UNION WITH CHRIST | Justification.

[This series of posts titled "UNION WITH CHRIST" comprise sections of a whole paper written on the relationship between the doctrines of union with Christ and justification. Because it is written for a class, its content reflects academic an tone, style, and structure. And although theologically heavy, my hope is that it would be both challenging and beneficial to understanding atonement, salvation, and the gospel more clearly. Feel free to give feedback and ask questions.]

JUSTIFICATION

First, it is important to understand that justification cannot be rightly understood whatsoever independent of union with Christ. Indeed, this is the only context within which it makes any sense at all without subjecting itself to the accusation of legal fiction. Speaking of justification, McKnight writes:

God’s making people right is itself part of a larger network of God’s redemptive work and it is reductionistic not to connect justification to union with Christ. The ground for justification, as Reformed scholar D. A. Carson argues, is being “in Christ.” Thus, incorporation is the foundation for justification… it all comes down to one thing—being incorporated into Christ, which showers the one so incorporated with all the blessings expected in God’s covenant.[1]

There is no understanding justification as separate from our union with the justified one, Jesus Christ, who is more than a merely legal “fix-it” for a merely legal problem. Indeed, because the problem is more than legal,[2] our solution, who is Jesus himself, is of course therefore more than legal. So what is justification? McKnight succinctly summarizes: “In particular, justification…is both corporate and individual; it is relational as well as judicial; it flows from the ‘in Christ’ theme, giving a less-than-totally-legal context; and therefore, finally, it is not just a declaration but also an actual ‘right-making’ in the here and now.”[3]

What we must restate and affirm is that the term justification is an aspect of law-court metaphor employed for the purpose of understanding what God has done in the person and work of Christ for us through union by grace, and any singular metaphor expected to encompass the whole of the saving, atoning person and work of Christ will fall miserably short of doing so.[4] However, justification is not merely law-court metaphor. In reducing justification to believers’ courtroom declaration of righteousness by God, we isolate a concept from its context. This context extends the meaning of justification beyond the courtroom of God. McKnight references Michael Bird to clarify:

Justification is forensic (it refers to status not moral state), eschatological (the verdict of judgment day is declared in the present), covenantal (Jews and Gentiles belong in one fellowship table), and is effective (sanctification cannot be subsumed under justification but neither can they be completely separated).[5]

This means that while there is a forensic, judicial aspect to justification, it is not limited to this setting. Justification, in light of its ancient Near-Eastern Jewish context, also refers to covenant, community, and our responsive participation.

Covenant | Jesus fulfills the Abrahamic Covenant in himself, who is the “blessing to all nations” and “seed” made known in Genesis 12 and fulfilled in his Great Commission: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28:19).[6] He embodies both the promises and their fulfillment. Christ remains faithful to his covenant, offering himself as the one true blessing of Israel to all nations as her Messiah, as established by his death, resurrection, and presence in and through us by the Spirit. His righteousness is, at least in part, his faithfulness to his own covenant with Abraham. This is why we who are in union with him may be called “the righteousness of God” as those who make Christ available through us (jars of clay)[7] to all nations by the indwelling Spirit.

Community | The covenant Christ fulfills in himself is not to the benefit of isolated individuals, but to a community in covenant: the people of God. This people of God is “comprised of both Jews and Gentiles who believe in the God who raised Jesus from the dead. God originally promised a universal family (Gen. 12; cf. Gal. 1-14, 28), and the ‘justified’ family ‘in Christ’ is the fulfillment of that promise and the anticipation of its future perfection.”[8] This redemptive, justified community lives what it looks like to be in right relationship with God as those who bear the imago Dei, the image of God. They image together as missional community.[9]

Responsive Participation | We, as this redeemed community justified in Christ, participate in God’s present, active “right-making” of the world. Justification is not merely something past (our union with Jesus and his resurrection) or something future (the final, climactic “right-making” of all things). We participate in the redemption and restoration of relationship with God, with self, with others, with world to presently mirror that reality which is yet to come (future) and has happened (past) in Jesus Christ. Paul expresses exactly this in Romans 6:5-14:

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him…Now if we died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him…In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body…but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life…For sin shall not be your master…

The past and future bear upon our responsibility in the present. McKnight says it well: “Our premise is simple: if eternity is like x, then life on earth ought to be lived in tune with x.”[10] The covenant people of God—those justified in Christ Jesus’ resurrection and who are therefore promised justification at the future eschaton—have a responsibility to live redeemed, justified lives as redeemed, justified people.

When we seize the person of Jesus, we seize the justified one, whether we realize it or not. N. T. Wright says it well: “one is not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith, but by believing in Jesus.”[11] Our present justification, according to Wright, “is based on God’s past accomplishment in the Messiah, and anticipates the future verdict.”[12] There is a present-tense aspect of justification, and its force is in the past justification (evidenced by the resurrection)[13] of Jesus and its momentum propels us toward the hope of our future justification.[14] So our present justification is the past justification of Jesus and future justification of the full people of God made manifest in us, who are united to him.[15]

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[1] McKnight, Atonement, 97.

[2] Ibid., 23: “Sin is the hyperrelational distortion and corruption of the Eikon’s relationship with God and therefore with the self, with others, and with the world… If sin is defined as guilt against law, then judicial remission becomes the focus of atonement. But judicial remission, or the wiping of guilt by a declaration of justification, does not resolve the fullness of the hyperrelational problem, for it only restores only one element of the God-relation.”

[3] Ibid., 94.

[4] Ibid., 95: “To affirm a juridical element in the atonement does not mean, however, that we should reduce the atonement to juridical elements, to law court scenes, or to notions of personal forgiveness of sins. When I speak about the juridicizing of the atonement, I have in mind a form of reductionism that limits the divine-human relationship to judicial categories, and that views the cross solely in terms of laws, infractions, judicial pronouncements, forgiveness, and punishments.”

[5] Ibid., 94.

[6] Gal. 3:16-20; cf. Gen. 12:7; 13:15

[7] 2 Cor. 4:7-11

[8] McKnight, Atonement, 92.

[9] Ibid., 23: “That is, sin in the Bible is the choice to ‘go it alone,’ to be ‘free’ in the sense of independence, to achieve (like God) absolute freedom…Eikons are made for union with God, communion with others, love of self, and care for the world…To pursue absolute freedom in all directions severs the Eikon from God, from others, from the world, and therefore from the self. Severed Eikons diminish themselves.”

[10] Ibid., 25.

[11] N. T. Wright, “The Shape of Justification,” (accessed 09 May 2011): http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_BR_ Shape_Justification.htm. Bible Review (April 2001); Internet.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Rom. 4:25; 1 Cor. 15:17

[14] Rom. 2:13; 4:21-24; 5:18-19; 6:5-14

[15] Rom. 6:2-11

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