishment in Christ, and anticipates the

future verdict. . . . God vindicates in the present, in advance of the last

day, all those who believe in Jesus as Messiah and Lord (Rom. 3.21–31;

4.13–25; 10.9–13).”5

How the Righteousness of Judge and

Defendant Differ

To grasp how justification works in this law-court context according to

Wright, we need to see how he clarifies the difference between the righteousness

of the judge and the righteousness of the plaintiff and defendant.

Wright says that God the Judge is righteous in four senses: “his

faithfulness to his covenant promises to Abraham, his impartiality, his

proper dealing with sin and his helping of the helpless.”6 This is distinct

from what righteousness means for the plaintiff and the defendant:

For the plaintiff or defendant to be ‘righteous’ in the biblical sense

within the law-court setting is for them to have that status as a result

4Wright, “The Shape of Justification.”

5Ibid.

6Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 36. For the working out of the distinctions between judge

and plaintiff and defendant in the law-court, see What Saint Paul Really Said, 97–98. In general,

and most importantly, Wright treats the righteousness of God as God’s faithfulness to his covenant.

“Romans [is] Paul’s exposition of God’s faithfulness to his covenant (in technical language, his righteousness’).”

Ibid., 48. “For a reader of the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Jewish scriptures,

‘the righteousness of God’ would have one obvious meaning: God’s own faithfulness to his promises,

to the covenant.” Ibid., 96. “In this context [Rom. 3:1–8] ‘God’s righteousness’ most naturally

means ‘God’s covenant faithfulness.’” Ibid., 106. “The gospel—the announcement of the lordship

of Jesus the Messiah—reveals God’s righteousness, his covenant faithfulness.” Ibid., 126. It seems

to me that this way of describing the righteousness of God falls under the same criticism as Wright’s

treatment of justification—that it forces an implication of God’s righteousness (that he keeps his

promises) into the definition of God’s righteousness (that he is the kind of God who always does

what is right). What righteousness is does not equal what righteousness does. Defining righteousness

as covenant-keeping is like defining integrity as contract-keeping. Yes, integrity keeps the terms of

its contracts, but integrity also tells the truth about where you were last night—and a hundred other

things. I will argue later that God keeps his promises, judges impartially, deals with sin properly, and

helps those who are unjustly oppressed because he is righteous. These actions are not his righteousness.

They flow from his righteousness (and other attributes). I will try to show that the failure to

make this distinction hinders Wright from focusing on the heart of God’s righteousness and distorts

the way he sees justification in Paul.

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and God’s Righteousness 59

of the decision of the court. . . . This doesn’t necessarily mean that

he or she is good, morally upright or virtuous; simply that he or she

has, in this case, been vindicated against the accuser; in other words,

acquitted.7

Imputation in This Court “Makes No Sense

at All”

Now, with these definitions and conceptions set up, Wright draws out

the deeply controversial implication concerning the historic doctrine

of imputation.

The result of all this should be obvious, but is enormously important for

understanding Paul. If we use the language of the law-court, it makes

no sense whatever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths,

conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff

or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas

which can be passed across the courtroom. For the judge to be righteous

does not mean that the court has found in his favour. For the

plaintiff or defendant to be righteous does not mean that he or she has

tried the case properly or impartially. To imagine the defendant somehow

receiving the judge’s righteousness is simply a category mistake.

That is not how the language works. . . . If and when God does act

to vindicate his people, his people will then, metaphorically speaking,

have the status of “righteousness.” . . . But the righteousness they have

will not be God’s own righteousness. That makes no sense at all.8

On the Wrong Foot for Fifteen Hundred

Years?

If Wright is correct here, then the entire history of the discussion of

justification for the last fifteen hundred years—Catholic, Protestant,

and Orthodox—has been misguided. Virtually everyone has been committing

a “category mistake,” and the entire debate between Roman

Catholics and Protestants about imputing versus imparting divine

righteousness “makes no sense at all.” This is a remarkable claim to

make about church history. But Wright is ready to play the man. “The

7Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 98. “‘Justification’ . . . is God’s declaration that the person

is now in the right, which confers on them the status ‘righteous’. (We may note that, since ‘righteous’

here, within the law-court metaphor, refers to ‘status’, not ‘character’, we correctly say that

God’s declaration makes the person ‘righteous’, i.e. in good standing.)” Wright, “The Shape of

Justification.”

8Ibid., 98–99. Emphasis added.

discussions of justification in much of the history of the church, certainly

since Augustine, got off on the wrong foot—at least in terms of

understanding Paul—and they have stayed there ever since.”9

A Modern-day Luther?

It is no final argument against what Wright says, but only a caution,

to observe that he sees himself methodologically in the same role as

Martin Luther—rediscovering what the New Testament originally

meant over against fifteen centuries of misguided tradition.

What I am doing, often enough, is exactly parallel, in terms of method,

to what Martin Luther did when he took the gospel word metanoeite

and insisted that it didn’t mean ‘do penance’, as the Vulgate indicated,

but “repent” in a much more personal and heartfelt way. The only way

to make that sort of point is to show that that’s what the word would

have meant at the time. That’s the kind of serious biblical scholarship

the Protestant Reformation was built on, and I for one am proud to

carry on that tradition—if need be, against those who have turned the

Reformation itself into a tradition to be set up over scripture itself.10

Whether we should follow Wright as a new Luther over against the

Reformation and fifteen hundred years of wrong-footed conceptuality

is open to question. I don’t think so. One of the differences between

Wright and the Reformers is that the latter labored to link their thinking

to the writings of the church fathers (hence the Reformers’ adoption

of the slogan, ad fontes, “back to the sources”). In his recurrent

reminders that he is a Protestant-like, Scripture-only man, Wright does

not communicate the kind of respect for history and careful treatment

of it that wins our confidence.11

Moreover, I do not think it is accurate to say that “the only way” to

demonstrate a new meaning like Luther’s (or Wright’s) is to show that it

is “what the word would have meant at the time.” “At the time” is too

general. Words mean different things at any given time depending on

how they are used in different contexts. Wright, of course, knows this

and would, I think, agree that the final court of appeal is the context

of an author’s own argument.

9Ibid., 115.

10Wright, “The Shape of Justification.” Emphasis added.

11See the section in chapter 1 entitled “Energized by What Is New,” 37-38.

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and God’s Righteousness 61

I see at least three problems with the way Wright arrives at the conclusion

that imputing God’s righteousness to a defendant is a “category

mistake” and “makes no sense.”

Wright’s Definition of Righteousness Does Not Go Deep Enough

First, Wright’s definition of the righteousness of God does not go to the

heart of the matter, but stays at the level of what divine righteousness

does rather than what it is. He defines God’s righteousness by saying

that it keeps covenant, judges impartially, deals properly with sin, and

advocates for the helpless.12 None of those is what righteousness is,

but they are some of the things righteousness does. This limited way of

treating God’s righteousness distorts Wright’s reading of Paul. Thus, he

has defined the righteousness of God, in part, in terms of God’s acting

impartially—and then he portrays the imputation of divine righteousness

as if it would mean that God imputes to a plaintiff the impartial

way he tried the case. Wright claims this “makes no sense at all”—it’s

“a category mistake.”

Since this is not a whole book focused only on the righteousness

of God, I can only give a summary statement here of what I

think is a more faithful reading of Paul and the wider Scripture

concerning God’s righteousness. I content myself that I devoted

most of an entire book to this issue—a book that is still in print

and that I still believe is compelling. The Justification of God13

contains chapters titled “The Righteousness of God in the Old

Testament,” “The Righteousness of God in Romans 3:1–8,” “The

Righteousness of God in Romans 3:25–26,” and “The Rights and

Purposes of the Creator in Romans 9:19–23.”

Not in the least do I want to question that God’s righteousness

impels him to be faithful to his covenant promises, to judge without

partiality, to deal with sin “properly,” and to stand up for those who are

unjustly oppressed. But God’s love (hesed) and his faithfulness (emet)

and his goodness (tov) could also be said to produce these actions. Yet

12See footnote 6 above.

13John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1–23,

2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993). A side note that I find interesting is that I was writing this

book at the same time N. T. Wright was writing his D.Phil. thesis for Oxford in 1980. As I read his

section on the righteousness of God in this unpublished thesis, I was struck by how in those days he

and I were dealing with the same issues and quoting the same people (Käseman, Ziesler, etc.). But

the conclusions we came to and the direction we have gone are very different.

God’s righteousness and love and faithfulness and goodness are not

all synonyms. So the crucial question in defining the righteousness of

God is: What is it about God’s righteousness that inclines him to act in

these ways? Behind each of those actions is the assumption that there

is something about God’s righteousness that explains why he acts as

he does. What is that? That is the question, so far as I can see, that

Wright does not ask.

I do not ask it for speculative reasons but exegetical ones. Paul’s

use of the righteousness language in Romans begs for this question to

be asked. The dikai- word group is used over seventy times in Romans.

Paul’s profound argument in answer to the question “Is there injustice

[ajdikiva] on God’s part?” (Rom. 9:14) pushes us deeper into God

beneath and before the covenant. And the development of his argument

in Romans 1–3 regarding man’s “unrighteousness” [ajdikivan] (Rom.

1:18) apart from the covenant presses us behind the covenant for the

ultimate meaning of righteousness as Paul conceived of it.

How Does God Decide What Is Right to Do?

There is a simple way to say the answer to this question and a more

complex and profound way. The simple way is to say that God’s righteousness

consists in his unswerving commitment to do what is right.

In other words, behind his doing what is right is a knowledge and love

of what is right that is so full and so strong that it consists in an inviolable

allegiance or commitment or faithfulness to do what is right. If

I limited myself to this simple way of describing God’s righteousness,

it would be simple, straightforward, and true. The only reason I press

beyond the more simple way is that it proves remarkably illuminating

exegetically.

It is not very satisfying simply to say that God’s righteousness is

his commitment to do what is right, because it leaves the term “right”

undefined. We don’t feel like we have gained very much in defining

“righteousness” if we use the word “right” to define it. To be sure, it is

not an insignificant thing to say to a child, “God is the kind of Person

who always knows and loves and does what is right.” That is a wise

and true thing to say. But someday that child is going to become a

teenager and ask, “How does God decide what is right? Who tells God

what is right? Is there a book of laws or rules that God has to obey?”

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and God’s Righteousness 63

Answering those questions gets at the deeper meaning of righteousness.

What is the “right” to which God is unswervingly committed?

The answer is that there is no book of laws or rules that God consults

to know what is right. He wrote the book. What we find therefore

in the Old Testament and in Paul is that God defines “right” in terms

of himself. There is no other standard to consult than his own infinitely

worthy being. Thus, what is right, most ultimately, is what upholds the

value and honor of God—what esteems and honors God’s glory.

The reasoning goes like this: The ultimate value in the universe is

God—the whole panorama of all his perfections. Another name for

this is God’s holiness (viewed as the intrinsic and infinite worth of his

perfect beauty) or God’s glory (viewed as the out-streaming manifestation

of that beauty). Therefore, “right” must be ultimately defined in

relation to this ultimate value, the holiness or the glory of God—this

is the highest standard for “right” in the universe. Therefore, what is

right is what upholds in proper proportion the value of what is infinitely

valuable, namely, God. “Right” actions are those that flow from

a proper esteem for God’s glory and that uphold his glory as the most

valuable reality there is. This means that the essence of the righteousness

of God is his unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of his

name. And human righteousness is the same: the unwavering faithfulness

to uphold the glory of God.

Behind God’s Covenant-Keeping Is

Allegiance to His Glory

On pages 111–119 of The Justification of God, I present this argument

on the basis of dozens of Old Testament texts. The reasoning may

sound speculative until one reads the Old Testament with this question

in mind and then reads Paul with a view to the relationship between

the glory of God and the righteousness of God. What is the highest

value that God and the authors of Scripture continually go back to in

accounting for the actions of God? The answer is: the glory of God, or

the sacred and infinite value of his holiness, or sometimes simply his

name. There is something far deeper in God than covenant faithfulness.

God was not unrighteous before there was a covenant. He was righteous

before there was any covenant to keep. “The Lord is righteous

in all his ways” (Ps. 145:17), not just in keeping the covenant. “He will

judge the world with righteousness” (Ps. 98:9). Something creates the

covenant. Behind the making and keeping of the covenant, and behind

all other divine actions, is this ultimate allegiance to his glory, his holiness,

his name.

For my name’s sake I defer my anger,

for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,

that I may not cut you off.

Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;

I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.

For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,

for how should my name be profaned?

My glory I will not give to another. (Isa. 48:9–11)

I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,

and I will not remember your sins. (Isa. 43:25)

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name;

deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake! (Ps. 79:9)

But when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned

my holy name. . . . But I had concern for my holy name, which the

house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came.

Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not

for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake

of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which

you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which

has been profaned among the nations. (Ezek. 36:20–23)

In these contexts, the motivation for God’s saving action is something

deeper than covenant faithfulness. It is God’s faithfulness—his unwavering

commitment—to act for the value of his glory.14 “He remains

faithful—for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:13).

This is part of his nature. It is part of what it means to be God. This

is the deeper foundation for covenant-keeping (and all other divine

action). Coming from this deepest allegiance of God is what makes a

divine action “right” or “righteous.”

14See 1 Samuel 12:22 for one example of how God’s commitment to his people is rooted most

deeply in his allegiance to his own name: “For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great

name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.”

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and God’s Righteousness 65

For your name’s sake, O Lord, preserve my life!

In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble! (Ps. 143:11)

Notice that “in your righteousness” is parallel to “for your name’s

sake.” From this and similar lines of textual argument in the Old

Testament, I conclude, “The righteousness of God consists most basically

in God’s unswerving commitment to preserve the honor of his

name and display his glory.”15

Does Paul Share This Understanding of the

Righteousness of God?

All of this would not matter much for interpreting Paul if there were no

clear internal evidence that he thought this way about the righteousness

of God. But, in fact, we find abundant evidence, especially in the book

of Romans, where the righteousness of God is a major theme. Paul sets

up the deepest problem of humankind in terms of human unrighteousness

and our failure to glorify God. He describes the “unrighteousness

of men” (ajdikivan ajnqrwvpwn, Rom. 1:18) in terms of how they “did

not glorify him as God” (oujc wJi qeo;n ejdovxasan, Rom. 1:21, author’s

translation) and how they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God”

(h[llaxan th;n dovxan tou` ajfqavrtou qeou`) for his creatures (Rom. 1:23,

author’s translation). All of this is described without any reference to

a covenant.

Paul describes the Jewish participation in this global unrighteousness

as the dishonoring of God and the blaspheming of his name. “You

who boast in the law dishonor God (to;n qeo;n ajtimavzeij) by breaking

the law. For, as it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed (ojnoma

tou` qeou` di’ uJma`i blasfhmei`tai) among the Gentiles because of you’”

(Rom. 2:23–24). Hence, “None is righteous (divkaioi), no, not one”

(Rom. 3:10), neither Jew nor Gentile.

Then Paul confirms that this is the essential problem by explaining

sin in terms of this exchange of God’s glory for created things: “All

have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (pavntei ga;r h}marton

kai; uJsterou/ntai th`i dovxhi tou` qeou`, Rom. 3:23). The word for

“fall short of” (uJsterou`ntai) means “to lack.” This is a reiteration of

Romans 1:23. The point is that we “lack” the glory of God because we

15Piper, The Justification of God, 119.

“exchanged” it. We have suicidally traded it for the poisonous pleasure

of idols. Thus, for Paul, sin is essentially preferring and embracing

other things and other people as more to be desired than the infinitely

valuable and all-satisfying glory of God. This is the essence of sin and

(as we saw in the Old Testament) the essence of unrighteousness.

Righteousness Creates the Problem for

Covenant Faithfulness (Rom. 3:25)

Now, with this understanding of how Paul has described the situation

of the world, we are able to understand more clearly the problem he is

dealing with when he says two verses later in Romans 3:25 that “God

put [Christ] forward as a propitiation by his blood . . . to show God’s

righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over

former sins.” What this enormously important text shows is that God’s

righteousness was called into question by God’s “passing over sins”

(th;n pavresin tw`n . . . aJmarthmavtwn). He has just explained that the

problem with humanity is that we are “unrighteous” in that we belittle

the glory of God (1:23; 3:10) and that this belittling of the glory of God

is what “sin” is (cf. 3:23 and 1:23).

But now we find God “passing over sin”—that is, treating sin in

a way that makes it look less outrageous than it is. This makes God

look as though he does not properly esteem his own glory that sin

belittles. Therefore, we can see that the reason God “shows [his] righteousness”

is that his glory has been dishonored and yet God seems to

have treated this lightly and thus acted unrighteously. In passing over

countless belittlings of his glory (sins), he looks as though he counts

his glory as a small thing. This would be unrighteousness in God—the

very essence of unrighteousness. Therefore, he puts Christ forward

to vindicate his righteousness, that is, to show that he does not take

lightly the scorning of his glory. When he justifies the “ungodly” (who

have treated his glory with contempt, Rom. 1:18, 23; 4:5), he is not

unrighteous, because the death of Christ exhibits God’s wrath against

God-belittling sin.

Wright says on Romans 3:25, “The first question at issue,

then—the aspect of God’s righteousness that might seem to have

been called into question and is now demonstrated after all—is

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and God’s Righteousness 67

God’s proper dealing with sins—i.e., punishment.”16 This is a

telling sentence. Wright’s most common definition of God’s righteousness—

God’s covenant faithfulness—does not, it seems, fit

easily into Romans 3:25–26. On the contrary, in these verses God’s

righteousness creates a problem for covenant faithfulness and must

be satisfied in order that his covenant faithfulness may continue.

Wright sees this and speaks of “the aspect of God’s righteousness

that is called into question.” Yes. And this “aspect” is not most

naturally, in this context, God’s covenant faithfulness. God’s passing

over sin would seem to be not a problem for God’s covenant

faithfulness, but an expression of it.

Wright calls the aspect of God’s righteousness that is called into

question “God’s proper dealing with sin—i.e., punishment.”17 He may

indeed prefer to say that God’s “righteousness” all the way through

this text refers to covenant faithfulness, but even if so, notice that

something in God other than covenant commitment determines what

the “proper” stipulations of the covenant are in the first place. That

is implied in calling punishment a “proper” dealing with sin. God’s

righteousness, before there was a covenant, determined that punishment

for sin would be part of what happens in the covenant (and

outside it!). And notice also that the flow of the context from Romans

3:9ff. suggests that the “passing over of sins” in Romans 3:25 was not

just the passing over of the sins of the covenant people Israel (see also

Acts 14:16; 17:30), but of the nations as well. Therefore, limiting the

“righteousness of God” in this context to covenantal categories is too

narrow.

My point is that Paul operates with the Old Testament understanding

that the deepest meaning of God’s righteousness is his unwavering

commitment to act for the sake of his glory. The belittling of his glory

by all humanity is the problem Paul sets up in Romans 1–3. Then,

as he presents God’s solution, he describes sin in terms of belittling

God’s glory (3:23), restates the problem as the passing over of these

God-belittling sins, and gives the glorious answer in the vindication of

God’s righteousness, that is, his unwavering commitment to act for the

glory of his name.

16Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 473.

17I do not think the problem is solved for Wright by saying that punishment in this context is one

aspect of covenant faithfulness.

It Is Righteous to Show Wrath for

His Own Glory (Rom. 3:1–8)

In addition to this line of thought, there is more evidence for how Paul

understood God’s righteousness in Romans 3:1–8. In these verses Paul

shows that, while God is faithful to his covenant promises, he would

not be “unrighteous” to inflict wrath on unrighteous Israel. The most

fundamental reason he would not be unrighteous to punish them is

that in his judgment “God’s truth abounds to his glory” (Rom. 3:7).

This link between God’s glory being vindicated and God being shown

righteous confirms again that Paul saw God’s righteousness most fundamentally

as his unwavering faithfulness to uphold the glory of his

name. Here are the key verses (Rom. 3:5–7):

But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what

shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in

a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world?

But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory [ejperivsseusen eiji

th;n dovxan aujtou`], why am I still being condemned as a sinner?

Notice the parallel between verses 5 and 7.

Verse 5 Verse 7

But if our unrighteousness But if through my lie

serves to show the righteousness of God, God’s truth abounds to his glory,

what shall we say? That God is why am I still being condemned

unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? as a sinner?

The middle parallel shows that the demonstration of God’s glory and

the demonstration of God’s righteousness are interpreting each other.

In other words, Paul’s underlying assumption is that vindicating God’s

glory is what righteousness does. Righteousness is God’s inviolable faithfulness

to uphold the value of his glory. Paul is echoing the conclusions

of his opponents in the third parallel in verses 5 and 7—both of which he

disagrees with—that it would be unrighteous of God to inflict wrath on

someone whose unrighteousness brought down God’s judgment (v. 5),

and that persons should not be condemned as sinners if their falsehood

highlighted God’s glory when he condemned them (v. 7). Both conclusions

are wrong. But the premises are true: Unfaithful Israelites will be

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and God’s Righteousness 69

judged, and this shows the righteousness of God because it magnifies his

glory. What his opponents try to conclude from these true premises is

that it is impossible for God to judge Israel. They are mistaken.18

Upholding God’s Glory in the Freedom of

Mercy (Rom. 9:14–23)

Consider one more illustration of Paul’s understanding of the righteousness

of God as God’s unwavering commitment to his glory. Romans

9:14–23 (nasb) deals with the question raised in verse 14, “What shall

we say then? There is no unrighteousness with God, is there [mh; ajdikiva

para; twÛ` qew`]?” The question was raised by God’s freedom in choosing

Jacob over Esau, “though they were not yet born and had done nothing

either good or bad” (Rom. 9:11).

Paul’s answer moves from the self-revelation of God at Mount

Sinai where he says God’s name and glory consist in his freedom to

have mercy on whom he will (Rom. 9:15 = Ex. 33:19), to the Exodus

where God raised up Pharaoh “that I might show my power in you,

and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (Rom. 9:17

= Ex. 9:16), to the conclusion in Romans 9:23 that God’s freedom in

election is not capricious but aims at a definite global purpose—“to

make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has

prepared beforehand for glory.” In other words, Paul’s answer to the

question of whether there is unrighteousness with God is no. And the

reason is that he has acted in a way that most fully upholds and displays

the supreme worth of his glory.

The upshot of this evidence is that God’s righteousness, in the mind

of Paul, as in the Old Testament, is most fundamentally his unwavering

allegiance to uphold the value of his glory. It is also plain that this

is the righteousness he demands from his creatures—that they forsake

their “unrighteousness” and “glorify him as God or give thanks to him”

(Rom. 1:18, 21, author’s translation). When he says that “none is righteous”

(Rom. 3:10), he means that all of us have failed to glorify God as

18For the full argument of the verses and a more extended defense of Paul’s understanding of

the glory of God in relation to his righteousness in Romans 3:1–8, see The Justification of God,

123–134. Wright, it seems, does not take note of the parallel between God’s glory (v. 7) and his

righteousness (v. 5). So he settles for the statement, “In this context [Rom. 3:1–8] ‘God’s righteousness’

most naturally means ‘God’s covenant faithfulness.’” Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said,

106. But this will not work. Try putting “covenant faithfulness” in the place of “righteousness of

God” in verse 5. It will not work because the righteousness of God is the warrant not for covenant

faithfulness but for God’s wrath being inflicted on Israel.

we should. We do not “seek God” (Rom. 3:11). Instead, we exchange the

glory of God and seek what his creation can offer (Rom. 1:23). And, in

the case of Israel, “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles

because of you” (Rom. 2:24). “All have sinned”—that is, all have bartered

away the glory of God for false substitutes. The aim of creation

and redemption is that God be glorified—treasured and displayed as infinitely

glorious. “Christ became a servant to the circumcised . . . in order

that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Rom. 15:8–9).

What Righteousness Means in God’s

Law-Court

Therefore, it seems to me that when Wright sets up God’s law-court scene in

such a way that the righteousness of the Judge and the righteousness of the

defendant cannot be the same, he has done something artificial. When he

says that the righteousness of the Judge is his “trying the case impartially”

and the righteousness of the defendant is his “being declared in the right,”

his framework fails to get at the meaning of righteousness behind these

different expressions. Therefore, he forces a portrayal of historic imputation

that “makes no sense at all.”19 But this is not because imputation

itself makes no sense, but because Wright has set things up in a way that

makes it look nonsensical. And this is because he treats the righteousness of

God merely in terms of the actions of the Judge, not in terms of his deeper

attribute of righteousness. The power of Wright’s paradigm to explain Paul

turns out to limit and distort rather than clarify.

There is a very different way to look at things. For both the defendant

and the judge, righteousness is “an unwavering allegiance to treasure

and uphold the glory of God.” This is what makes God and humans

“righteous.” Therefore, it may turn out in this law-court that it is indeed

conceivable for the Judge’s righteousness to be shared by the defendant.

It may be that when the defendant lacks moral righteousness, the Judge,

who is also Creator and Redeemer, may find a way to make his righteousness

count for the defendant, since it is exactly the righteousness

he needs—namely, an unwavering and flawless and acted-out allegiance

to the glory of the Judge. We will return to this possibility in chapter 11.

But first there are two more problems with Wright’s law-court scene that

I will try to address in the following chapter.

19Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 99.

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and God’s Righteousness 71

i

Chapter Four

The Law-Court Dynamics of

Justification and the Necessity of

Real Moral Righteousness

In the previous chapter, we looked at the law-court setting

that Wright develops to illumine the dynamics of justification. I have

tried to address one problem with that scene, namely, that Wright’s

definition of the righteousness of God does not go to the heart of the

matter but stays at the level of what divine righteousness does rather

than what it is.

The second problem I see in Wright’s way of setting up the law-

court imagery is that it does not seem to come to terms with the fact

that the judge is omniscient. The omniscience of the judge implies that

the defendant must have a different righteousness than Wright would

concede, that is, a righteousness that is more than the mere status of

being acquitted, regardless of innocence or guilt. Wright stresses that

for the defendant, righteousness is not a character quality (i.e., not a

moral righteousness) but a status, namely, that the court has found in

the defendant’s favor. The defendant may or may not have committed

the crime with which he was charged. Regardless, if the court finds in

his favor, he is “righteous.” He has that status.

This definition of “righteous” may work in ordinary human

law-courts where judges are fallible and their judgments must stand,

whether they are right or wrong. But there’s a catch. In God’s courtroom,

the Judge is omniscient and just. Now everyone in the first

century would agree that in a courtroom where the Judge knows

everything and is just, there can never be a case where there is a discrepancy

between the truth of the charge and the truth of the verdict.

In this court, what would be the basis of saying, “I bestow on you the

status of righteous, and I find you guilty as charged”? How could such

a finding be intelligible, not to mention just? One right answer that I

think Wright would agree with is that this is what the atonement is all

about. Christ died for our sins to provide a basis for this finding, and

therefore, though guilty, the court can exercise clemency (or in God’s

case, forgiveness) because of Christ and we go free.1

But Clemency and Forgiveness Are Not

Equivalent to Justification

God’s clemency in the courtroom and his personal forgiveness are

certainly true and glorious. We will sing of it to all eternity. But the

question is whether Paul has something to add—an even wider basis

for our justification—something that makes our salvation even more

wonderful and brings more glory to our Savior. I think he does. It

emerges when we realize that in the first-century courtroom, treating

as innocent a defendant who is known in the court to be guilty

(letting him go free without condemnation) on the basis of clemency

(or forgiveness) would not have been described as “justifying” him.

Commenting on Romans 4:6–8, Wright says,

Paul can assume that “reckoning righteousness apart from works” and

“not reckoning sin against someone” are equivalents. The covenant, we

must always remind ourselves, was there to deal with sin; when God

forgives sin, or reckons someone within the covenant [=justifies], these

are functionally equivalent. They draw attention to different aspects of

the same event.2

But, as we will see below, when the charge in the court is “none

is righteous” and the context is immorality (“no one does good, not

1For example, he says, “The death of Jesus has explained why it is that God was right to pass over

former sins. That which was unjust in the human law-court is now contained within a higher justice.”

Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 492. I do not bring in at this point anything about what the

defendant must do to enjoy this finding of the court. That is, I leave until later the question: What is

Wright’s view of “by faith alone”? And: What is the role, if any, of our Spirit-transformed behavior

in forming the basis of the Judge’s verdict?

2Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 493. Emphasis added.

even one,” Rom. 3:12), then to “reckon righteousness” to a defendant

(Rom. 4:6) is more than giving him a status of “forgiven” or being a

member of the covenant. With Wright’s argument from Romans 4:6–8,

there is a better way to understand the relationship between “reckoning

righteousness” and “not reckoning sin.” They do not have to be

“equivalents” for the argument to work. In fact, the argument for

“counting righteousness apart from works” is weakened by assuming

Paul supported it merely by calling it equivalent to forgiveness. Paul

wrote:

David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness

apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds

are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against

whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

It is plausible that when Paul quotes Psalm 32 (“whose lawless deeds

are forgiven”) to support his claim that “God counts righteousness

apart from works,” he is making forgiveness and justification “equivalents.”

But I find it more plausible that in Paul’s mind wherever sins

are not counted, a positive righteousness is counted. In other words,

the logic of Romans 4:6–8 may hang on Paul’s understanding of Psalm

32 as implying that wherever there is divine forgiveness of lawless

deeds—wherever sins are not counted—righteousness is counted. That

is, the forgiven person is not considered by God merely as a sinful

forgiven person, but as a righteous person—a person “to whom God

counts righteousness apart from works.”

Why might Paul see this implication in the psalm? One reason is

that the psalm ends by calling the forgiven man “righteous.”

Many are the sorrows of the wicked,

but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.

Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous,

and shout for joy, all you upright in heart! (vv. 10–11)

I am not saying that the psalmist has a full-blown doctrine of

justification as imputed righteousness. I am simply observing that Paul

may have meditated long and hard on the Psalms, including the often

perplexing language of righteousness, sin, blamelessness, and forgive

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and Real Moral Righteousness 75

ness, and drew the inference that divine forgiveness never stands alone

without God’s counting the forgiven person as positively righteous.3

That would account for the logic of Romans 4:6–8 better than assuming

that forgiveness and being counted righteous are “equivalents.”

Justification Is More Than Forgiveness

With this in mind, we return to the law-court and the meaning of

justification. If an omniscient and just judge found a person guilty

as charged, the court would not say that clemency or forgiveness

gives rise to the declaration of a status of righteous. Forgiveness

and clemency can commute a sentence, but they cannot mean the

judge finds in the defendant’s favor. An omniscient and just judge

never “finds in favor” of a guilty defendant. He always vindicates

the claim that is true. If the defendant is guilty, the omniscient, just

judge finds in favor of the plaintiff. The judge may show mercy.

He has it in his power to bestow clemency, and to forgive, and not

to condemn the guilty. But not condemning the guilty would never

have been called “justification” or “finding in favor” or “bestowing

the status of righteous.”

Nevertheless, justification and finding in favor and bestowing a

status of righteous are indeed what happen in the law-court of God

when guilty sinners who believe in Jesus are on trial. God “justifies the

ungodly” (Rom. 4:5). He declares them to be righteous, that is, to be

not guilty of the charge. And the charge is: “None is righteous” (Rom.

3:10). So, if the discrepancy between being found “guilty as charged”

and being given the status of righteous cannot be based on clemency

alone, what is it based on?

This question is not driven by logic. It is driven by the way Paul

3Here is a flavor of what I mean by “the often perplexing language of righteousness, sin, blamelessness,

and forgiveness.” The Bible is willing to call us “righteous” even though “None is righteous,

no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). And when it does so, it can at times mean that we not only have an

imputed righteousness but also a life of lived-out but imperfect righteousness. You can see this paradoxical

use of language clearly in several texts. For example, Ecclesiastes 7:20 says that “there is not

a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” But five verses earlier it says, “There is a

righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life

in his evildoing.” And in Psalm 41:4 the psalmist says, “O Lord, be gracious to me; heal me, for I

have sinned against you!” But then he says to the Lord in verse 12, “You have upheld me because

of [or in] my integrity.” So there are non-righteous righteous. And there are sinners with integrity.

The same thing can be shown from Paul’s use of the word “blameless.” Even though Paul speaks

in Philippians 3:12 of his best efforts as imperfect, he still describes the believers as “blameless and

innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation” (Phil.

2:15). So there is an imperfect blamelessness just as there is a non-righteous righteousness and a

sin-committing integrity. See Appendix 6 for more on how we fulfill the law.

speaks of justification in Romans. He describes the justification of the

ungodly in the language of imputation when he refers to “the one to

whom God counts [logivzetai, reckons, imputes] righteousness apart

from works” (Rom. 4:6). “Righteousness [is] counted [logisqh`nai,

reckoned, imputed] to them” (Rom. 4:11). Paul himself raises the

question of an imputed righteousness that is not performed by the

“ungodly” defendant in the courtroom.

The Paradoxes That Point Toward

Imputation

For virtually the entire history of the church, the answer has been,

with various nuances, that God either imputes or imparts divine righteousness

to the defendant because of his relationship with Christ.

This was the central division between the Reformers and Roman

Catholicism. One of the reasons for this is that the law-court that

Wright has described seems to demand it, if the judge is omniscient and

just—which he is. Exercising clemency toward, or forgiving, a guilty

defendant does not provide a basis for justification. Commuting the

sentence of the guilty person merely because of clemency or forgiveness

is not what justification is. And an omniscient, just judge does not say

that a defendant has moral righteousness when he is guilty of having no

moral righteousness (Rom. 3:10)—unless there is a way that an alien

moral righteousness can be counted as his.

Now why have I brought in moral righteousness? Doesn’t that

muddy the water? Isn’t justification the bestowing of a status of “righteousness,”

not the declaration that one is morally righteous? I bring

it in for two reasons. One reason is that in the context of Romans, the

charge that has brought us into court is: “None is righteous, no, not

one” (Rom. 3:10). Which means: “No one does good, not even one”

(Rom. 3:12). This is a statement about our moral condition.

The other reason is that God is omniscient, and so his findings

in court always accord with reality. The status bestowed will always

accord with whether the charge sticks. When the charge itself is, “You

have no moral righteousness before God” (cf. Rom. 3:10–18), the finding

of an omniscient judge in our favor must be: “You do indeed have

a moral righteousness before God and therefore a status of acquittal

in this court.”

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and Real Moral Righteousness 77

Bringing moral righteousness into the law-court setting is not

owing to Protestant and Roman Catholic tradition. It is owing to the

context of Romans 1–3 and the demands of having an omniscient judge

whose bestowal of a right standing in his court will always accord with

what he knows to be true in the defendant’s case.

A Summary of the Critique So Far

Now let us gather up the various strands so far in my critique of

Wright’s law-court paradigm. We saw in chapter 3 that, as the Judge,

God’s righteousness is not simply his covenant faithfulness, or his

acting impartially, or his dealing with sins properly. Those are some

of what righteousness does, not what it is. God’s righteousness is his

unwavering allegiance to do what is right, that is, most ultimately,

to uphold the infinite worth of his glory. The same holds true in

principle for our moral righteousness. We were created to have this

same unwavering allegiance to uphold the infinite worth of God’s

glory in all we do. That is what it would mean for a human being to

be righteous.

The charge against us in God’s law-court is that we do not have

this righteousness. “None is righteous, no, not one . . . no one seeks

for God” (Rom. 3:10–11). We are all guilty of “ungodliness and

unrighteousness . . . [and have] exchanged the glory of the immortal

God for images” (Rom. 1:18, 23; cf. 3:23). Nevertheless, God “justifies

the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5)—the omniscient Judge does not merely

show clemency or forgiveness and assign us a status of “righteous”;

he finds in our favor precisely because he counts us as having the

moral righteousness that we in fact do not have in ourselves. When

the charge against us is read (“You do not have moral righteousness”)

and the verdict of the Judge is rendered (“I declare that you are not

guilty as charged but do indeed have moral righteousness”), the

righteousness in view in this declaration is real moral righteousness.

I will argue later that this is the righteousness of Christ imputed to

the guilty through faith alone. The declaration of justification in the

law-court of God is not merely forgiveness; it is not merely the status

of acquitted; it is counting the defendant as morally righteous though

in himself he is not.

The “Nonsense” Really Does Happen

The third problem I see in Wright’s way of setting up the law-court

imagery is that he calls “nonsense” what in fact really does happen.

Recall that he says,

To imagine the defendant somehow receiving the judge’s righteousness

is simply a category mistake. That is not how the language works. . . .

If and when God does act to vindicate his people, his people will then,

metaphorically speaking, have the status of ‘righteousness’ . . . . But

the righteousness they have will not be God’s own righteousness. That

makes no sense at all.4

We have seen that Wright’s definitions of righteousness for the judge

and the defendant do not account for Paul’s understanding of how

this law-court works. Now we add that, because of the work of Jesus

Christ, it is not in fact nonsense to speak of the defendant in some sense

sharing in the righteousness of the judge. It is not a category mistake

to speak of the defendant “receiving the Judge’s righteousness.” This

is, in fact, what the language of justification demands in a law-court

where the Judge is omniscient and just and the charge is “none is [morally]

righteous” (Rom. 3:10). Of course, it will jar the ordinary human

categories. That is what the justification of the ungodly has always

done—and is meant to do.

Does Imputation Provide the Basis of

the Status?

The crucial question is: Does Paul present the defendant as having,

in some sense, the moral righteousness of the divine Judge because of

Christ? What I mean by the “moral righteousness” of God is simply

what I argued for above, namely, his unwavering allegiance to uphold

the worth of his glory. That is the essence of his righteousness. And

that is the moral righteousness he requires of us—that we unwaveringly

love and uphold the glory of God in all we feel and think and do, that

is, in the fulfillment of all his requirements.

But we have all failed. That is our unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18, 21,

23; 3:23). This is why we are on trial in God’s law-court. We have not

4Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 99.

The Law-Court Dynamics of Justification and Real Moral Righteousness 79

only exchanged the glory of God for images (Rom. 1:23) and failed to

glorify and thank him (Rom. 1:21) but have dishonored him by breaking

the law (Rom. 2:23) and caused his name to be blasphemed among

the nations (Rom. 2:24). So none of us is righteous, not even one (Rom.

3:10). The question is: When the Judge finds in our favor, does he count

us as having the required moral righteousness—not in ourselves, but

because of the divine righteousness imputed to us in Christ?

