One of the sideshows
from the recent Dave Armstrong threads involved a discussion of “the
righteousness of Christ imputed to believers”. One of the commenters there
said, “But you don't really care whether ‘the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness’ is in the Bible or not, do you, John? Not really.” He also
reiterated many times, “there just is no such thing as ‘the imputation of
Christ's righteousness’ in scripture and no amount of verbal acrobatics can
change that.”
Another commenter essentially quoted Roman Catholic
doctrine: “Imputed righteousness is something that is not taught in the Bible.
God's grace is infused and is able to actually clean and recreate a new heart
in us as opposed to forensic justification which is the notion that God merely
takes an eraser to our "account" and erases our sins.”
One of the better brief statements concerning the Reformed
doctrine of “the righteousness of Christ imputed to the believer” is in John
Murray’s Redemption
Accomplished and Applied. The link here is to his chapter on Justification,
but several of the specific pages which deal with that topic are missing. So I’d
like to provide here the entire sweep of Murray’s argument that not only is the
sinner’s sin forgiven in justification, but as well, the Righteousness of
Christ is imputed to the sinner as well.
Murray deals effectively with the notion of why “our own
righteousness”, even that given by God’s grace, is not sufficient for what God’s
holiness entails:
If we are to appreciate that which
is central in the gospel, … our thinking must be revolutionized by the realism
of the wrath of God, of the reality and gravity of our guilt, and the divine
condemnation. It is then and only then that our thinking and feeling will be
rehabilitated to an understanding of God’s grace in the justification of the
ungodly. The question is not really so
much: how can man be just with God; but how can sinful man become just with God? The question in this form points up the
necessity of a complete reversal in our relation to God. Justification is the
answer and justification is the act of God’s free grace. “It is God who
justifies; who is he that condemns?” (118)
The truth of justification has suffered
at the hands of human perversion as much as any doctrine of Scripture. One of
the ways in which it has been perverted is the failure to reckon with the meaning
of the term. Justification does not mean to make righteous, or good, or holy,
or upright. It is perfectly true that in the application of redemption God
makes people holy and upright. He renews them after his own image. He begins to
do this in regeneration, and he carries it on in the work of sanctification. He
will perfect it in glorification. But justification does not refer to this
renewing and sanctifying grace of God. It is one of the primary errors of the
Romish Church that it regards justification as the infusion of grace, and
renewal and sanctification whereby we are made holy. And the seriousness of the
Romish error is not so much that it has confused justification and renewal but
that it has confused these two distinct acts of God’s grace and eliminated from
the message of the gospel the great truth of free and full justification by
grace. (118-119)
[Justification] has to do with a
judgment given, declared, pronounced; it is judicial or juridical or forensic.
The main point of such terms is to distinguish between the kind of action which
justification involves and the kind of action involved in regeneration.
Regeneration is an act of God in us; justification is a judgment of God with
respect to us. The distinction is like that of the distinction between the act
of a surgeon and the act of a judge. The surgeon, when he removes an inward
cancer, does something in us. That is not what a judge does—he gives a verdict
regarding our judicial status. If we are innocent he declares accordingly. (121)
The purity of the gospel is bound
up with the recognition of this distinction. If justification is confused with
regeneration or sanctification, then the door is opened for the perversion of
the gospel at its centre. Justification is still the article of the standing or
falling Church. (121)
We are here faced with something
completely unique. It cannot be denied that God justifies the ungodly (Rom 4:5;
cf. Rom. 3:19-24). If man were to do this it would be an abomination in God’s
sight. Man must condemn the wicked,
and he may justify only the
righteous. God justifies the wicked and he does what no man may do. Yet God is
not unrighteous. He is just when he justifies the ungodly (Rom. 3:26). What is
it that enables him to be just when he justifies sinners?
It is here that the mere notion of
declaring to be righteous is seen to be inadequate of itself to express the fullness
of what is involved in God’s justification of the ungodly. Much more is
entailed than our English expression “declare to be righteous” denotes. In God’s
justification of sinners there is a totally new factor which does not hold in
any other case of justification. And this new factor arises from the totally
different situation which God’s justification of sinners contemplates and from
the marvelous provisions of God’s grace and justice to meet that situation. God
does what none other could do and he does here what he does nowhere else. What
is this unique and incomparable thing?
In God’s justification of sinners
there is no deviation from the rule that what is declared to be is presupposed
to be. God’s judgment is according to truth here as elsewhere. [For Roman Catholics
here, that means, this is not a legal fiction.] The peculiarity of God’s action
consists in this that he causes to be the righteous state or relation which is
declared to be. We must remember that justification is always forensic or
judicial. Therefore what God does in this case is that he constitutes the new
and righteous judicial relation as well as declares this new relation to be. He
constitutes the ungodly righteous, and consequently can declare them to be
righteous. In the justification of sinners there is a constitutive as well as a
declarative. Or, if we will, we may say that the declarative act of God in the
justification of the ungodly is constitutive. In this consists its incomparable
character.
This conclusion that justification
is constitutive is not only an inference drawn from the considerations of God’s
truth and equity; it is expressly stated in the Scripture itself. It is with
the subject of justification that Paul is dealing when he says, “for as through
the disobedience of the one man the many were constituted sinners, even so
through the obedience of the one the many will be constituted righteous (Rom.
5:19). The parallel expressions which Paul uses in this chapter are to the same
effect. In Romans 5:17 he speaks of those who receive “the free gift of
righteousness” and in verse 18 of the judgment which passes upon men unto
justification of life “through one righteousness.” It is clear that the justification which is unto eternal life
Paul regards as consisting in our being constituted righteous, in our receiving
righteousness as a free gift, and this righteousness is none other than the
righteousness of the one man Jesus Christ; it is the righteousness of his
obedience. (121-123).
