So You Want to Be a Calvinist? John Calvin on the Concept of Justification

Up to about the year 1500, the term “justification” was widely understood to mean “to be made righteous.” This interpretation, which had its origins in the writings of St. Augustine (or Aurelius Augustinus. I recommend reading his autobiography, The Confessions. Awesome!), saw justification as both an event and a process. The Reformation, however, saw justification defined exclusively in forensic terms – that is, as an event, in which sinners are declared to be righteous before God. Justification is then followed by sanctification, a process in which believers are made righteous. In this passage, John Calvin provides a classic articulation of this forensic notion of justification.

“To be justified in God’s sight is to be reckoned as righteous in God’s judgement, and to be accepted on account of that righteousness… The person who is justified by faith is someone who, apart from the righteousness of works, has taken hold of the righteousness of Christ through faith, and having been clothed with it, appears in the sight of God not as a sinner, but as a righteous person. Therefore justification is to be understood simply as the acceptance by which God receives us into his favour as righteous people. We say that it consists of the remission of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ…

There is no doubt that we obtain justification in the sight of God only by the intercession of the righteousness of Christ. This is equivalent to saying that believers are not righteous in themselves, but on account of the communication of the righteousness of Christ through imputation, something to be noted carefully… Our righteousness is not in us, but in Christ. We possess it only because we participate in Christ; in fact, with him, we possesses all his riches.”

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

References:

1) Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.xi.2, 23; in Johannis Calvini: Opera Selecta, ed. P. Barth and W. Niesel, vol. 4 (Munich: Kaiser, 1931), 182.25-183.10; 206.17-32.

2) The Christian Theology Reader, edited by Alister E. McGrath (Oxford: Blackwell), pg. 234-235

Martin Luther on Justifying Faith

In this passage from The Freedom of a Christian, originally published in German in 1520, Martin Luther develops the idea that faith unites the believer to Christ, in much the same way as marriage unites a bride and bridegroom. The soul is thus made “single and free” from its sin on account of being married to Christ; Luther’s language here suggests the image of being “divorced from sin” in order to be “united with Christ.” Through this union, the believer shares in all Christ’s riches, while Christ swallows up the believer’s sin. The passage serves to emphasize that Luther sees faith as far more than intellectual assent to propositions. Faith establishes a living personal relationship between Christ and the believer.

“[In the twelves place], faith does not merely mean that the soul realizes that the divine word is full of all grace, free and holy; it also unites the soul with Christ (voreynigt auch die seele mit Christo), as a bride is united with her bridegroom. From such a marriage, St. Paul says (Ephesians 5:31-32), it follows that Christ and the soul become one body, so that they hold all things in common, whether for better or worse. This means that what Christ possesses belongs to the believing soul; and what the soul possesses, belongs to Christ. Thus Christ possesses all good things and holiness; these now belong to the soul. The soul possesses lots of vices and sin; these now belong to Christ.

Here we have a happy exchange (froelich wechtzel) and struggle. Christ is God and a human being, who has never sinned and whose holiness is unconquerable, eternal and almighty. So he makes the sin of the believing soul his own through its wedding ring (braudtring), which is faith, and acts as if he had done it [i.e., sin] himself, so that sin could be swallowed up in him. For his unconquerable righteousness is too strong for all sin, so that it is made single and free (leding und frei) from all its sins on account of its pledge, that is its faith, and can turn to the eternal righteousness of its bridegroom, Christ. Now is not this is a happy business (ein froehliche wirtschafft)? Christ, the rich, noble, and holy bridegroom, takes in marriage this poor, contemptible and sinful little prostitute (das arm vorachte boetzes huerlein), takes away all her evil, and bestows all his goodness upon her! It is no longer possible for sin to overwhelm her, for she is now found in Christ and is swallowed up by him, so that she possesses a rich righteousness in her bridegroom.”

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

References:

1) The Freedom of a Christian; in D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol.7 (Weimar: Bohlaus, 1897), 25.26-26.9.

2) The Christian Theology Reader, edited by Alister E. McGrath (Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1995), pp. 229-230

Judas Was a Preacher

This quote is taken from Ray Comfort’s Spurgeon Gold (Bridge-Logos: Alachua, Florida, 2005. Page 10-11). Late Charles H. Spurgeon writes,

“Judas was preacher; nay, he was a foremost preacher. ‘He obtained part of this ministry,’ said the Apostle Peter. He was not simply one of the seventy; he had been selected by the Lord Himself as one of the twelve; and honourable member of the college of the apostles. Doubtless, he had preached the gospel so that many had been gladdened by his voice, and miraculous powers had been vouchsafed to him, so that at his word, the sick had been healed, deaf ears had been opened, and the blind had been made to see. Nay, there is no doubt that he, who could not keep the devil out of himself, had cast devils out of others. Yet how are you fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!

