Justification Is Complete For The Believer

#Justification #SolaFide #Gospel #Presbyterian #Luther #Calvinism

At some point during the Middle Ages, the church began to conceive of justification for the believer as a process instead of as a once for all act, and to confound it with sanctification. As a result of this declension in understanding, justification was made dependent on good works and could never be fully settled in this life. In fact, according to the theological system of the church just prior to the Protestant Reformation, justification was not even fully settled for the believer at death, since the faithful were still required to suffer for a requisite period of time, which could to some degree be mitigated through various rites and offerings to the church by the deceased person's loved ones, in a (fictitious) place called purgatory. The Protestant reformers, through the lead of Martin Luther, recovered the Biblical truth that justification is the judicial declaration of God that the believer is not only "not guilty" but also "righteous", solely based on the vicarious atoning death and perfect life of obedience of another, Jesus Christ, by faith alone.

That is why the apostle Paul repeatedly refers to justification as a completed event for the believer, received solely through faith, apart from all works. For example, after expounding the doctrine of justification in chapters one through four of Romans, Paul says at the beginning of Romans chapter five, "Therefore, having been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand."

Perhaps no better or more concise definition of justification can be found than that provided by Question 33 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which reads, "Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us, and received by faith alone."

Today, regrettably, a number of the very men who purport to follow in the footsteps of the Protestant reformers, and especially in the footsteps of John Calvin, are either directly or indirectly undermining the biblical doctrine of justification, recovered during the Protestant Reformation, by calling into question its completeness for the believer.

To provide just one recent example, David Briones, professor of New Testament at Westminster Seminary California, in the abstract of a 2020 article entitled "Already, Not Yet," writes, "For now, Christians live in great theological tension: we already possess every spiritual blessing in Christ, but we do not experience the fullness of these blessings yet. In one sense, we are already adopted, redeemed, sanctified, and saved; in another, these experiences are not yet fully ours." Anyone who is aware of the source of Briones's statement, the theology of Dr. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., former professor of biblical and systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, will know that although Briones omits justification here, justification is certainly, in his view, one of the spiritual blessings that is not yet fully experienced by the believer. This is made explicit in the article itself. Briones, following Gaffin, teaches that justification, for the believer, is "already, not yet."

What is wrong with this?

To begin with, the whole notion of "already, not yet," as construed by today's reformed Presbyterian theologians, is a construct foreign to Scripture, that has been appropriated from 20th-century European neo-reformed theologians. If the meaning of "already, not yet" were merely that believers already experience God's blessings in this life, but will not experience the fullness of God's blessings, such as, for example, being completely freed from all inclination and even the ability to sin, or having resurrected, glorified bodies, until a future time, there would be nothing novel about it. Certainly, believers in every age of the world have understood the basic and obvious truth that there are blessings which await a future world. However, despite qualifications to the contrary, today's reformed Presbyterian theologians effectively take "already, not yet" as something that is true of the same thing, in the same sense, at the same time: a notion which even Aristotle, who unfortunately was not a believer, would call them out on. Such a construct seems to have more affinity with Hegel than Aristotle. It also leads Briones to mischaracterize the Christian life as one of "great theological tension" between the "already" and the "not yet."

Beyond the fact that "already, not yet" is a construct foreign to Scripture, affirming that a believer's justification is in the mode of the "already" and the "not yet" radically departs from the doctrine of justification revealed in Scripture, and recovered by the Protestant reformers, in which justification is, for the believer, exclusively (if we have to use the term) "already." If the believer's justification were a grammatical tense, it would be the perfect tense. Foisting the "already, not yet" construct on justification turns it back into a process. Though many spiritual benefits that flow from justification are either ongoing or to be enjoyed in the future, and though the open manifestation of the believer's justification to the eyes of the universe awaits the last day, justification itself is a completed past act for the believer. This is because the meritorious basis for the believer's justification is the perfect, all sufficient righteousness of Jesus Christ, comprising his sacrificial, atoning death on the cross, which completely washes away the guilt of all the believer's sins, past, present, and future, and his perfect life of obedience under the law, which secures for the believer a title to eternal life. That is the basis for the believer's right standing before God in this world, and that will remain the basis for the believer's right standing before God through all eternity. Applying the newfangled "already, not yet" construct to the believer's justification undermines this truth and is, therefore, dangerous.

Hand in hand with making justification a process that will not be completed until the final day of judgment, this neo-reformed teaching attributes to the believer's good works a non-meritorious causality in the believer's supposed final justification. It is easy to miss the legalism in this view, because adherents to this teaching always make the point that works are in no way the ground or basis of the believer's justification. That is, they say that works are not meritorious. However, making works in any way causal in justification, or, to put it another way, making justification in any way or sense causally dependent on the believer's good works, is essentially to make them meritorious.

