Resurrection and Justification
Written by R.C. Sproul |
Saturday, April 8, 2023
His resurrection is seen not only as a vindication of or surety of Himself, but as a surety of our justification. Here justification does not refer to our vindication, but to the evidence that the atonement He made was accepted by the Father. By vindicating Christ in His resurrection, the Father declared His acceptance of Jesus’ work on our behalf. Our justification in this theological sense rests on the imputed righteousness of Christ, so the reality of that transaction is linked to Christ’s resurrection.
How is the resurrection of Christ linked to the idea of justification in the New Testament? To answer this question, we must first explore the use and meaning of the term justification in the New Testament. Confusion about this has provoked some of the fiercest controversies in the history of the church. The Protestant Reformation itself was fought over the issue of justification. In all its complications, the unreconciled and unreconcilable difference in the debate came down to the question of whether our justification before God is grounded in the infusion of Christ’s righteousness into us, by which we become inherently righteous, or in the imputation, or reckoning, of Christ’s righteousness to us while we are still sinners. The difference between these views makes all the difference in our understanding of the Gospel and of how we are saved.
One of the problems that led to confusion was the meaning of the word justification. Our English word justification is derived from the Latin justificare. The literal meaning of the Latin is “to make righteous.” The Latin fathers of church history worked with the Latin text instead of the Greek text and were clearly influenced by it. By contrast, the Greek word for justification, dikaiosune, carries the meaning of “to count, reckon, or declare righteous.”
But this variance between the Latin and the Greek is not enough to explain the debates over justification. Within the Greek text itself, there seem to be some problems. For example, Paul declares in Romans 3:28, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Then James, in his epistle, writes, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar” (James 2:21) and “You see then that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24).
On the surface, it appears that we have a clear contradiction between Paul and James. The problem is exacerbated when we realize that both use the same Greek word for justification and both use Abraham to prove their arguments.
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Washington State Attorney General Investigating Christian University for its Marriage Beliefs
If SPU were to change its employment policies with regard to sexual orientation, the consequences would be immediate. “If the University changed its employment policies to permit employment of Christians in same-sex marriages, the University would be automatically disaffiliated from the Free Methodist Church,” the lawsuit states. “The University would no longer be a denominational institution. Disaffiliation would occur whether the University made this change voluntarily or under compulsion of law. This would result in the loss of a religious affiliation that has existed for over 130 years.”
Washington state Attorney General (AG) Bob Ferguson, who became well known for hounding Christian florist Barronelle Stutzman into retirement for her biblical beliefs about marriage, has now set his sights on Seattle Pacific University (SPU), a Christian educational institution affiliated with the Free Methodist Church.
In June, Ferguson’s office sent a letter to SPU saying, “I am writing to inform you that the [Attorney General’s Office] is opening an inquiry to determine whether the University is meeting its obligations under state law.
“Specifically, we have learned of information that suggests that the University may utilize employment policies and practices that permit or require discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, including by prohibiting same-sex marriage and activity.”
Wait. That’s not controversial at all. And it shouldn’t be.
A Christian university that requires its faculty to abide by principles of the Christian faith is exactly what you should expect from such an institution. There are plenty of secular colleges and universities to work at or attend if you’re not particularly fond of the Bible.
SPU has a statement of faith that includes human sexuality and the school requires its faculty and staff to both affirm it and abide by it.
The school’s right to do so is protected by the religion clauses of the First Amendment, according to Lori Windham, an attorney with the Becket Fund, which represents the school in a federal lawsuit seeking to put an end to the attorney general’s investigation.
“At the heart of the lawsuit is religious autonomy, Windham, told World. “The Supreme Court has guaranteed that right several times. It has said the First Amendment protects churches and religious groups’ right to decide what they believe and who should lead them.”
The lawsuit explains the expectations that SPU has for its employees.