My answer is yes, and I will return later (pp. 163–180) to give

a fuller explanation and defense of this answer. Wright’s answer is

no. To review, he thinks that the whole discussion of imputing divine

righteousness to humans is muddle-headed. It is simply not operating

with proper biblical-historical categories. For the last fifteen hundred

years, the discussions of this issue in the church have been misguided.5

“If we use the language of the law-court, it makes no sense whatever

to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise

transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant.

Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be

passed across the courtroom.”6

At this point, it may help to draw in more of Wright’s related ideas

to round out his picture of justification before we proceed to defend

our understanding of imputation.

5“The discussions of justification in much of the history of the church, certainly [!] since Augustine,

got off on the wrong foot—at least in terms of understanding Paul—and they have stayed there ever

since.” Ibid., 115. Emphasis added.

6Ibid., 98.

Chapter Five

Justification and the Gospel:

When Is the Lordship of

Jesus Good News?

Where Are the Preachers of the

Glorious Gospel?

One of Wright’s passions is to help us see more clearly the historical

sweep and global scope of God’s purposes in the gospel. This accounts

for some of his reactions to the individualism and pietism that mark

some preaching of the gospel. There simply aren’t enough preachers

who show the gospel to be what it is, the magnificent announcement

of the lordship of Jesus, not only over my personal problems, but over

all of history and all the nations and all the environment.

I rejoice in any effort to restore the supremacy of Christ over all

things and to rescue the preaching of the gospel from myopic, individualistic

limitations. But Wright’s way of highlighting the global sweep of

the gospel has the effect of marginalizing, and perhaps even negating,

some aspects of the gospel that are precious, and without which all talk

of rescuing the world from chaos is hollow.

The Message of Justification Is Not

the Gospel?

For example, Wright is eager not to equate the gospel with the message

of justification by faith alone or even with a message about how to “get

saved.” “Paul’s gospel to the pagans was not a philosophy of life. Nor

was it, even, a doctrine about how to get saved.”1 “The announcement

of the gospel results in people being saved. . . . But ‘the gospel’ itself,

strictly speaking, is the narrative proclamation of King Jesus. . . . When

the herald makes a royal proclamation, he says ‘Nero (or whoever) has

become emperor.’”2

“‘The gospel’ itself refers to the proclamation that Jesus, the crucified

and risen Messiah, is the one, true and only Lord of the world.”3

For Paul, this imperial announcement was “that the crucified Jesus of

Nazareth had been raised from the dead; that he was thereby proved

to be Israel’s Messiah; that he was thereby installed as Lord of the

world.”4

The gospel has at its center the events of the cross and the resurrection.

“For Paul, the reason why there is good news at all is that in and

through the cross of King Jesus the one true God has dealt decisively with

evil.”5 And Wright wants to emphasize all evil—my personal “sin, death,

guilt and shame”6 and the global evil that the prophets promised would

be overcome when the Messiah ushers in the new age. This new age has

come. That is the good news that Paul preaches. “He is announcing that

the messianic promises of salvation have come true in Jesus.”7

The Gospel Is Not an Account of

How People Get Saved?

I love faithful portrayals of the majesty of God and the greatness of

Christ and the infinite reaches of the gospel. This accords perfectly

with God’s passion for his own glory. “For the earth will be filled with

the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea”

(Hab. 2:14). But I find it perplexing that Wright is so eager not to let

the message of justification be part of the gospel. He says:

I must stress again that the doctrine of justification by faith is not

what Paul means by ‘the gospel’. It is implied by the gospel; when the

gospel is proclaimed, people come to faith and so are regarded by God

1Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 90. “[The gospel] is not, then, a system of how people get

saved.” Ibid., 45. “My proposal has been that ‘the gospel’ is not, for Paul, a message about ‘how

one gets saved’, in an individual and ahistorical sense.” Ibid., 60.

2Ibid., 45. Emphasis added.

3Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.”

4Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 46.

5Ibid., 52.

6Ibid., 157.

7Ibid., 53.

as members of his people. But ‘the gospel’ is not an account of how

people get saved.8

If we come to Paul with these questions in mind—the questions about

how human beings come into a living and saving relationship with the

living and saving God—it is not justification that springs to [Paul’s] lips

or pen. The message about Jesus and his cross and resurrection—‘the

gospel’ . . . —is announced to them; through this means, God works

by his Spirit upon their hearts.9

There are significant problems with this claim. Exegetically the most

obvious one is that the portrayal of Paul’s preaching of the gospel in the

book of Acts seems to contradict what Wright says. He says that the

gospel “is not an account of how people get saved,” and he says that

“justification” does not spring to Paul’s lips if we come to him with the

question of how we can come into a saving relationship with God. In

view of these claims, consider the way Acts presents Paul’s preaching

as it relates to justification, Jews, Gentiles, and eternal life.

Paul Proclaims Justification by Faith as Part of His Gospel

In Acts 13:14, Paul and Barnabas arrive in Pisidian Antioch. On the

Sabbath day, they enter the synagogue and, after the reading of the law

and the prophets, they are invited to speak “any word of encouragement

for the people” (Acts 13:15). What follows is a radically God-

centered narration of the history of Israel from Israel’s election and

stay in Egypt (v. 17) through the wilderness, the period of the judges,

King Saul, and King David. From David, Paul makes the connection

with Jesus. “Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior,

Jesus, as he promised” (v. 23). Then Paul refers to the words of John

the Baptist and brings the story to a point with a reference to salvation:

“Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who

fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation” (v. 26).

8Ibid., 132–133.

9Ibid., 116. What Wright wants to stress is that when Paul walked into Thessalonica or Corinth

his announcement was not, “You can be justified by faith.” He announced Jesus as the Lord and

his death and resurrection. But can we separate this announcement from justification in this way?

Is the gospel only the first things we say, or is it also the explanation of why these things are good

news? And in that explanation, from culture to culture, do we not have to help people understand

their situation in terms that they may not at first understand? And when they trust in Jesus, do we

not need to give them the truth of what they must trust him for? And is not God’s not counting sins

against them (2 Cor. 5:19) but rather reckoning righteousness to them apart from works (Rom. 4:6)

part of what they trust Jesus for?

When Is the Lordship of Jesus Good News? 83

What is this salvation that Jesus has brought and Paul is announcing?

Before telling them exactly what he is offering them as “good

news,” he tells them how God is bringing it about. He explains that

Jesus was crucified, and that those who did it unwittingly fulfilled

the word of the prophets (vv. 27–29). And he explains that God

raised Jesus from the dead in accord with Psalm 2, Isaiah 55, and

Psalm 16 (vv. 30–37). Paul says that all of this was the way “the

gospel” was coming to them: “We bring you the good news [hJmei`i

uJma`i eujaggelizovmeqa] that what God promised to the fathers, this

he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus” (vv. 32–33).

Then, when all the historical foundation has been laid, Paul

announces the actual content of what makes this history, climaxing in

Jesus’ death and resurrection, “good news.” The gospel, he says, has

exactly to do with personal salvation, eternal life, and justification.

“Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness

of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes

is justified [dikaiwqh`nai] from everything from which you could not be

justified [dikaiou`tai] by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38–39, author’s

translation). When most of the Jewish people of the city spurned this

message of justification, Paul said that in doing so they judged themselves

“unworthy of eternal life.” “Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly,

saying, ‘It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you.

Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life,

behold, we are turning to the Gentiles’” (v. 46).

The next verse says that this very message of salvation—the one

that offered forgiveness, justification, and eternal life to “everyone who

believes”—would now be proclaimed to the Gentiles in accord with

Isaiah 49:6. “We are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded

us, saying, ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you

may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’” (Acts 13:46–47).

However one understands the meaning of “justification” in Acts

13:38–39, the fact of justification language is clear.10 As far as I can

10Luke’s use of dikaiovw (Luke 7:29, 35; 10:29; 16:15; 18:14; Acts 13:38–39) coheres naturally with

Paul’s use and suggests the meaning “consider or reckon someone to be just or righteous.” My assistant

David Mathis put this well: “Acts 13:38–39 falls in line with this usage. The parallel between

‘in Jesus’ and ‘in Moses’ law’ is important to see. In Jesus, all those who believe are considered (or

counted) to be righteous from all those demands by which in Moses’ law they were not previously

able to be considered righteous. In Moses’ law, they were not able to be considered righteous because

they were not righteous and Moses’ law did not provide the righteousness for them. But in Jesus,

see, it is located precisely where Wright says it does not occur—as

the climactic expression of the gospel to both Jews and then Gentiles,

offering them forgiveness of sins, a right standing with God, and, in

that way, eternal life. Even though there are different contextualization

challenges in making “justification” understandable to Jews and

Gentiles, what Acts makes plain is that the same “salvation” that Paul

offers to the Jews is offered to the Gentiles.

For example, again, in Acts 28, Paul speaks to Jews from morning

till evening “testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince

them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets”

(v. 23). When they reject the message, Paul says, “Therefore let it be

known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles;

they will listen” (v. 28). There is good reason to believe that “this

salvation” refers to the same “salvation” of Acts 13:23, 26, 47. It is

the salvation of personal eternal life: “As many as were appointed to

eternal life believed” (Acts 13:48). And this eternal life was promised

through faith that embraced the forgiveness and justification that God

offered through Jesus Christ.

Therefore, I find Wright’s claim that “the doctrine of justification

by faith is not what Paul means by ‘the gospel’” to be misleading. And

his claim that justification is not what comes to Paul’s mind when he

addresses the question of entering a “living and saving relationship

with the living and saving God” does not square with Acts 13:38–48.

Believe on Jesus, Not the Doctrine of

Justification?

Perhaps Wright would clarify his meaning with the words, “We are not

justified by faith by believing in justification by faith. We are justified

by faith by believing in the gospel itself—in other words, that Jesus

is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.”11 In this sense, he

would say that the message of justification is not the gospel, and not a

message about how we get saved.

But there is a misleading ambiguity in Wright’s statement that

we are saved not by believing in justification by faith but by believing

in Jesus’ death and resurrection. The ambiguity is that it leaves

while they are still unrighteous, they are able to be considered righteous because a righteousness has

been provided for them, namely, Jesus’ own righteousness.”

11Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 261.

When Is the Lordship of Jesus Good News? 85

undefined what we believe in Jesus’ death and resurrection for. It is

not saving faith to believe in Jesus merely for prosperity or health or a

better marriage. In Wright’s passion to liberate the gospel from mere

individualism and to make it historical and global, he leaves it vague

for individual sinners.

The summons “Believe the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection”

has no content that is yet clearly good news. Not until the gospel

preacher tells the listener what Jesus offers him personally and freely

does this proclamation have the quality of good news. My point here

has simply been that from Acts 13:39 it is evident that one way Paul

preached the gospel was by saying, “By him [namely, Jesus] everyone

who believes is justified from everything from which you could not be

justified by the law of Moses.” Of course, it is Jesus who saves, not the

doctrine. And so our faith rests decisively on Jesus. But the doctrine

tells us what sort of Jesus we are resting on and what we are resting

on him for. Without this, the word Jesus has no content that could be

good news.

The Lordship of Jesus Is Terrifying,

Not Good News

Coming at Wright’s claims about the gospel from another angle, they

do not fit real life—neither Paul’s nor ours. The announcement that

Jesus is the Messiah, the imperial Lord of the universe, is not good

news, but is an absolutely terrifying message to a sinner who has spent

all his life ignoring or blaspheming the God and Father of the Lord

Jesus Christ and is therefore guilty of treason and liable to execution.

Wright seems to overlook this when he deals with what happened in

the mind of Saul in his conversion on the Damascus road. He sums up

the change:

Saul’s vision on the road to Damascus thus equipped him with an

entirely new perspective, though one which kept its roots firm and

deep within his previous covenantal theology. Israel’s destiny had been

summed up and achieved in Jesus the Messiah. The Age to Come had

been inaugurated. Saul himself was summoned to be its agent. He was

to declare to the pagan world that YHWH, the God of Israel, was the

one true God of the whole world, and that in Jesus of Nazareth he had

overcome evil and was creating a new world in which justice and peace

should reign supreme.

Saul of Tarsus, in other words, had found a new vocation. It would

demand all the energy, all the zeal, that he had devoted to his former

way of life. He was now to be a herald of the king.12

This is not false, but by itself it is unrealistically intellectualistic. It is

mainly conceptual and minimally experiential. No doubt Wright is

aware of what Stephen Westerholm calls human beings’ “massive,

unremitting sense of answerability to their Maker.”13 But does he take

it sufficiently into account? I do not think it would be wild speculation

to suggest that when Saul, who had hated Jesus and his followers, fell

to the ground under the absolute, sovereign authority of the irresistible

brightness of the living Jesus, his first thoughts would not be about his

concepts, but about his survival. His first thoughts would not be about

a new worldview and a new vocation, but whether he would at that

moment be destroyed. What astonished Saul to the end of his days was

first and foremost that a persecutor of the church should receive mercy

instead of being cast into outer darkness.

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ

Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus

Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who

were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Tim. 1:15–16; cf. 1 Cor. 15:9;

Gal. 1:13; Phil. 3:6)

Escape from Wrath Is Not a Subplot of

the Gospel

It is not sixteenth-century or twenty-first-century anachronistic psychologizing

to say that the good news for Paul was, first, that a persecutor

of Jesus could be given a right standing before God through

faith. The good news was not that Jesus died and was raised—that

was emphatically bad news at this moment! What turned that bad

news of death and resurrection into good news was the teaching—the

12What Saint Paul Really Said, 37.

13Stephen Westerholm, “The ‘New Perspective’ at Twenty-Five,” in Justification and Variegated

Nomism, Vol. II: The Paradoxes of Paul, ed. D. A. Carson et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker

Academic, 2004), 38.

When Is the Lordship of Jesus Good News? 87

doctrine—that by faith alone this life and death of Jesus could be the

ground of the justification of the ungodly, not condemnation. And this

good news came before Paul ever thought through his new worldview

with Jesus as the King and himself as his ambassador. That would

come. But to treat the personal reality of Paul’s own immediate and

inescapable need under God’s wrath as a secondary subplot to the

global concerns of the gospel is to miss both the right ordering of Paul’s

message and what makes it relevant to every generation.

That God had not destined him for wrath but to obtain salvation

through Jesus (1 Thess. 5:9) was the first and foundational wonder

for Paul. It became increasingly real with every breath he took after

the blazing glory, in his blindness, on the way to Damascus. The personal

realities of knowing oneself loved, forgiven, and justified are not

subordinate to the global wonders of the universal lordship of Jesus.

Without these personal realities being known and received that lordship

is terrifying.

No Good News Till I Hear the Terms of

the Amnesty

I rejoice with N. T. Wright in the cosmic scope of what the gospel has

achieved. I am not eager to marginalize the hope “that the creation

itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the

freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). That the

material creation followed us into the Fall with chaos and corruption

and futility and will follow us into redemption with glory is not a marginal

truth. As I write these words, I have just delivered a message at

the Gospel Coalition entitled “The Triumph of the Gospel in the New

Heavens and the New Earth.”14 The renewal of creation to a glory far

beyond the first paradise (1 Cor. 15:49–50), where believers in Jesus

will magnify him in our new spiritual bodies forever, is the apex of our

gospel hope.15

For the sake of these great realities, Wright wants to keep the

14You can read or listen to this message at http://www.desiringGod.org/ResourceLibrary/

ConferenceMessages/ByDate/2177_The_Triumph_of_the_Gospel_in_the_New_Heavens_and_the_

New_Earth/ (accessed 6–2–07).

15This is not a token concession on my part, but a deeply held conviction unfolded in my own

preaching on repeated occasions. For my own exultation in the cosmic redemption of Christ and

our part in it, see my sermons at www.desiringGod.org dated 8-17-80; 5-25-86; 8-8-93; 4-28-02;

5-5-02; 4-1-07; 4-8-07.

gospel from being a message for “how to get saved,” and he wants to

keep the gospel distinct from the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

This is puzzling and seems to amount to keeping the gospel separate

from the very things that will make the lordship of Jesus good news

for sinners.

Why should a guilty sinner who has committed treason against

Jesus consider it good news when he hears the announcement that

this Jesus has been raised from the dead with absolute sovereign

rights over all human beings? If Wright answers, “Because the

narration of the events of the cross and resurrection are included

in the heralding of the King,” the sinner will say, “What good is

that for me? How can that help me? Why does that provide hope

for me or any sinner?” If the gospel has no answer for this sinner,

the mere facts of the death and resurrection of Jesus are not good

news. But if the gospel has an answer, it would have to be a message

about how the rebel against God can be saved—indeed, how he can

be right with God and become part of the covenant people. I do

not think Wright needs to marginalize these essential and glorious

aspects of the gospel in order to strengthen his case that the gospel

has larger global implications.

The closest Paul comes to a definition of his gospel seems to be

1 Corinthians 15:1–3:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you,

which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being

saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you

believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what

I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the

Scriptures.

Here Paul explicitly says two things: We are “saved” through the

gospel (di’ ou| kai; swÛvzesqe), and the gospel is the message that Christ

died “for our sins.” It is precisely the personal “for our sins” that

makes the heralding of the historic facts good news. And Paul is eager

to make explicit that this “for our sins” is good news because by it we

are “saved.” This is at the heart of what makes the gospel gospel, and

not just an effect of the gospel.

When Is the Lordship of Jesus Good News? 89

Jesus’ Lordship Is Good News When

Connected to Justification

Wright wants to maintain that when Paul announces the gospel, the

teaching on justification does not spring to Paul’s lips or pen. When

he approached people with “questions about how human beings come

into a living and saving relationship with the living and saving God,”16

he did not answer with the doctrine of justification. Without at all

insisting that Paul always announced the truth of justification in every

gospel message, I would still want to insist from Paul’s own words that

his announcement of the death and resurrection and lordship of Jesus

became good news in Paul’s preaching precisely because in some way

he communicated that believing in this Christ brought about justification.

For example, notice how Romans 10:9 relates to Romans 10:10.

It is true that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and

believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be

saved” (v. 9). Wright wants to stress the fact that when one believes the

gospel, this is precisely what one believes—that Jesus is Lord and that

God raised him from the dead. Yes. The announcement of Jesus’ resurrection

and lordship is good news. And we must believe it. But it can

only be heard as good news if we give the guilty rebel the promise that

believing this will save him and then give him some reason to hope that

the risen King will not execute him for his treason. The end of verse 9

gives that promise: Believe this and “you will be saved.” And the next

verse gives the reason for this hope.

Verse 10 says, “For with the heart one believes and is justified

[kardivaÛ ga;r pisteuvetai eiji dikaiosuvnhn], and with the mouth one

confesses and is saved [stovmati de; oJmologei`tai eiji swthrivan].”

Therefore, take heart, O rebel, “Everyone who calls on the name of the

Lord will be saved” (v. 13). Does not the way verse 10 grounds verse 9

show that in Paul’s mind the proclamation of the facts of Christ’s death

and resurrection and lordship become good news when some explanation

is given about how they make us righteous before God rather

than guilty? It is not just the existence of the truth of justification, but

the proclamation of it that is a crucial part of the gospel. Therefore,

it is confusing when Wright continues to say that the gospel, as Paul

16Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 116.

90 The Future of Justification

conceived it and announced it, is not a message about how to get saved

and how to be justified.

In the next chapter we turn to wrestle with what happens in the

initial divine act of justification and how it relates to the effectual call

of God.

When Is the Lordship of Jesus Good News? 91

Chapter Six

Justification and the Gospel:

Does Justification Determine Our

Standing with God?

A Deeper Reason Why Justification Is

Kept Separate from the Gospel

As we continue to wrestle with why Wright wants to emphasize that

justification is not the gospel, it seems that something deeper is going

on. Wright resists making justification part of the gospel for more reasons

than simply his desire to highlight the global scope of the gospel.1

What makes him say things like, “I must stress again that the doctrine

of justification by faith is not what Paul means by ‘the gospel’”?2

One answer seems to be that, in his understanding, justification is

not part of God’s work in conversion or the divine action whereby a

person becomes a part of the covenant family. Rather, justification is

a declaration that a person has been converted and is now, because of

faith and God’s effectual calling, in the covenant family. “‘Justification’

is not about ‘how I get saved’ but ‘how I am declared to be a member

of God’s people.’”3 The gospel—the announcement of Jesus’ universal

lordship to all people—is very much the means through which “God

works by his Spirit upon their hearts”4 to change them so that they

become Christians. But justification is not part of that gospel or that

1Again, I rejoice with Wright in the cosmic proportions of God’s redeeming work in Christ. That is

not what I am criticizing. See footnotes 14 and 15 in chapter 5.

2Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 132.

3Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 122.

4Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 116.

i

divine action by which a person becomes a Christian. For Wright, the

nature of justification is such that it is not part of becoming a Christian.

It is the declaration that one has become a Christian—a covenant

member.

Paul’s conception of how people are drawn into salvation starts with

the preaching of the gospel, continues with the work of the Spirit in

and through that preaching, and the effect of the Spirit’s work on the

hearts of the hearers, and concludes with the coming to birth of faith,

and entry into the family through baptism. ‘No one can say “Jesus is

Lord” except by the Holy Spirit’ (1 Corinthians 12:3). But when that

confession is made, God declares that this person, who perhaps to

their own surprise believes the gospel, is thereby marked out as being

within the true covenant family. Justification is not how someone

becomes a Christian. It is the declaration that they have become a

Christian.5

[Justification] was not so much about ‘getting in’, or indeed about

‘staying in’, as about ‘how you could tell who was in’. In standard

Christian theological language, it wasn’t so much about soteriology as

about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.6

The point is that the word ‘justification’ does not itself denote the

process whereby, or the event in which, a person is brought by grace

from unbelief, idolatry and sin into faith, true worship and renewal of

life. Paul, clearly and unambiguously, uses a different word for that,

the word ‘call’. The word ‘justification’, despite centuries of Christian

misuse, is used by Paul to denote that which happens immediately after

the ‘call’:7 ‘those God called, he also justified’ (Romans 8:30). In

other words, those who hear the gospel and respond to it in faith are

then declared by God to be his people, his elect, ‘the circumcision’, ‘the

Jews’, ‘the Israel of God’. They are given the status dikaios, ‘righteous’,

‘within the covenant’.8

5Ibid., 125. Emphasis added.

6Ibid., 119.

7I am not aware of any teacher in the church who has reversed the order of called and justified in

Romans 8:30. This part of Wright’s analysis is not controversial. Of course, justification (immediately)

follows God’s effectual grace in his call, which awakens the faith through which we are justified.

The misuse of justification that Wright opposes is an oversimplified equation of justification

and conversion. Yes, these are not synonymous, and Wright’s explanation of the “call” of God in

awakening faith is essential to conversion (1 Cor. 1:24). But it does not follow that justification, as

God’s action in response to faith, is not also an essential part of conversion and an essential act of

God in making someone part of his covenant family.

8Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 121–122.

Keep in mind that the sequence Wright is describing here is made

up of events that are so close together they are temporally indistinguishable.

Wright calls this “Paul’s own ‘ordo salutis [order of salvation].’”9

God’s “call” happens effectually; faith is instantaneously awakened

because of that call. There is no lapse of time between God’s call and

our justifying faith. That’s the nature of the call. When it exists, it has

the immediate effect of awakening faith. Then, as Wright says, justification

“happens immediately after the call.” “God at once makes”

this declaration.

This makes all the more remarkable Wright’s zeal to remove

justification from the event of becoming a Christian: “Justification is

not how someone becomes a Christian.” What is driving this peculiar

vigilance to make such a fine distinction between the temporally and

causally inseparable events of divine calling/faith/justification? On

many sweeping points, Wright is not so vigilant about making such fine

distinctions. Something unusual seems to be at stake here.

Does Justification Add Nothing to

the Call of God?

The actual redeeming work of God in taking sinners from idolatry and

sin into the position of fellowship with God and into membership in

his covenant people is, first, the work of Christ on the cross, and then

the work of the Spirit in giving birth to faith. This faith-awakening

work, which is a kind of resurrection from the dead (Eph. 2:5), Paul

designates as God’s “call.” It is not the general call that goes out from

a pulpit or radio program and summons everyone to faith. Rather, it is

the effectual call that accomplishes what it commands (1 Cor. 1:9, 24;

7:20, 24; Rom. 8:28, 30).

Hence, Paul writes to the Corinthians, “We preach Christ crucified,

a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those

who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and

the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23–24). God’s call enables us to see

and embrace the cross as the power and wisdom of God. That is, it

awakens faith.

Wright’s point is that when this call happens—when it awakens

spiritual life and faith—we are, by that act, “in,” that is, in the fam

9Wright, “The Shape of Justification.”

Does Justification Determine Our Standing with God? 95

ily of God. Justification has nothing more to contribute to our being

converted or becoming a Christian or being in the covenant family.

God’s act of justification is therefore what Wright calls a “second-

order doctrine.” Its design for this age is to give assurance, not salvation.

“Justification by faith itself is a second-order doctrine: to believe

it is both to have assurance (believing that one will be vindicated on

the last day) and to know that one belongs in the single family of

God.”10

In other words, when the gospel is preached, it is not the doctrine

of justification that is preached but the death and resurrection and lordship

of Christ over the world. The Holy Spirit uses this news to awaken

faith in the heart. This is God’s divine call through the gospel. By this

call and faith, we are made partakers of Christ’s victory and become

part of God’s family. Then the doctrine of justification comes in and

declares to us what has happened to us. It thus gives assurance—but

does not save, or convert, or make us part of God’s family.

Justification, for Paul, is not (in Sanders’s terminology) how one “gets

in” to God’s people but about God’s declaration that someone is in.

In other words, it is all about assurance—as we should have known

from reading Romans. I have said it before: If we are thinking Paul’s

thoughts after him, we are not justified by faith by believing in justification

by faith. We are justified by faith by believing in the gospel

itself—in other words, that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from

the dead. If, in addition, we believe in justification by faith itself, we

believe that—amazingly, considering what God knows about us—we

are now and forever part of the family to whose every member God

says what he said to Jesus at his baptism: you are my beloved child,

with you I am well pleased.11

In other words, the divine act of justification is not part of what God

does in putting us in right standing with himself but is the declaration

that we are in that position. Thus, it is not part of the gospel proclamation

nor of the event of conversion. I have argued above that justification

is more than this.12 I think that Simon Gathercole is correct on

this point:

10Wright, “The Shape of Justification.”

11Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 261.

12See chapter 2, 28-31 above.

Tom Wright’s definition of justification as being “reckoned to be in the

covenant with God” seems too minimal. To cite a longer definition [of

justification by Wright]:

Justification, to offer a fuller statement, is the recognition and

declaration by God that those who are thus called and believing

are in fact his people, the single family promised to Abraham,

that as the new covenant people their sins are forgiven, and that

since they have already died and been raised with the Messiah

they are assured of final bodily resurrection at the last.13

This may not sound like a minimalistic definition of justification.

We have seen above, however, that God’s act of justification is not one

of recognition but is, rather, closer to creation. It is God’s determination

of our new identity rather than a recognition of it.14

Wright rejects this view. In his insistence that the divine act of justification

is not conversion and not part of the event by which we move

from alienation to reconciliation and not part of the change from being

foreigners to being part of God’s forgiven people, he says, “The word

dikaioø is, after all, a declarative word, declaring that something is the

case, rather than a word for making something happen or changing the

way something is.”15

In Justification God Actually Puts Us

Right with Himself

If Wright only meant that justification is not part of conversion in the

sense that the inner workings of the human heart are not what justification

is, there would be no disagreement at this point. Agreed—justification

does not consist in the changes of the human heart in conversion.

But it is the change that takes place in the relationship between a sinner

and God at the moment of faith. Wright agrees that “the word ‘justification’

. . . is used by Paul to denote that which happens immediately

after the ‘call,’”16 but he denies that this “happening” effects our right

standing with God. It only declares that this right standing has come

about.

13N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Galatians: Exegesis and Theology,” in Between Two Horizons:

Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology, ed. J. B. Green and M. Turner (Grand

Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 235.

14Simon Gathercole, “The Doctrine of Justification in Paul and Beyond,” 229. See above, chapter

2, 28-31.

15Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 258.

16Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 121–122.

Does Justification Determine Our Standing with God? 97

However, in line with what Gathercole says above, Paul speaks of

the effect of justification: “Therefore, since we have been justified by

faith, we have peace with God” (Rom. 5:1). This most naturally means

that what God did in the act of justifying us at the moment of faith was

effective in giving us peace with God. God’s act of justification does

not merely inform us that we have peace with God; it establishes peace

with God. The divine act of justification is constitutive of the event by

which we obtain peace with God.17

Does Wright want us to think that because the call of God effectively

awakens faith and unites us to Christ, there can be no other aspects to

the work of God in conversion that are essential to the transition from

alienated to reconciled? Nothing Paul says would require such a position.

Therefore, we may conclude that justification should not be called

a “second-order doctrine,” only giving assurance but not part of the

event by which we enter God’s favor. Calling/faith/justification are parts

of one event that brings us from God’s enmity to his acceptance. There

is a logical sequence, but to say that justification only comes after we are

“in” would misrepresent Paul’s treatment of justification as essential to

the act of actually putting us in the right with God.

Is Justification Central Polemically but

Not Evangelistically?

Wright can speak of the doctrine of justification in more primary terms

than he does above. He has written, for example:

I . . . discover that my call, my Reformational call, to be a faithful

reader and interpreter of scripture impels me to take seriously the fact,

to which many writers in the last two hundred years have called attention,

that whenever Paul is talking about justification by faith he is also

talking about the coming together of Jews and Gentiles into the single

people of God. I did not make this up; it is there in the God-given texts.

I do not draw from this observation the conclusion that some have done

17I confess I do not know how to put what Wright said above (“New Perspectives on Paul,” 258)

together with what he says in his commentary on The Letter to the Romans, 515: “Justification

results in peace with God, in access to God’s loving favor.” On the one hand, it seemed that Wright

was arguing that God’s “call” is a clear act of God’s “loving favor” and that therefore we were

already “in” God’s family of favor at the event of calling/faith, which was then followed by the

assurance-giving declaration of acceptance called justification. But on the other hand, it sounds like

“justification results in . . . access to God’s loving favor” (emphasis added). The former sounds like

justification does not make anything happen but only declares, and the latter sounds like justification

makes something happen.

(I think particularly of Wrede and Schweitzer), namely that justification

is itself a mere secondary doctrine, called upon for particular polemical

purposes but not at the very centre of Paul’s thought. On the contrary:

since the creation, through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ,

of this single multi-ethnic family, the family God promised to Abraham,

the family justified, declared to be in the right, declared to be God’s

people, on the basis of faith alone, the family whose sins have been

forgiven through the death of the Messiah in their place and on their

behalf, the family who constitute the first-fruits of the new creation

that began with the bodily resurrection of Jesus—since the creation of

this family was the aim and goal of all Paul’s work, and since this work

was by its very nature polemical, granted the deeply suspicious pagan

world on the one hand and the deeply Law-based Jewish world on the

other, it was natural and inevitable that Paul’s apostolic work would

itself involve polemical exposition of the results of the gospel, and that

justification by faith, as itself a key polemical doctrine, would find itself

at the centre when he did so.18

Thus, when Wright calls justification a “second-order doctrine,” he

does not mean a “mere secondary doctrine” or one that is not of central

concern. It is a “key polemical doctrine”—which means, it seems, that

the doctrine is key as a doctrine of assurance in a polemical situation,

but still not part of the first-order gospel proclamation about how to

be saved. Accordingly, Wright says:

The doctrine of “justification by faith” . . . was not the message [Paul]

would announce on the street to the puzzled pagans (say) of Corinth;

it was not the main thrust of his evangelistic message. It was the thing

his converts most needed to know in order to be assured that they really

were part of God’s people.19

‘Justification’ is the declaration which God at once makes, that all who

share this faith belong to Christ, to his sin-forgiven family . . . and are

assured of final glorification.20

18Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.”

19Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 94. My guess is that Paul would not have drawn the line

Wright does between what you say to a pagan to win him to faith and what you say to him afterwards

to assure him that his faith has put him in a safe position. It is the hope of being in a safe

position before God that a person needs to hear about in order to hear the gospel as good news.

“If you believe, then such and such will be true of you” is the way the gospel speaks to unbelievers.

See chapter 5 above (pp. 47–49) for an example of Paul’s preaching that does not fit with Wright’s

statement here.

20Wright, “The Shape of Justification.”

Does Justification Determine Our Standing with God? 99

Is Future Justification a Saving Act

and Not Just a Declaration?

This limitation of justification to the declaration of who is in the covenant

is made harder to grasp when we recall that, for Wright, God’s

present act of justification is an “anticipation” of his future and final

act of justification that is more than declarative.

It seems that, even though Wright says dikaioø is “a declarative

word, declaring that something is the case, rather than a word for

making something happen or changing the way something is,”21

nevertheless, he wants to clarify that God’s future act of justification is

more than a declaration “that something is the case.” It is an event that

accomplishes final deliverance. For example, he says:

This declaration, this vindication, occurs twice. It occurs in the

future, as we have seen, on the basis of the entire life a person

has led in the power of the Spirit—that is, it occurs on the basis

of “works” in Paul’s redefined sense. And near the heart of Paul’s

theology, it occurs in the present as an anticipation of that future

verdict, when someone, responding in believing obedience to the

call of the gospel, believes that Jesus is Lord and that God raised

him from the dead. . . . And . . . the final declaration will consist

not in words so much as in an event, namely, the resurrection of

the person concerned into a glorious body like that of the risen

Jesus. . . .22

This last sentence emphasizes the fact that the final eschatological justification

is not only a declaration of what is the case but is an event

that completes the salvation of the believer.23 Without this event, there

would be no final salvation.

Evildoers (i.e. the Gentiles, and renegade Jews) would finally be

judged and punished; God’s faithful people (i.e. Israel, or at least

the true Israelites) would be vindicated. Their redemption, which

would take the physical and concrete form of political liberation

. . . and ultimately of resurrection itself, would be seen as the

21Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 258.

22Ibid., 260. Last emphasis added.

23Technically, Wright wants to preserve the parallel declaratory nature of first and final acts of

justification. But when he says that the second declaration is a declaration by means of an event,

especially the resurrection, he introduces a dimension of justification that is not merely declaratory

but profoundly—what shall we say—metaphysical, bodily, saving, consummative.

great law-court showdown, the great victory before the great

judge.24

Thus, according to Wright, justification in that day will not be an act

of public confirmation of a past, once-for-all, imputed righteousness

received in this life at the first act of faith (as I will maintain below).

Rather, the final justification will be something more than confirmation.

“Justification in the present . . . anticipates the future verdict.”25

But that future verdict is effective. It is an act of salvation, not just an

announcement or confirmation.

The Great Showdown

Final justification, he says, is a great showdown between God and evil.

Our eternal destiny is at stake. If God finds in our favor, we are not

condemned. If he does not, we are. This decision of God’s final law-

court is what the present declaration of justification was pointing to.

Justification in the present is not an act that puts us into the covenant

people. It declares that we are in. “Justification, for Paul, is not . . . how

one ‘gets in’ to God’s people but about God’s declaration that someone

is in.”26 But justification in the future is God’s great showdown with

evil and a great act of salvation. It does determine who, finally, is in.

And the crucial question for the final meaning of justification is: What

will be the final ground of our acceptance in the presence of God? That

is what we turn to in the next chapter.

The upshot of the last two chapters is that Wright’s claim that “the

doctrine of justification by faith is not what Paul means by ‘the gospel’”

27 and his claim that “justification is not how someone becomes

a Christian”28 are misleading. The kind of gospel preaching that will

flow from Wright’s spring will probably have global scope to it but will

not deal personally with the human heart of sin with clear declarations

of how Christ dealt with sin and how the fearful heart can find rest

in the gospel of grace—the active grace that, while not exhausted by

God’s act of justification, does include it.

24Wright, What Saint Paul Really Says, 33–34.

25Wright, “The Shape of Justification.”

26Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 261.

27Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 132.

28Ibid., 125.

Does Justification Determine Our Standing with God? 101

Chapter Seven

The Place of Our Works

in Justification

With the understanding of Wright’s view of justification that

we have seen so far, we may now ask: What is the basis or ground of

justification—in the present and at the end? We should be alert immediately

that the word basis is going to be a problem. Wright’s use of it is

not precise, as we will see. We will come to that difficulty directly. But

we may venture a preliminary answer to the question and then bring

in the needed nuances as we go along. Wright’s answer would be something

like this: In the future at the final court scene, God the Judge will

find in our favor on the basis of the works we have done—the life we

have lived—and in the present he anticipates that verdict and declares

it to be already true on the basis of our faith1 in Jesus.

The first mention of justification in Romans is a mention of justification

by works—apparently with Paul’s approval (2:13: ‘It is not the hearers

of the law who will be righteous before God, but the doers of the law

who will be justified’). The right way to understand this, I believe, is

to see that Paul is talking about the final justification. . . . The point is:

who will be vindicated, resurrected, shown to be the covenant people,

on that last day? Paul’s answer, with which many non-Christian Jews

would have agreed, is that those who will be vindicated on the last day

are those in whose hearts and lives God will have written his law, his

Torah. As Paul will make clear later on in the letter, this process can

1In his work Wright makes affirmations of justification in the present by faith alone. But I do not

find them to be perspicuous. The reason is that Wright sometimes speaks of faith as “faithfulness”

or sometimes as “obedience.” The result is that one feels unsure that Wright means by “faith alone”

what is ordinarily meant. We will deal with this below. See chapter 8, 130–131.

i

not be done by the Torah alone; God has now done in Christ and by

the Spirit what the Torah wanted to do but could not do [alluding to

Rom. 8:3–4].2

In other words, Paul believes that all men will face a final judgment

(law-court) in which people will “be vindicated, resurrected, shown to

be the covenant people”—that is, justified, by works. When he says

“by works,” he does not mean by legalism or by merit or by earning,

but by the obedience of our lives that is produced by the Holy Spirit

through faith. Wright sees Romans 8:3–4 as an explanation of Romans

2:13: It is “the doers of the law who will be justified.” “The doers of

the law” refer to Christians described in Romans 8:3–4.

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.

By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he

condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of

the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh

but according to the Spirit.

Are “the Doers of the Law” Christians?

