How is Christ our righteousness?
Dr. S.M. Baugh:
Christ, by being "born under the law" (Gal. 4:4), personally fulfilled all of the law's demands as our convenant Mediator or Surety. This is how Christ is "our righteousness": his righteous, perfect keeping of the law in every particular is imputed to me as a fee gift (Rom. 5:17). Paul does not develop this point in our Galatians 5:1-6 passage, but he does express it when he says: "For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness" (Gal. 5:5). I believe this principle of substitutionary mediation is expressed even more strongly--if succinctly--when Paul shows our complete identity with Christ in his death and in his life earlier in Galatians:
- For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. (Gal. 2:19-21)
Paul makes absolutely clear in the Galatians 5 passage that the two ways of righteousness are mutually exclusive: one either appropriates the gift of our Mediator's righteousness for which we hope and eagerly await through the Holy Spirit by faith (v.5; cf. Rom. 5:17; 2 Cor. 5:21) or one attempts to acquire that standing derived from the "works done by us in righteousness" (Titus 3:5). The latter is what the law of Moses commands: perfect performance by the individual, and there can be no admixture of circumcision and Christ (Gal. 3:3). Ironically, Paul says in Romans 7:6 that we in Christ have been severed from the law, but he says in Galatians 5:4 that those who come under the law have been "severed from Christ".
Furthermore, verse 4 unequivocally shows that there is no "gracious" fulfillment of the law which God accepts as a substitute for perfect and entire performance of its commands by the obligated person (v. 3). Paul says that all who would attempt to be justified by law have necessarily fallen from grace, since "grace" in this use is tied to the appropriation of the benefits of Christ's substitutionary mediation through faith and received as a gift (e.g., Eph. 2:8). The law here is tied to personal obligation without mediation; hence it is not "gracious" in this sense. This is what Paul had already communicated in brief in Galatians 2:21 where he links divine grace only to Christ's substitutionary death whereas justification through personal law-keeping is antithetical to and a vitiation of grace. [The Law Is Not Of Faith: Galatians 5:1-6 and Personal Obligation, pp. 276-277]
Since you reject propositional truth, all you have said nothing more than an analogy and not the truth itself. How is your opinion true if it is not grounded in the univocal revelation of God in Scripture?
ReplyDeleteCharlie,
ReplyDeleteYou insist on being confrontational and imputing positions to me I don't hold... I don't reject propositional truth. Scripture is indeed the revealed Word of God. And all truth (which is presented in words that are propositional) that we need to know for pertaining to God's redemption of sinful man (faith and life) is perpiscuously revealed therein. Your claim shows that you either intentionally or unintentionally misunderstand my positions.
Questions: if God is said to “repent” of having made man (Genesis 6:6), then He must have really changed His mind about His decision to create the world? Or if the Bible says that God “remembered” Noah and His family (Genesis 8:1), this must mean that He literally had forgotten about them?
Of course you "claim" to believe in propositional truth. But if the Bible is merely analogical then there is no such thing as "propositional" revelation. When the text is obviously using an anthropopathism or an anthropomorphic expression such as God "relented" or "remembered" you rejoice in the "analogy". But you and the Van Tilians also claim that God literally has emotions and feelings toward men, which is not true according to Article 1 of the 39 Articles and according to Ch. 2 of the Westminster Confession. So which is it, Jack? Are all anthropopathisms just that or do you confuse the "creature" with the "Creator" on the point of "love"?
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, please explain to me how the proposition that "David was the king of Israel" is an analogy? Maybe you agree with the typological theory of the dispensationalists? Or maybe the statement that "He is risen" is just an analogy and not the literal and factual truth expressed in a logical proposition? (Cf. Matthew 14:2).
Van Til's position, for all practical purposes, is nothing more than an equivocating position between classical Calvinism and the neo-orthodox view.
Irrationalists always try to have it both ways. It's typical of Barthian theology.
Quote: Those who advocate inerrancy take the Bible in its plain and obvious sense. The charge that they are 'wooden-headed literalists' shows the bias of those who make the charge. All that is meant by saying one takes the Bible literally is that one believes what it purports to say. This means that figures of speech are regarded as figures of speech. No evangelical takes figures of speech literally. Nor does any evangelical suppose that when Jesus said, "I am the door," He meant He was literally a door. The Scriptures use phenomenological language, as we all do." Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), pp.37-38.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the so-called "Calvinists" of Westminster CA and PA are continually attacking classical Calvinism and those who reject common grace and God's unrequited desire to save the reprobate (which is a direct contradiction of God's decrees) is proof enough that the majority view has gone over to liberalism. The latest fiasco in the PCA and their approval of the Federal Vision error is just more evidence of where the theology of paradox and irrationalism leads.
Take a hard look at Fuller Seminary or Calvin College and Calvin seminary. The three points of common grace were put forward by the modernists in the CRC, not the conservatives.
And before that the same thing happened at old Princeton. Common grace is the reason the oldline PCUS went liberal and it's being repeated now in the broad evangelical Presbyterian denominations.
Where have I claimed, "that God literally has emotions and feelings toward men, which is not true according to Article 1 of the 39 Articles and according to Ch. 2 of the Westminster Confession." Never have, never will..
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to get in a debate with you as that is like wrestling with a tar baby. Others, with whom I agree and the vast majority of Reformed throughout the centuries agree, have a better grip on this stuff than I do (as Here). You disagree. Fine. But your hyper-literalist reasoning leads you to false conclusions regarding the implications and positions of those with whom you disagree. In a word, you might take a pause and lighten up a bit.
So, no more comments on your Clarkian quest. That is not the topic of this post. If you have comments regarding the veracity of Dr. Baugh's quote and if you can be civil in expressing them, then please do.
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ReplyDeleteCharlie, I warned you. Comments deleted.
ReplyDeleteJack, whatever. I do not consider you to be a Christian. You're a false teacher like the rest of them. I will delete your blog from my blog list.
ReplyDeleteCharlie, like I said to you one time a while back - at this rate you'll end up in a fellowship of one, i.e. just you and yourself, as you label everyone else a heretic. Just to let you know, I consider you to be a Christian, yet one who is tilting at windmills and, unfortunately, cutting off his nose to spite his face.
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