Chaplain (Maj.) Paul Lynn delivers a wonderful sermon on the Word at Fort Huachua. I’m honored he found my work on Holy Scripture useful in his ministry.
Thank you for your service, Chaplain Lynn.
New Book Release
Great news! My contribution on Holy Scripture to the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics series has finally been released! I pray this work will help readers understand the absolute truthfulness of Scripture, the unity of Scripture in Christ, and how to confess these truths in our postmodern environment.
The Imputation of Righteousness and our Future-Present Justification
Although justification is pronounced objectively in the resurrection (Rom. 4:25), it is received subjectively through faith that hears the promise: “For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved . . . [And] faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:10, v. 17). No one can have faith apart from the electing and regenerative work of the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14, 12:3, Gal. 3:2). Christ makes intercession on behalf of believers in heaven, on the basis of his sacrifice on the cross (Rom. 8:34). The Holy Spirit, the who is the spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6), makes the fruits of Christ’s intercession – justification – present in the heart of the believer (Rom. 10:6-13) through the hearing of the Word (Rom. 10:7, Gal. 3:2). Much as the elect representational persons stood in the place of Israel in the Old Testament as mediators, so too Christ and his righteousness stand in for the unrighteousness of the unbeliever through an act of imputation (Rom. 3:25, 4:9, v. 22, 8:10, 1 Cor. 1:30, 2 Cor. 5:21, Gal. 3:6, Phil. 3:9). The concept of representation that we see in the Old Testament therefore makes sense of Paul’s language of imputation in atonement and justification. In atonement, Christ is imputed with human sin, and in justification humans are imputed with Christ’s righteousness (2 Cor. 5:21).
It is important to notice that Paul uses the term eschatological term “justification” for what happens proleptically (in the future) to believers in the present. As we observed earlier, for Second Temple Jews, at the end of time God would “justify” (judge righteous and vindicate) those who had adhered to the covenant and usher them into the kingdom. For Paul, Christ is the object of election and justification. He is one the one who has adhered to the covenant and be vindicated on the eschatological day of his resurrection. Therefore, in the present believers can proleptically receive through Christ what they will receive at the end of time through faith in the promise (i.e., election and justification). This is because the eschaton has already happened for Christ, and therefore when believers enter into him the eschaton happens to them as well. Outwardly, believers remain in the current age weighed down by sin and death, but in the inner being they already have been ushered into the kingdom of the resurrected: “But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10).
Lexham Survey of Theology
Check out a new theological resource, the Lexham Survey of Theology. I recently contributed 15 articles to this collection, which brings together orthodox Christian summaries of various theological topics. It also uses Logos Bible Software to provide direct links to other systematic theological works on various doctrines.
New Perspective on Paul and Works of the Law
Part of the issue with the New Perspective on Paul (NNP) is that this group of scholar reads Paul’s “works of the law” as being equivalent to “Judaism.” As Stephen Westerholm points out, the NNP scholars project their scholarly interpretation of what they think first century Judaism was like onto Paul’s statements about the “works of the law.” Of course, if one takes this line what Paul says about the law makes no sense, since it posits that first century Judaism was a “religion of grace” or, really, a religion that mixed grace with law. As a result, NNP scholars think that Paul must “really mean” to criticize first century Judaism for not knowing that the covenant signs of the old dispensation don’t really apply anymore. But Paul doesn’t make his point mysterious at all. In Galatians 3, he explains what he means by the “works of the law.” Namely, he refers to the Sinaitic covenant. Hence, all his statements about the law have nothing to do with Judaism or the empirical religion of Israel in the OT period. They have to do with the logic of reward and punishment that Sinaitic covenant establishes.