According to Wright, “the doers of the law” are those who “walk by the

Spirit” and thus fulfill the “righteous requirement of the law,” which is

possible because God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus.3 This means

that justification, which happens with final and complete salvation in the

future, and by way of anticipation in the present, will be based on the life

of obedience that we live in the power of the Spirit.

The Spirit is the path by which Paul traces the route from justification

by faith in the present to justification, by the complete life lived, in the

future. You cannot understand justification by faith in Romans 3 and

4 unless you see it flanked by the long statement of judgment according

to works in Romans 2.1–16 and the spectacular scene in Romans

8 which explains why there is indeed ‘no condemnation for those who

are in the Messiah, Jesus’.4

2Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 126–127.

3Wright takes “the righteous requirement of the law” (to; dikaivwma tou` novmou) in Romans 8:4 to

refer to God’s righteous decree, “Do this and you will live.” “The main sentence with which Paul

then explains how God has done what the law could not do must then be understood as follows:

God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus, so that the life the law offered could rightly be given to

those led by the Spirit.” Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 577–578.

4Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 148. Emphasis added.

Obviously Romans 2:13 is enormously significant for Wright’s

understanding of justification. He returns to it again and again as a

programmatically decisive word from Paul. We will do well then to pay

close attention to the context and what Paul is saying.

The Context of Romans 2:13

In Romans 2:1–5, Paul pointed out that the people in his day with

high moral standards, especially many of his own kinsmen (the Jews),

were guilty of hypocrisy. They point the finger at the immoral Gentiles

(mentioned in Rom. 1:18ff.), but in doing so, Paul says, they indict

themselves, because they do the same kind of things.

Then he explains in verses 6–10 that the judgment on Jew and

Gentile is going to be “according to . . . works” (kata; ta; e[rga aujtou),

not according to their ethnic or religious advantages. Jews and Gentiles

will receive or not receive eternal life on the same terms. Paul does

not spell out how the deeds actually function in the final judgment.

Theoretically, (1) the deeds could be the basis in a meritorious way; or

(2) they could be the basis as Spirit-wrought fruits of faith; or (3) they

might be, not the basis, but the evidence and confirmation of faith in

Christ who cancels the debt of all sin; or, (4) extending that last possibility,

they could also be the evidence and confirmation of faith in Christ

as the one in whom we are counted righteous with his righteousness.

In this text Paul does not settle which of these four possibilities is true.

His point here is: Jews and Gentiles are equally subject to eternal life or

wrath without respect to their ethnic distinctives.

In verse 11, Paul states the principle or the truth about God

underlying this train of argument: “For there is no partiality with

God” (nasb). This is why God will judge the Jews and the Gentiles not

according to their appearance or their circumstances or their cultural

or religious advantages, but according to something more intrinsic.

This is something fundamental about God. He is impartial.

But there is an objection that has to be answered. So Paul takes

another step in his argument. The objection goes like this: You say,

Paul, that God is going to judge all people according to their deeds, and

therefore impartially; but, in fact, God gave the law of Moses only to

the Jews, and so they have access to what deeds are required of them,

and the rest of the world doesn’t. So how can you say that God is

The Place of Our Works in Justification 105

impartial to judge according to deeds when he has told only one group

of people what deeds they must do?

The first part of Paul’s answer is in verse 12: The reason we know

God is impartial is because “all who have sinned without the law [that

is, nations who don’t have the Old Testament law of Moses] will also

perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law [Jews

who have the law of Moses] will be judged by the law.” We can see that

this is a direct response to an objection: They don’t have equal access

to what they will be held accountable for! The point is that the law of

Moses will not be brought in to condemn those who sinned with no

access to the law of Moses. It will be used only to judge those who had

access to it.

When someone perishes who never heard of the law of Moses, it is

not because they never heard that law. Not hearing the law of Moses

will not condemn anyone. And hearing it will not save anyone. That’s

what Paul says next in verse 13: “It is not the hearers of the law who are

righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.” In

other words, having access to the moral law of Moses and hearing it is

not an advantage at the final judgment. At the judgment, the question

will not be: How much of the law did you hear? The question will be:

Did you do it?

The Gentiles Have the Work of

the Law Written on Their Hearts

Before I comment on the meaning of “it is . . . the doers of the law

who will be justified,” let me finish tracing Paul’s argument in this

paragraph. A new objection emerges immediately after what Paul said

in verse 13. Somebody is going to say, “How can anyone do what the

law requires if they don’t have a copy of the law to read and follow?

Paul, you say that doing and not hearing is what counts, but still those

who have the law are at an advantage, because they know what they

have to do.”

Verses 14–15 are Paul’s answer to this objection. “When Gentiles,

who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are

a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show

that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience

also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even

excuse them.” This is Paul’s answer to the question: “How can God be

impartial in judging according to our deeds if the Jews have a written

record of the required deeds and the Gentiles don’t?” His answer is that

the Gentiles do have the law. The deeds required in the moral law of

God (“work of the law,” v. 15) are written on their hearts. Or, as verse

14 says, “They are a law to themselves.” Then he says in verse 15b that

the evidence for this is that the moral behavior of all kinds of people all

over the world shows that they have a sense of many true, God-given,

moral obligations, and their conscience confirms this with the conflicting

self-defenses and self-accusations that it constantly brings up.

Who Are the Gentiles with the Work of

the Law on Their Hearts?

Many today, including N. T. Wright,5 understand the Gentiles in

verses 14–15 who have the “work of the law . . . written on their

hearts” to be Christian Gentiles who are experiencing the fulfillment

of the new-covenant promise of Jeremiah 31:33. I find Tom Schreiner’s

careful analysis of the arguments on both sides of this issue compelling.

He points out that the thought flows most naturally if the Gentiles in

view are not Christians but pagans who are distant from any special

revelation. That is why the main statement in verse 14, “They are a law

to themselves,” is so crucial here, and yet so out of place if the Gentiles

are Christians. It would be very strange to say that believers are “a law

to themselves.”

Moreover, Paul does not say, with Jeremiah 31:33, that these

Gentiles have “the law written on their hearts.” He says that “the

work of the law [to; e[rgon tou` novmou] is written on their hearts” (v.

15). This is not the wording of Jeremiah 31, but it fits well with the

point that what the Gentile pagans have on their hearts is not the very

law of Moses but rather an impulse to do the kind of “work” that the

law requires.

Finally, Schreiner points out that the function of the conscience in

verse 15 is described in a way that would seem strange if it referred

to a believer who is a “doer of the law.” “Their conscience also bears

witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.”

Schreiner comments, “Any notion that this is saving obedience is ruled

5Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 441-442.

The Place of Our Works in Justification 107

out by this clause, for the text emphasizes that ‘accusing’ thoughts

predominate. . . . Indeed, the words h[ kai; (“or even”) that precede

ajpologoumevnwn (“defending”) intimate that the defending thoughts are

relatively rare, or at least the exception rather than the rule. Therefore,

the doing of the law described in verse 14 should not be understood as

a consistent and regular observance of the law.”6

Putting the Pieces Together

So we may now put the whole train of thought before us, from verse

11 on. First, Paul says that “there is no partiality with God” (v. 11,

nasb). Then, he defends this in verse 12 by saying that God’s judgment

will come to the world according to how they respond to the measure

of truth to which they have access. Then he explains (v. 13) that mere

hearing of the law is no advantage to the Jew at the judgment day, and

not hearing it is no disadvantage to the Gentile, because doing rather

than hearing is the issue. Then, he explains (vv. 14–15) that the law

really is available to those who have no access to the law of Moses,

because God has written what the law requires on the heart and given

all of us a conscience to awaken us to this moral knowledge in our

hearts.

Paul expressed these points earlier in Romans 1:32 (“They know

the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy

of death,” nasb) and Romans 1:26 (“Women exchanged the natural

function for that which is unnatural,” nasb) and Romans 1:21 (“They

knew God”). And the point of it all is to stress that every human being

is truly and justly guilty before God because everyone has access to the

truth but suppresses it (Rom. 1:18). None lives up to this truth, nor

even up to the demands of his own conscience. Nevertheless, all are

accountable to God and will be without excuse at the judgment day.

All Jews and all Gentiles are accountable to God and guilty before him

under the power of sin.

Justification by Works?

Now we are in a better position to comment on Romans 2:13 where

Paul says, “It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before

6Thomas Schreiner, Romans, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand

Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), 124. The entire section dealing with the arguments pro and con is on

pp. 119–125.

God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.” Again, as we saw

with verses 6–11, Paul does not say how being a “doer of the law”

functions in relation to being justified at the last day. At least the same

four possibilities that I mentioned above exist, plus one more: Doing

the law could be (1) the basis of justification in a meritorious way; or

(2) it could be the basis as Spirit-wrought fruits of faith; or (3) it could

be, not the basis, but the evidence and confirmation of faith in another

basis, namely, Christ who cancels the debt of all sin; or, extending that

last possibility beyond forgiveness, (4) it could also be the evidence and

confirmation of faith in Christ as the one in whom not only forgiveness

but also divine righteousness is counted as ours. Or (5) Paul could be

stating a principle that he affirms but that he believes never comes to

pass for sinful people. Thus, John Stott says, “This is a theoretical or

hypothetical statement, of course, since no human being has ever fully

obeyed the law (cf. 3:20).”7

What is not said in verse 13 is that people are justified “by works.”

Paul does not use the phrase ejx e[rgwn (“from works”), which I take to

be roughly what is usually meant by the English phrase “on the basis of

works,” as opposed to the phrase “according to works” (kata; ta; e[rga

aujtou`).8 Paul is clear that “by works of the law no human being will

7John Stott, Romans: God’s Good News for the World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,

1994), 86. Douglas Moo writes:

The question arises here again (as in vv. 7 and 10): Who are those whom Paul views as

vindicated in the judgment by their doing of the law? . . . As in vv. 7 and 10, therefore, we

think it more likely that Paul is here simply setting forth the standard by which God’s justifying

verdict will be rendered. This verse confirms and explains the reason for the Jews’

condemnation in v. 12b; and this suggests that its purpose is not to show how people can

be justified but to set forth the standard that must be met if a person is to be justified.

As he does throughout this chapter, Paul presses typical Jewish teaching into the service

of his “preparation for the gospel.” Jews believed that “doing” the law, or perhaps the

intent to do the law, would lead, for the Jew already in covenant relationship with God,

to final salvation. Paul affirms the principle that doing the law can lead to salvation;

but he denies (1) that anyone can so “do” the law; and (2) that Jews can depend on

their covenant relationship to shield them from the consequences of this failure. (Moo,

Romans, NICNT [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996], 147-148.)

8Wherever the phrase ejx e[rgwn is connected to justification in Paul, the point is that justification

does not happen this way. Rom. 3:20; 9:11, 32; 11:6; Gal. 2:16; 3:2, 5, 19; Eph. 2:9; Titus 3:5. In

Matthew 12:37 and James 2:21, 24–25, justification is said to happen “by your words” (ejk . . .

tw`n lovgwn sou) or “by works” (ejx e[rgwn). Other contextual factors incline me to take Jesus and

James to mean not that justification is “based on” our deeds the way our justification is “based on”

Christ as our righteousness, but rather that our deeds confirm our faith in Jesus so that he remains

the sole basis of our acceptance with God, in the sense that his death alone covers our sins and his

righteousness alone provides all the obedience that God requires of us for God to be totally for

us—the perfect righteousness implicitly required in the phrase, “God counts righteousness apart

from works” (Rom. 4:6). It is likely that Matthew and James are using the word dikaiovw differently

than Paul is (just as Matthew and Paul use kalevw differently, Matt. 22:14; Rom. 8:30). So, James

and Matthew may also be appropriating the phrase “from works” differently than Paul. While Paul

chooses to never employ that phrase in reference either to present justification or future judgment,

The Place of Our Works in Justification 109

be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin”

(Rom. 3:20).9 Rather, he says, “We hold that one is justified by faith

apart from works of the law” (Rom. 3:28). Does this mean that the

statement “It is . . . the doers of the law who will be justified” (v. 13)

only expresses a principle of doing over against hearing so as to remove

the objection that the Gentiles don’t have access to “hearing”?

Given the demands of the flow of the argument in Romans 2:6–16

which we saw above, I doubt that we can press this statement very far

for the defense of justification by works. Paul makes a statement that in

this context functions as a principle (doing, not hearing, will matter at

the judgment), rather than a declaration about how that doing relates

to justification—let alone whether the doing of Christ may supply what

our doing lacks. The verse was not written to carry that much freight.

However, the verse does raise the question that must be answered: How

does the obedience of the Christian relate to his justification?

How I See Works Relating to Justification

Let me declare myself clearly here: I believe in the necessity of a transformed

life of obedience to Jesus by the power of the Spirit through

faith as a public evidence and confirmation of faith at the Last Day for

all who will finally be saved. In other words, I believe it is actually true,

not just hypothetically true, that God “will render to each one according

to his works [ta; e[rga aujtou`]: to those who by patience in well-

doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal

life” (Rom. 2:6–7). I take the phrase “according to” (kata;) in a sense

different from “based on.” I think the best way to bring together the

various threads of Paul’s teaching on justification by faith apart from

works (Rom. 3:28; 4:4–6; 11:6; Eph. 2:8) is to treat the necessity of

obedience not as any part of the basis of our justification, but strictly

as the evidence and confirmation of our faith in Christ whose blood

and righteousness is the sole basis of our justification. How this is the

James and Matthew, without differing from Paul conceptually, employ a phrase that Paul wouldn’t

to say something (conceptually) that Paul would. I am not saying that there are distinct and uniform

usages of the two phrases ejx e[rgwn and kata; ta; e[rga. The latter can carry the sense of “on the

basis of” at times, though not always. Therefore, we must draw our conclusions concerning Paul’s

understanding of the function of works in relation to justification not merely from the phrases

themselves, but from the wider teaching of the apostle as well.

9I think Douglas Moo is right that “‘doers of the law’ are no more and no less than those who ‘do

the works of the law’; and ‘works of the law,’ Paul claims, cannot justify (cf. 3:20, 28).” Moo,

Romans, 147.

case, while justification is by faith alone apart from any basis in that

very obedience, has been one of the main themes of my preaching and

writing for the last thirty years.10

A Conspiracy of Silence?

Wright thinks Reformed pastors and scholars do not pay enough

attention to the relationship between justification and works. When

he spoke at the 2003 Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference, he said that

there seemed to be

a massive conspiracy of silence about something that was quite clear for

Paul (as indeed for Jesus). Paul, in company with mainstream second-

Temple Judaism affirms that God’s final judgment will be in accordance

with the entirety of a life led—in accordance, in other words, with

works. He says this clearly and unambiguously in Romans 14.10–12

and 2 Corinthians 5.10. He affirms it in that terrifying passage about

church-builders in 1 Corinthians 3. But the main passage in question is

of course Romans 2.1–16.11

Whether there was a conspiracy of silence in Edinburgh, there

surely has not been one in the history of Reformed reflection on

Scripture, or in the Reformed confessions. The thinking on this issue

has been sustained, detailed, meticulously careful, and often profound.

The fruit of that thinking and exegesis is found in the confessions.

The Augsburg Confession

The historic Lutheran Augsburg Confession was written by Philipp

Melanchthon (1497–1560), sanctioned by Martin Luther, and presented

by the German Protestants to Charles V in 1530. It describes the

relationship between justifying faith and the subsequent life of obedience

in the following terms:

10See most fully my extended treatment of this issue in The Purifying Power of Living by Faith in

Future Grace (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1995). See also “The Pleasure of God in Personal Obedience

and Public Justice,” in John Piper, The Pleasures of God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2000, orig.

1991), 233–257; “Fighting for Joy Like a Justified Sinner,” in When I Don’t Desire God: How

to Fight for Joy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 71–94; What Jesus Demands from the

World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), especially 174–180, 242–248; “Letter to a Friend

Concerning the So-Called Lordship Salvation,” http://www.desiringGod.org/ResourceLibrary/

Articles/ByDate/1990/1496_Letter_to_a_Friend_Concerning_the_SoCalled_Lordship_Salvation/.

11Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 253.

The Place of Our Works in Justification 111

(IV) [The churches with common consent among us] teach that men

cannot be justified before God by their own powers, merits, or works;

but are justified freely for Christ’s sake through faith, when they believe

. . . (VI) Also they teach that this faith should bring forth good fruits,

and that men ought to do the good works commanded of God, because

it is God’s will, and not on any confidence of meriting justification

before God by their works.

Thus far, the Augsburg Confession simply says that justifying faith

“should bring forth good fruits.” But in Article XX it goes deeper in

explaining this connection:

Because the Holy Spirit is received by faith, our hearts are now

renewed, and so put on new affections, so that they are able to bring

forth good works. For thus saith Ambrose: “Faith is the begetter of a

good will and of good actions.” . . . Hereby every man may see that

this doctrine [of justification by faith alone] is not to be accused, as

forbidding good works; but rather is much to be commended, because

it showeth after what sort we must do good works. For without faith

the nature of man can by no means perform the works of the First or

Second Table. Without faith, it cannot call upon God, hope in God,

bear the cross; but seeketh help from man, and trusteth in man’s help.

So it cometh to pass that all lusts and human counsels bear sway in the

heart so long as faith and trust in God are absent.12

The doctrine of justification by faith “showeth after what sort [i.e.,

way] we must do good works.” I take this to mean that the Augsburg

Confession is not content to say that good works merely exist alongside

justifying faith, but also arise from that faith. “Faith is the begetter of

. . . good actions.” The power of “lusts and human counsels” is broken

where this faith is present.

A Swiss Confession

The First Helvetic Confession was composed by Swiss theologians

(Heinrich Bullinger, Simon Grynaeus, Oswald Myconius, etc.) at Basel,

Switzerland, in 1536. It represented the faith of all the cantons of

Switzerland at that period of the Reformation. Article XIII is entitled

“How the grace of Christ and his merit are imparted to us and what

12Quoted from Philip Schaff, ed., The Creeds of Christendom (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1977,

orig. 1877), 3:10–11, 24–25.

fruit comes from them.” It reads, “We come to the great and high deeds

of divine grace and the true sanctifying of the Holy Spirit not through

our merit or powers, but through faith, which is a pure gift and favor

of God.” Then Article XIV explains the connection between this faith

and works:

This same faith is a certain, firm, yes, undoubting ground, and a grasping

of all things that one hopes from God. From it love grows as a

fruit, and, by this love, come all kinds of virtues and good works. And,

although the pious and believing practice such fruit of faith, we do not

ascribe their piety or their attained salvation to such works, but to the

grace of God. This faith comforts itself with the mercy of God, and not

its works, even though it performs innumerable good works. This faith

is the true service which pleases God.13

Thus the Helvetic Confession affirms that love grows from faith

and produces all virtues. Faith does not simply exist alongside the fruit

of obedience, but itself “performs innumerable good works.”

The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England

The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England was

published as an expression of Anglican Reformed faith in 1571. Its

teaching on justification and good works is refreshingly straightforward

and clear:

We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our

Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works

or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only, is a most

wholesome Doctrine, and very full of comfort. . . . Albeit that Good

Works, which are the fruits of Faith, and follow after Justification,

cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God’s judgment;

yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do

spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith; insomuch that by

them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned

by the fruit.14

A life of obedience “springs out necessarily” from a true and

lively faith. Good works “are the fruits of Faith.” Justifying faith is

13Quoted from ibid., 218, my own translation from the original German.

14Quoted from ibid., 494.

The Place of Our Works in Justification 113

not merely alongside good works, but is also the agency employed by

the grace of God to give rise to good works. Thus good works are the

evidence of authentic faith.

The Westminster Confession of Faith

Perhaps the best known Confession of the Reformed faith is the

Westminster Confession of Faith, published in England in 1647.

Chapter XI of the Confession says:

(1) Those whom God effectually calleth he also freely justifieth; not by

infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by

accounting and accepting their persons as righteous: not for anything

wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone . . . (2)

Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the

alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified,

but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is not

dead faith, but worketh by love.15

Thus the Confession boldly declares that the faith that is the

“alone instrument of justification” also “work[s] by love.” It affirms,

therefore, that justifying faith is also sanctifying faith. It “work[s] by

love.” The Confession makes explicit (by its footnotes) that the words

“work[s] by love” are a reference to Galatians 5:6 (“For in Christ Jesus

neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only

faith working through love”). It thus establishes a necessary connection

between the faith that justifies and the obedient life of love. It says that

justifying faith “is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is

not dead faith, but worketh by love.” The word ever implies that there

can be no sustained life of the justified saint without also the outworking

of grace in a life of love.16

This is why the Reformed tradition has been able to affirm those

texts of Jesus and Paul and James and the writer to the Hebrews and

Peter and John that make moral transformation (especially the fruit of

15Quoted from ibid., 626. Emphasis added.

16Robert L. Dabney puts it this way: “Since the same faith, if vital enough to embrace Christ, is

also vital enough to ‘work by love,’ ‘to purify our hearts.’ This, then is the virtue of the free gospel,

as a ministry of sanctification, that the very faith which embraces the gift becomes an inevitable

and a divinely powerful principle of obedience” (emphasis added). Robert L. Dabney, “The Moral

Effects of a Free Justification,” in Discussions: Evangelical and Theological (London: Banner of

Truth, 1967, orig. 1890), 1:96.

love) necessary for final salvation.17 And yet, unlike N. T. Wright, they

have been jealous to clearly distinguish works, on the one hand, as a

necessary evidence of the faith that alone unites to Christ for justification

from works, on the other hand, as the basis of justification.18

I do not mean to treat the Reformed confessions as having authority

on a par with Scripture. What has been taught in the past does not

settle what should be taught in the future. Scripture, rightly understood,

remains the sole infallible authority in these matters. But I do

want to affirm that when Wright gives the impression that the biblical

texts that connect justification with works have not been rigorously

handled both exegetically and theologically, it is misleading. In fact, in

my view, his own references to justification “by the whole life lived”

or “by works” seem unreflective compared to the history of Reformed

exegesis.

Gaffin on Future Justification and Works

In January 2005, Wright joined Richard Gaffin and others at a Pastors

Conference in Monroe, Louisiana, to deal with issues relating to justification.

In this conference Gaffin offered good exegesis that moved in

a different direction than Wright on this matter of the basis of future

17Matthew 6:15: “If you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your

trespasses.” John 5:28–29: “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming when all who are in the

tombs shall hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and

those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” Romans 8:13: “If you live according

to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

Galatians 6:8–9: “The one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the

one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing

good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” Hebrews 12:14: “Strive for peace with

everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” James 2:17: “Faith by

itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” First Peter 3:9: “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for

reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.”

First John 1:7: “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another,

and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” First John 2:4: “Whoever says ‘I know him’

but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” First John 3:14: “We

know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not

love abides in death.”

18Thus, in a classic restatement of the doctrine of justification, James Buchanan invites us to

consider how Good Works stand related to Faith, and to Justification, respectively. They

are the effects of faith, and, as such, the evidences both of faith, and of justification. That

they are the effects of faith is clear; for “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” [Rom. 14:23];

and “without faith it is impossible to please God” [Heb. 11:6]; and “the end of the commandment

is charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and faith unfeigned”

[1 Tim. 1:5]. It is equally clear that, being the effects, they are also the evidences, of a

true and living faith; for “a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me

thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works” [James 2:18];

and all the good works, which are ascribed to believers under the Old Testament, are

traced to the operation of faith [Heb. 11:4, 7, 8, 23, 32]. James Buchanan, The Doctrine

of Justification (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1961, orig. 1867), 357.

The Place of Our Works in Justification 115

justification. Gaffin subsequently published his lectures under the title

By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation. Interacting

with Wright along the way, he came to the following conclusion:

For Christians, future judgment according to works does not operate

according to a different principle than their already having been

justified by faith. The difference is that the final judgment will be the

open manifestation of that present justification. . . . And in that future

judgment their obedience, their works, are not the ground or basis.

Nor are they (co-)instrumental, a coordinate instrument for appropriating

divine approbation as they supplement faith. Rather, they are the

essential and manifest criterion of that faith, the integral “fruits and

evidences of a true and lively faith.”19

Gaffin’s exegetical efforts in By Faith, Not by Sight and the careful

work of many other scholars, and my own efforts to understand

Scripture persuade me that this is the true biblical understanding of the

function of works in the final judgment.

There is a good deal of overlap between Wright and Gaffin (and

me) in that we all want to put full and proper stress on the importance

of real, ethical obedience in accordance with the mind of the apostle

Paul (as well as the rest of the New Testament writers). I have no hesitancy

in agreeing with Wright when he says, “The attempt to shore

up justification by faith by saying that the life we now live will be

irrelevant at the final judgment is unPauline, unpastoral and ultimately

dishonouring to God himself.”20 On that we agree. But how far does

this agreement extend when we press carefully into Wright’s meaning

of “basis” when describing the function of works in final justification?

To that we now turn.

19Richard B. Gaffin, By Faith, Not By Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation (Waynesboro, GA:

Paternoster, 2006), 98.

20Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.”

Chapter Eight

Does Wright Say with Different

Words What the Reformed

Tradition Means by

“Imputed Righteousness”?

I mentioned at the beginning of chapter 7 that when Wright

speaks of final justification “on the basis of the entire life a person has

led in the power of the Spirit—that is . . . on the basis of ‘works,’”1 we

should be aware that he does not use the word basis with nuanced theological

precision. I promised we would come to that directly and try to

honor the variety of expressions Wright uses. I do not want to expose

Wright to the flame of criticism just because there are incendiary words

(like basis) that seem to imply, but may not, that he is vulnerable to

such criticism. Taken as a whole, his position concerning the final basis

of justification is ambiguous.

Unlike Gaffin,2 Wright repeatedly refers to works—the entirety

of our lives—as the “basis” of justification in the last day.3 However,

Wright also uses the language of judgment and justification “according

to works” in a way that inclines one to think that the terms “according

to” and “on the basis of” may be interchangeable for him. For

example, he refers to Romans 2:13 and says, “Here is the first state

1Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 260. Emphasis added.

2See chapter 7, note 19.

3“Present justification declares, on the basis of faith, what future justification will affirm publicly

(according to 2:14–16 and 8:9–11) on the basis of the entire life.” Wright, What Saint Paul Really

Said, 129.

i

ment about justification in Romans, and lo and behold it affirms justification

according to works.”4 “Paul, in company with mainstream

second Temple Judaism, affirms that God’s final judgment will be in

accordance with the entirety of a life led—in accordance, in other

words, with works.”5

But in these contexts where he is discussing justification on the

basis of works or according to works, he does not discuss the finer

distinctions between “based on” and “according to.” I suspect his view

of how works really function in relation to final justification would

become a good bit clearer if Wright discussed this difference. But when

we turn to Wright’s commentary for help with understanding the basis

of the coming judgment in the text that he repeatedly refers to, namely,

Romans 14:10–12 (“we will all stand before the judgment seat of

God”), what we read is this:

There is no tension in Paul’s mind between this and 8:1, where there is

no condemnation for those who are in Christ. He has already indicated

in 2:1–16 that there will be a coming day when all will be judged; the

fact that the Christian believer is assured of a favorable verdict on that

day does not make it any less serious as 1 Cor 3:10–17 indicates well

enough.6

Huge and important questions go unaddressed here. The allusion

to 1 Corinthians 3:10–17 (“he himself will be saved, but only as

through fire,” v. 15) as confirming the seriousness of the final judgment

does not work. At the place where it cries out for reflection, Wright

does not come to terms with the fact that Paul threatens baptized professing

Christians not just with barely being saved, but with not being

saved at all at the last judgment (Gal. 5:21; 6:7–9; 1 Cor. 6:9). The

whole question of how Paul can speak this way and how our works

actually function at the last day are passed over. This is a silence where

we very much need to hear Wright speak with detail and precision,

since the issues are so controversial and so important for the central

doctrine of justification. There is, as far as I can see, emphatically more

to be learned from the history of exegesis, referred to in the last chapter,

4Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 253. Emphasis added.

5Ibid. Emphasis added.

6Wright, Letter to the Romans, 738.

than there is from Wright on the complexities of how our works function

in the final judgment.

Basis? Signs? Evidence?

But let us probe as carefully as we can into the varied terminology that

Wright uses to describe how works function in our final justification.

There are a few places where he speaks in a way that sounds like the

more traditional Protestant view of works confirming the authenticity

of faith and union with Christ. For example, referring again to Romans

2:13 (“the doers of the law . . . will be justified”) he says:

The “works” in accordance with which the Christian will be vindicated

on the last day are not the unaided works of the self-help moralist. Nor

are they the performance of the ethnically distinctive Jewish boundary-

markers (Sabbath, food-laws and circumcision). They are the things

which show, rather, that one is in Christ; the things which are produced

in one’s life as a result of the Spirit’s indwelling and operation. In this

way, Romans 8:1–17 provides the real answer to Romans 2:1–16.7

This is very similar to the way Gaffin or I or the Protestant tradition

would talk. Our Spirit-wrought fruits of obedience are “things

that show . . . that one is in Christ.” In accord with this use of the word

show, he also uses the word signs in the following section:

[Paul] is not as concerned as we are about the danger of speaking of

the things he himself has done—though sometimes, to be sure, he adds

a rider, which proves my point, that it is not his own energy but that

which God gives and inspires within him (1 Cor. 15.10; Col. 1.29).

But he is still clear that the things he does in the present, by moral and

physical effort, will count to his credit on the last day, precisely because

they are the effective signs that the Spirit of the living Christ has been

at work in him.8

And in another place he uses the word evidence: “On the last day

the final judgment will be made on the evidence of the complete life

7Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 254. Emphasis added.

8Ibid. Emphasis added. Surely Wright knows that he is using misleading language when he says

that Paul’s works will “count to his credit on the last day.” Does he mean this strictly in the sense

that there will be a credit column and a debit column in our lives, and that our good works will cause

the credit column to be larger? It sounds like it. But I doubt it. But this kind of loose use of biblically

and historically loaded language is not making his position clearer.

Does Wright Say with Different Words What the Reformed Tradition Means? 119

that someone has led.”9 Thus, it could appear that Wright is falling

right in line with the historic Protestant view that the role of our works

at the last judgment will be to show that we are in Christ, and thus

function as evidences and signs that “the Spirit of the living Christ has

been at work in” us, so that justification is not, in the traditionally

negative sense, “based on” our works, but rather is “in accordance

with” our works.

What Our Works Signify at the

Final Judgment

One key difference in Wright’s view from the historic Protestant

understanding of how our works relate to our final judgment is that

the reality that they signify is not precisely the same. In other words,

it may be that we do agree that our works at the last day are essential

as “signs” or as “evidences” or as “showing” something that has

gone before; but do we agree what this “something” is? Wright has

mentioned two things. One is that our works “show . . . that one is in

Christ.” The other is that our works are “signs that the Spirit of the

living Christ has been at work in [us].” Our works must give evidence

of these two realities because, Wright says, these are the two bases of

our final justification:

Why is there now “no condemnation”? Because, on the one hand,

[1] God has condemned sin in the flesh of Christ . . . and, on the other

hand, [2] because the Spirit is at work to do, within believers, what

the Law could not do—ultimately, to give life, but a life that begins in

the present with the putting to death of the deeds of the body and the

obedient submission to the leading of the Spirit.10

9Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.” Emphasis added. Similarly, in a debate with

Paul Barnett, Wright said, “My view of the place of good works in justification at the last judgment

is I hope, exactly that of Paul in Romans 2:1–6, and in Romans 14 and in 2 Corinthians 5, where it

is quite clear that the things that Christians do in the power of the Spirit in obedience to Christ in the

present will be part of the evidence submitted on the last day. That has nothing to do with works-

righteousness in the usually fashionable sense—nothing to contribute to justification by faith in the

present, as the thing which constitutes the Christian in the present as dikaios (righteous).” Quoted by

Tony Payne, “The Wright Stuff,” The Briefing, Issue 334 (July 2006): 6. The reason this is not clear is

(1) he doesn’t say “evidence” of what. He does not say that our works are evidence of a union with

Christ by which the obedience of Christ is imputed to us. The precision that the history of thinking

on this issue has produced in many writers is missing in Wright at this point. (2) He says our works

do not “contribute to justification by faith in the present.” This seems to imply that he wants to say

that they do “contribute” in some way in the future differently than in the present. And his frequent

use of the word basis seems to suggest that “justification by faith” would be a fitting description of

our final justification in the same way it is for our present experience of justification.

10Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 254.

Here are the two foundations for our final justification: Christ’s

bearing our condemnation in his own flesh (Rom. 8:3), and the Spirit

working in us an obedient submission to God (Rom. 8:4). Both are the

reason there is no “no condemnation” (Rom. 8:1). These two bases

correspond to the two realities to which our works are evidence: We

are in Christ and so have died with him in his penal death for us, and

his Spirit is in us bearing the fruit of obedience.

But at this point it is unclear how these two realities are related to

each other in securing our final justification. When Wright says that

our works—our entire life lived—will be the basis of our justification

in the sense of showing that we are “in Christ” (if my understanding is

correct), what is it about being in Christ that will provide the foundation

for our justification at the last day? And how is this reality of being

in Christ such a surety of our justification that our works themselves

are only evidence or signs of the surety, but not part of it? I am not sure

Wright would want to say it that way, but I am trying to give him the

benefit of the doubt at this point—at least from my standpoint.

Common Ground on Imputation?

To help us wrestle with this question (if not answer it with total confidence),

we may quote at length one of the most important sections

of his work that I have read. It is important because in it he addresses

people (like me) who cherish the traditional view of the imputed

righteousness of Christ and tries to find as much common ground as

possible, suggesting that we may be saying the same thing in different

ways.

The covenant plan of God has what may loosely be called a ‘participationist’

aspect, and this, too, is part of the glorification of God, as I

have already shown from Romans 15. Abraham’s true family, the single

‘seed’ which God promised him, is summed up in the Messiah, whose

role precisely as Messiah is not least to draw together the identity of the

whole of God’s people so that what is true of him is true of them and

vice versa. Here we arrive at one of the great truths of the gospel, which

is that the accomplishment of Jesus Christ is reckoned to all those who

are ‘in him’. This is the truth which has been expressed within the

Reformed tradition in terms of ‘imputed righteousness’, often stated

in terms of Jesus Christ having fulfilled the moral law and thus hav

Does Wright Say with Different Words What the Reformed Tradition Means? 121

ing accumulated a ‘righteous’ status which can be shared with all his

people. As with some other theological problems, I regard this as saying

a substantially right thing in a substantially wrong way, and the trouble

when you do that is that things on both sides of the equation, and the

passages which are invoked to support them, become distorted.

The central passage is in fact Romans 6, and I think it is because

much post-reformation theology has tended to fight shy of taking

seriously Paul’s realistic theology of baptism that it has sought

to achieve what Paul describes in that chapter and elsewhere by

another route. It is very significant that the Messiah died to sin; we

are in the Messiah through baptism and faith; therefore we have

died to sin. The Messiah rose again and is now ‘alive to God’; we

are in the Messiah through baptism and faith; therefore we have

risen again and are now ‘alive to God’. This is what Paul means in

Galatians 3 when he says that as many as have been baptized into

the Messiah have put on the Messiah, and that if we thus belong to

the Messiah we are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.

There is indeed a status which is reckoned to all God’s people, all

those in Christ; and this status is that of dikaiosune, ‘righteousness’,

‘covenant membership’; and this covenant membership, in

order to be covenant membership, must be a covenant membership

in which the members have died and been raised, because until that

has happened they would still be in their sins. ‘I through the law

died to the law, that I might live to God; I have been crucified with

the Messiah; nevertheless I live; and the life I now live in the flesh I

live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself

for me’ [Gal. 2:19–20]. If this is what you are trying to get at by

the phrase ‘imputed righteousness’, then I not only have no quarrel

with the substance of it but rather insist on it as a central and vital

part of Paul’s theology. What I do object to is calling this truth by a

name which, within the world of thought where it is common coin,

is bound to be heard to say that Jesus has himself earned something

called ‘righteousness’, and that he then reckons this to be true of

his people (as in the phrase ‘the merits of Christ’), whereas on my

reading of Paul the ‘righteousness’ of Jesus is that which results

from God’s vindication of him as Messiah in the resurrection; and,

particularly, that this is what Paul means when he speaks of ‘God’s

righteousness’, as though that phrase denoted the righteous status

which God’s people have in virtue of justification, whereas in fact

the phrase, always and everywhere else from the Psalms and Isaiah

onwards, refers to God’s own righteousness as the creator and covenant

God; and, underneath all of this, I object to the misreading

of several key Pauline texts that results, and the marginalization

in consequence of themes which have major importance for Paul

but which this theology manages to ignore. The mistake, as I see

it, arises from the combination of the Reformers’ proper sense

of something being accomplished in Christ Jesus which is then

reckoned to us, allied with their overemphasis on the category of

iustitia as the catch-all, their consequent underemphasis on Paul’s

frequently repeated theology of our participation in the Messiah’s

death and resurrection, and their failure to locate Paul’s soteriology

itself on the larger map of God’s plan for the whole creation.

A proper re-emphasis on ‘God’s righteousness’ as God’s own righteousness

should set all this straight.11

Wright’s Expression of Imputed

Righteousness?

In answering the question why union with Christ is so crucial at the last

day, Wright’s key sentence is this one:

[Christ’s] role precisely as Messiah is not least to draw together the

identity of the whole of God’s people so that what is true of him is true

of them and vice versa. Here we arrive at one of the great truths of the

gospel, which is that the accomplishment of Jesus Christ is reckoned to

all those who are ‘in him’.

Here he says at least two key things. One is that when believers are

identified with Christ, “what is true of him is true of them and vice

versa.” The other is that “the accomplishment of Jesus Christ is reckoned

to all those who are ‘in him.’” Here is where Wright believes he

is expressing “the truth which has been expressed within the Reformed

tradition in terms of ‘imputed righteousness.’”

This is true as long as one speaks only of the general structure of

union with Christ: All Jesus accomplished is reckoned to us. Or: What

is true of him is true of us. If we took the analysis no further, we would

say: Yes, that is certainly what the traditional view says. But if one asks

what Wright believes is in fact reckoned to us, or what in fact it is about

Christ that is true of us, the ways divide. He himself makes this plain

as he explains the difference between his view and the traditional view

of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.

11Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.”

Does Wright Say with Different Words What the Reformed Tradition Means? 123

His understanding of the traditional view is that “Jesus Christ . . .

fulfilled the moral law and thus . . . accumulated a ‘righteous’ status12

which can be shared with all his people.” Thus being in Christ is crucial,

in the traditional view, because Jesus has a righteousness that we

need, now and at the last judgment, and it is imputed to us when we

are united to him by faith alone.