Page 123 was not a part of the preview in Murray.
One of the very real differences between Protestants and Roman
Catholics is the very definition of what sin is. As Murray explained at the
beginning of this chapter, page 117, if we are to understand the “imputed
righteousness of Christ”, we must first understand the raw and absolute
Holiness of God, and the degree to which God hates sin.
Roman Catholicism seems to be among those these days for
whom sin is, in Murray’s words, “little more than a misfortune or maladjustment”.
See section 405 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church”:
405 Although it is proper to each individual,
original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's
descendants. It is a deprivation of
original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted:
it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance,
suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to
evil that is called "concupiscence".
On the contrary, the Reformers understood God as “is
infinite in being and perfection”, and sinful man as being “dead in sin, and
wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body”.
“A righteousness wrought in us, even though it were perfect
and eliminated all future sin, would not measure up to the requirements of the
full and irrevocable justification which the Scripture represents justification
to be. Such a righteousness would not obliterate the sin and unrighteousness of
the past and the condemnation resting upon us for our past sin. But justification
includes the remission of all sin and condemnation. Consequently the
righteousness which is the basis of such justification must be one that will
take care of past sin as well as provide for the future. Inwrought
righteousness does not measure up to this need…”(125-126)
At this point, the reader can follow Murray’s argument
through pages 124 and 126 in the book. Here I pick up at the bottom of page 126:
We thus see that if we are to find
the righteousness which supplies the basis of the full and perfect
justification which God bestows upon the ungodly we cannot find it in anything
that resides in us, nor in anything which God does in us, nor in anything which
we do. We must look away from ourselves to something which is of an entirely
different sort in an entirely different direction. What is the direction which
the Scripture indicates?
1. It is in Christ we are justified
(Acts 13:39; Rom. 8:1; 1 Cor. 6:11; Gal. 2:17). At the outset we are here
advised that it is by union with Christ and by some specific relation to him
involved in that union that we are justified.
2. It is through Christ’s
sacrificial and redemptive work (Rom. 3:24; 5:9; 8:33, 34). We are justified in
Jesus’ blood. The particular significance of this truth in this connection is
that it is the once-for-all redemptive accomplishment of Christ that is brought
into the centre of attention when we are thinking of justification. It is
therefore something objective to ourselves and not the work of God’s grace in
our hearts and minds and lives.
3. It is by the righteousness
of God that we are justified (Rom. 1:17; 3:21, 22; 10:3; Phil. 3:9). In
other words, the righteousness of our justification is God’s righteousness.
Nothing more conclusively demonstrates that it is not a righteousness which is
ours. Righteousness wrought in us or wrought by us, even though it be
altogether the grace of God and even though it be perfect in character [as the
Roman Catholics say], is not a God-righteousness. It is, after all, a human
righteousness. It the commanding insistence of the Scripture is that in
justification, it is the righteousness of God which is revealed from faith to
faith, and therefore a righteousness which is contrasted not only with human
unrighteousness but with human righteousness. It is righteousness which is divine in quality. It is not, of course,
the divine attribute of justice or righteousness, but, nevertheless, it is a
righteousness with divine attributes or qualities and therefore a righteousness
which is of divine property.
4. The righteousness of
justification is the righteousness and obedience of Christ (Rom. 5:17, 18, 19).
Here we have the final consideration which confirms all of the foregoing
considerations and sets them in clear focus. This is the final reason why we
are pointed away from ourselves to Christ and his accomplished work. And this
is the reason why the righteousness of justification is the righteousness of
God. It is the righteousness of Christ wrought by him in human nature, the
righteousness of his obedience unto death, even the death of the cross. But, as
such, it is the righteousness of the God-man, a righteousness which measures up
to the requirements of our sinful and sin-cursed situation, a righteousness
which meets all the demands of a complete and irrevocable justification, and a
righteousness fulfilling all these demands because it is a righteousness of
divine property and character, a righteousness undefiled and inviolable.
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteApparently the heat was too much in the kitchen for the Catholic boys so they closed off comments. And I was about to post something that I think our friends should know about their church and the misunderstanding Dave and his friends have of it. So with your permission, what follows is what I would have posted if the Catholics hadn't closed up shop:
=====================================
Adomnan:
Adomnan: False. Vatican I's decree is speaking of a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction belonging to the Petrine office. This is not at all comparable to local jurisdiction over a city or region by a monarchical bishop. If it were, then the Pope would be the monarchical bishop of every diocese, instead of the local bishop.
According to Canon Law, the pope IS the monarchical bishop of every diocese. To wit,
Can. 333 §1. By virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff not only possesses power offer the universal Church but also obtains the primacy of ordinary power offer all particular churches and groups of them.
The Bishop of Rome has primacy of “ordinary power over all particular churches”.
Canon 334 states it this way:
“Bishops assist the Roman Pontiff in exercising his office...In his name and by his authority, all these persons and institutes fulfill the function entrusted to them for the good of all the churches, according to the norms defined by law.”
You see the Roman Pontiff has the primacy of jurisdiction over EVERY Catholic parish. The bishops only derive their authority from the Pope– they do not act autonomously. They only act “in his name and by his authority.” Ergo, the papacy is by definition a monoepiscopacy.
Therefore, my point stands. The Petrine office is a mono-episcopacy according to Rome's very laws.
Adomnan: Watch your tone
You have no idea what my tone was. I'm sorry you are so sensitive.
Peace.