Without knowing it, I appear to have entered a short season of study of the doctrine of justification. Piper discusses it in both “The Future of Justification” as he engages with N.T. Wright about the New Perspective on Paul and “Counted Righteous in Christ” where he engages Robert Gundry about the necessity of the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness within the doctrine of justification.
I am not going to go too in-depth into the actual content of “Counted Righteous in Christ,” nor do I feel able to, since I am still trying to get my head around some of the arguments. But I will be posting a series of thoughts that came up while I read it (or tried to work through it rather) that I found compelling.
Piper opens the book by talking about the reasons why he is defending the doctrine of imputation, and the one that stuck out to me was in the section “For the Sake of My Family: Marriage” on pages 27-28. Piper is specifically speaking about the doctrine of imputation in the context of marriage, but I believe it can be applied in any relationship between Christians because we are all sinners who sin against one another.
We all have disagreements and arguments and fights with our friends, family and peers. Some of these are minor disputes, and others can erupt into full-blown enmity…
“But what if one or both of the partners [or parties] becomes overwhelmed with the truth of justification by faith alone, and with the particular truth that in Christ Jesus God credits me, for Christ’s sake, was fulfilling all his expectations? What would happen if this doctrine so mastered our souls that we began to bend it from the vertical to the horizontal? What if we applied it to our marriages?…I will no longer think merely in terms of whether my expectations are met in practice. I will, for Christ’s sake, regard my wife (or husband) [or any believer] the way God regards me-complete and accepted in Christ-and to be helped and blessed and nurtured and cherished, even if in practice there are shortcomings (p. 27-28).”
Paul most likely had this in mind in Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (ESV)”
February 10, 2009 at 8:19 pm |
Moses Stuart: says: “How can it be consistent now, that we should denounce others in severe terms, who, in order to make out their favourite tenets, do on any occasion superinduce a meaning upon the sacred text which will support their own peculiar views, and yet we ourselves, who thus readly denouce this practice in others, do the very same thing in respect to the passage before us where no declaration is at all made, that the evils resulting from Adam’s sin, or the benefits bestowed by Christ’s obedience, are by imputation?”
February 10, 2009 at 8:20 pm |
Caleb Burge, says: “If the sentiment be, that Christ’s righteousness is transferred to the believer so as to become his righteousness, it is believed to be utterly, without foundation, Righteousness, as well as sin, must be entirely a personal thing, in such a sense that it cannot be transferred… Essentially it consists in his love to God and other beings, and is as unalienably his, as is any attribute of his nature. Is it even possible that the actions which Christ performed while here on earth, in which his righteousness in part consists, should be so transferred from him to believers as to become actions which they have performed?”
February 10, 2009 at 8:23 pm |
Charles G. Finney, says: But if Christ owed personal obedience to the moral law, then his obedience could no more than justify himself. It can never be imputed to us. He was bound for himself to love God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, and his neighbor as himself. He did no more than this. He could do no more. It was naturally impossible, then, for him to obey in our behalf. This doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s obedience to the moral law to us, is based upon the absurd assumptions.