But Wright thinks this is a misunderstanding of Paul, for it misses

the point of what Christ’s righteousness is. Wright says, “On my reading

of Paul the ‘righteousness’ of Jesus is that which results from God’s

vindication of him as Messiah in the resurrection.” In other words,

when we think of imputation, we should not think of Christ’s obedience—

his moral righteousness, or his fulfillment of the law—but rather

his position of being vindicated into a glorious resurrection life after his

atoning death. So it is not the “status” of a fulfilled moral law that is

reckoned to us in union with Christ, but the status of vindication, that

is, covenant membership.

There is indeed a status which is reckoned to all God’s people [this

would be the meaning of imputation in Wright’s system], all those in

Christ; and this status is that of dikaiosune, ‘righteousness’, ‘covenant

membership’; and this covenant membership, in order to be covenant

membership, must be a covenant membership in which the members

have died and been raised, because until that has happened they would

still be in their sins.

The Differences on Imputation Begin

to Appear

The difference between the understanding of imputation in Reformed

exegesis and Wright’s exegesis begins to appear. In historic Reformed

exegesis, (1) a person is in union with Christ by faith alone. In this

union, (2) the believer is identified with Christ in his (a) wrath-

absorbing death, (b) his perfect obedience to the Father, and (c) his

vindication-securing resurrection. All of these are reckoned—that is,

imputed—to the believer in Christ. On this basis, (3) the “dead,” “righ

12I assume Wright is speaking loosely here rather than precisely, since the traditional view would

want to stress that what Jesus “accumulated” was not just a “status” but a real life of perfect obedience—

righteousness in that sense. This is what is imputed to us, not just a status or a position.

This, of course, is not what Wright means by righteousness, and that is one of the main differences

between the two views.

teous,” “raised” believer is accepted and assured of final vindication

and eternal fellowship with God.

In Wright’s exegesis, the middle element in step 2 is missing (2b),

because he does not believe that the New Testament teaches that

Christ’s perfect obedience is imputed to us. Thus the pattern is: (1) A

person is in union with Christ by faith alone (expressed in baptism).

(2) The believer is identified with Christ in his wrath-absorbing death

(there is no identification with or imputation of Christ’s perfect obedience)

and his vindication-securing resurrection. Both of these are

reckoned—that is, imputed—to the believer in Christ. On this basis,

(3) the “dead” and “raised” believer is accepted and assured of final

vindication and eternal fellowship with God.

Summarized, the two admittedly oversimplified patterns would be:

Neither of us intends to say that there are any temporal gaps in this

sequence. Both of us know that there are elements of the ordo salutis

missing from this sketch. The aim is to sort out fairly how close we are,

and yet, perhaps, how different.

Union with Christ: Imparted Newness as

Imputed Newness?

The question at this point is: Does the missing element—the imputation

of Christ’s perfect obedience as part of what is reckoned to us in union

with Christ—have any significant reverberations in Wright’s system?

To answer this question, it is relevant to observe from the extended

quotation above (from “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1”)

that when Wright wants to explain his understanding of imputation,

Does Wright Say with Different Words What the Reformed Tradition Means? 125

/Traditional Reformed Exegesis:

/ Wright’s Exegesis:

Union with Christ >Imputation of Christ’s death,

obedience, and resurrectionAssurance of final

vindication>Faith / baptism >

Union with Christ >Imputation of Christ’s death,

________, and resurrectionAssurance of final

vindication>Faith / baptism >

he reaches not for Romans 4:1–6 or Romans 5:12–19, but for Romans

6:1–6. Let me quote it again:

The central passage is in fact Romans 6, and I think it is because much

post-reformation theology has tended to fight shy of taking seriously

Paul’s realistic theology of baptism that it has sought to achieve what

Paul describes in that chapter and elsewhere by another route. The

Messiah died to sin; we are in the Messiah through baptism and faith;

therefore we have died to sin. The Messiah rose again and is now ‘alive

to God’; we are in the Messiah through baptism and faith; therefore we

have risen again and are now ‘alive to God’.

What is less than clear in Wright’s effort to find common ground

with the historic Protestant understanding of “imputed righteousness”

is whether his view of union with Christ tends to merge the imputation

of a new position with the impartation of a new nature. That is, when

he says that union with Christ means All Jesus accomplished is reckoned

to us and What is true of him is true of us, does he include in “all

Jesus accomplished” and “what is true of him” not just the imputation

of his legal status as vindicated, but also his real nature by the Spirit

so that our moral transformation is included in what Wright thinks we

should mean by “imputed righteousness”?

In choosing Romans 6 as the “central passage” for illuminating

“the truth which has been expressed within the Reformed tradition

in terms of ‘imputed righteousness,’” Wright seems to suggest that in

his mind the really new moral nature that “walk[s] in newness of life”

(Rom. 6:4) is part of what Reformed folk should mean by “imputed

righteousness” in union with Christ. I am not sure of this. But the following

sentences seem to point in this direction. This time he clarifies

his understanding of what “imputed righteousness” could rightly mean

using Galatians 2:19–20:

‘I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God; I have been

crucified with the Messiah; nevertheless I live; and the life I now live in

the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself

for me’. If this is what you are trying to get at by the phrase ‘imputed

righteousness’, then I not only have no quarrel with the substance of it

but rather insist on it as a central and vital part of Paul’s theology.13

13Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.” Emphasis added.

It is not clear what “this” refers to when he says, “If this is what

you are trying to get at by the phrase ‘imputed righteousness’ . . . ,”

but it appears to refer to the main thing that is happening in Galatians

2:20, namely, that Paul’s new life in Christ is being lived by faith in

the Son of God. It is unclear whether Wright is merging our imputed

position in Christ as vindicated before God with an imparted newness

of nature that lives by faith. I don’t think Wright would even

like this distinction, since both are totally gracious gifts of God; but

this is what has to be spelled out if he wants to make clear the degree

of common ground with those whose exegesis has led them to the

view of imputed righteousness that he thinks is poorly expressed in

traditional categories.

Same Words, Different Meaning

The upshot of all this is that when Wright describes our works in relation

to final judgment as “the things which show . . . that one is in

Christ,” he does not mean what most Reformed exegetes have meant

when they speak like that. They mean that the necessary works—the

imperfect but real life of love—at the last day show that there has

been authentic faith and union with Christ whose atoning death and

imputed obedience are the sole ground of acceptance and vindication,

apart from any grounding in our Spirit-enabled, imperfect deeds.

Wright, we have seen, does not believe Paul taught such an imputation

of Christ’s obedience.

Therefore, even though Wright describes our works at the last

judgment as “signs” and “evidence” “according to which” (or sometimes

“on the basis of which”) we are justified, nevertheless, he does

not use that language to preserve the truth of “imputed righteousness”

in the more traditional sense. What, then, in Wright’s system, does this

description of works as “signs” point to? Clearly, it points to the fact

that union with Christ by faith secures a status of vindication for us

that we have only because of union with Christ, not because of our

merit or “self-help moralism.” But what is less clear is whether it points

also to a Spirit-wrought transformation “in Christ” that also functions

coordinately with the death and resurrection of Christ as the ground or

basis of our final vindication.

He does say that these works in the end are “signs that the Spirit

Does Wright Say with Different Words What the Reformed Tradition Means? 127

of the living Christ has been at work in him,” and he does make “no

condemnation” (Rom. 8:1) depend (without distinction as to how it

depends) both on the death of Christ and on our transformation. “Why

is there now ‘no condemnation’? Because, on the one hand, [1] God

has condemned sin in the flesh of Christ . . . and, on the other hand,

[2] because the Spirit is at work to do, within believers what the law

could not do—ultimately, to give life.”14

Where Does Saying No to Imputed

Obedience Lead?

We asked above: Does the missing element—the imputation of Christ’s

perfect obedience as part of what is reckoned to us in union with

Christ—have any significant reverberations in Wright’s system? My

answer is that it seems to have these effects:

1. It leaves the gift of the status of vindication without foundation

in real perfect imputed obedience.15 We have no perfect obedience to

offer, and, Wright would say, Christ’s obedience is not imputed to me,

nor does it need to be. He does not believe that this is a biblical category.

So we have no perfect obedience as the foundation of our status

of vindication (i.e., justification).

2. This absence of a foundation for our vindication, in real perfect

obedience, results in a vacuum that our own Spirit-enabled, but

imperfect, obedience seems to fill as part of the foundation or ground

or basis alongside the atoning death of Jesus. I say “seems to,” since I

14Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 254.

15The demand for perfection is implicit in the holiness of God who is “of purer eyes than to see evil

and cannot look at wrong” (Hab. 1:13) and is made explicit throughout the Bible. For example,

James 2:10: “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all

of it.” Hebrews 2:2: “Since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression

or disobedience received a just retribution . . .” Hebrews 10:1–4: “Since the law has but

a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the

same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise,

would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no

longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Leviticus 26:14–16: “If you

will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your

soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then

I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic.” Galatians 3:10: “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.’” On this crucial Pauline text, see the lengthy treatment by Tom

Schreiner defending its use in this sense, as demanding obedience to all that the law requires. The

Law and Its Fulfillment: A Pauline Theology of Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), 44–59. Of

course, both the Old and New Testaments made provision for those who fail (all humans), but the

very nature of the provision made (substitution of a sacrifice) proved our falling short of the demand

for the perfect obedience of faith.

would be happy for Wright to clarify for his reading public that this, in

fact, is not what he believes.16

3. The ambiguity about how works function in “future justification”

leaves us unsure how they function in present justification.

Wright is emphatic about present justification being by “faith alone.”

What is ‘justification by faith’ all about? Paul’s answer is that it is the

anticipation, in the present time, of the verdict which will be issued

on the last day. . . . They are then, because of God’s declaration,

‘righteous’ in the covenantal sense that they are members of the single

family God promised to Abraham, in the forensic sense that the divine

lawcourt has already announced its verdict in their case, and in the

eschatological sense that this verdict properly anticipates the one which

will be issued, in confirmation, on the last day.17

But calling the present justification an anticipation of the “final

justification” while being ambiguous about the way our works function

in the “final justification” is not a strong way to assure us that

present justification is not grounded in Spirit-enabled transformation.

18 Sentences like the following one perplex: “Justification by faith,

the verdict issued in the present time over gospel faith which anticipates

the verdict issued in the future over the entire life, thus produces the

solid assurance of membership, now and in the future, in the single

family promised to Abraham.”19 Surely, Wright can see that correlating

the “verdict . . . over gospel faith” in the present with the “verdict . . .

over the entire life” in the future seems to undermine present justification

as justification by faith alone.

Similarly, in his comments on Romans 8:3–4, he says, “This in no

way compromises present [only present?] justification by faith. What is

spoken of here is the future verdict, that of the last day, the ‘day’ Paul

16Wright would probably protest: “Does this mean, after all, some kind of semi-Pelagianism in

which God first infuses ‘righteousness’ into me and then declares that he likes what he sees? Have

we abandoned the extra nos of the gospel? By no means. That is simply to take what I have said

and filter it back through the old misunderstandings of the word ‘righteousness’ which I have been

careful to rule out.” Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.” I wish I could vouch for how

“careful” Wright has been to rule out misunderstandings. But it seems to me that there is enough

ambiguity still that a protest like this does not settle the matter in view of the rest of what he says.

17Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.” Emphasis in original.

18Nor does it help our clarity about the role of Spirit-wrought works in justification to read, “The

Spirit is the path by which Paul traces the route from justification by faith in the present to justification,

by the complete life lived, in the future.” Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 148. Emphasis

added.

19Ibid.

Does Wright Say with Different Words What the Reformed Tradition Means? 129

described in [Rom.] 2:1–16. That verdict will correspond to the present

one, and will follow from (though not, in that sense, be earned or merited

by), the Spirit-led life of which Paul now speaks.”20 How can one

read this without hearing the implication that we should treat the present

justification but not the “future justification” as being “by faith”?

Whatever Wright means by saying the future justification “follows

from” our Spirit-led life, he apparently intends for us to distinguish

this from justification by faith alone. So again I ask: Does not the effort

to call the present justification an anticipation of the final one tend to

undermine the truth that present justification is by “faith alone”?

He calls this present justification an “anticipation” of future justification,

and yet they seem to have two different foundations.21 Again,

I use the word seem as an invitation to Wright to express himself with

more precision if he wants us to understand clearly where he stands.

Still More Ambiguity on Faith Alone

Adding to the ambiguity of how our works function in justification is

Wright’s apparent conflation of “faith,” on the one hand, and “faithfulness”

(or faithful obedience), on the other hand. On the one hand,

he says, “All who believe in the gospel belong [to the family of God],

and that is the only way you can tell—not by who their parents were,

or how well they have obeyed the Torah (or any other moral code).”22

This sounds like Wright believes that no obedience of any kind can be

a part of faith. No “moral code” is part of “believing the gospel.” But

on the other hand, Wright says:

One of Paul’s key phrases is ‘the obedience of faith’. Faith and obedience

are not antithetical. They belong exactly together. Indeed, very

often the word ‘faith’ itself could properly be translated as ‘faithfulness’,

which makes the point just as well. Nor, of course, does this

then compromise the gospel or justification, smuggling in ‘works’ by

20Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 580. Emphasis added.

21He says of present justifying faith, “This faith looks backwards to what God has done in Christ,

by means of his own obedient faithfulness to God’s purpose (Rom. 5.19; Phil. 2.6), relying on that

rather than on anything that is true of oneself.” Wright, “The Shape of Justification.” But would

this be true of us as we walk into the law-court of the last day? Would one not rely “on anything

that is true of oneself”? Does he not direct us to the way we have lived? And if so, how is the present

justification a mere “anticipation” of the final justification? Does justification by faith anticipate

justification by works? How then is justification now not really a reliance on “anything true of

oneself”?

22Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 121.

the back door. That would only be the case if the realignment I have

been arguing for throughout were not grasped. Faith, even in this

active sense, is never and in no way a qualification, provided from

the human side, either for getting into God’s family or for staying

there once in. It is the God-given badge of membership, neither more

nor less.23

This is not clear. But I think he is saying: The reason that defining faith

as faithful obedience is not a smuggling in of “works” is because the

faithful obedience is “God-given,” not “provided from the human

side.” But that is not the issue—whether it is produced by us semi-

Pelagian-like or given by God in sovereign grace. The issue is whether

justification by faith really means justification by works of any kind,

whether provided by God or man. That is the issue, and Wright again

leaves us with the impression that human transformation and Spirit-

wrought acts of obedience are included in the term “faith” when he

speaks of present justification being by faith alone.

What Is the Upshot of This Chapter?

As much as I try to see Wright’s construction of Pauline theology as

saying the same thing as the Reformed tradition, I don’t think he is.

Here again is his hopeful affirmation of common ground:

Here we arrive at one of the great truths of the gospel, which is that

the accomplishment of Jesus Christ is reckoned to all those who are ‘in

him’. This is the truth which has been expressed within the Reformed

tradition in terms of ‘imputed righteousness’, often stated in terms of

Jesus Christ having fulfilled the moral law and thus having accumulated

a ‘righteous’ status which can be shared with all his people. As with

some other theological problems, I regard this as saying a substantially

right thing in a substantially wrong way, and the trouble when you do

that is that things on both sides of the equation, and the passages which

are invoked to support them, become distorted.

My conclusion is that Wright’s position on the meaning24 and the

basis of justification are not “substantially” the same as what has been

affirmed in the Reformation tradition by “imputed righteousness”

23Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 160. Emphasis added.

24See especially chapter 6 (above).

Does Wright Say with Different Words What the Reformed Tradition Means? 131

on the basis of “faith alone” through the blood and righteousness of

Christ alone. That, of course, he would remind us, is no proof that he

is mistaken. Scripture, not tradition, is decisive. I agree with that. My

hope is that, in the limits of this book, the exegesis offered, and the

exegesis of others referred to, will prove to be compelling.

Chapter Nine

Paul’s Structural Continuity with

Second-Temple Judaism?

One important way to pursue greater clarity about Wright’s

understanding of justification and how works function in relation to

justification is to probe his understanding of the “agitators” (as he

calls them) behind the letter to the Galatians and his understanding of

Paul’s Jewish background in general. According to Wright, the term

“works of the law” (e[rga novmou, Gal. 2:16; 3:2, 5, 10) referred not to

law-keeping in general, but to the acts of circumcision, Sabbath-keeping,

and dietary regulations.1 These, he explains, were pursued, not

for the purpose of earning a right standing with God, or getting saved,

or entering the covenant people, but rather as a “badge” to show that

those who did these “works of law” would be found on the last day to

belong, by grace, to God’s people. Paul’s problem with this was not that

these Jewish people were trying to earn God’s favor by their own self-

wrought righteousness, but rather that they failed to see their calling

to reach the nations and instead used their “badge” to exclude Gentiles

from the covenant. They did not see that now, in Jesus, Gentiles are to

be included in the covenant in such a way that Jews and Gentiles would

be marked out by only one badge, namely, faith in Jesus.

Maintaining a Structural Continuity

with Judaism

In other words, by seeing only ethnocentrism and not “legalism” in the

agitators, Wright is able to see more structural unity between Paul and

1N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians (Louisville: Westminster John

Knox, 2004), 32.

i

his Jewish background. That is, Paul does not present his new Christian

faith as one free from legalism and his old Jewish faith as one fraught

with legalism. Both are rooted in grace. Thus, Wright sees a basic structural

continuity between first-century Judaism and Christianity. “Paul,

in company with mainstream Second Temple Judaism,2 affirms that

God’s final judgment will be in accordance with the entirety of a life

led—in accordance, in other words, with works.”3 This continuity

with Second-Temple Judaism is built on the conviction that this

Judaism did not attempt to obtain or maintain the saving favor of God

by law-keeping, as is often assumed, but rather assumed divine favor

because of unconditional election and kept the law in dependence on

grace. Thus, Wright agrees with E. P. Sanders that “the Jew keeps the

law out of gratitude, as the proper response to grace.”4

The structural continuity, therefore, between Judaism and

Christianity means that both Paul and Judaism understood salvation

in formally similar ways. One way to describe the structure would be

as follows:

This is, of course, oversimplified and purely structural without any distinctions

in content. But it is significant for understanding how Wright

sees Paul in the wider context of Second-Temple Judaism.

2The term “Second Temple Judaism” refers to the Jewish religion during the period of the Second

Temple (515 b.c. to a.d. 70).

3Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 253. Emphasis added. In his study of justification in the

Qumran community (especially in his study of 4QMMT), Wright says that their documents “reveal

nothing of the self-righteous and boastful ‘legalism’ which used to be thought characteristic of Jews

in Paul’s day.” “4QMMT and Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and Eschatology,” 106. Note: The usual

abbreviation for 4QMMT is MMT.

4Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 19.

Free and gracious entrance into the covenant

a life of obedience to God out of gratitude for this grace

final justification on the basis of the entire life lived.

Paul Against the Backdrop of Qumran:

A Structural Similarity

In spite of this formal similarity, the differences between Paul and his

non-Christian Jewish contemporaries were significant. Wright illumines

both the similarities and differences in an extended comparison

and contrast between Paul and Qumran in his essay “4QMMT and

Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and Eschatology.”5

The key passage from this Qumran document reads as follows:

26Now, we have written to you 27some of the works of the Law, those

which we determined would be beneficial for you and your people,

because we have seen that 28you possess insight and knowledge of the

Law. Understand all these things and beseech Him to set 29your counsel

straight and so keep you away from evil thoughts and the counsel

of Belial. 30Then you shall rejoice at the end time when you find the

essence of our words to be true. 31And it will be reckoned to you as

righteousness, in that you have done what is right and good before

Him, to your own benefit 32and to that of Israel.6

Wright sums up his argument in relation to this text in six points:

(1) The context within which the key line C31 [referring to section 31

in the preceding quote] may best be understood is explicitly covenantal

and eschatological.

(2) The halakhic7 precepts offered in the text are intended to function

as indicators, boundary-markers, of God’s eschatological people;

this is the meaning of “justification by works” in the present time,

anticipating “the end of time”.

(3) Paul, arguably, held a version of the same covenantal and eschatological

scheme of thought; but in his scheme the place MMT gave to

“works of Torah” was taken by “faith”.

(4) Paul’s doctrine, like that of MMT, was not about “getting in”

but about community definition.

(5) The Pauline halakhah, if that is what it is, plays a quite different

role within his community definition to that which halakhah plays in

MMT.

5Cited in footnote 3 above. This document (4QMMT) is from fragmentary manuscripts found

in a cave at Qumran, which was officially published in 1994 and that scholars date in the first or

second century b.c.

64QMMT C26–32.

7The halakhah was a body of written practical applications of canonical Hebrew laws.

Paul’s Structural Continuity with Second-Temple Judaism? 135

(6) MMT is written neither by nor for Pharisees. Just as the ‘works’

it prescribes are not those of the Pharisees, so we cannot assume that

the form and structure of its doctrine of justification are identical, or

even similar, to that of the Pharisees, or of the Galatian ‘agitators’, or

of Peter in Galatians 2.8

Thus, there is one kind of structural similarity, Wright maintains,

between Paul and Qumran: Both think of justification in terms of

covenant membership and in terms of the end times. Moreover, the

last judgment will bring the final verdict of covenant membership, and

this verdict can be known now by certain boundary-markers or badges

of the covenant community. For Qumran, the boundary-markers are

“halakhic precepts”—that is, ethical teachings based on the law. What

is the meaning of “boundary-markers”?

The point is not that by keeping these precepts the readers will show

that they are morally or ethically superior to other Jews,9 or that they

have gained more merit by moral effort. Rather, it is because these

works of Torah will mark them out in the present time as the true,

returned-from-exile, covenant people of Israel. These “works” will

not earn them membership in God’s eschatological people; they will

demonstrate that they are God’s people. The key line here is C30, in

the context of C28–29:

28 . . . Consider all these things and ask Him that He

strengthen 29 your will and remove from you the plans of evil

and the device of Belial 30 so that you may rejoice at the end of

time, finding that this selection of our practices is correct.

In other words, if through prayer and the moral strength which

God supplies (C28–29) you keep these precepts, you will rejoice at

the end of time, in finding that the advice given herein, this selection

of commands, was on the right track. That is when (C31) “it will be

reckoned to you as righteousness when you perform what is right and

good before him”. “Righteousness”, in context here as in the biblical

passages quoted, must mean more than simply “a moral or virtuous

deed.” The whole point of MMT is that those who keep the precepts

it urges are thereby marked out as God’s covenant people, part of the

true, returned-from-exile, eschatological community. The practice of

8Wright, “4QMMT and Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and Eschatology,” 112.

9That is a difficult statement to embrace. Perhaps he means for the word “superior” to have negative

connotations of pride, for surely the point of teaching someone how to live is that they avoid

inferior ways of life.

Torah according to this interpretation, will signify, in the present time,

that the practitioners are “righteous” in this sense: they are the people

with whom Israel’s God is in covenant, the people who, like David,

have their sins forgiven. This is what MMT has to say on the subject

of “justification”.10

Wright would say that structurally (not in terms of the content

of the boundary-markers) Paul’s understanding of the eschatological

context of justification is similar. At this point, Wright would see

himself structurally more in line with Qumran than with “mainstream

Christian tradition”:

In using the term “justification” in this context we have seen that

it refers to something other than its normal referent in mainstream

Christian theological discussion, not least since the Reformation.

In that tradition, “justification” refers to the event or process by

which people come to be Christians, sometimes conceived in a narrower

sense, sometimes in a broader. But the “reckoning of righteousness”

in this text is not about how someone comes to be a member

of the sect. It is the recognition, the indication, that one is already a

member. It is what marks someone out as having already made the

transition from outsider to insider, from (in the sect’s eyes) renegade

Jew to member of the eschatological people.11

Another similarity between Paul and Qumran, according to Wright,

is that the term “works of the law” is understood not as describing

efforts to be accepted by God, but rather as the markers that set off

God’s graciously chosen people in the present.

“Works of the law” function here, in other words, within the broader

covenantal and eschatological scheme which has been set out. They

cannot be abstracted from it either into a more generalized system of

timeless halakhah or into a wider “legalism” to which Paul’s doctrine

of justification, in its traditional Reformation sense, could then be

opposed. . . .

10Wright, “4QMMT and Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and Eschatology,” 116. For my criticism see

below, but here it should at least be noted that Wright sees more in these few sentences than they can

easily bear. The actual words, “It will be reckoned to you as righteousness, in that you have done

what is right,” would seem, on an ordinary reading, to just as easily lead one to see “righteousness”

here as “having done what is right,” rather than signifying “they are the people with whom Israel’s

God is in covenant.”

11Ibid., 117.

Paul’s Structural Continuity with Second-Temple Judaism? 137

The “works” commended in MMT, then, are designed to mark

out God’s true people in the present time, the time when the final

fulfillment of Deuteronomy has begun but is not yet concluded.

They are designed (C30) “so that you may rejoice at the end of

time, finding these words of ours to be true”. I.e. so that you may

be “justified.” Proven to have been in the covenant. These extra-

biblical commands will thus enable the sect to anticipate the verdict

of the last day.12

Justification by Works in

Qumran and Paul

Wright argues that all of this is structurally similar to Paul, and that

the key difference is that Paul does not affirm “justification by works”

in the present. That is, in Qumran (and in the antagonists of Galatia),

the “works of the law” are the boundary-markers or badges by which

one shows himself to be part of the true covenant people now. But that

is emphatically, Wright says, what Paul opposes. This is the point of

his rejection of “justification by works of the law.” The Messiah has

come and died and risen and reigns, and all such boundary-markers,

especially any that would separate Jew from Gentile, have been done

away with as boundary-markers and have been replaced by one thing:

faith in Jesus. That is the one and only boundary-marker or badge of

the Christian community.

This brings us to the key comparison between MMT and Paul. Paul,

arguably, held a version of the same covenantal and eschatological

scheme of thought as MMT; but, in his scheme, the place taken by

“works of Torah” in MMT was taken by “faith.”13

In other words, Wright claims:

The shape of the scheme is the same, the content different. We may set

this out in the diagram on the following page.

Paul’s doctrine has exactly the same shape as that of MMT.

Justification (to use the shorthand term which MMT does not employ,

and which Paul uses only rarely) is God’s verdict, the verdict of the last

day. This verdict can be brought forward into the present, and thus

known ahead of time, when certain identity markers are present. In

12Ibid., 117–118.

13Ibid., 118.

other words, with this evidence you can tell in the present who will

be justified in the future. For MMT, that evidence is the adoption of

a particular halakhah. For Paul, it is faith in Jesus Christ. . . .14 Paul’s

theology, like that of MMT, is covenantal and eschatological in form.

But within the form there is radically different content.15

The point Paul is driving at is the polar opposite of the central

concern of MMT. Instead of highlighting legal precepts which

define Israel over against the Gentile world, or which mark out

one group of sectarian Jews over against another, he claims to have

found the way in which the biblical promises themselves marked

out the family of Abraham, making room as they did so for that

family to include believing Jews and believing Gentiles side by side

(e.g. Romans 4.9).16

Of course, what Paul found was that Jesus is Messiah and Lord.

Therefore, faith in Jesus replaces all “legal precepts” as the badge

of the true covenant people of God. That is, faith alone replaces all

“works of the law” as the markers that define the Christian church.

Thus, Paul did not oppose “works of the law” (e[rga novmou, Rom.

3:20, 28; Gal. 2:16; 3:2, 5, 10) in the way in which mainstream

Christian tradition thought he did. He did not oppose them as Old

Testament commands per se, or as legalistic efforts to earn God’s

14Ibid., 120–121.

15Ibid., 122.

16Ibid., 123–124.

Paul’s Structural Continuity with Second-Temple Judaism? 139

/Teacher of RighteousnessDeuteronomic promise >Community establishedGod’s final vindication>

Present state of exile marked out by ‘works’ in the present>

>

/Jesus the MessiahAbrahamic / Deuteronomic promise >Community establishedFinal salvation>

State of exile until the Messiah marked out by faith in the present>

>

favor. Rather, he opposed them as being too narrow and exclusive.17

They excluded Gentiles, and they did not flow from a confession as

Jesus as Lord.

Similarly, Paul did not oppose “justification by works” in the

way in which mainstream Christian interpretation thought he did.

“Both [MMT and the Pharisees] would have believed in something

Paul would have recognized (and rejected) as ‘justification by works’,

namely the definition of the eschatological people of God in terms of

particular halakhah; but they would have disagreed with each other on

what precisely those works were to be.”18

Notice the definition of “justification by works.” It refers, in Paul’s

thinking, not to the effort to get right with God, or to gain God’s favor

by doing works; rather, it refers to the effort to “[define] the eschatological

people of God in terms of particular halakhah.” The problem

Paul faced in Galatia, for example, was not that the adversaries were

trying to merit anything from God, nor was the problem that they were

trying to “get in” to the covenant. The problem was one of failure to

recognize Jesus as the reality that defines the covenant people and the

failure to embrace a “marker” or “badge” of the covenant that could

include Gentiles, namely, faith in Jesus.19

In this way, Wright sees in 4QMMT an eschatological structure

of justification that is similar to Paul’s. “The point of contact between

Paul and MMT is to be found in the form and structure of their

respective eschatological schemes, not in the ‘works’ that the one was

urging and in the ‘works’ that the other was resisting.”20 This structure

includes a kind of “inaugurated eschatology” for both. However,

Wright does not suggest that either the pre-Christian Paul or the “agitators

in Galatia” shared this added feature in the common Jewish

eschatological structure of justification. But, omitting this element, the

eschatological structure of justification in Paul and Qumran was the

common view of Judaism.21

17“What, then, is Paul attacking under the label ‘works of the law’? Not, we must insist, what

one might call proto-Pelagianism, the belief that one must earn one’s justification and salvation by

unaided good works.” Ibid., 124.

18Ibid., 128.

19“Faith is not, in other words, the thing one ‘does’ in order to earn acceptance with God. It is the

gift of God, and it forms the badge—the one and only legitimate badge—of membership in the true

family of Abraham.” Ibid., 123.

20Ibid., 125–126. Emphasis added.

21“Although MMT is written neither by nor for Pharisees, the shape of its doctrine of justification

(covenantal and eschatological) may well have been similar to that of the Pharisees, since, as we have

That common view, as we saw earlier, looks roughly like this:

Implications of This Structural Similarity

with Qumran

This understanding of first-century Judaism is an integral part of

Wright’s system. If it were to prove inaccurate, there would need to be

a pervasive rethinking of many things because of how many aspects of

the system are tied to this one. We may sum up some of these aspects

from what we have seen so far.

1. Judaism is a religion of grace, not legalism. Being in a saving

relationship with God is not merited by doing works but received as a

gift and responded to with gratitude.

[Sanders’s] major point, to which all else is subservient, can be quite

simply stated. Judaism in Paul’s day was not, as has regularly been

supposed, a religion of legalistic works-righteousness. If we imagine

that it was, and that Paul was attacking it as if it was, we will do great

violence to it and to him. . . . The Jew keeps the law out of gratitude,

as the proper response to grace—not, in other words, in order to get

into the covenant people, but to stay in. Being ‘in’ in the first place

was God’s gift. This scheme Sanders famously labeled as “covenantal

nomism” (from the Greek nomos, law).22

2. The “works” that the agitators in Galatia were demanding from

seen, it corresponds closely at a structural level to that which Paul expounds, and Paul may well have

retained the shape of Pharisaic thinking while filling it with new content. . . . The pre-Christian Saul

of Tarsus certainly believed that God’s true people would be vindicated at the last day, and that the

way in which this true Israel was to be known in the present time was by keeping the whole biblical

Torah (Gal 5.3).” Ibid., 128–129.

22Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 18–19.

Paul’s Structural Continuity with Second-Temple Judaism? 141

Free and gracious entrance into the covenant

a life of obedience to God out of gratitude for this grace

final justification on the basis of the entire life lived.

the Christians did not stir up self-exalting dependence on one’s own

deeds for God’s favor, but defined the covenant people in an ethnically

limited way through Jewish customs. Yet they were still a response of

gratitude to grace. “Galatians 3, being about circumcision, makes the

point, because Paul did not see circumcision at all as a ‘good work’

which one might do as part of a self-help moralism, but always an

ethnic badge.”23

3. The term “works of the law” does not refer, in Judaism or in

Paul, to moral efforts to earn or gain God’s favor, but to gratitude-

awakened markers of who the covenant people are and who will prove

to be vindicated as such at the final judgment.

Circumcision is not a ‘moral’ issue; it does not have to do with moral

effort, or earning salvation by good deeds.24

Can one tell in the present who precisely will be vindicated when God

finally acts in fulfillment of his righteousness, of his covenant obligations?

Yes, reply many Jews of Paul’s day. The present sign [that is,

“badge” or “marker”] of our future vindication consists in our present

loyalty to the covenant obligations laid upon us by our God. Our

‘works of the law’ [circumcision, etc.] demonstrate in the present that,

when God acts, we will be seen to be his people. Thus there arises that

theology of ‘justification by works’ which Paul was at such pains to

demolish.25

4. “Justification by works” is thus opposed by Paul not because

it is thought to be an act of God that grants his favor to those who

do sufficient works, but rather because it was mistakenly taken to be

God’s declaration that his people were those who wear the badge of

works—works such as circumcision, dietary laws, and Sabbath-keeping.

Paul opposes this and puts another badge in the place of works,

namely, faith in Jesus.

5. “Justification by faith,” accordingly, is not an act of God which

grants his favor to those who put their faith in Jesus. One does not get

into God’s favor through justification. Rather, “justification by faith”

is the declaration by God of who is already in God’s favor—in the cov

23Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 148.

24Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 120.

25Ibid., 99.

enant. It is “the anticipation, in the present time, of the verdict which

will be issued on the last day.”26 “Present justification declares, on the

basis of faith, what future justification will affirm publicly (according

to 2:14–16 and 8:9–11) on the basis of the entire life.”27

6. The gospel is the announcement that Christ has become the

expression and ground of God’s grace so that the forgiveness that

Jews were expecting from God, through their grace-based works,

now comes through Jesus.28 His resurrection and lordship over all

things makes all ethnic limitations of the Christian “badge” inappropriate.

Faith in him is now the only badge that defines who the

covenant people are. This badge, therefore, opens the door to all

ethnic groups.

Is Wright’s Understanding True?

These six aspects of Wright’s understanding of Paul in his first-century

context are interwoven in such a way that one of the most integral

threads holding the system together is Wright’s assessment of first-

century Jewish experience as a life built on God’s grace, and his assessment

of Paul’s antagonists in Galatia as representatives of that general

experience. We turn now to assess this particular construction of Paul’s

relationship to Judaism.

26Wright, “Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1.”

27Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 129.

28Wright notes that “forgiveness is mentioned in MMT C24–26 in connection with righteous kings

in general and with David in particular. They were forgiven, says the writer, because of their works.

No, says Paul; despite their lack of works.” Wright, “4QMMT and Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and

Eschatology,” 123.

Paul’s Structural Continuity with Second-Temple Judaism? 143

Chapter Ten

The Implications for Justification

of the Single Self-Righteous Root

of “Ethnic Badges” and

“Self-Help Moralism”

Does Wright succeed in portraying first-century Judaism, and

Paul’s pre-Christian life as a Pharisee, and the experience of the Jewish

agitators in Galatia as a life of “gratitude, as the proper response to

grace”? I don’t think so. I will try to give some reasons for this in what

follows, and then show what effect it has on his understanding of justification

in Paul.1

Are “Works of the Law” Only

Ethnic Badges?

Wright’s understanding of the term “works of the law” is not based

only, or even mainly, he would say, on external sources like Qumran,

but on his exegesis of Paul’s letters. He sees them as an ethnic badge

worn to show that a person is in the covenant rather than deeds done

1My conclusions are not unlike those of others. One summary of the critics is supplied by James M.

Hamilton Jr., “N. T. Wright and Saul’s Moral Bootstraps: Newer Light on ‘The New Perspective,”

in Trinity Journal, 25NS (2004), where he concludes “that the portion of Wright’s magnificent

edifice that rests on E. P. Sanders’s reconstruction of Palestinian Judaism is sagging. We have seen

that the foundation stone that Wright got from Sanders is out of shape when compared to the writings

from the period. Avemarie has shown that Sanders’s description does not match the Tannaitic

materials. Elliott demonstrates that his work does not fit the Qumran and Pseudepigraphical literature.

Gundry, Schreiner, Das, Kim, Gathercole, and many others (including Sanders himself) argue

that the Pauline literature does not match the description of Judaism that Sanders offers, and my

brief examination of Galatians 3 agrees with their work. To the extent, then, that N. T. Wright’s

conclusions regarding the nature of Paul’s conversion and his conception of justification depend on

Sanders’s Judaism, the picture is distorted.”

i

to show that they deserve God’s favor. One of his key exegetical arguments

for this view is from Romans 3:27–30.

Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of

law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that

one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Or is God the

God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles

also, since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and

the uncircumcised through faith.

Wright argues as follows from this text:

‘Where then is boasting?’ asks Paul in 3:27. ‘It is excluded!’ This ‘boasting’

which is excluded is not the boasting of the successful moralist;

it is the racial boast of the Jew, as in 2:17–24. If this is not so, 3:29

(‘Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not of Gentiles also?’) is

a non sequitur. Paul has no thought in this passage of warding off a

proto-Pelagianism, of which in any case his contemporaries were not

guilty. He is here, as in Galatians and Philippians, declaring that there

is no road into covenant membership on the grounds of Jewish racial

privilege.2

Paul has just said that God is the justifier of the one who has faith

in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Then he makes the point that this justification

by faith excludes boasting. He repeats this ground in verse 28: “For

we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” In

other words, what excludes boasting is justification by faith apart from

works of the law.

Here is the controversial phrase “works of the law.” Wright contends

that the words “apart from works of the law” are not aimed at

“the successful moralist.” That is, Paul is not addressing the problem

of doing deeds as the ground of getting or keeping God’s favor. Rather,

he is addressing the problem of ethnic boasting. Something like: “We

have the badge of membership and you don’t.” Wright’s argument is

that verse 29 would be a non sequitur if this were not what Paul means

by “works of the law.”