The men who created the Westminster Standards were certainly aware of this principle, as they guarded against the notion that works could be construed to be in some way co-instrumental with faith for justification, by affirming that "faith is the alone instrument of justification." As has become customary for followers of the new teaching, Briones says, "we must remember that Christian judgment [meaning the time when the Christian stands before God on judgment day] is in accordance with our good works and never on the basis of our good works," but does not explain what is meant by "in accordance with." The reader is thrown off from suspecting any legalism in this statement because of the denial that good works could ever be the basis of justification. Briones does not tell his readers that in accordance with means something beyond the Biblical truth that good works are evidential of a believer's justification. That is, this neo-reformed teaching makes the believer's good works in some sense co-instrumental with faith in justification.

Since this new teaching is being inculcated in many presbyterian seminaries, it is rapidly becoming the predominant view in presbyterian and other reformed churches. As a practical recommendation, I would encourage believers to spend more time reading, with Bible in hand, the theological and expository works of Reformed teachers and preachers from past ages-----especially the Protestant reformers themselves, such as Luther, Heinrich Bullinger, and Calvin, and men like Charles Hodge, J.C. Ryle, Charles Spurgeon, and Louis Berkhof-----than reading contemporary authors. If you find a book with favorable references to the work of Herman Ridderbos or G.C. Berkouwer, or which touts "already, not yet" as a sort of central or foundational Christian doctrine to be reflected on with wonder, you are reading an author who has come under the influence of the neo-reformed teaching on justification.

Far better to reflect on the Biblical truth expressed in the following words by Bullinger:

Vitae enim & salutis nostrae firmamentum & basis stabilissima est iustificatio [For justification is the most stable ground and foundation of our life and salvation].

Beware, beloved.

The Dream That Enabled The Reformation

#ReformationDay #ProtestantReformation #MartinLuther #Christianity #HolySpirit #JesusChrist

The night before Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses against the doctrine of indulgences on the door of All Saints' Church in Wittenberg, Germany, something very unusual happened. The Elector Frederick of Saxony had a dream that caught his attention in a way reminiscent of Pharoah or Nebuchadnezzar. The next morning, on October 31, 1517, at his palace in Schweinitz, he felt compelled to share the dream with his brother Duke John. "I must tell you of a dream, brother, which I had last night, and of which I should like to know the meaning. It is so firmly graven in my memory that I should never forget it, even were I to live a thousand years; for it came three times, and always with new circumstances."

When John asked to hear it, Frederick related the following:

"Having gone to bed last night, tired and dispirited, I soon fell asleep after saying my prayers, and slept calmly for about two and a half hours. I then awoke, and all kinds of thoughts occupied me until midnight. I reflected how I should keep the festival of All Saints [which was coming up on November 1st]; I prayed for the wretched souls in purgatory, and begged that God would direct me, my councils, and my people, according to the truth. I then fell asleep again, and dreamt that the Almighty sent me a monk, who was a true son of the apostle Paul. He was accompanied by all the saints, in obedience to God's command, to bear him testimony, and to assure me that he did not come with any fraudulent design, but that all he should do was conformable to the will of God. They asked my gracious permission to let him write something on the doors of the palace chapel at Wittenberg, which I conceded through my chancellor. Upon this, the monk repaired to that place and began to write; so large were the characters, that I could read from Schweinitz [located about 20 miles from Wittenberg] what he was writing. The pen he used was so long that its extremity reached as far as Rome, where it pierced the ears of a lion which lay there, and shook the triple crown on the pope's head. All the cardinals and princes ran up hastily and endeavored to support it. You and I both tendered our assistance: I stretched our my arm...that moment I awoke with my arm extended, in great alarm and very angry with this monk, who could not guide his pen better. I recovered myself a little...it was only a dream.

"I was still half asleep, and once more closed my eyes. The dream came again. The lion, still disturbed by the pen, began to roar with all his might, until the whole city of Rome, and all the states of the Holy Empire, ran up to know what was the matter. The pope called upon us to oppose this monk, and addressed himself particularly to me, because the friar was living in my dominions. I again awoke, repeated the Lord's prayer, entreated God to preserve his holiness, and fell asleep...

"I then dreamt that all the princes of the empire, and we along with them, hastened to Rome, and endeavored one after another to break this pen; but the greater our exertions, the stronger it became: it crackled as if it had been made of iron: we gave it up as hopeless. I then asked the monk (for I was now at Rome, now at Wittenberg) where he had gotten that pen, and how it came to be so strong. 'This pen,' he replied, 'belonged to a Bohemian goose a hundred years old. I had it from one of my old schoolmasters. It is so strong, because no one can take the pith out of it, and I am myself quite astonished at it.' All of a sudden I heard a loud cry: from the monk's long pen had issued a host of other pens...I awoke a third time: it was daylight."