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Salvation
Written by R. Scott Clark |
Saturday, February 18, 2023
The social gospellers taught that we may and must “save” ourselves “through love.” For Machen, however, such a doctrine was just “semi-Pelagianism.” For the social gospellers, the hope of the world is to “apply the principles of Jesus” to it, as though He were a mere teacher or prophet. For Machen, however, the “redeeming work of Christ which is at the center of the Bible is applied to the individual soul . . . by the Holy Spirit.” Therefore, we “find no permanent hope for society in the mere ‘principles of Jesus’ or the like, but we find it in the new birth of individual souls.”World War I turned Europe on its head, brought crashing down the optimism of the Enlightenment, and ushered in post-Enlightenment Europe. In America, however, young people undeterred by the war set about attempting to bring to earth the kingdom of God through social action. They called their message “the social gospel,” and its principal preacher was Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918), who endeavored to address the poverty he found in Hell’s Kitchen (in New York) by preaching a “gospel” of social improvement and working toward bringing about the kingdom of God on the earth through social action. This was their definition of salvation.
J. Gresham Machen (1881–1936), however, also survived World War I and defended a different doctrine, which held that the visible church represents Christ’s spiritual kingdom on the earth and that Christians exist in what John Calvin had called a “twofold kingdom” (Institutes 3.19.15). For Machen, salvation was too grand an idea to be brought utterly to earth. He recognized that Christianity was “certainly a life,” but how was it produced? The social gospellers thought that they could bring about that life “by exhortation,” Machen wrote, but such an approach always proves “powerless.” “The strange thing about Christianity was,” he explained, “that it adopted an entirely different method. It transformed the lives of men not by appealing to the human will, but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the narration of an event.” He recognized that such an approach seems “impractical.” It is what Paul called “ ‘the foolishness of the message.’ . . . It seemed foolish to the ancient world, and it seems foolish to liberal teachers today.” Nevertheless, the “effects of it appear even in this world. Where the most eloquent exhortation fails, the simple story of an event succeeds; the lives of men are transformed by a piece of news.”
The social gospel reduced the human problem to material poverty. For Machen, a student of Paul and an Augustinian, our problem is much more profound. In his 1935 radio addresses, he explained that sin is much more than “antisocial conduct,” as the progressives and the social gospellers had it. The true definition of sin is “disobedience to a command of God.” It is, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism so wonderfully says, “any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God” (Q&A 14).
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The Last Hour
The “last hour” to which John refers has to do with the period of time between our Lord’s ascension and return, in which the spirit of the antichrist is at work. In that time frame the Lord Jesus is building His church. But that building faces opposition from a world that does not know Jesus.
Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming (1 John 2:18, NKJV).
It is in vogue in our day to desert the Christian faith in the name of freedom. There is even a name for it: “deconversion.” Deconversion testimonies follow a distinct pattern. A person steeped in the Christian faith and an outspoken adherent of it, perhaps even seen as an influencer for the faith, will declare their emancipation from its bondage. By their testimony they now become evangelists for whatever religious, spiritual, or philosophical construct that suits them at the moment.
Little do they realize, however, that they have exchanged the truth for a lie and given themselves over to the bondage of sin and Satan.
John describes these sorts of people who once were part of the community of faith but have departed from it for one reason or another. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us” (1 John 2:19).
John is not speaking of a wandering but of a definitive break with Christ. The apostle has his own term for such deserters, “antichrist.” “Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18). Antichrists are those in league with the devil, who oppose Christ and His church.
The “last hour” to which John refers has to do with the period of time between our Lord’s ascension and return, in which the spirit of the antichrist is at work. In that time frame the Lord Jesus is building His church. But that building faces opposition from a world that does not know Jesus. Jude put it “that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit” (Jude 18–19).
John, however, is confident of the faith of those he addresses as “little children.” Because he is convinced of the workmanship of God in their lives, he is confident that they are secure in Christ against the lures and molestations of the devil. “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things” (1 John 2:20). His point is that they remain in the truth and have not bought into the devil’s lies, and therefore are safe and secure in the arms of their Lord.
While all not of the Kingdom of God are in bondage to sin and can be called “children of the devil” (John 8:44), those who are antichrists make it their business to lead people astray.
What are the telling signs of an antichrist that you can look out for?
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