On the contrary, I would argue that there are contextually sensitive,

compelling interpretations of the logic of these verses that are not

2Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 129.

dependent on seeing “works of the law” as ethnic badges. For example,

moving backward, consider the following. The statement “God is one”

leads to the inference that he “will justify the circumcised by faith and

uncircumcised through faith” (v. 30). In other words, the oneness of

God implies oneness in the way he justifies Jew and Gentile, namely,

by faith (not by works of the law). This unit then—the singular God

implying a singular way of justification for all peoples (v. 30)—is the

explanatory ground (ei[per, since) of verse 29 (“Or is God the God of

Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also.”) In

other words, we know that God is not a tribal deity limiting his saving

grace and rights to one people (v. 29), because, being one, God has one

way to save all the peoples (v. 30).

The rhetorical question beginning with “or” (“Or is God the God

of the Jews only?”) is then a ground3 of verse 28, supporting the

claim that justification is by faith apart from works of the law. God’s

unity implies a unity of how one is justified among all peoples (v. 30).

This in turn supports God’s universal and single-method justifying

intention for all peoples (v. 29). This in turn supports the statement

that this single-method way of justifying is by faith and not by works

(v. 28) as he clarifies in verse 30 (“ . . . who will justify the circumcised

by faith and the uncircumcised through faith”).

This single method of justifying cuts the nerve of all boasting—

both Jewish and Gentile—since the very nature of faith is to look away

from itself to Jesus (v. 26) rather than to one’s works. The focus in

the argument is not mainly on “works of the law” but on faith as the

universally accessible and universally humbling way of justification.

Of course, the boasting of ethnocentrism is excluded, but Paul is also

condemning the use of the law (or any moral code) to commend oneself

for justification by law-keeping. It is very likely, contrary to Wright’s

conclusion, that Paul has in view the “boasting of the successful moralist.”

It is likely that this kind of pride is virtually inseparable from

ethnocentrism (as we will see below).4

3This is the usual way Paul uses the word or in rhetorical questions: Rom. 2:4; 7:1; 1 Cor. 6:2, 9,

16, 19; 11:22; 2 Cor. 13:5.

4Very briefly I should perhaps mention one other argument in favor of treating “works of the law” as

the deeds of law-keeping in general rather than as ethnic badges like circumcision, dietary laws, etc.

Romans 4:6 says, “David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness

apart from works [cwri;i e[rgwn].” This refers, in the context of Psalm 32 where Paul is quoting, to

what David has done as “sins” and “lawless deeds.” So the “works” that he is without are the moral

works that he has transgressed. His failure is not ceremonial. Therefore, since Romans 4:1–6 comes

The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root 147

Is Legalism Ruled out by Believing in Grace?

Wright is aware that his reading of 4QMMT is not the only one. He

claims that the teachings of 4QMMT “reveal nothing of the self-righteous

and boastful ‘legalism’ which used to be thought characteristic of

Jews in Paul’s day.”5 However, we will see in what follows that this is

doubtful. Wright bases this claim on the fact that the author of MMT

instructs his followers to pray for God’s enablement in keeping the

works of the law: “Understand all these things and beseech Him to set

your counsel straight and so keep you away from evil thoughts and the

counsel of Belial” (sections 28–29). But we will see later on that such

a prayer does not warrant the conclusion that belief in grace-wrought

righteousness rules out legalism. Paul may well have considered reliance

on works of the law for final justification to be hopeless and

dishonoring to Christ even if a person prayed for divine enablement to

perform them. Appealing to Qumran’s reliance on God’s help in answer

to prayer to perform “works of the law” does not in itself demonstrate

the absence of “legalism” and “self-righteousness.”6in to support and explain the statements made about “works of the law” in 3:20, 28, we should

not assume that the term “works of the law” is more narrowly conceived than “works” in Rom.

4:6. See, for example, Simon Gathercole, Where Is Boasting?, 247. “It is crucial to recognize that

the New Perspective interpretation of 4:1–8 falls to the ground on this point: that David although

circumcised, sabbatarian, and kosher, is described as without works because of his disobedience”

(his emphasis). For the wider defense of the term “works of the law” as simply a reference to law-

keeping, I must lean here on the work of others. See especially Douglas Moo’s summary and defense

in The Epistle to the Romans, 206–210, and the excursus which follows, 211–217 (“Excursus:

Paul, ‘Works of the Law,’ and First-Century Judaism”), as well as his articles “‘Law,’ ‘Works of the

Law,’ and Legalism in Paul,” Westminster Theological Journal 45 [1983]: 73–100, and “Review of

D. P. Fuller. Gospel and Law: Contrast or Continuum? The Hermeneutic of Dispensationalism and

Covenant Theology,” Trinity Journal 3 [1982], 99–102. See also T. R. Schreiner, “‘Works of the Law’

in Paul,” Novum Testamentum 33 [1991]: 217–244, and The Law and Its Fulfillment, 179–204;

Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics (Grand

Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 300–321; and Moisés Silva, “The Law and Christianity: Dunn’s New

Synthesis,” Westminster Theological Journal 53 [1991]: 339–53, and “Faith Versus Works of Law

in Galatians,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, ed. Carson et al., Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI:

Baker, 2004), 217–248.

5Wright, “4QMMT and Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and Eschatology,” 106.

6Tom Schreiner makes the helpful distinction between formal statements implying grace over against

the way people may truly live: “Legalism may also exist in practice, even if grace is trumpeted in

theory. Religionists may easily proclaim the primacy of grace and actually live as if the determining

factor was human effort. The history of the Christian church amply demonstrates that a theology

of grace does not preclude legalism in practice. It would be surprising if Judaism did not suffer from

the same problem. Legalism threatens even those who hold to a theology of grace since pride and

self-boasting are deeply rooted in human nature. . . .” “Theology . . . is not measured only by formal

statements but also by what it stresses. Any theology that claims to stress God’s grace but rarely mentions

it and that elaborates human responsibility in detail inevitably becomes legalistic in practice, if

not theory.” Schreiner, Law and Its Fulfillment, 115–116. Schreiner points to Wright’s statement in

The New Testament and the People of God (222) where he says, “The Pharisees believed that their

brand of fidelity to the traditions of the fathers was the divinely appointed programme of Torah

intensification, and thus the means of Israel’s rescue” (emphasis added).

The most crucial lines in 4QMMT for Wright are: “And it will

be reckoned to you as righteousness, in that you have done what is

right and good before Him, to your own benefit, and to that of Israel”

(C31–32). However, these lines are not transparently supportive of his

understanding of justification. A more natural reading would seem to

be that the words “in that you have done what is right” signify the

meaning of the righteousness that will be reckoned to the obedient

sectarian, namely, simple obedience to what the law requires. Wright’s

effort to place these words in the service of his understanding of justification

as the declaration of who are members of the covenant people

does not seem compelling to me. The person who stands before God

at the last day with the assumption that he will be justified “in that

[he has] done what is right and good” is more likely a candidate for

Jesus’ indictment: They “trusted in themselves that they were righteous”—

even though they say, “God, I thank you that I am not like

other men” (Luke 18:9, 11).

Wright seems to operate with the assumption that there can be no

legalism and no self-righteousness where a person depends on God’s

grace to do the works that he expects to be the basis of his justification

at the last day. But that has not been shown. It may, in fact, be the

case that looking to any works (with or without grace as the enabling

power) put forward as the basis of justification is hopeless and dishonors

what Christ can achieve and provide.

We have seen in the previous chapter that simply appealing to

Romans 2:13 and the terminology of “the doers of the law . . . will be

justified” does not account for the complexity of how, in Paul’s theology,

good works relate to justification in the end. I have argued that

these works will demonstrate the authenticity of faith that looks away

from all self-wrought or Spirit-wrought obedience in us to the blood

and obedience of Jesus as the punishment and perfection that God

requires. It seems to me that Wright has not strengthened his case by

his arguments from 4QMMT.

Not Legalistic, Only Ethnocentric?

Another problem with Wright’s reconstruction of the first-century setting

that illumines the position of the “agitators” in Galatia and in turn

sheds light on Paul’s understanding of justification is that this recon

The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root 149

struction seems to miss some of the implications of ethnocentricity.

Insisting, as Paul’s Jewish opponents did, that Gentiles wear the Jewish

badge of circumcision, dietary restrictions, and Sabbath-keeping is not,

Wright would say, legalistic; it is ethnocentric. The problem with these

antagonists was not that they were relying on the badge in order to be

God’s people (which happened by a gracious election); the problem

was that they wanted to keep that relationship for themselves.

Among the historical and exegetical objections that scholars have

raised against this reconstruction of the background of Paul’s thought,7

one that has not been expressed as frequently is that Wright, and other

representatives of the New Perspective on Paul, offer an inadequate

analysis of the roots of ethnocentrism. Can one, for example, draw a line

between the evil of legalism and the evil of lovelessness?

What did Paul’s opponents believe as grace-dependent people?

Wright answers: They believed not that their “works of law” made

them members of the covenant, but rather that the works showed that

they were members already by God’s grace.

Our ‘works of the law’ [circumcision, etc.] demonstrate in the present

that, when God acts, we will be seen to be his people. Thus there arises

that theology of ‘justification by works’ which Paul was at such pains

to demolish.8

But, Wright insists, Paul aimed to demolish “justification by

works” not because it was legalistic, that is, not because the “works

of law” were viewed as the basis of membership in the covenant, but

rather because these “works of the law” (circumcision, dietary laws,

etc.) were the wrong sign of the grace-based life. They were ethno

7See footnote 5. For example, after extensive analysis of the Jewish sources, Simon Gathercole

concludes,

The Jewish expository tradition, summarized by Paul in Romans 4:2 [“If Abraham was

justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God”], asserts that

works were the means whereby Abraham (and thus Israel) was justified and declared to

be a friend of God: obedience was not just an indication of covenant membership. In

1 Maccabees 2:52 (cf. Damascus Document), it is Abraham’s ‘being-found-faithful-in-testing’

that is the subject of the verb phrase ‘was reckoned as righteousness.’ In the phrases ‘by

works’ and ‘by faith,” the preposition (ejk, ejx) in both cases denotes the means to, or basis

of, justification. The exegesis of the Jewish texts in chapters 1–4 [of Gathercole’s book]

. . . entirely validates an understanding of Romans 4:2 and 4:4 in terms of commutative

justice. The antithesis that [Richard] Hays, [James] Dunn, and Wright construct, between

obeying the Torah as a means to righteousness and elements of the Torah marking out

the righteous, is false. A distinction between commutative justice and covenantal markers

would be entirely foreign to Paul. (Where Is Boasting?, 248–249)

8Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 99.

centric. Now that the Messiah had come, faith in Christ was the only

proper badge for a grace-dependent covenant member. Israel’s mistake

was not in the way she related to God (grace vs. works), but in the way

she related to the Gentiles. “In seeking to establish a status of righteousness,

of covenant membership, which will be for Jews and Jews

only, she [Israel] has not submitted to God’s righteousness.”9

For Wright, exclusivism is the antagonists’ key problem. But structurally

they share with Paul an understanding of grace and obedience

and final justification by works. These opponents were, presumably,

what Paul himself had been as a non-legalistic, grace-rooted Shammaite

Pharisee before the Damascus road, for Wright says, “His zeal for

Torah was not . . . a Pelagian religion of self-help moralism.”10

Following E. P. Sanders11 (on this but certainly not every point),

Wright agrees that first-century Pharisaism was a grace-based religion

that has been much misunderstood and falsely maligned.

Saul, I used to believe, was a proto-Pelagian, who thought he could

pull himself up by his moral bootstraps. What mattered for him was

understanding, believing and operating a system of salvation that

could be described as ‘moralism’ or ‘legalism’: a timeless system into

which one plugged oneself in order to receive the promised benefits,

especially ‘salvation’ and ‘eternal life’, understood as the post-mortem

bliss of heaven.

I now believe that this is both radically anachronistic (this view was

not invented in Saul’s day) and culturally out of line (it is not the Jewish

way of thinking). To this extent, I am convinced, Ed Sanders is right:

we have misjudged early Judaism, especially Pharisaism, if we have

thought of it as an early version of Pelagianism.12

One of the problems with this is that you do not have to articulate

full-blown Pelagianism to be guilty of self-righteousness in relating

to God.13 We need to let Paul and Jesus help us go deeper in our

9Ibid., 108. For my understanding of “seeking to establish their own righteousness” and “not submitting

to God’s righteousness” in Romans 10:3–4, see Appendix 1 on Romans 9:30–10:4.

10Ibid., 35.

11The seminal book was E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of

Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977).

12Ibid., 32. Emphasis added.

13Tom Schreiner alerts us with the help of Robert Stein that legalism is endemic to the human

heart, not just a few religions: “My colleague, Robert H. Stein, has remarked that, if Judaism were

not legalistic at all, it would be the only religion in history that escaped the human propensity for

works-righteousness.” The Law and Its Fulfillment, 115.

The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root 151

understanding of the Pharisees, the pre-Christian Pharisee Paul, and

the opponents of Paul. There are kinds of self-righteousness and

subtle forms of legalism14 that do not take the form of full-blown

Pelagianism.

Was Paul’s Pre-Christian Vision Shaped by

Gratitude for Grace?

To the degree that the pre-Christian Paul was typical15 of the Pharisees

of his day, the picture is not as grace-based as the newer view implies.

By his own testimony, Saul the Pharisee (Phil. 3:5) was not living a life

of dependence on grace walking in favor with God. He said that he and

all others who rejected Christ were “dead in . . . trespasses” (Eph. 2:5).

He explicitly included himself in the indictment: “We all once lived

[among the sons of disobedience] in the passions of our flesh, carrying

out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children

of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3).

Paul’s own description of himself before his conversion to Jesus

was that he was not a humble supplicant of grace (even if his theology

claimed this) but an arrogant blasphemer in his very service

of God. “Formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent

14I found the following quote from Matt Perman in a personal e-mail on 10-12-06 so illuminating

I want to include it here: “When I read E. P. Sanders, what stood out to me was that legalism was

in almost every quote that he gave from Judaism in his attempt to prove that it was not legalistic.

It became clear to me that Sanders doesn’t seem to know what legalism is. In fact, it appears that

this is the case with most of the New Perspective. They appear to be thinking only in terms of hard

legalism, which is the notion that either your works bribe God or that they are self-produced by

our own effort. But, as you flesh it out, hard legalism does not exhaust the definition of legalism.

There is also soft legalism, which is the belief that your God-empowered obedience justifies you

before God, or that you ‘become saved’ by faith but ‘remain saved’ by God-produced works (which

includes the idea that final justification is based on obedience). In fact, Sanders acknowledged that

the first-century Jews believed that they got into the covenant by grace but ‘stayed in’ by works. But

he failed to realize that this is legalism. The New Perspective—and those taking their initial cues

from it—typically conflate legalism and Pelagianism, seeming to think that because they (or the first-

century Jews) are not Pelagians, they therefore cannot be legalists. It needs to be made crystal-clear

that these are distinct issues. You can utterly reject Pelagianism and yet be a legalist. You can be a

Calvinist legalist, an Augustinian legalist, a believing-in-grace-empowered-works legalist. . . . This

is perhaps the central issue of the debate and is probably a big part of the reason that they are going

wrong. The essence of legalism is the belief that our right standing with God is based on, comes by

means of, or is sustained by our works—regardless of whether those works are self-produced (hard

legalism) or whether they are completely produced by God’s grace in us (soft legalism). . . . Related

to this, some have seemed to think that the Reformation was primarily about Pelagianism, as though

Luther’s and Calvin’s issue with Rome was over self-produced works. But the Reformation was first

about legalism, whether the works we do justify us, regardless of whether they are grace-empowered

or not. The distinction between Pelagianism and legalism is so crucial. . . . Even though they overlap,

Pelagianism and legalism are distinct issues.” See also footnote 24 below.

15He was, by his own testimony, an exceedingly zealous Pharisee, but this means he was on the same

wavelength with the rest, only better at it. “If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the

flesh, I have more” (Phil. 3:4).

opponent [blavsfhmon kai; diwvkthn kai; uJbristhvn]” (1 Tim. 1:13).

Paul’s pre-Christian religion positioned him squarely under the

wrath of God (“children of wrath, like the rest of mankind”).16 He

was not God’s friend or follower. He was not loyal to the God of

the covenant.

Of course, he thought he was, and would no doubt have spoken

of the election of grace. But Jesus (in line with Paul’s own testimony of

Eph. 2:2–3) said that many Pharisees did not have God as their father,

but the devil:

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for

I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but

he sent me. . . . You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do

your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning [as Acts

9:1 describes Paul prior to his conversion], and has nothing to do with

the truth, because there is no truth in him.” (John 8:42, 44)

This fits with Paul’s own testimony that as a Pharisee before his

conversion he was “following the prince of the power of the air,” that

is, the devil (Eph. 2:2). Wright does not, as far as I can see, express any

amazement that Paul looked back on his pre-Christian devotion to

pharisaic Torah-keeping as demonic. In Paul’s very service to God he

was blaspheming. He saw his religion as the consummate expression

of hubris (uJbristhvn, 1 Tim. 1:13).

16Of course, there were Jews in Jesus’ and Paul’s day who were humbly trusting the promises and

seeking the kingdom and ready to recognize the Messiah when he came—like Anna and Simeon

and Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:5–6; 2:25–38). But Paul did not see himself as one of these,

and Jesus did not see most of the Pharisees in this category. There was a profound difference

between the “blamelessness” (a[memptoj) of the pre-Christian Paul (Phil. 3:6) and the “blamelessness”

(a[memptoi) of Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:6). Douglas Wilson has expressed this

difference pointedly:

Now I grant that Zechariah was a sinner, needing forgiveness. Yet I take Luke’s

record of his blamelessness straight on, taking it to mean that Zecharias was a faithful

covenant member, honestly availing himself of the means provided for sins within the

covenant arrangement. But in my view, Saul was in a different realm entirely. Saul was

a flaming hypocrite before his conversion, and not like Zecharias at all. Before Christ

came, had Zecharias and Saul been hit by the same truck, Zecharias would have been

saved and Saul lost. This would have happened on the same principles that lead us

to believe that David was saved and Korah was lost. This is not an obscure point.

Saul tells us this in a number of places, including in this passage of Philippians under

discussion. He is clearly mocking himself, because right before he tells us of his so-

called “blamelessness,” he identifies the people who currently think just like he used

to think as dogs, as evil workers, as mutilators of the flesh (Phil. 3:2). Is he wanting

us to believe that he was a blameless dog, a blameless evil worker, a blameless mutilator

of the Abrahamic sign? (http://www.dougwils.com/Print.asp?Action=Anchor&

–CategoryID=1&BlogID=1617)

The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root 153

Jesus’ Assessment of the Pharisees and

Paul’s Confession

There is no reason to reject the teaching of Jesus concerning most of

the Pharisees in his experience, of which Paul, by his own testimony,

was a classic example.17 “They do all their deeds to be seen by others.

For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they

love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues

and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others”

(Matt. 23:5–7). In other words, their pursuit of Torah was not out of

gratitude to God, but out of craving for human glory. This is why they

could not believe on Jesus: “How can you believe, when you receive

glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the

only God?” (John 5:44). Jesus made a distinction between what they

said they believed and the true condition of their hearts.

The Pharisees were committed to establishing their own righteousness,

even if they claimed to believe that it was by God’s gracious

enabling. And the most natural understanding of the meaning

of that “righteousness” is simply obedience to the law with a view

to glorifying God. But Jesus said it was only external and therefore

hypocritical: “You clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but

inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence . . . you are like whitewashed

tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full

of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly

appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and

lawlessness” (Matt. 23:25, 27–28). They were lovers of money (Luke

16:14) and, by this and other means, were an “adulterous” generation

(Matt. 12:39; 16:4).

Their zeal for righteousness included proselytizing: “Woe to you,

scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land

to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you

make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (Matt. 23:15).

Therefore, in spite of all their self-understanding to the contrary, Jesus

says these Jewish leaders (not all Jewish people!) are not going to be

justified at the final judgment: “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how

are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” (Matt. 23:33).

17The fact that Nicodemus was a Pharisee and seemed to have a different spirit showed that there

were exceptions to the general indictment (John 3:1; 7:50; 19:39).

Both Jesus and Paul would have said that before his conversion

Paul hated God and hated people. Of course, this was not Paul’s

self-understanding at the time. But Jesus said that a person’s attitude

toward Jesus himself revealed the truth: “Whoever hates me hates my

Father also” (John 15:23). And Paul confessed from his Christian vantage

point that he actually hated others: “We ourselves were once foolish,

disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures,

passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one

another” (Titus 3:3).

In view of Jesus’ penetrating and devastating indictment of the

Pharisees, and in view of Paul’s testimony that he was one from that

group (Gal. 1:13; Phil. 3:6; Eph. 2:2–3; 1 Tim. 1:13–14; Titus 3:3), it

seems to be a historical fantasy to portray the pre-Christian Saul or his

later opponents in Galatia as true lovers of God who had drunk from

the fountain of divine grace and who therefore genuinely followed the

Torah out of heartfelt gratitude to God. No doubt there were such

grace-dependent, gratitude-driven Jewish people, but it is doubtful

that Paul and the Pharisees whom Jesus knew and Paul’s opponents in

Galatia were among them. My aim here is not to say that Wright has a

rosy picture of Paul’s antagonists in Galatia, but to make clear that the

picture was not rosy and that saying “legalism” was not the problem

may overlook the deeper connections between other sins and depths of

legalism that are not as obvious.18

The Depth of Evil in

Ethnocentrism

Turning from the Qumran community and first-century Pharisaism, we

focus on what appears to be an insufficient analysis of the problem of

ethnocentrism. Wright talks as though there is a significant difference

between the evil of legalistic boasting in works, on the one hand, and

the evil of loveless boasting in ethnic distinctives, on the other hand. He

identifies the underlying reason that Paul and other Jews rejected Jesus

18If some of the New Perspective defenders (not N. T. Wright) choose to attribute this portrait of

the Pharisees not to Jesus but to later Christian communities, then not only must they assume that

they know more than those communities about Jesus, but also that they know more than those communities

about the Pharisees in or near those very communities. If I have to choose which testimony

to believe about the nature of the Pharisees, I choose to believe the testimony of the early Christians,

not the reconstruction of twenty-first-century scholars whose biases are no less dangerous than

those of early Christians.

The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root 155

as Jesus’ threat to their ethnocentrism, not his threat to their so-called

“self-help moralism.”

When Paul’s fellow Jews rejected Jesus (as Paul did himself to begin

with), and when they continue to reject the message about Jesus which

Paul proclaims, he sees the underlying reason: they recognize, as he has

had to recognize, that it will mean abandoning the idea of a covenant

membership which will be inalienably hers and hers alone.19

Yes. But that is only the tip of an iceberg of evil that Jesus exposes

and Paul confesses. Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,

hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.

For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to

go in” (Matt. 23:13). It does not matter that the immediate reference

here is the exclusion of other Jewish people by the legal demands the

Pharisees were making. The principle holds. Exclusivism rooted in religious

pride remains the same. Jesus identifies the ethnic exclusiveness

of the Pharisees as deeply rooted in morally reprehensible pride—that

is, self-righteousness. “You are those who justify yourselves before

men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is

an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). For Jesus, the line

between ethnic pride and moral pride vanishes. Ethnocentrism and

self-righteousness are morally inseparable.

In such hearts, the use of the law will inevitably be self-justifying,

whatever the theology one professes. In Paul’s battle with those who

seek to establish their own righteousness, he was not dealing merely

with ethnocentrism but the kind of heart that uses whatever it takes up

as part self-commendation to God and man.

Two Additional Problems

Wright’s general orientation toward Second-Temple Judaism—that

“the Jew keeps the law out of gratitude, as the proper response to

grace”20—encounters at least two additional problems. First, it seems

to fly in the face of what Jesus says about how the Pharisees in general

experienced and shared mercy. And second, it seems to overlook the

reality that the root of ethnic pride is the same root as legalism, namely,

19Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 108.

20Ibid., 19.

self-righteousness, and that this root can produce branches that boast

in God’s grace.

“I Desire Mercy, Not Sacrifice”

In regard to the first problem, Jesus’ basic statement about the hermeneutic

that guided the Pharisees’ pursuit of Torah was: “Go and learn

what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice’” (Matt. 9:13; 12:7).

In other words, they do not handle the Torah faithfully because they do

not have a “proper response to grace.” They do not grasp—or, more

crucially, are not grasped by—the precious reality of the mercy of God

and its implications for how to read the Bible and treat people. They

may say that they are depending on grace. But Jesus said they are not.

Jesus made it plain in the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt.

18:23–35) that a person who is demanding and unforgiving has not

truly experienced God’s grace. The evidence that this was generally

true of the Pharisees is that “they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear,

and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing

to move them with their finger” (Matt. 23:4). This is not the work of

“gratitude as a proper response to grace.” “He who is forgiven little,

loves little” (Luke 7:47).

Legalism and Ethnocentrism Have the

Same Root: Self-righteousness

In regard to the second objection to the general view that “the Jew

keeps the law out of gratitude, as the proper response to grace,”21 it

is important to see that, from Jesus’ standpoint, relational exclusivism

(ethnic or otherwise) is rooted in self-righteousness, which means

that ethnocentrism and legalism have the same root. This connection

between self-righteousness and exclusivism is one of the points of

Jesus’ parable that begins, “He also told this parable to some who

trusted in themselves that they were righteous [divkaioi],22 and treated

others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). A deep root of “treating others

with contempt” (whether the others are ethnically similar publicans or

ethnically different Gentiles) is: “[They] trusted in themselves that they

21Ibid.

22The meaning of “righteousness” here is simply morally right behavior in obedience to what God

requires for his glory. It is found, for example, in Matthew 6:1, “Beware of practicing your righteousness

before other people in order to be seen by them.”

The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root 157

were righteous [tou;i pepoiqovtai ejf’ eJautoi`i o{ti eijsi;n divkaioi].” In

other words, the exclusivistic treatment of others is one manifestation

of the self-righteousness that trusts in its own law-keeping. Legalism

and ethnocentrism have the same root. They are not separate conditions

of the soul.

Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector also shows

that the branches of this root of exclusivistic self-righteousness can,

amazingly, make protests and prayers to the effect that all is of grace.

Thus, the Pharisee prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other

men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector”

(Luke 18:11). Is this not a clear warning to us that finding grace-

dependent statements in Second-Temple Judaism does not demonstrate

that the hearts of those who made those statements were not

at root self-righteous?

This is why we said above that Wright’s view of possible legalism

in Qumran was inadequate. He claimed that the teachings of 4QMMT

“reveal nothing of the self-righteous and boastful ‘legalism’ which used

to be thought characteristic of Jews in Paul’s day.”23 But now we have

seen that this cannot be successfully defended by saying that the author

instructs his followers to pray for God’s gracious help in keeping the

works of the law (“Understand all these things and beseech Him to set

your counsel straight and so keep you away from evil thoughts and the

counsel of Belial,” sections 28–29 of MMT). Jesus makes plain in Luke

18:11 that such prayers do not prove the absence of self-righteousness,

which is the root of legalism, even when protests of depending on grace

are present.24

23Wright, “4QMMT and Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and Eschatology,” 106.

24Stephen Westerholm, in partial dependence on Heikki Räisänen, draws our attention to a crucial

distinction that we saw once already (footnote 14 above), namely, the difference between hard and

soft legalism:

[Räisänen] notes that, while legalism involves the view that ‘salvation consists of the

observance of precepts,’ boasting and self-righteousness may, but do not always, accompany

this notion. When they do not, we may speak of a ‘soft’ or ‘torah-centric’ form

of legalism; when they do, we have a ‘hard’ or ‘anthropocentric’ legalism. To this we

may add that ‘soft’ legalists, who try to obey God’s law because they believe God has

commanded them to do so, may not believe that they are thereby ‘earning’ their salvation,

still less that they are ‘establishing a claim’ on God based on their own ‘merit.’

Surely love for God, or even fear of his judgment, are adequate motives for obedience

to his commands. No such explanation as hypocrisy, self-seeking, merit-mongering, and

outright rebellion against God need be invoked to explain why religious people would

attempt to do what they believe God has commanded them. To think otherwise is to

insist, for example, that Psalm 119 expresses the religion of a sham, and that Deut.

30:16 commands it.

The Futile Differentiation

I would suggest, therefore, that Wright’s effort to distinguish the

“racial boast” of the Jew from the boast of the “successful moralist”

is both futile and, in the end, pointless because the racial boast

is rooted in self-righteousness that is the fundamental problem with

the legalist. Wright says, “This ‘boasting’ which is excluded [in Rom.

3:27] is not the boasting of the successful moralist; it is the racial

boast of the Jew.”25 But Jesus has shown us that boasting in one’s

human distinctives—whether racial, cultural, or moral—is rooted in

trusting in oneself as righteous (Luke 18:9). This is true even if the

human distinctives are thought of as gifts of God (Luke 18:11). Both

the racial boast and the moral boast show that, no matter what one

believes about grace, the heart is not properly resting in the God of

grace—that is, in the obedience he provides outside of us and for

us—but is trusting in self (even, perhaps, the self one may believe God

has graciously created).

Unfortunately, in most definitions of legalism by New Testament scholars, the possibility

of ‘soft’ legalism is not even considered. The ‘legalist,’ for Cranfield, is the one

who tries to use the law ‘as a means to the establishment of a claim upon God, and so

to the defense of his self-centeredness and the assertion of a measure of independence

over against God. He imagines that he can put God under an obligation to himself, that

he will be able so adequately to fulfill the law’s demands that he will earn for himself

a righteous status before God.’ For Moule, legalism is ‘the intention to claim God’s

favour by establishing one’s own rightness.’ For Hübner, those who see righteousness

as based on works define their existence in terms of their own activities, leave God

out of consideration, and, in effect, ‘see themselves as their own creator.’ For [Daniel]

Fuller, legalism ‘presumes that the Lord, who is not ‘served by human hands, as though

he needed anything’ (Acts 17:25), can nevertheless be bribed and obligated to bestow

blessing by the way men distinguish themselves.’

Such definitions would be innocent enough if they were accompanied by an awareness

that ‘legalists’ of this kind represent only some of those who interpreted Deut.

30:16 as saying that obedience to God’s law was the way to life. But all too frequently

there is no such awareness. The alternative to faith is not (as it is in Paul) simply

‘works,’ whether they are ‘good or bad’—a statement which embraces both ‘soft’

and ‘hard’ legalism—but rather the sinful, self-seeking, merit-claiming works of the

(necessarily ‘hard’) legalist. Whereas Paul can contrast faith in Christ with ‘the works

of the law,’ and mean by the latter no more than the deeds commanded by the law,

the very notion of ‘works’ is so inextricably linked in the minds of some scholars with

self-righteousness and pride that (as we have seen) the ‘works of the law’ can only be

conceived as sinful. It is not surprising that for such scholars, the ‘law’ whose works

are viewed as sinful cannot be seen as divine, but inevitably becomes the legalistically

distorted form of God’s law which prevailed (we are confidently told) among the Jews

of Paul’s day. But—it must be emphasized—in Paul’s argument it is human deeds of

any kind which cannot justify, not simply deeds done ‘in a spirit of legalism.’ Paul’s

very point is lost to view when his statements excluding the law and its works from

justification are applied only to the law’s perversion. (Stephen Westerholm, Israel’s

Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters [Grand Rapids, MI:

Eerdmans, 1988], 132–134)

25Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 129.

The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root 159

When a Badge of Grace Becomes a

Boast in Self

Both Jesus and Paul saw this deeper problem in the Pharisees and, by

implication, in Paul’s opponents in Galatia. The issue was not whether

one should wear a Jewish badge to signify one’s reliance on grace or a

Christian badge to signify one’s reliance on grace. The issue was that

the Jewish badge itself (circumcision, diet laws, etc.) had become the

trust of many Jews (like the Pharisee in the parable of Jesus) and was

thus a means of exalting self, not God (even, for some perhaps, while

thanking the grace of God), and had therefore led to contempt for others,

and was therefore a morally unrighteous form of legalism.

Wright is correct to say, “The Jewish longing for a great law-

court scene, a great assize, in which they would be on one side and

the Gentiles on the other, seems to have gone horribly wrong.”26 Yes.

And we learn from Jesus and Paul how horribly wrong it had gone.

It was not merely the “wrong” of a mistaken badge of God’s gracious

activity. It was the wrong of turning gracious national election into

racial and moral superiority to the exclusion of the nations—all of

which was rooted in the exaltation of self—including the God-elected,

Torah-keeping, supposedly Spirit-assisted, righteous self. The effort to

disassociate this mind-set from legalism is not successful or helpful. On

the contrary, this mind-set is itself a form of legalism.

The Unity of Racial Boasting and

Self-Help Moralism

Wright’s repeated claim that Paul was confronting “Jewish racial privilege,”

27 not “self-help moralism,”28 is an unhelpful and misleading

differentiation. Something had gone “horribly wrong.” Racial privilege,

with all its badges, had become the ethical twin sister of “self-help

moralism.” Both nullified grace. Both were expressions of confidence

26Ibid., 127. Emphasis added.

27“Paul has no thought in this passage [Rom. 3:27–29] of warding off a proto-Pelagianism, of which

in any case his contemporaries were not guilty. He is here, as in Galatians and Philippians, declaring

that there is no road into covenant membership on the grounds of Jewish racial privilege.” Ibid.,

129. Emphasis added.

28“Paul did not see circumcision at all as a ‘good work’ which one might do as part of a self-help

moralism, but always an ethnic badge.” Paul in Fresh Perspective, 148. “[Saul’s] zeal for Torah was

not, however, a Pelagian religion of self-help moralism.” What Saint Paul Really Said, 35. “[Rom.

1:16–17] does not, therefore, mean ‘the gospel reveals justification by faith as the true scheme of

salvation, as opposed to Jewish self-help moralism.’” Ibid., 126.

in self that it was upright because of human distinctives (one claiming

that these were from God, both acting as though they were not).

Both exalted self and boasted before God, and neither expressed the

spirit of Jesus’ words, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done

what was our duty” (Luke 17:10). It is morally irrelevant whether the

self-exaltation comes from thinking they have achieved a superiority

by moral performances (like the Ten Commandments) or by religious

performances (like circumcision) or by being born by God’s grace into

a certain group.

Self-Righteousness as the Hope of Salvation

Is What Justification Deals With

Therefore, it is not misleading to say that Paul was confronting a deep

legalism when he articulated his doctrine of justification. The root of

this legalism was self-righteousness, in whatever ethnic or moral dress.

Inevitably, self-righteousness implies that one’s own moral condition

is the basis of self-exalting exclusion in relation to men and hoped-for

inclusion in relation to God. Being Jewish by birth—and therefore by

grace—was not a saving category for Paul (Rom. 9:3, 6–8). Perishing

or being saved hung on whether one trusted in one’s own moral condition

(self-righteousness) or the moral condition of a Substitute (Christ-

righteousness). Which would be the basis of being counted just and

therefore included in everlasting joy with God (1 Pet. 3:18)? This is

what justification dealt with.

We turn, finally, to give biblical foundation to the doctrine of the

imputation of God’s righteousness in Christ through faith alone, now

and for eternity.

The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root 161

Chapter Eleven

“That in Him We Might Become the

Righteousness of God”

There are ways to define the righteousness of God so that it

becomes nonsense to speak of the imputation of that righteousness to

us. N. T. Wright’s treatment of the righteousness of God is certainly not

eccentric. Thinking of God’s righteousness mainly as God’s covenant

faithfulness has become the scholar’s new tradition in the past forty

years or so. This was not compelling to me thirty-five years ago when

I was immersed in the academic literature, and it is less so today after

thirty years of trying to make sense out of texts for the sake of preaching.

The confusion introduced into the understanding of justification

in recent decades stems significantly from this new and sometimes

unquestioned watchword of the scholarly world.

Wright’s understanding of the righteousness of God is not simplistic.

He moves thoughtfully back and forth between covenantal and

law-court portrayals of the righteousness of God. The reason for this

is that “the covenant was there in the first place to deal with the sin

of the world, and (to the Hebrew mind) you dealt with sin through

the law-court, condemning the sinner and ‘justifying’, i.e. acquitting

or vindicating, the righteous.”1 But whether covenantal language or

law-court language is used, Wright regards the conception of God’s

righteousness as something that can be imputed to us or counted as

ours as at best a category mistake. This is plainest in his statement

about imputation in the sphere of the law-court:

1Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 33.

i

If we use the language of the law-court, it makes no sense whatever to

say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise

transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant.

Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be

passed across the courtroom.2

The Divine Righteousness That We Need

I have tried to show that Wright’s understanding of the righteousness

of God is an unrealistic limitation of how Paul understands the

righteousness of God.3 Paul’s vision of God’s righteousness is not

synonymous with God’s covenant faithfulness or his impartiality in

court. It is deeper than both of these. They are some of what righteousness

does, not what righteousness is. God’s righteousness is no more

defined by covenant-keeping than a man’s integrity is defined by his

contract-keeping. There are a hundred other things integrity prompts

a person to do besides keep contracts. And there are a hundred other

things God’s righteousness prompts him to do besides keep covenant.

The unifying root of righteousness giving rise to all these things was

there before the covenant and is not limited to or defined by it.

God’s righteousness, we have argued,4 is his commitment to do

what is right. Or, pressing beneath the surface to discern the standard

by which God defines what is “right,” righteousness consists most

deeply in God’s unwavering allegiance to himself. “He cannot deny

himself” (2 Tim. 2:13). His righteousness is his unswerving commitment

to uphold the worth of his glory. That is the essence of his

righteousness.

Thus the moral righteousness he requires of us is the same—that

we unwaveringly love and uphold the glory of God. He does not

demand that we glorify him part of the time or that we glorify him

with pretty good zeal. His demand is unwavering and complete allegiance

of heart, soul, mind, and strength.5 But we have all failed. That

is our unrighteousness. “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven

against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men . . . they did not

glorify him as God . . . and [they] exchanged the glory of the immortal

God” (Rom. 1:18, 21, 23, author’s translation). This is why we are

2Ibid., 98.

3See chapter 3.

4See chapter 3, pp. 37-43.

5On God’s demand for perfection, see above chapter 8, footnote 15.

on trial in God’s law-court. We have exchanged the glory of God for

images and failed to glorify and thank him but have dishonored God

by breaking the law (Rom. 2:23) and caused his name to be blasphemed

among the nations (Rom. 2:24). So none of us is righteous,

not even one (Rom. 3:10). That is the charge against every member

of the human race.