Without the Elector Frederick of Saxony, there would have been no Protestant Reformation as we know it. That may be a bold statement but it's true. He did not, of course, preach to the masses or write theological works. It was not for him to recover and boldly proclaim the biblical teaching that justification is by faith alone. However, he was the one man who could protect Martin Luther's life and freedom to proclaim the truth. This he bravely did, in the face of enormous pressure, and even at risk to his own life and kingdom. The Roman Catholic church and the Holy Roman Empire together wanted to silence and then kill Martin Luther. Without the protection of the Elector Frederick of Saxony, Luther would undoubtedly have been shut down before he had the opportunity to proclaim the recovered Gospel to all the world.

Can we think for a moment that the dream Frederick had on the eve of the Reformation didn't factor into the persevering conviction and courage he showed in his protection of Luther? Without question, memory of this dream would have sustained him when doubts arose about the rightness of the Reformation cause and when he experienced direct threats from the pope and the emperor. Indeed, it was a vital part of God's preparation of the Elector Frederick for the important role he had for him in the effecting of the Protestant Reformation.

This short but highly impactful episode at the inception of the Protestant Reformation reminds us of two important things.

1) No matter what your profession or role in life is ---- excluding, of course, vocations that are inherently sinful ---- God can make use of you, in that profession or role, for his glory and the good of his kingdom. Office manager, CEO, homemaker, journalist, check-out clerk at Staples, pharmaceutical sales representative, high school teacher, social worker, baseball coach...you name it. Wherever you are planted, God can make use of you in an eternal way, if you are a Christian. You don't have to be in the ministry to be useful for the kingdom of God. Look at how God used the Elector Frederick of Saxony!

2) While we need to test everything in the light of Holy Scripture, God can still communicate to us personally and can still perform miracles today. There is nothing incompatible between the fact that God can communicate to us in a prophetic way personally today and the unique authority and sufficiency of Scripture. To be sure, the Elector Frederick's dream was not the only supernatural dream that occurred during the time of the Protestant Reformation. Beware of anyone who tells you that sound orthodoxy demands the renunciation of the possibility that God can communicate to us personally today. Scripture is our sole authority for faith and practice, but this in no way precludes God from acting as he did with the Elector Frederick. Indeed, without that dream, we would not have inherited the recovered truth of Sola Scriptura from the reformers.

What Solomon's Song Of Songs Is Not

#SongofSongs #TremperLongman #BiblicalInterpretation #IntroductionToTheOldTestament #Music

Music is one of the many wonderful gifts of God. It is able to move people, and even animals, in a way that nothing else can. Since the fall of our first parents, through which sin and death entered this world, the use of music has been corrupted by the heart of sinful man from its original purpose, which was to give glory to God. Further, a case could be made that Satan in some way orchestrates, or at least actively instigates, this perversion of music. Satan may have been God's most glorious angel, created with an incredible gift for music, and responsible for leading the worship of God, before his fall. In any case, what is most distinctive about secular music seems to be its focus on man and this world, rather than on the glorious Being who created all things.

Spend only a little time listening to the latest popular songs, more or less irrespective of genre (e.g., top-40, country, rap), and it will be observed that the particular focus is on romantic and erotic themes. Secular music is about romantic love, sexual desire and attraction, heartbreak due to the breaking apart of a romantic relationship, and so forth. The focus of secular music is upon the things of this world and especially upon sexual or romantic relationships. It is only in the church of the redeemed where music is used to extol, glorify, and pour out thanksgiving to God. When human hearts are renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit, on account of the sanctifying blood of Jesus Christ, worship is restored to its original purpose, and even exalted beyond its original purpose, because unlike among the company of unfallen angels, and unlike any singing that may have taken place in the Garden of Eden prior to Adam's fall, worship of God now includes thanksgiving and the giving of glory to him for his marvelous work of redemption.

Tremper Longman, an Old Testament scholar who has taught at multiple institutions including Westminster Theological Seminary and Westmont College, asserts that Solomon's Song of Songs, one of the sixty-six books of the Bible, "is a collection of poetry that extols the love that a man and a woman have for each other." He rejects the notion that this book, which is situated between Ecclesiastes and Isaiah in most contemporary Bibles, and which is almost never preached on in the church, should be interpreted allegorically or figuratively. Based largely on a comparison of the book with secular Near Eastern poetry and literature, Longman believes that the "primary aim" of Solomon's Song of Songs "is not to portray the relationship between God and his people, but rather to extol sexual love between a man and a woman." He detects multiple erotic references in the book, believes that the book serves as a reminder that the act of lovemaking, physical sex, is a gift of God, and that despite being (as he believes) a collection of human love poems with no reference to God or Jesus Christ, the book provides "divine insight and instruction about an important area of human experience: sexuality." Longman also concedes that there is no reference to marriage in the book. All of the quotations I am citing are drawn from An Introduction To the Old Testament, which Longman coauthored with Raymond Dillard.

