This episode discusses article three of the Formula of Concord on the nature of the righteousness of God and justifying faith.
Just and Sinner Podcast
The Righteousness of Faith (FC Article III)
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We have gone through the entirety of the Augsburg Confession, which you can find on the channel. There are playlists, by the way, for every single series that we do, that I do on the channel. So if you ever wondering how to find all the videos, there are playlists for everything. So, and there is an order to do these videos in series and things like that as well. So, we are now in article three of the formula of Concord. And today I'm gonna be using another edition of the Book of Concord. I bounce back and forth between different ones, but this is the Colb and the Wengert edition. Robert Colb, Timothy Wengert. These are, this is a newer edition of the Book of Concord. It's a newer translation and it is the one that I usually use when I am teaching classes on the Lutheran Confessions. So, we're gonna be looking at article three on concerning the righteousness of faith before God. So, let's start with some historical background. What exactly is going on here that is causing this controversy? As we've talked about with the formula of Concord, these are all basically controversies that have arisen since the death of Luther. And these controversies surround things that are taught within the Augsburg Confession, the small and large catechisms of Martin Luther. There are disagreements about interpretation of certain teachings of Luther or certain things that the church has affirmed. So, all of this is clarified within these documents. Now, the prior two articles have been dealing with a particular group of people. And those are those who are referred to as the Philippists. These are students of Melancton and these students of Melancton were more indebted to that kind of humanistic, not in the secular humanism sense, but Renaissance humanism, more humanistic in their approach to theology. So, they used different categories to describe certain things. And this led to this conversation about the will that we talked about last time as well as a substance accident's distinction in article one, dealing with human nature and the question of what is human nature and what is the fall? And how does the fall affect what human nature is? Is sin an accidental or a substantial thing? So, at the Philippists, and then we have the other group called the Ganesia Lutherans. And the Ganesia Lutherans are those who are very Luther-like in their mentality and in their doctrine, very firm in their doctrine. But those like Matthias Flakius could be a bit, well, abrasive and also lacking in a theological rigor and making certain distinctions. So, they end up saying things that are extremely un-careful. So, what, as we've looked at with the formula of concord, the formula of concord tries to kind of navigate these, on the one hand, that kind of humanistic tendency and on the other, this very bold attempt to just uphold pure doctrine sometimes at the expense of actually being careful on how you say things. So, the proper path really is in the middle of those things. And as I talk about often, this is kind of your Luther versus Melanchthon tension that you have within the Lutheran church. And the proper way to navigate things is really grabbing onto the best of both. Luther and Melanchthon were both great theologians and thinkers and church leaders because they had each other and helped balance each other out. But when you miss that balance, there are a number of problems that can arise. So, you have a different issue there that's going on here. You're not dealing here with the Philippists, you're not dealing with the Ganesia Lutherans. Article three is interacting with ideas from a particular theologian, student of Luther, who named Andreas Oceander. Now, Andreas Oceander spoke about righteousness or the righteousness that justifies in a way that the later Lutherans were quite uncomfortable with. So, this actually brings up some issues within Luther's own doctrine of justification. And Luther's doctrine of justification is not always a purely forensic justification. There are plenty of debates in Luther scholarship about this particular issue. And I'm not gonna solve all of those debates here. But when you go back to some of Luther's early writings on justification, when he starts to make these clear distinctions between the two kinds of righteousness, the passive righteousness of faith and the active righteousness of the Christian, go back to his 15, 18 sermon on the two kinds of righteousness. In that sermon, Luther speaks about alien righteousness as something that grows within the Christian. Very strange way of speaking, because generally when we think about this alien righteousness or passive righteousness, it is not something within the Christian, but it's Christ. And it's Christ's imputed righteousness. It is counted to us. That's what we usually speak about this. So the idea of an imputed righteousness growing, well, it's already perfect and it covers us. So how can it grow within us? Sounds really more Augustinian than what we think of traditionally as Lutheran. Now, Martin Luther does in his later writings and as things, his theology develops, you significantly more kind of legal language in the way that he describes justification, accounting of righteousness, reputing of righteousness. And that language is really clarified more by Melanchthon than it is by Luther, by the way, for everyone who has to criticize Melanchthon, we owe him quite a bit on this matter and a number of others. But there are times where Luther is not as precise in his exact definition of justification as we might want him to be. And this is something that is a little bit odd that for one who spoke so much about justification, for Luther's is so central, he never wrote a treatise that was, a treatise on justification. There actually was a planned treatise on justification that Luther just never wrote. So what we do have is like the Galatians commentary, which is a masterpiece of both theology and pastoral care. That is all about justification and that becomes a central place where people tend to go. This article is actually gonna point people toward that Galatians commentary to say, if you really want a full exposition of justification, here's where you go, and it's a wonderful text. That's one that's been highly influential on me more than any other text of Luther by far. I think it's the best thing that he wrote. Well, that in on Christian liberty, it's a toss up. So in the midst of this though, because there are statements of Luther