The question, then, that we posed earlier is: When the Judge finds

in our favor, does he count us as having the required God-glorifying

moral righteousness—an unwavering allegiance in heart and mind

and behavior? And does this counting us as righteous happen because

we meet this requirement for perfect God-glorifying allegiance in our

own heart and mind and behavior, or because God’s righteousness is

counted as ours in Christ? I said I would return to give my answer.

Yes, the latter is what I believe happens in justification. God counts

us as having his righteousness in Christ because we are united to Christ

by faith alone. That is, we are counted as perfectly honoring and

displaying the glory of God, which is the essence of God’s righteousness,

and which is also a perfect fulfilling of the law. This is what God

imputes to us and counts us as having because we are in Christ who

perfectly honored God in his sinless life. It is not nonsense. It is true

and precious beyond words.

Where Will Preaching Go in

Wright’s Wake?

Before interacting with Wright on one of the most important texts

on the imputation of divine righteousness, I think we should take

note of what is at stake. Following N. T. Wright in his understanding

of justification will result in a kind of preaching that will at best be

confusing to the church. This preaching, as we have seen, will speak

of final justification “by the complete life lived” or “on the basis of

the whole life.”6 And then, while defending this way of speaking from

Romans 8:1–11, this preaching will say, “This is why, when Paul

looks ahead to the future and asks, as well one might, what God will

say on the last day, he holds up as his joy and crown, not the merits

6“The Spirit is the path by which Paul traces the route from justification by faith in the present

to justification, by the complete life lived, in the future.” Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 148.

Emphasis added. “Paul has . . . spoken in Romans 2 about the final justification of God’s people on

the basis of their whole life.” Ibid., 121.

“That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God” 165

and death of Jesus, but the churches he has planted who remain faithful

to the gospel.”7

This is where preaching will go in the wake of Wright’s influence.

That Wright would use this language really is astonishing. He construes

and preaches 1 Thessalonians 2:19 in a way that makes it support his

understanding of future justification on the basis of our behavior. There

is no basis for this in the text. And he even goes so far as to underline

his point by expressing the negation that what Paul appeals to in the

last day is “not the merits and death of Jesus.” The text says:

We wanted to come to you—I, Paul, again and again—but Satan hindered

us. For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our

Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.

(1 Thess. 2:18–20)

It is remarkable that Wright says, “When Paul looks ahead to

the future and asks, as well one might, what God will say on the last

day, he holds up as his joy and crown, not the merits and death of

Jesus. . . .” This negation—“not the merits and death of Jesus”—is

seriously misleading. Leave aside the loaded and notoriously ambiguous

word “merits” and just focus on the negation, “not . . . the death

of Jesus.” Is this true—that when Paul ponders what God might ask

in the last day, he does not hold up the death of Jesus?

No, it is not. When Paul contemplates the basis of his escape from

wrath in his first letter to the Thessalonians, it is precisely to the death

of Christ that he looks. In 1 Thessalonians 5:9–10 he says, “God has

not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord

Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep

we might live with him.” In other words, when Paul explicitly contemplates

the basis of his escape from wrath in the final day, he does not

mention the church planting that God has enabled him to achieve. He

mentions the death of Christ.

An illuminating analogy to 1 Thessalonians 2:19 is 1 Corinthians

3:6–8: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So

neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God

who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and

each will receive his wages according to his labor.” This last phrase

7Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 148. Emphasis added.

suggests that variable rewards come to different Christians. If so, then

Paul’s exultation over his converts in 1 Thessalonians is likely because

they signify the same grace of God referred to in 1 Corinthians 3:6

(“God gave the growth . . . each will receive his wages according to his

labor”). This is not a reference to final justification, but to rewards of

those who are justified (1 Cor. 3:14–15).

In 1 Thessalonians 2:19 Paul calls the church his “crown of boasting

[kauchvsewi] before our Lord Jesus at his coming.” Since Paul said

in Galatians 6:14 that he should have no other boast (kauca`sqai)

than the cross, I take this “boast” in 1 Thessalonians 2:19 as something

that reflects and highlights the value of the cross. Probably this

happens because these saints in Thessalonica came into being by the

power of the cross (1 Cor. 1:17–18, 24; 2:4–5). There is nothing in

1 Thessalonians 2:19–20 that suggests that the fruit of Paul’s ministry

in the saints would lead us to understand or speak of justification

the way Wright does. The fruit of Paul’s work in the churches he has

planted may be (1) evidence of his faithfulness in ministry, and of God’s

grace, and thus the reason he will receive rewards; or (2) it may be the

visible evidence of Paul’s faith in Christ, and so the reason his faith is

viewed as authentic. His exultation in his converts is not connected by

Paul to his justification or to his escape from wrath the way the death

of Christ is in 1 Thessalonians 5:9. Since I think Wright’s way of handling

1 Thessalonians 2:19 is symptomatic of where preaching will go

under his influence, I have written this book and turn now to one last

effort to point in another direction.

In Support of the Imputation of

God’s Righteousness in Christ

The key question is: Does Paul believe and teach the imputation of

Christ’s obedience for those who are in Christ by faith alone? Since I

have already written a small book in defense of imputation, and posted

online over 200 expositions of Romans,8 I will only point toward the

key texts in Paul and refer to the more detailed exegetical defense in

that book. Mainly I would like to engage N. T. Wright on one of the

8John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s

Righteousness? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2002). For the sermons see, http://www.desiring

God.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByScripture/10/.

“That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God” 167

most important verses in Paul concerning the imputation of divine

righteousness, namely, 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Romans 4:3–8

The biblical language of imputation is found most strikingly perhaps

in Romans 4:3–8, where Paul picks up the language for imputing from

Genesis 15:6 and gives his interpretation. The Greek word logivzomai

can be translated “count” or “reckon” or “impute.” It occurs five

times in the following verses:

3For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it

was counted [imputed, reckoned, ejlogivsqh] to him as righteousness.”

4Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted [logivzetai]

as a gift but as his due. 5And to the one who does not work but trusts

in him who justifies [dikaiou`nta] the ungodly, his faith is counted

[logivzetai] as righteousness, 6just as David also speaks of the blessing

of the one to whom God counts righteousness [logivzetai dikaiosuvnhn]

apart from works: 7“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are

forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8blessed is the man against whom

the Lord will not count [logivshta] his sin.” (Rom. 4:3–8)

Here the term justifies (dikaiovw) in verse 5a is explained in terms of the

“imputing of righteousness” (v. 5b). “To the one who does not work

but believes in him who justifies [dikaiou`nta] the ungodly, his faith is

counted [or imputed, logivzetai] as righteousness.” So justification is

conceived in terms of “counting (or imputing) as righteous.” Unlike

Wright’s emphasis that justification must call to mind the image of the

final law-court, Paul sees rather, in this case, the picture of a ledger—a

book in which are “counted” a person’s “wages.” The key statement

is that not working but trusting results in righteousness being reckoned

to our account.

Gathercole on the Positive Reckoning

of Righteousness

Simon Gathercole has written one of the most thorough critiques of

E. P. Sanders, James Dunn, and N. T. Wright. His summary comments

on the positive imputation described in Romans 4:1–8 will be useful

to include here.

It is crucial to recognize that the New Perspective interpretation of

4:1–8 falls to the ground on this point: that David although circumcised,

sabbatarian, and kosher, is described as without works because

of his disobedience.9

We should go further, however, and point out the positive contribution

these verses make to Paul’s doctrine of justification. It is striking

that . . . forgiveness is seen as a vital component of justification. This

can, again, be seen within the wider context of justification as God’s

declarative, creative action that brings about his will out of its opposite.

God’s justification of David “apart from works” has two components

that are two sides of the same coin. Both echo the “heavenly books”

imagery, such as we saw above in Jubilees 30 where justification and

the heavenly books were integrally related. We can imagine a ledger for

each person that records both sins and righteousness. In the case of the

first, Paul follows David in recognizing that blessedness consists in the

“sin” side of the ledger being wiped clean. David is the paradigmatic

sinner whose sins need, in the threefold assertion of 4:7–8, forgiveness,

covering, and “nonreckoning.” God’s declarative act of justification

of the sinner (4:5) requires his act of the “nonreckoning” of sin (4:8).

However, this is simultaneous with God’s positive reckoning of righteousness

on the other side of the ledger [that is, positive imputation!].

Again, where there was no righteousness, where David was “without

works,” God creatively “counts” righteousness. This is Paul’s God:

“the one who justifies the ungodly.”10

Romans 5:18–19

Romans 5:18–19 points in the same direction. Only here Paul is explicit

that the righteousness counted as ours is Christ’s obedience.

18Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one

act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19For as

by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the

one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

My conclusion on this text from Counted Righteous in Christ is

as follows:

9Gathercole, Where Is Boasting?, 247. His emphasis. The point is that many New Perspective

advocates emphasize that the “works of the law” are precisely circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, and

kosher eating, so that if you do them, you do have “works.” But David had them and was “without

works” (v. 6, cwri;i e[rgwn) because of his moral failures. For my treatment of Romans 4:1–8 in

context, see John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ, 54–68.

10Gathercole, Where Is Boasting?, 247–248. The bracketed words are mine.

“That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God” 169

Notice the main point about justification in verse 18: It happens to all

who are connected to Christ the same way condemnation happened to

those who were connected to Adam. How is that? Adam acted sinfully,

and because we were connected to him, we were condemned in him.

Christ acted righteously, and because we are connected to Christ we

are justified in Christ. Adam’s sin is counted as ours. Christ’s “act of

righteousness” is counted as ours.

Verse 19 supports this by saying it another way to make sure we get

the main point: “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many

were made (katestavqhsan, katestathSsan) sinners, even so through

the obedience of the One the many will be made (katastaqhvsontai,

katastathSsontai) righteous.”11

After wrestling with the possible meanings of katastaqhvsontai,

I conclude that “the whole context calls for the common meaning

of kaqivsthmi (kathistSmi) in verse 19, namely, ‘appoint.’ Through

the obedience of the One, many will be appointed or counted

righteous.”12

Paul’s point is that our righteousness before God, our justification, is

not based on what we have done, but on what Christ did. His righteous

act, his obedience, is counted as ours. We are counted, or appointed,

righteous in him. It is a real righteousness, and it is ours, but it is ours

only by imputation—or to use Paul’s language from earlier in the letter,

God “imputes righteousness” to us apart from works (4:6); or “righteousness

is imputed” to those who believe (4:9).13

It is significant that Paul does not say in Romans 5:19 that “by the one

man’s disobedience the many were made” guilty. That is true. But it is

important to see that what he actually says is: “By the one man’s disobedience

the many were made sinners [aJmartwloi;].” This is important

because the imputation of Adam’s sin is more than the imputation of a

“status.” We are counted as having sinned in Adam. Therefore, when

Paul goes on to say, “so by the one man’s obedience the many will be

made righteous,” he does not mean only that Christ’s status was imputed

11Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ, 107–108.

12Ibid., 109.

13Ibid., 110. Christ’s obedience reaches its climax in the cross (Phil. 2:8), but it is not limited to

the cross. The obedience of dying on the cross is inseparable from his whole life of obedience both

because there could be no vicarious death without a comprehensively perfect sacrifice and because

there is no place you can draw a line before three o’clock on Good Friday before which the obedience

of Jesus would not be included in what we need from him.

to us. Rather, in Christ we are counted as having done all the righteousness

that God requires. Imputation is not the conferring of a status without

a ground of real imputed moral righteousness. It is the counting of an

alien, real, moral, perfect righteousness, namely Christ’s, as ours.

Philippians 3:9

Philippians 3:9 speaks of a righteousness that Paul “has” (e[cwn) that is

“not his own” (mh . . . ejmh;n) and that “comes . . . from God” (th;n ejk

qeou` dikaiosuvnhn) because we are “in Christ” (ejn aujtw`).

I count everything as . . . rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and

be found in him, 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. 3:8–9)

Notice that the righteousness Paul counts on having “from God” is

pursued with a longing to “be found in Christ.” The righteousness that

he has is his because he is “found in Christ.” This use of “in Christ”

is positional. In Christ by faith is the place where God’s righteousness

counts as a righteousness I have, while not being “a righteousness of

my own.”14 Thus, “being found in Christ” is the way to “have a righteousness

not my own.” True, this does not say explicitly that Christ’s

righteousness is imputed to us, but along with the other evidence pre

14There is, of course, nothing new about emphasizing that justification happens to us by virtue of

our union with Christ and no other way. For example, Andrew Fuller (the great “rope holder” of

missionary pioneer William Carey), following his teachers John Owen and Jonathan Edwards, put

it like this for the controversies of his own day:

It is said to be ‘of faith that it might be by grace’ [Rom. 4:16]. There must, therefore, be

something in the nature of faith which peculiarly corresponds with the free grace of the

gospel; something which looks out of self, and receives the free gifts of Heaven as being

what they are—pure undeserved favor. We need not reduce it to a mere exercise of the

intellectual faculty [contra the intellectualistic Sandemanians of his day], in which there

is nothing holy; but whatever holiness there is in it, it is not this, but the obedience of

Christ, that constitutes our justifying righteousness. Whatever other properties the magnet

may possess, it is as pointing invariably to the north that it guides the mariner; and

whatever other properties faith may possess, it is as receiving Christ, and bringing us into

union with him, that it justifies” [added emphasis]. . . . It is thus that justification stands

connected, in the Scriptures, with the union with Christ: “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus,

who of God is made unto us – righteousness” [1 Cor. 1:30].—“There is therefore now

no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” [Rom. 8:1].—“That I may be found

in him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through

faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” [Phil. 3:9]. From these and

other passages we perceive that faith justifies, not in a way of merit, not on account of

anything in itself, be it what it may, but as uniting us to Christ. (Andrew Fuller, The

Complete Works of Reverend Andrew Fuller, ed. Joseph Belcher [Harrisonburg, VA:

Sprinkle Publications, 1988], 1:281)

“That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God” 171

sented here and in Counted Righteous in Christ, it is a natural implication

of this verse.15

1 Corinthians 1:3016

Wright says of 1 Corinthians 1:30, “It is the only passage I know

where something called ‘the imputed righteousness of Christ,’ a phrase

more often found in post-Reformation theology and piety than in the

New Testament, finds any basis in the text.”17 That concession is not

insignificant, especially in view of the fact that Christ becomes our

righteousness because we are “in Christ Jesus.”

The reality of being “in Christ” is all-important for understanding

justification. We will see below in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that “in him we

become the righteousness of God” (ejn aujtw`), and in Philippians 3:9,

we “have” divine righteousness “in him” (ejn aujtw`). Paul says explicitly

in Galatians 2:17 that we are “justified in Christ” (dikaiwqh`nai

ejn CristwÛ`). The implication seems to be that our union with Christ

is what connects us with divine righteousness. This truth raises the

importance of 1 Corinthians 1:30.

By [God’s] doing you are in Christ Jesus [ejx aujtou` de; uJmei`i ejste ejn

CristwÛ` ’Ihsou], who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness,

and sanctification, and redemption. (nasb)

Here is a clear statement that Christ “became for us righteousness

[ejgenhvqh . . . hJmi`n . . . dikaiosuvnh].” This is remarkable. In some sense,

Christ has become our righteousness. Add to this that he becomes

righteousness for us (esv, “to us”; hJmi`n) by virtue of our being in him

(ejn CristwÛ` ’Ihsou). And then add to that how Paul says explicitly in

Galatians 2:17 that “justification” is “in Christ.” This surely suggests

strongly that Christ’s “becoming” or “being” (as the verb ejgenhvqh

can mean) righteousness for us is related to justification—our being

counted righteous.

C. K. Barrett argues:

The root of the thought is forensic: man is arraigned in God’s court,

and is unable to satisfy the judge unless righteousness, which he cannot

15This is argued at greater length in Counted Righteous in Christ, 83–84.

16This section is based on the material in Counted Righteous in Christ, 84–87.

17Wright, What Saint Paul Really Says, 123.

himself produce, is given to him. . . . Christ himself becomes righteousness

for him (2 Cor. 5:21), and God the judge views him not as he is in

himself but in Christ.18

One may object that Christ’s becoming sanctification for us is

not an imputed reality, but rather is worked in us, so why should we

assume that Christ’s becoming righteousness for us refers to an imputed

righteousness? In answer, I don’t assume it. Instead I note that the other

passages that connect righteousness with being “in Christ” have to do

with justification (Gal. 2:17) and speak of a righteousness that is “not

our own” (Phil. 3:9) and that “we . . . become the righteousness of

God” in the same way Christ became sin, that is, by imputation (see

below on 2 Cor. 5:21).

Then I observe that there is no reason to think that Christ must

“become” for us righteousness exactly the same way he becomes wisdom

and sanctification and redemption. This is not said or implied.19

In fact, it is plausible to see a natural progression in the four realities

that Christ is for us. In our union with Christ, he becomes “wisdom”

for us in overcoming the blinding and deadening ignorance that keeps

us from seeing the glory of the cross (1 Cor. 1:24). Then he becomes

righteousness for us in overcoming our guilt and condemnation (Rom.

8:1). Then he becomes sanctification for us in overcoming our corruption

and pollution (1 Cor. 1:2; Eph. 2:10). Finally, he becomes

redemption for us in overcoming, in the resurrection, all the miseries,

pain, futility, and death of this age (Rom. 8:23).20 There is no reason

to force this text to mean that Christ becomes all these things for us in

exactly the same way, namely, by imputation. He may become each of

these things for us as each reality requires.

Whether Paul had this progression in mind or not, 1 Corinthians

1:30 stands as a signal pointing to the righteousness of Christ that

becomes ours when we are united to him by God through faith. In

connection with the other texts we have seen, it is therefore war

18C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (New York: Harper and

Row, 1968), 60.

19This is why Wright is incorrect when he says that if we claim 1 Corinthians 1:30 as a textual

basis for imputed righteousness, then “we must also be prepared to talk of the imputed wisdom of

Christ; the imputed sanctification of Christ; and the imputed redemption of Christ.” Wright, What

Saint Paul Really Said, 123.

20I have leaned here on John Flavel from his sermon on 1 Corinthians 1:30 in John Flavel, The

Method of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1977), 14.

“That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God” 173

ranted to speak of his righteousness being imputed to us by faith

in him.

2 Corinthians 5:21

Other texts in Paul point to the imputation of Christ’s righteousness

to the believer,21 but we turn now to the one that has been viewed

historically as pivotal but that is discounted by N. T. Wright in the

unprecedented way he interprets it. This verse is one of the most

compelling concerning the imputation of the divine righteousness to

believers because of our union with Christ. “For our sake [God] made

[Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become

the righteousness of God.”

What is crucial to focus on here is the parallel between the two

halves of the verse. Charles Hodge points to the parallel when he says,

“His being made sin is consistent with his being in himself free from

sin; and our being made righteous is consistent with our being in ourselves

ungodly.”22 What is so illuminating here is specifically the parallel

between Christ’s being “made sin” and our “becoming righteous.”

George Ladd brings this out with its crucial implication for imputation.

Christ was made sin for our sake. We might say that our sins were

reckoned to Christ. He, although sinless, identified himself with our

sins, suffered their penalty and doom—death. So we have reckoned to

us Christ’s righteousness even though in character and deed we remain

sinners. It is an unavoidable logical conclusion that men of faith are

justified because Christ’s righteousness is imputed to them.23

“In Him We Become God’s Covenant

Faithfulness”?

Wright’s interpretation of this verse is based on his reading the term

dikaiosuvnh qeou` (“righteousness of God”) “as a clear Pauline technical

term meaning ‘the covenant-faithfulness of [Israel’s] God.’”24 The term

21See Appendix 1 on Romans 10:4 and Counted Righteous in Christ, 87–90.

22Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the Second Letter to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI:

Eerdmans, n.d.), 149. Hodge admits that “Paul never expressly states that the righteousness of Christ

is reckoned to believers” (148). But his conclusion shows that the absence of doctrinal explicitness

and systematization in Paul may be no more problematic for the doctrine of the imputation of

Christ’s righteousness than it is for the doctrine of the Trinity.

23George Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, revised edition, Donald Hagner, ed. (Grand

Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 491.

24Wright, “On Becoming the Righteousness of God,” 203.

is ordinarily translated “righteousness of God” (“ . . . so that in him

we might become the righteousness of God”). The resulting translation

with Wright’s comments goes like this:

“For our sake God made Christ, who did not know sin, to be a sin-offering

for us, so that in him we might become God’s covenant-faithfulness.”

The “righteousness of God” in this verse is not a human status in

virtue of which the one who has “become” it stands “righteous” before

God. . . . It is the covenant faithfulness of the one true God, now active

through the paradoxical Christ-shaped ministry of Paul, reaching out

with the offer of reconciliation to all who hear his bold preaching.

What the whole passage involves, then, is the idea of the covenant

ambassador, who represents the one for whom he speaks in such a full

and thorough way that he actually becomes the living embodiment of

his sovereign.25

If this (as far as I know, unprecedented) interpretation were correct,

2 Corinthians 5:21 would obviously have nothing to say in support

of the imputation of God’s righteousness to us in Christ. But it is very

unlikely that Wright’s interpretation is correct.

His Three Arguments

His main arguments are, first, that the term dikaiosuvnh qeou` is a technical

term and means “covenant faithfulness.” Second, he argues that

the context of 2 Corinthians 3–5 is a portrayal of Paul’s apostleship as

a minister of the new covenant (3:6), so that his interpretation gives a

contextually fitting and pithy climax to the unit: “In his ministry, Paul

becomes the righteousness of God, that is, the covenant faithfulness

of God, the living embodiment of his sovereign extension of the new

covenant in the world.” Third, he says that the traditional interpretation

would be “an aside, a soteriological statement thrown in here for

good measure as though to explain how it is that people can in fact

thus be reconciled.”26

Remarkable Claims about This Passage

In regard to the more historic understanding of 2 Corinthians 5:21,

Wright says (1) that this verse is a “detached statement.” “The verse

25Ibid., 205–206.

26Ibid., 205.

“That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God” 175

has traditionally been read as a somewhat detached statement of

atonement theology.”27 He says (2) that the traditional interpretation

treats it as a “soteriological statement thrown in here for good

measure.”28 And he adds (3) that the traditional view treats the verse

as “an extra added comment about something other than the subject

of the previous paragraph.”29 I find the first of these three statements

unhelpful and the last two untrue. Consider the context leading up

to 2 Corinthians 5:21.

In 2 Corinthians 5:14, Paul places the death of Christ squarely

underneath his apostolic ministry as its foundational, controlling

impulse: “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded

this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died.” It is

typical of Paul that he moves back and forth from personal testimony

about his work to massively profound statements about Christ. In this

case, he does not simply introduce the death of Christ as the controlling

vision of his life (“the love of Christ controls us”) but makes a stunning

comment about the deep workings of the death of Christ: “One has

died for all, therefore all have died.” This statement is deeply connected

to verse 21a: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin.”

They complement each other, for verse 14 does not mention sin, which

verse 21 does; and verse 21 does not mention the death of Christ,

which verse 14 does. And in both Paul thinks in terms of our profound

identification with Christ in his death: When he died, we died in him,

and the reason is that my sin was made his sin on the cross. This is the

wider context of verse 21, and the concept of imputation is present well

before we arrive at verse 21.

The Links between Verse 21 and the

Soteriological Aspects of the Context

As we move through the paragraph, the contextual links with soteriological

aspects of verse 21 abound. Paul draws the inference from

Christ’s death for us and our death with him (v. 14) that we should live

for him and regard no one according to the flesh, and that in Christ we

are a new creation (vv. 15–17). Two crucial links between verse 21 and

27Ibid., 203.

28Ibid., 205. Emphasis added. He multiplies labels by saying the verse is “not an abstract, detached

statement.” Ibid., 208. Emphasis added.

29Ibid., 207.

this complex of thought are the logic of the verse and the statement

that “in him” we become the righteousness of God. The logic is that

Christ was made sin for our sake “so that” (i{na) we might become the

righteousness of God in him. This is the same logic that is working

between verses 14 and 17. Christ died for all and all died in him so that

in him we might become a new creation in Christ.

Becoming Righteousness in Him and

Becoming a New Creation in Christ

And not only does the logic connect verse 21 to this context, but also the

analogy between becoming a new creation “in Christ” and becoming the

righteousness of God “in him.”30 Wright makes no comment about the

words “in him” in verse 21. They are not a natural part of his interpretation.

But they are essential in the traditional interpretation. “In him we

. . . become the righteousness of God.” Notice the close parallel with

verse 17 (“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation”). This parallel

inclines us not only to discount Wright’s comments about a soteriological

reading of verse 21 being “detached”; it also inclines us to give the phrase

“become the righteousness of God” a meaning analogous to the phrase

“become a new creation,” which applies to everyone in Christ, not just

the apostles as the embodiment of God’s covenant faithfulness.

The Brightness That Wright Obscures

As we continue to read in the context, we find the connection between

verses 18 and 19 doing exactly what Wright obscures. He says the

traditional interpretation implies that verse 21 is “thrown in . . . as

though to explain how it is that people can in fact thus be reconciled”

and that this would be “something other than the subject of the previous

paragraph.”31 But Paul explicitly does what Wright denies. He

“explains how it is that people can in fact thus be reconciled.” That is

the point of verse 19:

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and

gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is [wJi o{ti], in Christ God

30I don’t mean to press this to imply that “become the righteousness of God” carries all the metaphysical

implications of “become a new creation.” I don’t think that is so, since the closer parallel is

in verse 21 with “made him to be sin,” which implies imputation, not metaphysical transformation.

I simply am pointing out, by way of analogy, a structural link with the context.

31Ibid., 205, 207. Emphasis added.

“That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God” 177

was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses

against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Of course, the paragraph is about Paul’s ministry of reconciliation.

But it is also about how that reconciliation is possible. That is explicit

and unmistakable. Paul is jealous to draw attention to the way reconciliation

works in verses 14, 17, 19, and 21. Moreover, when Paul says

in verse 19 that God was “not counting their trespasses against them,”

this begs for the explanation of verse 21 that “for our sake he made

him to be sin who knew no sin.” That is how our sins might justly not

be counted against us. All of these connections are shrouded in Wright’s

misleading comments about the verse being “abstract” and “detached”

when read “as though to explain how it is that people can in fact thus

be reconciled.”

Who Are “He” and “Him”?

The context becomes even more powerful when you consider that the

meaning of “he” and “him” in verse 21a (“For our sake he made him

to be sin . . .”) must be taken from the immediately preceding words in

verse 20, which is Paul’s plea for others to be reconciled. “We implore

you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made

him to be sin who knew no sin.” The implication of this close connection

between verses 20 and 21 is that we should read verse 21 in closest

connection to the words “Be reconciled to God.”

That would imply two things. One is that verse 21 is indeed about

how to be reconciled. And the other is that the point of the verse is for

the sake of those Paul is appealing to, not for the sake of describing his

own ministry. When Paul says “for our sake” God made Christ to be

sin, the most natural meaning is not “for the sake of me and my fellow

apostles” but rather “for the sake of all of us who trust Christ.” The

“for us” (uJpe;r hJmw`n) of verse 21 is most closely connected to the “for

all” (uJpe;r pavntwn) in verses 14 and 15 and warrants the global “we

implore [everyone]”32 in verse 20.

32Andreas Köstenberger argues compellingly that the absence of the direct object “you” after the

verb “we implore” in the original Greek signals Paul’s intention not to address some unreconciled

component of the Corinthian church, but rather to state “the general nature of his apostolic message

of reconciliation” whenever he preaches it to all people: “We the apostles plead with our respective

audiences, ‘Be reconciled to God.’” “We Plead on Christ’s Behalf: ‘Be Reconciled to God,’”in The

Bible Translator, Vol. 48, No. 3, 328-331.

dikaiosuvnh qeou`

Does Not Mean Covenant Faithfulness

Finally, Wright’s assumption that the phrase dikaiosuvnh qeou` means

“the covenant faithfulness of God,” instead of the more traditional

“the righteousness of God,” is not warranted. I have tried to show why

this is the case (see chapter 3). The meaning of dikaiosuvnh qeou` is most

fundamentally the “righteousness of God” in reference to his unwavering

commitment and follow-through to do what is right—which is to

always uphold the worth of his glory. It is the opposite of sin, which is

a falling short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23); and it is what God requires

that all of us must have (Rom. 1:21), but that none of us does have:

“None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10).

Not surprisingly, Wright makes nothing of the coordination of

“sin” in the first half of verse 21 and “righteousness” in the second

half of the verse.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,

so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The most natural way to think about “righteousness” in this

verse is as the counterpart of “sin.” This points most naturally to the

understanding of righteousness as the attribute of loving and doing the

opposite of sin, that is, loving and doing what is right.

Therefore, from this and all the contextual observations above,

I conclude that Wright’s novel interpretation is not correct, but the

historic understanding of these words is warranted and crucial and

precious.

Summarizing the Glory That Still Shines

Through This Text

I do not know a better summary of the implications of 2 Corinthians

5:21 than the words of Charles Hodge:

There is probably no passage in the Scriptures in which the doctrine of

justification is more concisely or clearly stated than in [2 Cor. 5:21].

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

“That in Him We Might Become the Righteousness of God” 179

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, so that our pardon

is an act of justice.33

In other words, this text gives us biblical warrant for believing that the

divine righteousness that is imputed to believers in Romans 4:6 and

4:1134 is the righteousness of Christ. Becoming the righteousness of

God “in him” implies that our identity with Christ is the way God sees

his own righteousness as becoming ours.35

33Hodge, An Exposition of the Second Letter to the Corinthians, 150–151.

34“David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts [imputes] righteousness apart

from works” (Rom. 4:6). “[Abraham] received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness

that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father

of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted [imputed] to

them as well” (Rom. 4:11).

35Don Carson, defending a similar position, draws attention to verse 19: “The opening clause of

verse 19 must not be overlooked: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, or God was

reconciling the world to himself in Christ. . . . It is difficult to imagine why this righteousness should

be understood to be ‘the righteousness of God’ and not the righteousness of Christ.” D. A. Carson,

“The Vindication of Imputation: On Fields of Discourse and Semantic Fields,” in Justification:

What’s at Stake in the Current Debates, ed. Mark Husbands and Daniel Treier (Downers Grove, IL:

InterVarsity Press, 2004), 69–70.

Conclusion

Is the Reformation Over?

In answer to the burning question Is the Reformation Over?1 N. T.

Wright’s answer is optimistic on justification but pessimistic on other

issues. “Not that there are not large and important problems in ecumenical

relations. I am horrified at some of the recent Anglican/Roman

statements, for instance, and on things like the Papacy, purgatory,

and the cult of saints (especially Mary), I am as protestant as the next

person, for (I take it) good Pauline reasons.”2 But on the issue of

justification, Wright says that the entire debate between Protestantism

and Roman Catholicism has been misconceived.

Once we relocate justification, moving it from the discussion of how

people become Christians to the discussion of how we know that

someone is a Christian, we have a powerful incentive to work together

across denominational barriers. One of the sad ironies of the last four

hundred years is that, at least since 1541, we have allowed disputes

about how people become Christians—that which we thought was

denoted by the language of justification—to divide us, when the doctrine

of justification itself, urging us to unite across our cultural divides,

went unheard.3

So the upshot of Wright’s view on justification for the Protestant-

Catholic controversy is: Both your houses have missed the point.

Justification is not about how a person becomes a Christian. So the

issue is not as supercharged as you thought it was. “Justification by

faith tells me that if my Roman neighbor believes that Jesus is Lord

1Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of

Contemporary Roman Catholicism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005). For a significant,

fair, and critical review see Scott Manetsch, “Discerning the Divide: A Review Article,” in Trinity

Journal, 28NS (2007): 62–63.

2Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” 261.

3Ibid.

and that God raised him from the dead then he or she is a brother or

sister, however much I believe them muddled, even dangerously so, on

other matters.”4

I do not think it is likely that the way the question has been framed

for centuries will be abandoned easily. And one implication of this

book is that this framing of the question should not be abandoned,

but resolved. Justification is, in fact, part of the event of becoming a

Christian. By justification we come into a right standing with God.

And until we do, we are not saved, we are not Christians. And because

of the abiding reality of this right standing, we are, and remain,

Christians. “I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ

will be of no advantage to you” (Gal. 5:2). The faith that justifies continues

to hold fast to Christ alone as the ground of our having God as

our Father who is completely for us. Whether this right standing with

God consists in the imputation of righteousness from beginning to end

or consists partly in the impartation of righteousness is a crucial and

necessary question.

The Reformers Would Not Say It Is Over

Whatever the wobbling views of justification are among Protestants

today, it seems clear to me that at least the views of the Reformers are

fundamentally at odds with the official position of the Roman Catholic

Church expressed today in the Catholic Catechism.5 If, as I believe, the

Reformers got it fundamentally right, then the Reformation is not over.

Among the positions on justification in the Catholic Catechism with

which the Reformers would energetically disagree would be these:

Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms

us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the

power of his mercy.6

Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ. It is

granted through Baptism. It conforms us to the righteousness of God,

who justifies us. It has for its goal the glory of God and of Christ, and

the gift of eternal life. It is the most excellent work of God’s mercy.7

4Ibid., 261–262.

5Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994).

6Ibid., 482, par. 1992.

7Ibid., 489, par. 2020.

182 Conclusion

In other words, in today’s official Roman Catholicism, the act of

justification is not the imputation of the obedience of Christ, as the

Reformers believed,8 but the infusion of righteousness. “Justification

. . . conforms us to the righteousness of God.” Thus “God’s final verdict

of justification is based on the Christian’s inherent righteousness,

acquired by grace through baptism and through meritorious good

works freely performed in response to and in cooperation with God’s

grace. Christians are judged righteous (and receive eternal life) because

they are truly righteous.”9

The Critical Place of Our Works in

Future Judgment

Wright’s statements about future justification10 are so similar to

this (even if his meaning isn’t) that it is doubtful his paradigm will

set Roman Catholics on a new conceptual playing field. It is more

likely that his view will be co-opted as confirmation of the Catholic

way.

One of the crucial things that has become clear in our study is

that for N. T. Wright, and for the historic debate between Catholics

and Protestants—indeed, for anyone who takes the Bible seriously

and reads it carefully—the role of our own obedience in relationship

to justification and final judgment is enormously important. It is not

8For Luther on imputation, see quotes in Bruce McCormack, “What’s at Stake in Current Debates

over Justification? The Crisis of Protestantism in the West,” in Justification: What’s at Stake in the

Current Debates? 81–117. Luther said, for example, “This is a marvelous definition of Christian

righteousness: it is a divine imputation of reckoning as righteousness or to righteousness, for the sake

of our faith in Christ or for the sake of Christ.” McCormack, p. 93; Luther’s Works, Vol. 26, ed.

Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963), 231. See also Timothy George, “Modernizing Luther,

Domesticating Paul: Another Perspective,” in D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid,

Justification and Variegated Nomism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 437-464. Calvin

said, “We explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor

as righteous men. And we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s

righteousness. . . . You see that our righteousness is not in us but in Christ, that we possess it only

because we are partakers in Christ; indeed, with him we possess all its riches. . . . To declare that by

him alone we are accounted righteous, what else is this but to lodge our righteousness in Christ’s

obedience, because the obedience of Christ is reckoned to us as if it were our own?” John Calvin,

Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 727, 753. On Calvin’s

view of justification see also Anthony N. S. Lane, Justification by Faith in Catholic-Protestant

Dialogue: An Evangelical Assessment (London: T&T Clark, 2002), 17-44.

9Manetsch, “Discerning the Divide: A Review Article,” 57.

10Quoting from the Introduction to this book (p. 22 where the sources are given), “Wright makes

startling statements to the effect that our future justification will be on the basis of works. ‘The Spirit

is the path by which Paul traces the route from justification by faith in the present to justification,

by the complete life lived, in the future.’ ‘Paul has . . . spoken in Romans 2 about the final justification

of God’s people on the basis of their whole life.’ ‘Present justification declares, on the basis of

faith, what future justification will affirm publicly (according to [Rom.] 2:14–16 and 8:9–11) on

the basis of the entire life.’”

Conclusion 183

accidental that the title of this book has a double meaning. The Future

of Justification draws attention not only to where the doctrine itself

may be going, but also to the critical importance of God’s future act

of judgment when our justification will be confirmed. How will our

obedience function in that Day?

With analysis and argumentation behind us,11 it is time for affirmation

and proclamation. My hope is that what follows as a final declaration

will be a fresh statement of very old and wonderful truth. May

the Lord use it not simply to commend a position, but also to mobilize

missions. In the end, what is at stake is not simply a doctrine, but the

strength and purity of the spring of love.

Here I Stand

Our only hope for living the radical demands of the Christian life is that

God is totally for us now and forever. Therefore, God has not ordained

that living the Christian life should be the basis of our hope that God

is for us. That basis is the death and righteousness of Christ, counted

as ours through faith alone. On the cross Christ endured for us all the

punishment required of us because of our sin. And in order that God,

as our Father, might be completely for us and not against us forever,

Christ has performed for us, in his perfect obedience to God, all that

God required of us as the ground of his being totally for us forever.

This punishment and this obedience are completed and past. They

can never change. Our union with Christ and the enjoyment of these

benefits is secure forever. Through faith alone, God establishes our

union with Christ. This union will never fail, because in Christ God

is for us as an omnipotent Father who sustains our faith, and works

all things together for our everlasting good. The one and only instrument

through which God preserves our union with Christ is faith in

Christ—the purely receiving act of the soul.

The Place of Our Good Works in

God’s Purposes

Our own works of love do not create or increase God’s being for us

as a Father committed to bringing us everlasting joy in his presence.

11Besides the arguments in this book, I have addressed this issue in Counted Righteous in Christ, in

Future Grace, and in many sermons arranged by text and topic at www.desiringGod.org.

184 Conclusion

That fatherly commitment to be for us in this way was established once

for all through faith and union with God’s Son. In his Son, the perfection

and punishment required of us are past and unchangeable. They

were performed by Christ in his obedience and death. They cannot be

changed or increased in sufficiency or worth.

Our relationship with God is with One who has become for us an

omnipotent Father committed to working all things together for our

everlasting enjoyment of him. This relationship was established at the

point of our justification when God removed his judicial wrath from

us, and imputed the obedience of his Son to us, and counted us as

righteous in Christ, and forgave all our sins because he had punished

them in the death of Jesus.