What shall we say about all of this? First, if the book is a mere collection of poems about romantic love or sex, with no mention of marriage, it is difficult to understand how it provides "divine insight and instruction" about sexuality. Longman tells us that the book "reminds us that sex is good and pleasurable," but do we really need an entire book in Holy Scripture to remind us of that? With the important exception of those who have experienced some form of sexual abuse, it is not clear to me that men and women really need to be reminded that sex is pleasurable. Why would so many people engage in it, within and (especially nowadays) outside of marriage, if they didn't already know that it was pleasurable? Why would so many secular songs and poems make romance and sex their theme, if it were not pleasurable? Further, would a canonical book that is merely about the human experience of sex really leave out the institution of marriage? I agree with Longman that sex is a good gift of God. It was created by God for the exclusive context of marriage between a man and a woman. However, in addition to containing no reference to marriage, the book provides no guidance about the source or origin of sex itself. If Song of Songs is a mere collection of love poems, with no mention of the marriage covenant, or of the fact that God created sex, what "divine instruction" can it possibly give us? I think the question answers itself.

Second, in his attempt to understand Scripture, Longman seems to spend more of his energy comparing Scripture with extrabiblical Near Eastern literature than he does comparing Scripture with Scripture. In the chapter on Song of Songs in An Introduction To The Old Testament, there is not a single reference to or comparison with Psalm 45, which closely parallels and almost seems to be a compendium of Song of Songs. In the chapter on the Psalms in An Introduction To The Old Testament, Psalm 45 is said to be "a royal marriage psalm" and to bear "a number of similarities to the love poems of the Song of Songs," yet no mention of these similarities is mentioned in the genre analysis of the Song of Songs itself.

Third, for anyone who is somewhat familiar with Tremper Longman's overall body of work, it is noteworthy that he disparages a "literalistic" approach to understanding the early chapters of Genesis, even expressing a willingness to entertain the notion that Adam was not a historical figure, yet takes the "literalistic" approach to understanding Solomon's Song of Songs. In both cases, the driving force seems to be the weight Longman gives to extrabiblical literature, which he seems to consider a crucial tool for a proper understanding Scripture.

Fourth, and finally, can we for a moment think that a book in the Bible entitled "Song of Songs", which means "the most superlative or preeminent of all songs," is devoted to no higher end than to exalt physical lovemaking between a man and a woman? Think about it. There are songs throughout the Old and New Testaments that extol the glory of God, including his various attributes and extraordinary works. Look at the songs found in the Book of Revelation. They all have their focus on God and his Son Jesus Christ. To cite just one example, in Revelation chapter five, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fall down before the Lamb and sing, "You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for you were slain, and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth" (Revelation 5:9–10). The words of the song in chapter fifteen of the same book go like this, "Great and marvelous are your works; Lord God Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O king of the saints! Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. For all nations shall come and worship before you, for your judgments have been manifested" (Revelation 15:3–4).

Does Longman believe that a mere collection of poems about human sexuality is greater and more exalted in theme than the songs just cited from the Book of Revelation? Are we to believe that a collection of erotic poems is more superlative than any of the 150 songs found in the Book of Psalms? Surely, the very title "Song of Songs" is determinative of the fact that whatever may be its genre, this book of the Bible is certainly not a collection of poems put together "to extol the love that a man and a woman have for each other." That would be akin to dubbing the head of China or the head of any other country the "King of kings," which would be blasphemy in light of our knowledge of Jesus Christ.

The great 19th-century German Old Testament scholar Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenburg (1802–1869), someone contemporary Old Testament scholars would do well to become acquainted with, says the following in a monograph on the Song of Songs:

Even [Albertus] Magnus cannot avoid finding in the name given in the superscription to the work—"The Song of Songs"—a proof that the writer of the superscription, who, as we have shown previously, can be no other than the author of the poem itself, intended the whole to be interpreted allegorically. "For," he says, "had he really regarded his book in the light of an ordinary love-song, the title given to it would have been a thorough lampoon of all the other writings of the Old Testament. What Israelite could dare to consider a worldly song as more excellent than the many divine compositions of a Moses, a Miriam, a Deborah, a Hannah, and a David—or even than the God-inspired discourses of the prophets, which may, after all, be styled שירים ?" A correspondence may be traced between the superscription—"The Song of Songs"—here, and the expression, "thou art the fairest amongst the children of men," in Psalm 45:3;—and with the greater right, as the reason assigned in the superscription for the exaltedness of the poem is, that it relates to the most glorious of all subjects, namely, the heavenly Solomon, (chap. 1:1).

A detailed interpretation of Solomon's Song of Songs is for another study. However, we can be sure of one thing as we enter such a study. This book of the Bible is certainly not a mere collection of poems about human sexuality.