He that was as a prophet in the midst of the people, and speak with the tongue of the learned, whose word and wonders proved that he had been with Jesus and had learned from him – he betrays his Master. Understand, my brethren, that no gifts can ensure grace, and that no position of honour or usefulness in the Church will necessarily prove our being true to our Lord and Master. Doubtless, there are bishops in Hell, and crowds of those who once occupied the pulpits are now condemned forever to bewail their hypocrisy. You that are Church-officers do not conclude that because you enjoy the confidence of the Church, therefore there is an absolute certainty the grace of God in you.

Perhaps it is the most dangerous of all positions for a man to become well known and much respected by religious world, and yet to be rotten to the core. To be where others can observe our faults is a healthy thing, though painful; but to live with beloved friends who would not believe it possible for us to do wrong, and who, if they saw us err, would make excuses for us – this is to be where it is next to impossible for us ever to be aroused if our hearts be not right with God. To have a fair reputation and a false heart is to stand upon the brink of Hell.”

This is scary, yet it is the truth. Amen.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Martin Luther's Discovery of the "Righteousness of God"

My favourite speech (quote) from Martin Luther

In the passage below, originally written in 1545, the year before his death, Luther reflects on his early life, and particularly a major theological difficulty which he experienced as a young man. What was “Good News” about the proclamation of the righteousness of God? For Luther, this could only mean the condemnation of sinners, himself included. Luther here relates how, after wrestling with the meaning of Romans 1:17, he finally came to understand the “righteousness of God (iustitia Dei)” in a different way, thus opening the door of his theological reformation. He writes,

“Meanwhile in that year [1519], I had returned to interpreting the Psalter again, confident that I was better equipped after I had expounded in the schools the letters of St. Paul to the Romans and the Galatians, and the letter to the Hebrews. I had certainly been overcome with a great desire to understand St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, but what had hindered me thus far was not any ‘coldness of the blood’ so much as that on phrase in the first chapter: ‘The righteousness of God is revealed in it.’ For I had hated the phrase ‘the righteousness of God’ which, according to the use and custom of all the doctors (I think what he means are the theologians), I had been taught to understand philosophically, in the sense of the formal or active righteousness (as they termed it), by which God is righteous, and punishes unrighteous sinners.

Although I lived an irreproachable life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God; nor was I able to believe that I had pleased him with my satisfaction. I did not love (in fact, I hated) that righteous God who punished sinners, if not with silent blasphemy, then certainly with great murmuring. I was angry with God, saying ‘As if it were not enough that miserable sinners should be eternally damned through original sin, with all kinds of misfortunes laid upon them by the Old Testament law, and yet God adds sorrow upon sorrow through the gospel, and even brings wrath and righteousness to bear through it!’ Thus I drove myself mad, with a desperate disturbed conscience, persistently pounding upon Paul in this passage, thirsting most ardently to know what he meant.

At last, God being merciful, as I meditated day and night on he connection of the words ‘the righteousness of God is revealed in it, as it is written: the righteous shall live by faith,’ I began to understand that ‘righteousness of God’ as that by which the righteous lives by the gift of God, namely by faith, and this sentence, ‘the righteousness of God is revealed,’ to refer to a passive righteousness, by which the merciful God justified us by faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous lives by faith.’ This immediately made me feel as though I had been born again, and as though I had entered through open gates into paradise itself. From that moment, the whole face of Scripture appeared to me in a different light. Afterwards, I ran through the Scriptures, as from memory, and found the same analogy in other phrases such as the ‘work of God’ (that which God works with us), the ‘power of God’ (by which makes us strong), the ‘wisdom of God’ (by which he makes us wise), the ‘strength of God’, the ‘salvation of God’ and the ‘glory of God.’

And now, where I had once hated the phrase ‘the righteousness of God,’ so much I began to love and extol it as the sweetest of words, so that this passage in Paul became the very gate of paradise to me. Afterwards, I read Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter, where I found that he too, beyond my expectation, interpreted ‘the righteousness of God’ in the same way – as that which God bestows upon us, when he justifies us. And although this is expressed somewhat imperfectly, and he does not explain everything about imputation clearly, it was nevertheless pleasing to find that he taught that the ‘righteousness of God’ is that, by which we are justified.”

[Source: Preface to the Latin Works (1545); D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 54 (Weimar: Bohlau, 1938), 185.12-186.21]

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.