Therefore, the function of our own obedience flowing from faith

(that is, our own good works produced as the fruit of the Holy Spirit)

is to make visible the worth of Christ and the worth of his work as our

substitute-punishment and substitute-righteousness. God’s purpose in

the universe is not only to be infinitely worthy, but to be displayed as

infinitely worthy. Our works of love, flowing from faith, are the way

Christ-embracing faith shows the value of what it has embraced. The

sacrifices of love for the good of others show the all-satisfying worth

of Christ as the one whose blood and righteousness establish the fact

that God is for us forever.

All the benefits of Christ—all the blessings that flow from God

being for us and not against us—rest on the redeeming work of Christ

as our Substitute. If God is for us, who can be against us? With this

confidence—that God is our omnipotent Father and is committed to

working all things together for our everlasting joy in him—we will love

others. God has so designed and ordered things that invisible faith,

which embraces Christ as infinitely worthy, gives rise to acts of love

that make the worth of Christ visible. Thus our sacrifices of love do

not have any hand in establishing the fact that God is completely for

us, now and forever. It’s the reverse: the fact that God is for us establishes

our sacrifices of love. If he were not totally for us, we would not

persevere in faith and would not therefore be able to make sacrifices

of love.

If we make the mistake of thinking that our works of love (the fruit

of God’s Spirit) secure or increase God’s commitment to be completely

Conclusion 185

for us, now and in the last judgment, we compromise the very reason

that these works of love exist, namely, to display the infinite worth of

Christ and his work as our all-sufficient obedience and all-sufficient

sacrifice.

Our mind-set toward our own good works must always be: These

works depend on God being totally for us. That’s what the blood and

righteousness of Christ have secured and guaranteed forever. Therefore,

we must resist every tendency to think of our works as establishing or

securing the fact that God is for us forever. It is always the other way

around. Because he is for us, he sustains our faith. And through that

faith-sustaining work, the Holy Spirit bears the fruit of love.

The Double Tragedy

There would be a double tragedy in thinking of our works of love as

securing the fact that God is completely for us. Not only would we

obscure the very reason these works exist—namely, to display the

beauty and worth of Christ, whose blood and righteousness is the

only and all-sufficient guarantee that God is for us—but we would

also undermine the very thing that makes the works of love possible—

namely, the assurance that God is totally for us, from which flows the

freedom and courage to make the sacrifices of love.

Let us make no mistake: Our works of love are necessary. There

is a holiness without which we will not see the Lord (Heb. 12:14).

Our works of love—the fruit of the Holy Spirit—are as necessary as

the purpose of God to make the worth of his Son visible in the world.

Therefore, the necessity that God has established is of such a kind that

it will never compromise the worth of his Son. It will never compromise

the total sufficiency of his Son’s work in providing all the obedience

and all the suffering required in order for God to be for us in Christ.

The necessity of our obedience is of such a nature that it always highlights

and confirms this truth: The fact that God is completely for us as

an omnipotent Father is secured and guaranteed solely by the all-sufficient

obedience and suffering of Christ.

When the Bible says that we will not inherit the kingdom of God

without the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:21), it does not mean that

we add anything to what Christ has done to secure the fact that God is

totally for us. It means that God has established his Son’s perfect obedi

186 Conclusion

ence and suffering as the completely sufficient spring of our necessary

obedience. This obedience—admittedly imperfect—will come to pass

in the lives of those who count on Christ’s obedience and sacrifice as

the guarantee of God’s being for them.

Our obedience does not add to the perfection and beauty and all-

sufficiency of Christ’s obedience in securing the reality that God is for

us; it displays that perfection and beauty and all-sufficiency. Our works

of love are as necessary as God’s purpose to glorify himself. That is,

they are necessary because God is righteous—he has an eternal and

unwavering commitment to do the ultimately right thing: to make the

infinite value of his Son visible in the world.

Why This Book?

My ultimate reason for writing this book is to avert the double tragedy

that will come where the obedience of Christ, imputed to us through

faith alone, is denied or obscured. Inevitably, in the wake of that

denial, our own works—the fruit of the Holy Spirit—begin to take

on a function that contradicts the very reason these good works exist.

They exist to display the beauty and worth of Christ whose sacrifice

and obedience (counted as ours through faith alone) are the only and

all-sufficient security of the fact that God is completely for us. That’s

the first tragedy: In our desire to elevate the importance of the beautiful

works of love, we begin to nullify the very beauty of Christ and his

work that they were designed to display.

The other tragedy that I pray we can avert is the undermining of

the very thing that makes the works of love possible. What makes radical,

risk-taking, sacrificial, Christ-exalting works of love possible is the

fact that Christ’s perfect obedience (counted as our righteousness) and

Christ’s perfect sacrifice (counted as our punishment) secured completely

the glorious reality that God is for us as an omnipotent Father

who works all things together for our everlasting joy in him. If we

begin to deny or minimize the importance of the obedience of Christ,

imputed to us through faith alone, our own works will begin to assume

the role that should have been Christ’s. As that happens, over time

(perhaps generations), the works of love themselves will be severed

from their root in the Christ-secured assurance that God is totally for

Conclusion 187

us. In this way, for the sake of exalting the importance of love, we will

undermine the very thing that makes them possible.

Yet the freedom and courage to love is what the world desperately

needs to see in the church and from the church. The world does not

need to see strident, triumphalistic evangelicals laying claim on their

rights. The world needs to see the radical, risk-taking, Christ-exalting

sacrifice of humble love that makes us willing to lay down our lives for

the good of others, without the demand of reward on this earth. For the

sake of this display of the glory of Christ, I plead for our allegiance to

a robust, biblical, historic vision of Christ whose obedience is counted

as ours through faith alone.

188 Conclusion

A Note on the Purpose of

the Appendices

These appendices were not written in response to the work of

N. T. Wright. Most of them were written before I had read Wright’s

work. They do not interact with his work. The reason for their presence

here is to give some windows into my wider understanding of justification

and related exegetical issues.

In my interaction with Wright by e-mail, he questioned me about

my own understanding of the bigger picture and some texts in particular.

Most of my responses to that interaction were built into the book

as it grew to twice the size it was before that interaction. But it seemed

to me that even though I could not afford to write another whole book

of constructive exegesis on justification, I could perhaps offer some

exegetical glimpses into what such a book might look like.

These appendices are not interwoven. They are self-standing. The

reader may be selective according to interest, or pass over them entirely.

They are not part of the substance of my critique of Wright. I hope

that they will be helpful for some readers in leading toward a coherent

understanding of Paul’s vision of justification through the imputation

of the obedience of Christ to sinners through faith alone.

Appendix One

What Does It Mean That Israel Did

Not “Attain The Law” Because She

Pursued It “Not By Faith But as

Though It Were by Works”?

Thoughts on Romans 9:30–10:4

What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness

have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; 31 but

that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did

not succeed in reaching that law. 32 Why? Because they did not pursue

it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over

the stumbling stone, 33 as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a

stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him

will not be put to shame.” 10:1 Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer

to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness

that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For,

being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish

their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 For Christ is

the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Thesis: Romans 9:32a (“Because they did not pursue it by faith,

but as if it were based on works”) teaches us that the long-term aim

and end (tevloi) of the Mosaic law was and is “Christ for righteousness

to everyone who believes” (10:4, my translation). The aim and end of

the law was not to help us establish our own righteousness (10:3). To

say it another way, submitting to the righteousness of God (10:3) is not

accomplished by “works” (9:32), but by faith in Christ, which is the

i

overall, long-term aim of the law. Therefore, Romans 9:32a does not

exclude the meaning that there is a subordinate, short-term aim of the

law that may suitably be described as “not of faith,” as in Galatians

3:12 (“But the law is not of faith, rather ‘The one who does them shall

live by them’”).

1. The situation in view in Romans 9:30–32 is Paul’s contemporary

situation described in 9:24 (“ . . . even us whom he has called, not from

the Jews only but also from the Gentiles”). Jews and Gentiles are being

called by God as vessels of mercy. But the problem of 9:1–5 lingers:

While Gentiles are being saved, some Jews stumble over the stumbling

stone of Christ (9:33) and are not saved (10:1), but are accursed and

cut off from Christ (9:3). Paul was wrestling in Romans 9:6–13 with

why his Jewish kinsmen were accursed in view of God’s promises to

Israel. He continues to wrestle with the stumbling and lostness of

Israel in Romans 9:30–10:4. In 9:6–29, Paul answers the problem of

Israel’s perishing with the doctrine of election: Not all Israel is Israel

(9:6). Here in 9:30–10:4, he answers the problem with Israel’s unbelief

and their rejection of the true, long-term aim of the Torah, namely, the

Messiah (Christ) as their righteousness.

2. Even though the Gentiles have not been engaged in the pursuit of

righteousness, many of them have laid hold of it, namely, the “righteousness

that is by faith” (dikaiosuvnhn de; th;n ejk pivstewi). They may not

even know about the law, but when they hear of Christ, who is the aim

of the law (10:4), they believe on him, so that he becomes their righteousness

(the aim of the law is “Christ . . . for righteousness to everyone who

believes,” even for those who do not know the law, 10:4).

On the other hand, Israel in Paul’s day does know the law and is

“pursuing a law [of] righteousness” (diwvkwn novmon dikaiosuvnhi, 9:31,

author’s translation). But they do not arrive at that law (eiji novmon oujk

e[fqasen, 9:31). What does this mean—“pursue but fail to arrive at the

law”? It may mean something general like: pursue and fail to keep the

law’s statutes. Or it may mean: pursue and fail to arrive at the overall,

long-term aim of the law.

For example, if I said, “I pursued my diet but failed to attain it,”

I might mean: “I failed to eat the right things.” Or I might mean:

“I failed to lose weight.” The context supports the second meaning

in verse 31, namely, Israel, as a group in Paul’s day, failed to attain

192 Appendix One

the overall, long-term aim of the law, that is, “Christ for righteousness

to everyone who believes” (Cristo;i eiji dikaiosuvnhn panti; twÛ`

pisteuvonti, 10:4).1 In other words, Paul is not dealing here with a programmatic

analysis of the law in all of its aspects; rather, he is specifically

discussing the long-term aim of the law: Christ for righteousness

to all who believe.

3. The clearest evidence for this (that Israel’s failure to “attain the

law” refers to her failure to attain the overall, long-term aim of the law:

“Christ for righteousness”) is that the explanation for Israel’s failure

to “attain the law” is that “they have stumbled over the stumbling

stone” (9:32b). The stumbling stone is Christ, which is made clear in

9:33, since believing on him is the opposite of stumbling over the stone

(“As it is written, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling,

and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to

shame.’”). So Israel failed to “attain the law” (v. 31b) because they

stumbled over Christ by failing to believe on him “for righteousness,”

but sought to establish their own (10:3). Thus, “pursuing the law and

not attaining it” refers to pursuing the overall, long-term aim of the

law, namely, righteousness, which Paul argues is “Christ . . . for righteousness

to everyone who believes” (10:4).

4. Another reason for saying that failure to “attain the law” (9:31)

refers to failure to trust Christ for righteousness is the close parallel in

1Though my point in this appendix does not entirely depend on it, I am construing tevloi to be the

subject of the sentence in Romans 10:4. It seems to me that nothing stands in the way of bringing the

Greek words over into English in almost the exact order that they stand in the original:

tevloi ga;r novmou Cristo;i eiji dikaiosuvnhn panti; twÛ` pisteuvonti˜

For the goal of the law is Christ for righteousness to everyone who believes.

As I have considered the relevant sections in Daniel B. Wallace’s Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics

(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), concerning the predicate nominative, and particularly the

section titled “How to Distinguish Subject from Predicate Nominative” (42–46) and the section on

Colwell’s Construction, especially the appendix “When the Verb Is Absent” (269–270), it has seemed

to me that no general rule can answer the question whether tevloi or Cristo;i is the subject or the

predicate nominative of this sentence. But Wallace makes one observation that inclines me toward

construing tevloi as the subject: Concerning Colwell’s rule about anarthrous definite predicate

nouns (257), when there is no verb present (as in Romans 10:4), Wallace says, “By placing the PN

[predicate nominative] before the subject, an author is making the PN emphatic and if emphatic, then

either qualitative or definite” (270). Tevloi is before Christos in Romans 10:4. But it seems to me that

Paul’s intention in this verse is not to make tevloi emphatic, but to make Christ emphatic. In other

words, the emphasis should be as follows: Not: Christ is the goal of the law, but: The goal of the

law is Christ. What is surprising and emphatic in the flow of Paul’s thought is not the introduction

of the tevloi of the law, but the introduction of Christ as the tevloi of the law. Therefore, according

to Wallace’s comment, tevloi would not naturally be thought of as the predicate nominative, coming

first for emphasis, but as the subject of the sentence. But again, I would say that the argument of this

appendix does not depend on whether tevloi or Cristo;i is the subject. More important is the fact

that in the natural flow of the sentence, “Christ” belongs closely with the phrase “for righteousness

to everyone who believes.”

Appendix One 193

thought between 9:31 and 10:3. In 9:31 Paul says of Israel, “pursuing

a law of righteousness, they did not attain the law.” In 10:3 he says

of Israel, “seeking to establish their own [righteousness] they did not

submit to the righteousness of God.” The “seeking” and “pursuing” in

these two verses are very similar and probably refer to the same striving.

Then in 10:4, Paul explains and supports (ga;r) what he means by

not submitting to “the righteousness of God.” It refers to Israel’s failure

to embrace “Christ for righteousness to everyone who believes.” This

was the overall, long-term aim (tevloi 10:4a) of the law—to submit to

God’s righteousness, that is, to believe on Christ for righteousness. This

is what Israel failed to attain because they did not believe on Christ for

their righteousness.

5. This understanding of Israel’s failure to “attain the law” (9:31)

is confirmed by another parallel, this time between 9:32 and 10:3.

Romans 9:32 says that the reason Israel failed to “attain the law”

was because they went about this pursuit “not from faith but as

from works” (oujk ejk pivstewj ajll’ wJi ejx e[rgwn). The parallel in 10:3

says that the reason Israel failed to submit to God’s righteousness is

that they “sought to establish their own [righteousness]” (th;n ijdivan

dikaiosuvnhn | zhtou`ntej sth`sai). Thus, the parallel is between seeking

to establish one’s own righteousness rather than submitting to God’s

righteousness, on the one hand (10:3), and pursuing the law “as from

works,” rather than “from faith,” on the other hand (9:32). But 10:4

makes clear that the failure to submit to God’s righteousness is equivalent

to failing to embrace “Christ for righteousness” as the overall,

long-term aim (tevloi) of the law.

The implication of this parallel is that “pursuing the law . . .

as from works” (9:31–32) refers to pursuing the overall, long-term

aim of the law, namely, “Christ for righteousness to everyone who

believes,” “as by works.” Simply put, Israel stumbled over the stumbling

stone, Christ, because they sought the overall, long-term aim of

the law, namely, righteousness, “as from works,” when, in fact, that

aim (tevloi) was not “from works” but “by faith,” namely, by faith in

“Christ for righteousness to everyone who believes.”

6. The upshot of this interpretation for what Romans 9:32 teaches

about the law is this: Its long-term aim was and is “Christ for righ

194 Appendix One

teousness to everyone who believes,” and this long-term aim of the law

was and is to be attained “by faith” and not “as by works.”

7. A corollary of this conclusion is that Romans 9:32 views the

law as it points to and aims at “Christ for righteousness,” not in all the

law’s designs and relations to faith. Therefore, it would be a mistake to

use Romans 9:32 to deny, for example, that there is a short-term aim of

the law that may suitably be described as “not of faith” as in Galatians

3:12 (“But the law is not of faith, rather ‘The one who does them shall

live by them’”). I myself have argued in the past, for example, without

careful distinction, that “the law teaches faith” because Romans 9:32

says that you don’t “attain the law” if you fail to pursue it “by faith,”

but pursue “as from works.” But the distinction that must be made is

whether we are talking about the overall, long-term aim of the law,

which is in view in Romans 9:32, or whether we are making a sweeping

judgment about all the designs of the law. We would go beyond what

Romans 9:32 teaches if we made such a sweeping judgment, so as to

deny that there is a short-term design of the law not easily summed up

in the phrase “the law teaches faith” but fairly described in the words

“the law is not of faith” (Gal. 3:12).

For example, one short-term aim of the law was to “imprison

everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might

be given to those who believe” (Gal. 3:22). That is, the law functions,

in a subordinate, short-term way, to keep people in custody, awaiting

the fullness of time, which is a time of faith, as Galatians 3:23 says,

“Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned

until the coming faith would be revealed.” If, in some sense,

“faith” had not yet come, but was “to be later revealed,” then it would

not be strange to say “the law is not of faith” if the faith being referred

to is the faith of Galatians 3:23, that is, faith in the Son of God who

has come in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4). This is probably what Paul

means when he says in Galatians 3:12, “The law is not of faith.” The

faith that was to come—to which the law was leading Israel, as it held

them in custody—is faith that is consciously in Christ, “the end of the

law for righteousness for all who believe.”

Appendix One 195

Appendix Two

Thoughts on Law and Faith

in Galatians 3

1. The law, in its narrow, short-term design, demands perfectly

doing the 6131 commandments of the Pentateuch in order to have life

(Gal. 3:10, 12; 5:3; 6:13; Rom. 4:2; 10:5). This is not a kind of legal

arrangement that excludes reliance on God for enabling power. There

is no thought in this arrangement of man being required to give to God

what he has not first given to man (Rom. 11:35–36). This narrow,

short-term design of the law holds up an absolute standard of childlike,

humble, God-reliant, God-exalting perfection, and thus provides

the moral backdrop without which the sin-atoning provisions of the

Pentateuch and the work of Christ would make no sense.2

2. The recipients of this law (Israel and, indirectly, all the Gentiles)

are uniformly sinful and hostile to God. They do not submit to God

and cannot (Rom. 8:7).

3. Therefore, the effect of this law on sinful Israel, when she is confronted

with hundreds of commandments, is (a) the awareness of latent

sin (Rom. 7:7); (b) the increase of sin by its becoming exceedingly sinful

(Rom. 5:20; 7:13); and (c) the multiplication of transgressions (Rom.

5:20; 4:15). This effect was part of God’s design for the law: “[The law]

was added because of transgressions” (Gal. 3:19); “The law came in to

increase the trespass” (Rom. 5:20). The Mosaic law itself shows that

its aim is indictment in the short run—Deuteronomy 31:26–27: “Take

this Book of the Law and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant

1See John Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 481, for

the explanation of the origin of the number 613.

2On the underlying biblical demand for perfection see above, chapter 8, footnote 15.

i

of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against you.

For I know how rebellious and stubborn you are.”

4. This narrow, short-term design of the law is expressed in

Galatians 3:22: “The Scripture imprisoned everything under sin.” The

effect of this design of the law is to kill rather than to make alive. Paul

says he is the servant “of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the

Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6). The old

covenant, the letter, is the Mosaic covenant, the law (Gal. 3:17–19;

Rom. 7:6) which was different from the “new covenant,” especially

in that the old covenant could not “give life” the way the Spirit could.

Paul says this in Galatians 3:21: “If a law had been given that could

give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” The law

could not give life. It could only kill, because it shut people up to sin

and multiplied transgressions. Or, as Paul says in Romans 3:20, this

narrow, short-term design of the law is not that anyone be justified but

that the “knowledge of sin” be awakened: “By works of the law no

human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes

knowledge of sin.”

5. All of this deadly design of the law is sufficient to warrant the

statement in Galatians 3:12: “The law is not of faith.” The point of

this statement is not to say that the demand of the law for perfect

obedience excluded reliance on God for enabling (see #1). The context

of Galatians 3 makes clear that the point of saying “the law is not of

faith” is that the design of the law was not to give life to the faith of

the new covenant that would arrive with the coming of Christ. “The

law is not of faith” means: The narrow, short-term design of the law is

imprisonment to sin, multiplied transgressions, and death, all of which

happen because the law is primarily “commandments” (Rom. 7:8–13;

13:8–9; Eph. 2:15, see below #12), demanding perfect obedience without

giving the Spirit who “gives life” (Gal. 3:21; 2 Cor. 3:6).

6. This all-important context of Galatians 3 speaks of faith in

a striking way: Faith is the way Abraham was justified when he

received the promise by faith (3:6–8); and faith is something “later

to be revealed” (after the law). It is something that does not “come”

until Christ comes. The law “was added,” Paul says, 430 years after

Abraham, “until the offspring should come to whom the promise had

been made” (Gal. 3:19). When Christ, the offspring, comes, then, the

198 Appendix Two

deadly, old-covenant work of the law will pass away, and the time for

the Spirit and life and justification by faith in Christ will have arrived.

In Paul’s way of thinking, the faith he has in view “has come,” and the

role of the law as a tutor to bring us to Christ is over:

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned

until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was

our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by

faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

(Gal. 3:23–25)

7. The upshot of #6 is that there is another design of the law

besides the narrow, short-term design of sin, transgression, unbelief,

and death. There is an overall, long-term design for the law, namely, to

lead Israel to Christ “in order that we might be justified by faith” (Gal.

3:24). God’s design is that the outpouring of the Spirit (Gal. 4:6) and

the giving of life and the act of justification by faith be clearly attached

to the work of Christ. That is why, until Christ came, God restrained

the Spirit and the gift of life and the work of faith.

8. In view of these two designs of the law (short-term to kill and

long-term to lead to Christ who gives life), we can understand Paul’s

argument for why the law is not against the promise (Gal. 3:21) and

therefore not against faith (Rom. 3:31). In Galatians 3:21 Paul asks,

“Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?” His answer is an

emphatic “Certainly not!” But the reason he gives is remarkable. To

understand it, the rest of verse 21 and verse 22 must be taken together.

He says:

21 [The promise and the law are not contrary because] if a law had been

given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the

law. 22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the

promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

In other words, the reason the law is not against the promise is

precisely that it was designed not to give life but to hold under sin

and lead to Christ who gives life. Paul says that if the law had given

life, then it would have been against the promise. It would have short-

circuited the purpose of the promise to make Christ the basis of life

Appendix Two 199

and righteousness. It would have played into the hands of those who

want to make their own doing (enabled by life-giving law) the basis of

their right standing with God. But the law does not do that. It holds

under sin and leads to Christ. Thus its aim (tevloi) is “Christ . . . for

righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4). The short-term

design of the law (to hinder life and faith and righteousness) serves the

long-term design of the law (to base life and faith and righteousness on

Christ). In this way, the fact that the law is “not of faith” serves faith

in Christ. And the (non-life-giving) law prevents life and justification

from being “by the law” (Gal. 3:21).

9. Now we need an explanation of Galatians 3:18. “If the inheritance

comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise.” This statement

made the question in verse 21 very pressing: “Is the law then contrary

to the promises?” Verse 18 surely sounds like law and promise are

contrary, because it denies that they could both be the basis of the

inheritance. Law and promise are antithetical foundations for the

inheritance. Paul’s argument in verses 21–22 (see #8) helps us understand

why promise and law cannot both be the basis of the inheritance,

and yet promise and law are not contrary.

Paul says that the law would indeed be contrary to the promise if

it “gave life” (“If a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness

would indeed be by the law”), but since the law doesn’t give

life, it will instead bring Israel to Christ in whom the blessing (inheritance)

of Abraham comes to the Gentiles by faith (3:14). How then are

we to understand the apparent antithesis between promise and law in

verse 18? We understand the antithesis as potential: The law would

have put the inheritance on another footing if God had ordained for

the law to give life and thus enable people to attain righteousness without

Christ. Thus the phrase “inheritance comes by the law” in verse

18 refers to the use of the law—not legalistically, but in the life-giving

power of God—to attain a righteousness that would be acceptable to

God without need of the work of Christ. This would be contrary to the

promise that says, “In Christ Jesus [the offspring, 3:16) the blessing of

Abraham [will] come to the Gentiles” (3:14). But the law is not contrary

to the promise, since it was not added as another way of getting

right with God without Christ, but “because of transgressions [to hold

200 Appendix Two

Israel under sin] until the offspring should come to whom the promise

had been made” (Gal. 3:19).

12. So “the law is not of faith” may mean that the law, in the

narrow and short-term sense, was not designed to produce faith, even

though it may call for faith when understood in its larger Pentateuchal

context. Its narrow and short-term design is to be “letter,” not “Spirit,”

and so to kill rather than give life (2 Cor. 3:6), that is, “to imprison

everything under sin” (Gal. 3:22, 19; Rom. 5:20; 7:8, 13). It does

this by (a) putting commandments in the dominant place rather than

God’s redeeming Substitute and enabling grace and thus awakening

the “knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20; 7:7); (b) by commanding perfect

obedience (Gal. 3:10; 5:3; 6:13); and (c) by not providing the new heart

of the new covenant that enables the fulfillment of the law in a life of

love (Deut. 5:29; 29:4; Gal. 3:21, 23; Rom. 8:3–4).

Appendix Two 201

Appendix Three

Thoughts on Galatians 5:6 and

the Relationship between

Faith and Love

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts

for anything, but only faith working through love.

ejn ga;r CristwÛ` ’Ihsou` ou[te peritomhv ti ijscuvei ou[te ajkrobustiva

ajlla; pivstii di’ ajgavphi ejnergoumevnh

As we will see, much of the Reformation division between Rome

and Protestantism was over how to understand this verse. The observation

has been made to me, for example, “In Galatians 5:6, Paul doesn’t

say, ‘the kind of faith which works through love avails everything

(including justification),’ but he does say that ‘faith expressing itself

in love avails everything (including justification).’” The implication of

this observation is that the faith that justifies is not merely the kind of

faith that produces the new activity of love, but rather that the new

activity of love is a form of faith.

It is possible that the nuance of ejnergoumevnh (“working”) falls on

the self-extension of faith, so that “faith working through love” means

that faith extends itself in the form of love. But that is not obvious either

from the grammar or the nearest parallels in the New Testament.

One might put a “self-expressive” twist on the middle voice of

ejnergoumevnh that it need not have in any of its uses in the New

Testament and cannot have in several. In Paul’s use of ejnergei`n in

the active voice, the verb generally has a personal subject and a direct

object and means “to effect or bring about” (e.g., 1 Cor. 12:6, 11; Gal.

i

3:5; Eph. 1:11, 20; Phil. 2:13). But wherever he uses ejnergei`n in the

middle voice, the subject is not a person, and there are no direct objects.

The meaning is simply “become effective” (Rom. 7:5; 2 Cor. 1:6; 4:12;

Eph. 3:20; Col. 1:29; 1 Thess. 2:13; 2 Thess. 2:7). That is the basic

difference between the active and middle voice: In the active voice,

someone effects something; in the middle voice, something “becomes

effective.” There is no necessary implication in the middle voice of the

subject extending itself as a new form.

On the contrary, several parallels show that this is not likely. For

example, in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 Paul says, “You accepted [the word

of God] not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of

God, which is at work in you believers” (o}i kai; ejnergei`tai ejn uJmi`n

toi`i pisteuvousin). Here “the word of God” is the subject of the

middle voice ejnergei`tai; (“is at work”). The point is that the word of

God is “becoming effective” in producing bold and patient Christians

under affliction (as 2:14 makes plain). So the effect of the word is not a

self-extension of the word itself, but rather is patience in affliction. The

word of God is not “extending itself” in patience. The word of God

and patient endurance are different realities. The word effects or brings

about the endurance, but does not become a form of endurance.

Another example, James 5:16, is the closest parallel in the New

Testament to Paul’s use of ejnergoumevnh here. Recall the form of

Galatians 5:6 (ejn ga;r CristwÛ` ’Ihsou` ou[te peritomhv ti ijscuvei ou[te

ajkrobustiva ajlla; pivstii di’ ajgavphi ejnergoumevnh). James says, “The

prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (polu;

ijscuvei devhsii dikaivou ejnergoumevnh). What makes this parallel so

close to Galatians 5:6 is (1) the use of the verb ijscuvei (“counts” in Gal.

5:6; “has great power” in Jas. 5:16) both here and in Galatians 5:6; (2)

the anarthrous noun as subject (devhsii and pivstii); (3) the anarthrous

identical form of ejnergoumevnh ending the sentence; and (4) a modifier

separating the subject (devhsii) and the final participle (ejnergoumevnh),

namely, di’ ajgavphi in Galatians 5:6 and dikaivou in James 5:16.

A literal rendering of James 5:16 would be: “The prayer of a

righteous man, becoming effective, avails much.” This corresponds

in Galatians 5:6 to “The faith becoming effective through love avails

[justification].” The only point I want to make is that prayer is not rain.

That is, when James says that Elijah prayed and it “became effective”

204 Appendix Three

in drought and rain, he was not saying that prayer “expressed itself” in

drought and rain. He was saying that prayer had the effect of producing

drought and rain. That is analogous to how faith relates to love.

I conclude therefore that the use of ejnergoumevnh in the middle

voice does not have the nuance implication of extending itself, with the

implication that the love in which this self-extension happens is part of

what faith is. That cannot be shown from the words as they are used.

Moreover the grammar of the verse suggests that Paul is saying that

justifying faith is the kind of faith that produces love. The anarthrous

participle (ejnergoumevnh) following an anarthrous noun (pivstii) is

naturally construed as having an attributive relationship. That is, the

natural way to read it is: “faith, which through love becomes effective.”

“The attributive participle stands both with and without the article and

is equivalent to a relative clause.”1

Therefore, even though it is possible that ejnergoumevnh is adverbial

(“faith, by means of becoming effective through love, avails justification”),

this is not obvious. In fact, the effect of this unnecessary translation

is to make love “the instrument of the instrument” of justification

(justification is by faith by love). This translation is then used as an

argument that justification is not by faith alone apart from works of

love, but rather that justification is by faith by means of works of love.

This, I think is the opposite of what Paul teaches in Romans 3:28;

4:4–6; 5:1; 10:3–4; Philippians 3:8–9; Galatians 2:16; 3:8, 24.

In one sense, the Reformation hinges on how love and faith are

related in Galatians 5:6. Luther summed up the battleground this way

in reference to Galatians 5:6: “This place the schoolmen do wrest unto

their own opinion, whereby they teach that we are justified by charity

or works. ‘For they say that faith, even though it be infused from

above . . . justifieth not, except it be formed by charity.”2 In other

words, what Luther was willing to fight over was whether di’ ajgavphi

ejnergoumevnh was attributive, defining the kind of faith that justifies

(his own view), or was doubly adverbial, explaining how faith justifies.

Thus (1) ejnergoumevnh is adverbial in that it implies that faith justifies

by means of extending itself through love. And (2) di’ ajgavphi has an

1J. H. Moulton, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,

1963), 3:152.

2Martin Luther, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H.

Revell, 1953), 464.

Appendix Three 205

adverbial force in that it implies that the essentially justifying instrument

is faith formed by love—that is, faith in the form of love.

I would argue that we stay closer to the mind of Paul by giving

di’ ajgavphi ejnergoumevnh a simple attributive meaning. “Faith, which

becomes effective through love, avails justification.” The clause “which

becomes effective through love” is an adjectival modifier of faith. It

tells what kind of faith avails justification. Therefore, love as an expression

of faith is not the instrument of justification—it does not unite us

to Christ who is our perfection. Only faith does. But this faith is the

kind of faith that inevitably gives rise to love.3

3My effort to explain why and how justifying faith has this effect is found in Future Grace.

206 Appendix Three

Appendix Four

Using the Law Lawfully

Thoughts on 1 Timothy 1:5–11

5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good

conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Certain persons, by swerving from

these, have wandered away into vain discussion, 7 desiring to be teachers

of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the

things about which they make confident assertions. 8 Now we know

that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that

the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient,

for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who

strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral,

men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever

else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the gospel

of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

First Timothy 1:5 teaches that “the aim of our charge is love

from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” So Paul’s

gospel preaching aims at a certain kind of lifestyle. Love. That is what

accords with his instruction.

This love flows “from a pure heart and a good conscience and a

sincere faith” (v. 5). So the way to teach and awaken this love is by

focusing on the transformation of the heart and the conscience and the

awakening and strengthening of faith.

However, according to verses 6–7, “certain persons, by swerving

from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be

teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying

or the things about which they make confident assertions.” So their

error is that they misuse the law. They are trying to teach the law, but

i

they are turning aside from matters of the heart and conscience and

faith. And so they are not arriving at love. In this way, they are making

the law an instrument of something other than love.

But in Romans 13:8 and Galatians 5:14, Paul says that the law is

fulfilled by love. So these men do not know what they are doing. Is the

law then the problem?

No. Paul absolves the law by saying in verse 8, “Now we know

that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully.” The “lawful” use of the

law is to use it now as a pointer to the gospel, which is the way to

awaken love (as Paul shows in the rest of the passage). Paul says in

verse 9, “The law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless.”

Then he lists several kinds of lawless people that he says the law is

meant to confront (ungodly and sinners, the unholy and profane, those

who strike their fathers and mothers, murderers, the sexually immoral,

men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers).

Then, in a decisive and sweeping statement, he says that the law is

meant to confront and expose not only this long list of ungodly people

but also “whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance

with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.” This is remarkable.

To use the law lawfully (v. 8) is to understand that it is designed to

lead people to the gospel of Christ and to indict what is not in accord

with the gospel. In this way, the lawful use of the law leads to the

transformation of the heart through “sincere faith” (v. 5) and thus

leads to love, which is in turn the aim of Paul’s preaching (v. 5) and the

fulfilling of the law (Rom. 13:8). The key defining criterion of the life-

change that Paul is pursuing is whether it is “in accordance with the

gospel of the glory of the blessed God” (v. 11). Using the law lawfully

means using it to convict people of living out of accordance with the

gospel. “The law is for . . . [convicting people of] whatever is contrary

to sound teaching . . .” (v. 10, author’s translation), that is, whatever

does not “accord with the glorious gospel” (v. 11).

And so Paul’s focus is on what the gospel does to people in heart

and conscience and faith (v. 5). This gives rise to love (v. 5). But if we

turn it around and start using the law as the direct and decisive means

of sanctification, it will be misused and will abort. We will fall under

the criticism of verse 7: “[They have wandered into vain discussion]

desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what

208 Appendix Four

they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.”

In other words, there are moralists who use simple teachings

about right and wrong—even from the Bible—to get people to change

behavior, but do not know what they are doing. They do not know that

what they are doing is profoundly out of sync (kata;, v. 11) with the

gospel. They don’t understand the way the gospel works. They don’t

understand Romans 7:4: “My brothers, you also have died to the law

through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him

who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit

for God.”

We bear fruit for God (love) by being joined through faith to Jesus,

not through the law. That is what the law was ultimately designed to

show.

Appendix Four 209

Appendix Five

Does the Doctrine of the

Imputation of Christ’s

Righteousness Imply That the

Cross Is Insufficient for Our

Right Standing with God?

When we teach that our right standing with God is attained

through the imputation of Christ’s obedience to our account (2 Cor.

5:21; Rom. 4:6, 11; 5:19; 10:3), does this imply that the work of

Christ on the cross—his final suffering and death—are insufficient

for our justification?

This question arises in part because of texts that connect the cause

of justification specifically to the cross of Christ. For example:

• Romans 3:24–25: “[They] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the

redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation

by his blood.”

• Romans 4:25: “[He] was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for

our justification.”

• Romans 5:9: “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood,

much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”

• Galatians 2:21: “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were

through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”

To see the answer, we might ask a similar question concerning the

forgiveness of sins. In other words: Does the insistence upon Jesus’ sin

i

less life imply that the work of Christ as the spotless Lamb of God on

the cross is insufficient for the canceling of the debt of our sins? Our

sins being canceled and forgiven is connected most directly to the death

of Christ. For example:

• Colossians 2:14: “[He forgave] by canceling the record of debt that

stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the

cross.”

• 1 Corinthians 15:3: “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also

received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.”

• Isaiah 53:5: “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for

our iniquities.”

• 1 Peter 2:24: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.”

• Revelation 1:5: “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by

his blood.”

• 1 John 1:7: “The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”

Is the death of Jesus sufficient to cleanse us from all our sins? Yes,

but only as the climax of a sinless life. The book of Hebrews is most

explicit about the necessity of the Son of God being perfect and without

sin so that he can bear our sins once for all.

• Hebrews 4:15: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize

with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as

we are, yet without sin.”

• Hebrews 7:27–28: “He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices

daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he

did this once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints men

in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came

later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever.”

• Hebrews 2:10: “It was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things

exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their

salvation perfect through suffering.”

• Hebrews 5:9: “And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal

salvation to all who obey him.”

So the death of the Son of God is sufficient to cover all our sins as the

climax of a sinless life. This is no disparagement to the cross. It is not

adding to the cross. The New Testament writers saw the death of Christ

as the climax of his life. His whole life was designed to bring him to the

212 Appendix Five

cross (Mark 10:45; John 12:27; Heb. 2:14). That is why he was born,

and why he lived. To speak of the saving effect of his death was therefore

to speak of his death as the sum and climax of his sinless life.

Similarly, the final obedience of Christ in his death is sufficient to

justify his people as the climax of a sinless life. It is not likely that the

apostles thought of Jesus’ obedience on the cross as separate from his

obedience leading to the cross. Where would one draw the line between

his life of sinless obedience and the final acts of obedience? Any line

would be artificial. Do we draw it at the point where he submitted to

the piercing of his hands? Or at the point when he submitted to his

arrest in the garden? Or at the point where he endured Judas’ departure

from the supper? Or at the point where he planned his final entry to

Jerusalem? Or at the point where he “set his face to go to Jerusalem”

(Luke 9:51)? Or at the point of his baptism where he said, “It is fitting

for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15)?

It is more likely that when Paul spoke of Jesus’ obedience as the

cause of our justification he meant not merely the final acts of obedience

on the cross, but rather the cross as the climax of his obedient

life. This seems to be the way Paul is thinking in Philippians 2:7–8:

“[He] made himself nothing . . . being born in the likeness of men. And

being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient

to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Notice the sequence

of thought: He became a human. That is, he was found in human

form. > He humbled himself. > The way he humbled himself was

by becoming obedient. > This obedience was so complete that it

willingly embraced death. > Even death in the most painful and

shameful way—on a cross.

What this text shows is that between “being born in the likeness of

men” at one end of his life and “even death on a cross” at the other end

of his life was a life of self-humbling obedience. The fact that it came to

its climax on the cross in the most terrible and glorious way is probably

what causes Paul to speak of the cross as the sum and climax of all his

obedience. But it is very unlikely that Paul would have separated the

obedience of the final hours from the obedience that designed, planned,

pursued, and embraced those final hours.

Thus when Paul says in Romans 5:18, “One act of righteousness

[di’ eJno;i dikaiwvmatoi] leads to justification and life,” and when he

Appendix Five 213

says in Romans 5:19, “By the one man’s obedience [dia; th`i uJpakoh`i

tou` eJno;i] the many will be made righteous,” there is little reason to

think he meant to separate the final obedience of Jesus from the total

obedience of Jesus. In Adam’s case, it only took one sin to completely

fail. In Christ’s case, it took an entire life to completely succeed. That is

how their disobedience and obedience correspond to each other.

Thus when Paul compares the “one trespass” of Adam to Christ’s

“one act of righteousness” (Rom. 5:18), there is no single act in Christ’s

life that corresponds to the eating of the forbidden fruit. Rather, his

whole life of obedience was necessary so that he would not be a second

failing Adam. One single sin would have put him in the category of a

failing Adam. But it took one entire life of obedience to be a successful

second Adam. That this complete life of obedience came to climax

in the freely embraced death of Christ made such an overwhelming

impression on his followers that they looked upon the “cross” or the

“death” as the climax and sum of his obedience, but not separate from

his cross-pursuing life.

So back to our initial question: “Does the doctrine of the imputation

of Christ’s righteousness imply that the cross is insufficient for our

right standing with God?” The answer is no. Just as the perfectly obedient

life of Christ is essential to the death of Christ as a covering for

our sin, so the perfectly obedient life of Christ is essential to the death

of Christ as the supreme act of obedience by which we are appointed

righteous in him. The death of Christ is sufficient for covering our sins

as the climax of a sinless life. And the death of Christ is sufficient for

our justification as the climax of a sinless life.

214 Appendix Five

Appendix Six

Twelve Theses on What It Means

to Fulfill the Law

With Special Reference to Romans 8:4

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ

Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus

from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened

by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness

of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that

the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk

not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who

live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but

those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of

the Spirit. (Rom. 8:1–5)

What does Paul mean in Romans 8:4 when he says that the aim

of Christ’s death is “that the righteous requirement of the law might

be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according

to the Spirit”?

Some take this to mean that Christ fulfilled the law for us when he

obeyed it perfectly and died as the perfect sacrifice on our behalf.1 Thus

in him we are perfect with his perfection, and in him we are pardoned

by his blood. I believe that is true in reality, and that it is foundational

for a right understanding of Paul and for a life fully conformed to

Christ’s work. But I don’t think that is the point of verse 4.

1Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 483. “First, the passive verb ‘might be fulfilled’ points not to

something that we are to do but something that is done in and for us. Second, the always imperfect

obedience of the law by Christians does not satisfy what is demanded by the logic of the text.” I

stand with Moo theologically, but on this verse, not exegetically.

i

The reason I disagree with this interpretation is that it doesn’t

fit the wording of the text very well. Verse 4 says the aim of Christ’s

death is “that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled

in us.” It does not say that the law is to be fulfilled for us. Again, I

believe that the law is indeed fulfilled for us by Christ. I believe that

is implied in Romans 5:19 and in the entire picture that unfolds when

all the relevant texts make their contribution. But that does not seem

to be the point here. In the next verse (v. 5), Paul focuses specifically

on our walking—that is, our living—as the way the fulfillment of the

righteous requirement of the law will happen: “. . . that the righteous

requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk . . . according

to the Spirit.”2

So my question is: What does it mean to fulfill the requirement

of the law? And specifically, how can any of my “walking” by the

Spirit—which is always imperfect in this life—be said to fulfill God’s

law, which is holy and just and good? God’s divine standard does not

say, “Pretty good will do.” I will try to answer this question with a summary

of the relationship of the Christian to the law in twelve theses.

1. Fulfilling the righteous requirement of the law in Romans 8:4

refers to a life of real love for people (Rom. 13:8–10; Gal. 5:13–18;

Matt. 7:12; 22:37–40).3

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves

another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not

commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall

not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word:

2N. T. Wright sees the term in Romans 8:4 translated in the esv “righteous requirement” (to;

dikaivwma tou` novmou) not as a reference to behavior that the law requires, but as a reference to the

decree of “resurrection life” that the law intended to give us, but could not because it was weak

through the flesh (Rom. 7:10). Wright, The Letter to the Romans, 577–580. I don’t see his arguments

for this as compelling, but I don’t want to make more of this than is necessary. In the end, he says

that his view “does not, of course, exclude” the view I am taking, namely, that Paul is saying God

condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus so that the “righteous requirement of the law” (meaning the way

of life that the law required) might be fulfilled in us (580). And when he gets to Romans 13:8–10,

he says, “People who love their neighbors thus ‘fulfill Torah,’ both in the immediate sense that they

will never do any of the things that Torah forbids, and in the wider sense that through them God’s

way of life will be seen to advantage” (725).

3From the list of some of the Ten Commandments in Romans 13:8–10 we may infer that the law

that love fulfills is primarily thought of as the moral law of God, which finds its chief historical summary

in the Ten Commandments, which are tailored for Israel’s situation. The focus of our fulfilling

the law is not on all the Jewish-specific laws, such as circumcision and sacrifices and food laws and

feast days. However, when Jesus says in Matthew 22:40 that “all the Law and the Prophets” hang

on the love commands, he may indeed see love as, in some sense, the source and goal of even the

more Jewish-specific laws. Either way, the point is that the law was pointing to Christ and to a life

of love lived in dependence on him.

216 Appendix Six

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a

neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Rom. 13:8–10)

You were called to freedom, brothers. 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.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you

are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and

you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh

are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh,

for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things

you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the

law. (Gal. 5:13–18)

Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for

this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matt. 7:12)

[Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your

heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great

and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your

neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law

and the Prophets.” (Matt. 22:37–40)

2. Our fulfilling God’s law in loving others is not the ground of our

justification. The ground of justification is the sacrifice and obedience

of Christ alone, appropriated through faith alone before any other acts

are performed. Our fulfilling the law is the fruit and evidence of being

justified by faith (Rom. 3:20–22, 24–25, 28; 4:4–6; 5:19; 8:3; 10:3–4;

2 Cor. 5:21).

By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since

through the law comes knowledge of sin. But 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. 3:20–22)

[Those who are in Christ] are justified by his grace as a gift, through

the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a

propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show

God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed

over former sins. (Rom. 3:24–25)

Appendix Six 217

We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

(Rom. 3:28)

To the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his

due. And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies

the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also

speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness

apart from works. (Rom. 4:4–6)

As by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the

one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. (Rom. 5:19)

God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By

sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned

sin in the flesh. (Rom. 8:3)

Being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish

their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ

is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

(Rom. 10:3–4)

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)

(See also Phil. 3:8–9; 1 Cor. 1:30; Tit. 3:5; Gal. 2:16, 21; 3:10;

5:2–3.)

3. This fulfilling of God’s law in loving others is rendered not in our

own strength but by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit (Rom.

8:4; Gal. 5:13–16, 22–23).

[God condemned sin in Christ’s flesh] in order that the righteous

requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according

to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:4)

You were called to freedom, brothers. 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.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you

are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you

will not gratify the desires of the flesh. (Gal. 5:13–16)

218 Appendix Six

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

(Gal. 5:22–23)

4. This fulfilling of God’s law in loving others through the Spirit

is rendered by faith, that is, by being satisfied with all that God is for

us in Christ and him crucified—the perseverance of the same faith that

justifies (Gal. 3:5; 5:6; 1 Tim. 1:5; Heb. 11:6, 24–26; 10:34).

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? (Gal. 3:5)

In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for

anything, but only faith working through love. (Gal. 5:6)

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good

conscience and a sincere faith. (1 Tim. 1:5)

Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw

near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who

seek him. (Heb. 11:6)

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of

Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people

of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the

reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he

was looking to the reward. (Heb. 11:24–26)

You had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the

plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a

better possession and an abiding one. (Heb. 10:34)

5. This fulfilling of God’s law in loving others through the Spirit

by faith is not a perfect love in this life (Rom. 7:15, 19, 23–25; Phil.

3:12).

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but

I do the very thing I hate. (Rom. 7:15)

I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep

on doing. (Rom. 7:19)

Appendix Six 219

I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my

mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of

death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I

myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve

the law of sin. (Rom. 7:23–25)

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press

on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

(Phil. 3:12)

6. But this fulfilling of God’s law in loving others through the Spirit

by faith will become perfect when we die or when Christ returns, and

we will live in the perfection of love forever (Rom. 8:30; Phil. 1:6; Heb.

12:22–23).

Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he

called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

(Rom. 8:30)

I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it

to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (Phil. 1:6)

You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the

heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and

to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to

God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.

(Heb. 12:22–23)

7. Even though we will one day be perfected in love, the totality of

our existence, from conception to eternity, will never be a perfect one,

because it will always include the first chapter of our fallen life. We will

always be forgiven—that is, we will always be those who have sinned.

We will always be in need of an imputed, alien righteousness and a

sin-bearing Substitute for our right standing before God. In this way,

Christ will be glorified forever in our salvation. We will forever lean on

his righteousness and his sacrifice (Heb. 7:25; Rev. 5:9–10; 15:3).

[Jesus] is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through

him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. (Heb. 7:25)

220 Appendix Six

They sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and

to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed

people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,

and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they

shall reign on the earth.” (Rev. 5:9–10)

They sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the

Lamb. (Rev. 15:3)

8. Even though imperfect, this Spirit-dependent, Christ-exalting

love (which is essentially self-sacrificing gladness in the temporal and

eternal good of others, 2 Cor. 8:1–2, 8) is the true and real direction

of life that God’s law requires. In this life, we have new direction, not

full perfection. This direction is what the law demands on the way to

perfection (cf. texts under #1).

9. This fulfilling of the Old Testament law in the loving of others

through the Spirit by faith is sometimes called “the law of liberty”

(James 1:25; 2:12) and “the law of Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21; Gal. 6:2).

9.1 When the fulfilling of the law is called “the law of liberty,” it

means that, in the pursuit of love, Christians are free from law-keeping

as the ground of our justification and as the power of our sanctification.

Instead, we pursue it by the “law of the Spirit of life . . . in Christ

Jesus” (Rom. 8:2). We look to the Spirit of Christ for transformation

so that love flows by power from within, not pressure from without.

We are dead to law-keeping and therefore at liberty to bear fruit for

God in the newness of the Spirit (Rom. 7:4, 6). The law of liberty is the

leading of the Spirit, and “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is free-

dom” (2 Cor. 3:17) (Jas. 1:25; 2:10–12; Gal. 5:1; Rom. 7:4, 6;

2 Cor. 3:17–18).

The one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres,

being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be

blessed in his doing. (Jas. 1:25)

Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become

accountable for all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,”

also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder,

you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as

those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. (Jas. 2:10–12)

Appendix Six 221

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not

submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Gal. 5:1)

My brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ,

so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from

the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. . . . But now we are

released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so

that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the

written code. (Rom. 7:4, 6)

The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there

is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of

the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree

of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

(2 Cor. 3:17–18)

9.2 When the fulfilling of the law is called “the law of Christ,”

it means that our pursuit of love is guided and enabled by the life,

word, and Spirit of Jesus Christ. The law of Christ is not a new list of

behaviors on the outside, but a new Treasure, Friend, and Master on

the inside. He did give us “a new commandment” (“A new commandment

I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you,

that you also are to love one another,” John 13:34). But this standard

of love is the life and power of a person who indwells us by his Spirit

(Rom. 7:4; 8:11). We pursue love as “the law of Christ” by looking

to Christ as our sin-covering sacrifice, our all-sufficient righteousness,

our all-satisfying Treasure, our all-providing Protection and Helper,

and our all-wise counselor and guide (Rom. 7:4; 8:9, 12–14; 1 Cor.

9:21; Gal. 2:20; 6:2).

My brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ,

so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from

the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. (Rom. 7:4)

Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to

him. . . . So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live

according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will

die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will

live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Rom.

8:9, 12–14)

222 Appendix Six

To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being

outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win

those outside the law. (1 Cor. 9:21)

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ

who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the

Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20)

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. (Gal. 6:2)

10. The Old Testament law can be understood narrowly as a

set of commandments, or more broadly as the entire teaching of the

Pentateuch, or even as all the instruction of God in the Old Testament

wherever he gives it.

10.1 In the narrow sense, one may think of the law as commanding

perfect obedience that, if we could perform it (the way Adam should

have) by depending on God’s help, would be our righteousness and the

ground of our justification. But, because of our sin, the law does not

lead to life in this way (Gal. 3:21), but shuts us up to look away from

law-keeping to Christ so that we might be justified through faith in

him (Gal. 3:21–25).

Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For

if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would

indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under

sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those

who believe. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the

law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the

law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be

justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under

a guardian. (Gal. 3:21–25)

10.2. In the broader sense of the whole Pentateuch or the whole Old

Testament, we may think of the law not merely as making demands,

but also as offering justification through faith by pointing forward to

a Redeemer who would provide the ground of that justification, and

in whom Jews and Gentiles would be counted righteous because of his

blood and righteousness (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3; Rom. 3:19–22).

Appendix Six 223

[Abraham] believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

(Gen. 15:6)

What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was

counted to him as righteousness.” (Rom. 4:3; cf. Gal. 3:6)

We know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under

the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may

be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being

will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of

sin. But 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. 3:19–22)

11. When the law is understood in its entirety, its aim is that Jesus

Christ get the glory as the one who provides the only ground for our

imputed righteousness through faith (justification) and the only power

for our imparted righteousness through faith (sanctification) (Rom.

5:19; 10:4; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 1:11; 3:8–9).

As by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners,

so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

(Rom. 5:19)

Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

(Rom. 10:4)

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; cf. texts

under #2)

[I pray that you may be] filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes

through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Phil. 1:11)

I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things

and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be

found in him, 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. 3:8–9)

224 Appendix Six

12. Therefore, I give a summarizing three-part answer to the question,

“How can our imperfect obedience and love fulfill the perfect

law of God?”

12.1 First, our imperfect love is, nevertheless, real, God-dependent,

Spirit-enabled, Christ-exalting love that flows from our justification

and is not a means to it. And therefore it is the new direction

that the law was aiming at and what the new covenant promised. In

short, Christ-exalting love as the fruit of faith is what the law was

aiming at.

12.2 Second, our imperfect love is the firstfruits of a final perfection

that Christ will complete in us at his appearing. Romans 8:4 does

not say that the entire fulfillment of the law happens in us now. But

our walk by the Spirit begins now, and so does our fulfillment of the

righteous requirement of the law.

12.3 Finally, our imperfect love is the fruit of our faith in Jesus who

is himself our only justifying perfection before God. In other words,

the only law-keeping we depend on as the ground of our justification

is Jesus’ law-keeping. His was perfect. Ours is imperfect. And so we

will never (even in eternity) have a whole life of perfection to offer

God. The acceptability of our lives to all eternity will always depend

on the perfection of Jesus offered in our place. Our imperfect love now

and our perfect love later will always be the fruit of faith that looks to

Jesus as our only complete perfection. In the end, the law is fulfilled

in us everlastingly because it was fulfilled in him from everlasting to

everlasting. Our imperfection and need is a pointer to his perfection

and all-sufficiency; and that pointing—that exaltation of Christ—is the

aim of the law.

Appendix Six 225

Works by N. T. Wright

Cited in This Book

Books

The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh:

T&T Clark, 1991).

Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996).

The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority

of Scripture (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005).

The Letter to the Romans, in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X (Nashville:

Abingdon Press, 2002), 393–770.

The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,

1992).

Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians (Louisville: Westminster John

Knox, 2004).

Paul in Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005).

What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Saul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity?

(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997).

Essays, Interviews, and Lectures

“4QMMT and Paul: Justification, ‘Works,’ and Eschatology,” in History and

Exegesis: New Testament Essays in Honor of Dr. E. Earle Ellis for His

80th Birthday, ed. Aang-Won (Aaron) Son (New York and London: T&T

Clark, 2006), 104–132.

“The Cross and the Caricatures: A Response to Robert Jenson, Jeffrey John,

and a New Volume Entitled Pierced for Our Transgressions,” http://www.

fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/news/2007/20070423wright.cfm?doc=205.

“The Letter to the Galatians: Exegesis and Theology,” in Between Two Horizons:

Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology, ed. J. B.

Green and M. Turner (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 205–236.

“New Perspectives on Paul,” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments

and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Grand

Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 243–264.

“On Becoming the Righteousness of God,” in Pauline Theology, Volume II:

1 & 2 Corinthians, ed. David M. Hay (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 200–

208.

“Paul in Different Perspectives: Lecture 1: Starting Points and Opening Reflections,”

at the Pastors Conference of Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church,

Monroe, Louisiana (January 3, 2005); http://www.ntwrightpage.com/

Wright_Auburn_Paul.htm.

“Righteousness,” in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. David F. Wright et. al.

(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 590–592.

“The Shape of Justification” (2001), http://www.thepaulpage.com/Shape.html.

Travis Tamerius, “An Interview with N. T. Wright,” Reformation & Revival

Journal 11, Nos. 1 and 2 (Winter and Spring 2003). Available online at

http://www.hornes.org/theologia/content/travis_tamerius/interview_with_

n_t_wright.htm.

Genesis

12:3 45

15:6 168, 223-224

Exodus

9:16 70

33:19 70

Leviticus

26:14-16 128

Deuteronomy

138

5:29 201

25:1 58

29:4 201

30:16 158, 159

31:26-27 197

1 Samuel

12:22 65

1 Kings

8:32 58

Job

33:32 58

Psalms

122

2 84

16:30-37 84

22:27-28 30

32 75, 147

32:10-11 75

41:4 76

41:12 76

79:9 65

98:9 64-65

119 158

133:1 30

143:11 66

145:17 64

Ecclesiastes

7:20 76

Isaiah

122

1:17 58

5:23 58

40-55 52

43:25 65

46:10 30

48:9-11 65

49:6 84

52:7 36

53 48, 49, 50

53:4-5 52

53:6 52

53:10 52

53:11-12 52

53:12 52

52:15 52

53:5 212

53:1 52

55 84

Jeremiah

31 107

31:33 107

Ezekiel

36:20-23 65

Habakkuk

1:13 128

2:14 82

Matthew

3:15 213

6:1 157

6:15 115

7:12 216-217

9:13 157

11:19 58

12:7 157

12:37 58, 109

Scripture Index

12:39 154

16:4 154

18:23-35 157

22:14 109

22:37-40 216-217

22:40 216

23:4 157

23:5-7 154

23:13 156

23:15 154

23:25 154

23:27-28 154

23:33 154

Mark

10:45 213

11:33 32

Luke

1:5-6 153

1:6 153

2:25-38 153

7:29 58, 84

7:35 84

7:47 157

9:51 213

10:29 58, 84

16:14 154

16:15 58, 84, 156

17:10 161

18:9 149, 157-158, 159

18:11 149, 158, 159

18:14 84

John

3:1 154

5:28-29 115

5:44 154

7:50 154

8:32 31

8:42 153

8:44 153

12:27 213

13:34 222

15:23 155

17:17 31

19:39 154

21:17 13

Acts

8:13 20

8:21-23 20

13:14 83

13:15 83

13:17 83

13:23 83, 85

13:26 83, 85

13:27-29 84

13:32-33 84

13:39 86

13:46 84

13:47 85

13:48 85

13:38-39 20, 84

13:38-48 85

13:46-47 84

14:16 68

17:25 159

17:30 68

20:26-27 14

20:28 13

28:23 85

28:28 85

Romans

34, 52, 59, 96, 167

1-3 63, 68, 78

1:3ff 58

1-5 35

1:16-17 160

1:18 63, 66, 67, 70, 78,

79, 108, 164

1:18ff 105

1:18-3:20 52

1:21 66, 70, 79, 80, 108,

164, 179

1:23 66, 67, 71, 78, 79,

80, 164

1:26 108

1:32 108

2 22, 165, 183

2:1-6 120

2:1-16 57, 104, 105-111,

118, 119, 129-130

2:4 147

2:13 57, 58, 103-110,

117, 119, 149

2:14-16 22, 117, 143, 183

2:17-24 146

2:23 80, 165

2:23-24 66

2:24 71, 80, 165

3 40, 104

3:1-8 59, 62, 69-70

3:4 40-41

3:5-7 69

230 Scripture Index

3:7 69, 70

3:9ff 68

3:10 66, 67, 70, 76, 77,

79, 80, 165, 179

3:10-11 78

3:10-18 77

3:11 71

3:12 74-75, 77

3:19-22 223-224

3:20 58, 109, 110, 139,

148, 198, 201

3:20-22 217-218

3:21-31 59

3:23 66, 67, 68, 78, 79,

179

3:24-25 211, 217-218

3:24-26 46

3:25 67-68

3:25-26 47, 62, 68

3:26 146, 147

3:27 159

3:27-29 160

3:27-30 146-147

3:28 15, 43, 110, 139,

148, 205, 217-218

3:31 199

4 42, 104

4:1-6 126, 147-148

4:1-8 148, 168-169

4:2 150, 197

4:3 223-224

4:3-8 168

4:4 150

4:4-6 110, 205, 217-218

4:5 47, 67, 76, 78

4:6 43, 75, 77, 83, 109,

147, 148, 170, 180,

211

4:6-8 74, 75, 76

4:9 139, 170

4:11 77, 180, 211

4:13-25 59

4:15 197

4:16 171

4:19 180

4:25 52, 211

5:1 19, 42, 98, 205

5:8 52

5:9 211

5:12-19 126

5:12-21 58

5:15 52

5:18 213-214

5:18-19 169-171

5:19 52, 130, 211, 214,

216, 217-218, 224

5:20 197, 201

6 122

6:1-6 126

6:4 126

7:1 147

7:4 209, 221, 222

7:5 204

7:6 198, 221

7:7 197, 201

7:8 201

7:8-13 198

7:10 216

7:13 197, 201

7:15 219

7:19 219

7:23-25 219-220

8 104

8:1 51, 59, 118, 121,

128, 171, 173

8:1-5 215

8:1-11 165

8:1-17 119

8:1-30 52

8:2 221

8:3 51, 52, 58-59, 121,

217-218

8:3-4 103-104, 129, 201

8:4 104, 121, 215-216,

218, 225

8:5 216

8:7 197

8:9 222

8:9-11 22, 117, 143, 183

8:11 222

8:12-14 222

8:13 115

8:21 88

8:23 173

8:28 95

8:30 41, 94, 95, 109, 220

8:31-39 59

9:1-5 192

9:3 161, 192

9:6 192

9:6-8 161

9:6-13 192

9:6-29 192

9:11 70, 109

9:14 63

9:14-23 70-71

Scripture Index 231

9:15 70

9:17 70

9:19-23 62

9:24 192

9:30-10:4 151, 191-195

9:32 109

10:1 192

10:3 16, 211

10:3-4 151, 205, 217-218

10:4 174, 200, 224

10:5 197

10:9 90

10:9-13 59

10:10 90

10:13 90

10:16 52

11:6 109, 110

11:35-36 197

13:8 208

13:8-9 198

13:8-10 216-217

14 120

14:10-12 111, 118

14:19 30

14:23 115

15 121

15:8-9 71

15:21 52

1 Corinthians

30

1:2 173

1:4 30

1:9 95

1:10-3:23 30

1:17-18 167

1:23-24 95

1:24 94, 95, 167, 173

1:30 171, 172-174, 218

2:4-5 167

3 111

3:6 167

3:6-8 166

3:10-17 118

3:14-15 167

3:15 118

4:1-2 14

5:1-8 30

5:9-13 30

6:1-8 30

6:2 147

6:9 118, 147

6:16 147

6:19 147

7:1-16 30

7:20 95

7:24 95

8:1-13 30

9:21 221, 222-223

10:11 33

11:2-16 30

11:17-34 30

11:22 147

12:3 94

12:6 203

12:11 203

12-14 30

13 29

15 30

15:1-2 18

15:1-3 89

15:2 14

15:3 212

15:9 87

15:10 119

15:12-19 58

15:49-50 88

16:24 30

2 Corinthians

1:6 204

2:15-16 14

2:17 13

3-5 175

3:6 175, 198, 201

3:17 221

3:17-18 221-222

4:2 32

4:12 204

5 120

5:10 111

5:14 176-177, 178

5:15 178

5:15-17 176

5:17 177, 178

5:18 177

5:19 83, 177, 178

5:20 178

5:21 24, 168, 172-180,

211, 217-218, 224

8:8 221

8:1-2 221

13:5 147

232 Scripture Index

Galatians

16, 146, 160

1:8 14

1:8-9 15, 23

1:13 87, 155

2 136

2:14 14, 28

2:16 15, 58, 109, 133,

139, 205, 218

2:17 172, 173

2:19-20 122, 126

2:20 127, 222-223

2:21 14, 211, 218

3 122, 142, 145, 197-

201

3:2 109, 133, 139

3:5 109, 133, 139,

203-204, 219

3:6 224

3:8 205

3:10 15, 128, 133, 139,

218

3:12 192, 195

3:13 15

3:19 109

3:21 223

3:21-25 223

3:22 195

3:23 195

3:24 205

4:4 195

4:6 199

5:1 221-222

5:2 182

5:2-3 218

5:3 141, 197, 201

5:4 15

5:6 114, 203-206, 219

5:13-16 218

5:13-18 216-217

5:14 208

5:21 118, 186

5:22-23 218-219

6:2 221, 222-223

6:7-9 118

6:8-9 115

6:13 197, 201

6:14 167

Ephesians

1:11 204

1:20 204

2:2 153

2:2-3 153, 155

2:3 152

2:5 95, 152

2:8 110

2:9 109

2:10 173

2:15 198

3:20 204

4:12 14

4:13 30

4:14 14

4:16 30

6:14-15 31

6:17 31

Philippians

146, 160

1:6 220

1:7 27

1:9 31

1:11 224

2:2 30

2:6 130

2:6-9 58

2:7-8 213

2:8 170

2:13 204

2:15 76

3:2 153

3:4 152

3:5 152

3:6 87, 153, 155

3:8-9 171, 205, 218, 224

3:9 171-172, 172, 173

3:12 76, 219-220

4:8-9 30

Colossians

1:29 119, 204

2:14 212

1 Thessalonians

2:13 204

2:14 204

2:18-20 166

2:19 166-167

2:19-20 167

5:9 88, 167

5:9-10 166

2 Thessalonians

1:7-8 14

2:7 204

Scripture Index 233

1 Timothy

1:5 115, 219

1:5-11 207-209

1:13 153

1:13-14 155

1:15-16 87

3:3 31

3:5 31

3:16 41

4:16 13-14

5:20 31

2 Timothy

2:13 65, 164

2:15 14

2:22 30

2:24-26 31

3:16 31

Titus

1:9 31

1:13 31

2:15 31

3:3 155

3:5 109, 218

Hebrews

1:1-2a 33

2:2 128

2:10 212

2:14 213

4:15 212

5:9 212

7:25 220

7:27-28 212

10:1-4 128

10:34 219

11:4 115

11:6 115, 219

11:7 115

11:8 115

11:23 115

11:24-26 219

11:32 115

12:11 30

12:14 115, 186

12:22-23 220

13:7 13

James

1:25 221

2:10 128

2:10-12 221

2:12 221

2:17 115

2:18 115

2:19 20

2:21 109

2:24-25 109

3:1 13

3:17 30

5:16 204

1 Peter

1:20 33

2:24 212

3:9 115

3:11 30

3:18 161

2 Peter

1:2 31

1:3 31

1:5 31

1:12 31

1 John

1:7 115, 212

2:4 115

3:14 115

Revelation

1:5 212

5:9-10 220-221

15:3 220-221

234 Scripture Index

Ambrose, Saint, 112

Arnal, William E., 35

Athanasius, 28

Augustine, Aurelius, 37, 61, 80

Avemarie, Friedrich, 35. 145

Barnett, Paul, 120

Barrett, C. K., 172-173

Belcher, Joseph, 171

Bird, Michael, 10

Buchanan, James, 115

Bullinger, Heinrich, 112

Calvin, John, 11, 152, 183

Caneday, Ardel, 10

Carey, William, 171

Carson, D. A., 34, 35, 87, 148, 180, 183

Chalke, Steve, 47-53

Charles V, King, 111

Colwell, E. C., 193,

Cowan, Andrew, 10, 40

Cranfield, C. E. B., 16, 159

Dabney, Robert L., 114

Das, A. Andrew, 35, 145

Denney, James, 13

Dennis, Lane, 10

Desjardins, Michel, 35

Dever, Mark, 38

Dunn, J. D. G., 27, 35, 148, 150, 168

Edwards, Jonathan, 11, 24-25

Elliott, Mark, 35

Elliott, Neil, 145

Ellis, E. Earle, 23, 227

Erskine, John, 11

Flavel, John, 173

Fuller, Andrew, 171

Fuller, Daniel P., 11, 148, 159

Gaffin, Richard, 115-116, 117, 119

Gathercole, Simon, 35, 42, 43, 96-97,

145, 148, 150, 169

George, Timothy, 183

Goold, William , 28

Green, J. B., 97, 227

Griffin, Ted, 10

Grudem, Wayne, 28

Grynaeus, Simon, 112

Gundry, Stanley, 145

Hagner, Donald, 174

Hamilton, James M., Jr., 10, 145

Hart, D. G., 29

Hay, David M., 24, 228

Hays, Richard, 150

Hodge, Charles, 174, 179, 180

Hübner, H., 159

Hurtado, Larry, 35

Husbands, Mark, 180

Jeffrey, Steve, 48

Jenson, Robert, 51, 227

John, Jeffrey, 50-51, 227

Käseman, Ernst, 62

Kim, Seyoon, 145

Knight, Jonathan, 35

Köstenberger, Andreas, 178

Laato, Timo, 35

Ladd, George, 11, 33, 174

Lane, Anthony N. S., 183

Luther, Martin, 11, 25, 61, 111, 152, 183,

205

Machen, J. Gresham, 28

Manetsch, Scott, 25, 181

Mann, Alan, 48, 49

Mathis, David, 10, 84-85

McCormack, Bruce L., 16, 183, 227

McKnight, Scot, 35

Melanchthon, Philipp, 111

Miller, Nathan, 10

Moo, Douglas, 109, 110, 148, 215

Morris, Leon, 11, 25

Moule, Robert, 159

Person Index

Moulton, J. H., 205

Murray, John, 11

Myconius, Oswald, 112

Nicole, Roger, 27

Noll, Mark A., 25, 181

Nystrom, Carolyn, 25, 181

O’Brien, Peter T., 35, 183

Ovey, Mike, 48

Owen, John, 11, 24-25, 28

Parsons, Burk, 10

Payne, Tony, 120

Pelikan, Jaroslav, 183

Perman, Matt, 10, 152

Piper, John, 28, 32, 38, 62, 66, 111, 167,

169, 170, 184

Piper, Noël, 10

Piper, William Solomon Hottle, 5, 9,11

Räisänen, Heikki, 158

Rigney, Joseph, 10

Sach, Andrew, 48

Sailhamer, John, 197

Sanders, E. P., 16, 22-23, 27, 41, 96, 134,

141, 145, 151, 152, 168

Schaff, Philip, 112, 113, 114

Schreiner, Thomas R., 10, 107-108, 128,

145, 148, 151

Schweitzer, Albert, 99

Seifrid, Mark A., 35, 183

Silva, Moisés, 148

Son, Aang-Won (Aaron), 23, 227

Stein, Robert H., 151

Steinbach, Carol, 10

Stoddard, Solomon, 11

Stott, John, 13, 109

Tamerius, Travis, 16, 228

Taylor, Justin, 10

Treier, Daniel, 180

Turner, M., 97, 227

Vickers, Brian, 10

Wallace, Daniel B., 193

Westerholm, Stephen, 87, 148, 158-159

Wilson, Douglas, 10, 153

Witherington, Ben, III, 35

Wrede, Wilhelm, 99

Wright, David F., 57, 228

Ziesler, J. A., 62

236 Person Index

4QMMT, 23, 133-143, 148-149, 158

According to works, 109, 118-120

Acknowledgments, 9-11

Ad fontes, 61

Aim of this book see Why this book

Amnesty, 88-89

Augsburg Confession, 111-112

Badges, 131, 133, 136, 138-160

Basis, Wrightís unnuanced use of, 117-

120

Becoming Godís righteousness in Christ,

163-180

Books by N. T. Wright, 227

Brightness, obscured by Wright, 177-178

By Faith, Not by Sight, 116

Call of God and justification, 95-97

Catholic Catechism, 182-183

Clemency, not same as justification, 74-78

Colored glasses, 17

Communion with God, 28

Complete life lived, 22, 104, 129, 165,

183

Conspiracy of silence?, 111-115

Contending see Controversy

Controversy, 27-32

Counted Righteous in Christ, 167-174,

184

Defective view of justification, 24 n 30

Desiring God, 232

Dikaioø, 19, 40-44

Doers of the law, 103-104, 106, 109-110,

119, 149

Double tragedy, 186-187

Effectual call, 41, 91-95

Ego, 13, 25

Entire life lived see Complete life lived

Ethnic badges see Badges

Ethnocentrism, 22-23, 133, 147-161

Evangelicals, 36, 49-50, 188

Evidence, works functioning as, 119-121

Extra-biblical literature, 34-36

Fathers, 9, 11

First century, 19, 22, 25, 34-36, 40, 74,

87, 134-155

sweeping statements of precarious, 36

First Helvetic Confession, 112-113

Flashpoints, 18-24

“Fresh” interpretations, 36-38

Fulfilling the law, twelve theses on, 215-

225

Future Grace, 111, 184, 206

Future justification, 22, 100-101, 115-

117, 130, 143, 166, 183

Galatian “agitators,” 133, 136, 141, 145,

149

“Getting in,” 19, 94, 131, 135

Global reconstructions, 17

God for us 100 percent, 9

totally, 184, 186-187

Gospel, the

escape from God’s wrath not a subplot,

87-88

justification is not?, 19-20, 81-91

news that Christ died, 20

not about getting saved, 18

when Jesus’ lordship is good news,

81-91

Great Showdown, the, 101

Ground see Basis

Helvetic Confession, 112-113

Here I stand, 184

Imputation, 163-180

Does Wright mean what the tradition

does?, 117-132

God’s own righteousness, 21

“No sense at all,” 21, 60, 62, 71, 79

Paradoxes that point to, 77-78

Imputed righteousness see Imputation

Is the Reformation Over?, 25 n 31, 181-

183

Subject Index

Jesus’ assessment of the Pharisees 154-161

Judaism, 22-23, 133-158,

problems with Wright’s orientation

toward first-century, 156-161

Judgment has already happened in Christ,

58-59

Justification of God, The, 62-70

KathistSmi, 170

Law,

and faith in Galatians 3, 197-201

long-term aim of, 191-195, 199-200

short-term aim of, 192, 195, 197-201

twelve theses on fulfilling, 215-225

using lawfully, 207-209

written on Gentile hearts, 106-108

Law-court imagery, 39-55

Legalism, 22-23, 104, 133-134, 137, 141,

145-161

ruled out by believing in grace?, 148-

149

Lordship of Jesus terrifying, 86-87

Lost Message of Jesus, 47-53

Methods, biblical-theological, 33-38

New Perspective, 16, 22-23, 27, 86, 98,

145, 148-152, 155, 169, 181

New Testament

assumption is, strive for peace, 30

polemical book, 28

“Nonsense” really does happen, 79

Omniscience of the Judge, 73-79

Paul’s pre-Christian faith, 152-161

Penal substitution, 46-53

Pharisees, 136, 140, 148, 152-160

Pierced for Our Transgressions, 48-53

Place of our works in justification, 103-

116

Polemical but not evangelistic?, 98-99

Polemics serve pastoral ministry, 27

Positive reckoning of righteousness, 168-

169

Preaching, where it will go in Wrightís

wake, 165-167

Propitiation, 20, 46-47, 52, 67, 217

Qumran see 4QMMT

Reformation theologians, 21

Reformed exegesis v. Wright, 125

Reformed tradition, 21, 114, 119-131

Remarkable claims of Wright, 60, 175-

176

Re-thinking Paul, 16

Righteousness,

allegiance to his glory, 64-71, 78

becoming in Christ, 163-180

covenant faithfulness, 23, 45, 59, 64-

70, 78, 164, 175-179

imputed see Imputation

necessity of real moral, 73-80

of God, 23-24, 57-71, 78, 163-180

positive reckoning, 168-169

righteousness of the Judge, 59-60

what we need, 164-165

Wright’s definition not deep enough,

62-63

Salvation, not by believing in justification,

20, 85

Scholars who gave feedback, 10

Scoring points in debate, 13

Self-help moralism, 119, 127, 142, 145-

161

Self-righteousness, 23, 149-161

Root of legalism and ethnocentrism,

157-161

Standing with God determined by justification,

93-101

Status, 73-80, 122-131, 151, 159, 170-

175

“Staying in” see “Getting in”

Structural Continuity with Second-temple

Judaism?, 133-143

Swiss Confession, 112-113

Thirty-Nine Articles of Church of England,

113-114

Theology, systematic, historical, and biblical,

33-34

Tyndale House, Cambridge, England, 10

Unity

flows from truth, 31

in the truth, 29-30

Westminster Confession of Faith, 114-115

What’s at stake, 14-15

What the church needs at this moment, 37

Where saying no to imputed obedience

leads, 128-130

238 Subject Index

Why this book, 16-24, 27, 32, 187-188

Works,

and justification, 110-116, 103- 116,

142

by N. T. Wright cited, 227-228

in future judgment, 183-184

Wrath of God, escape from not subplot of

the gospel, 87-88

Wright, N. T.,

ambiguous, 24, 85, 117, 129-130

bio, 15-16

concept of covenant, 39-44

confusing, 24, 38, 46, 54, 163

energized by what is new, 37-38

misleading, 20, 38

modern-day Luther?, 61-63

“putting the world to rights,” 45

regrettable endorsement, 47-53

sweeping statements, 36

unfair critics, 44-46

why not respond to others, 27

Subject Index 239