that do not always define justification in the same way, and I think this is what the issue with Luther is, I think Luther actually uses the term justification to refer to multiple things. Because he doesn't have the precision that these later theologians are going to have in terminology. So I think at times, Luther uses justification to refer to something more like what we think of as regeneration, and at other times, he's clearly talking about something that is imputed. So there is a lack of clarity at times in the way Luther uses his language. Because of that, this then leads to disagreements about exactly what justification is. The majority of theologians of this time, pretty much everybody, I actually, both sides of the Ganesia, Lutherans, or the Philippists, they pretty much all agree on justification, which is that they are taking that more of a like-donian definition that justification is a forensic term. It is a declaration, it includes two elements that are the forgiveness of sins or the nonimputation of sins, and then the granting of Christ righteousness to the believer or the imputation, the counting of Christ righteousness to the one who has faith and one is justified for the sake of Christ. So those are the two elements of justification. Actually, when you read this article though, there is a third element that's included here that is adoption. What we think of as adoption of being adopted into the family of God is very clearly throughout Article III mentioned as another element of justification. So in a way, you've really actually got all three of those, which is interesting in that there's some divergence from this in some of the later Lutherans' scholastics. Some will speak about adoption under the topic of justification, as an element of justification, and others will treat it separately. I think that there is a pretty strong exegetical case to be made, especially in the book of Galatians that adoption is part of justification. Because Paul very clearly goes back and forth between justification and being part of the family of Abraham. So there is this familial element. What that does is it brings justification out of the only legal with no relational element and says that it is also a relational term. It's legal but also but not impersonally legal. So that's just noteworthy I think in this article. But Oceander essentially says that justification is a righteousness that we are given that is essentially the indwelling of the divine nature of Christ. So he's going to use language like the righteousness of Jesus as the divine son of the father. It is so great, it is so infinite that it essentially swallows up sin. It covers sin but it also just kind of swallows it up and absorbs sin. So that sin just kind of disappears in the great ocean of the divine righteousness of Jesus. And there are statements of Luther that say things like this, but they're not the only statements of Luther. So this is certainly not all that Luther is saying but he does grab onto some statements and some of those are in that Galatians commentary. And this then leads to a debate over Oceander's view because the argument is that is essentially not that different from the perspective that Rome has. And what you are doing is taking that righteousness that justifies away from that alien righteousness of Christ and now placing it in something that is within me. Though again, Luther does actually speak about an alien righteousness in us that grows. So he didn't have that strict if I dichotomy between alien versus internal, which is interesting. And I think Luther is getting some of that from his influence from Tauler, Yoan Tauler specifically. And Oceander is very much influenced by some of those same medieval mystical figures. And so Luther's influences theologically are numerous, but one of the primary influences is these German mystical theologians. And those German mystical thinkers are very Christologically focused. They speak a lot about the passivity of the Christian before God, they speak extensively of the work of Christ and his grace on the cross being that which is our righteousness, but they think of it more in that internal changing sense rather than this legal imputation. So that's part of the reason of the divergence in some statements of Luther or among Lutheran theologians. So you have a number of issues that are dealt with in this article. So one of those is the question of what is it that justifies us? Is it the divine nature of Christ or is it the person of Christ as a whole? Because this idea of the infinity of the divine nature swallowing up sins really takes justification out of the realm of the redemptive historical reality of Christ's life, death, and resurrection and places it just in this something ontological, the being of divinity as something that is infinite. And so I'm going to start reading in four here. Christ is our righteousness, not only according to his divine nature and also not only according to his human nature, but according to both natures. As God and as a human being, he has redeemed us from all sin, made us righteous and saved us through his perfect obedience. Therefore, they have taught that the righteousness of faith is the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, and that we are accepted as children of God for the sake of Christ's obedience alone, which is reckoned as righteousness through faith alone out of sheer grace to all who truly believe. Because of this, they are absolved from all of their unrighteousness. So here there is an affirmation that when we're speaking about the righteousness of Christ that saves us, it is the righteousness of the person of Christ according to both natures. So we can't simply say that it is the divine nature of Christ that justifies us and the human nature does not. On the other hand, we also don't want to say that it is only the human nature of Christ which justifies us. And this may seem weird like who would actually teach that, but I have heard presentations of the work of Christ, whether it's his act of obedience under the law or his suffering on the cross, and it will be called as passive obedience, that portray this as really just the humanity of Jesus. The humanity lives a perfect life under the law in our place and the humanity of Jesus dies. And so though it is only through the obligations of humanity that Jesus does this, becoming one who's born under the law, and God is certainly not under the law, God's moral nature is the law. So that wouldn't make sense. So it's only through the humanity of Jesus that there is this active and passive obedience, but he does not act as a singular nature. He acts as a person, which means that it is also his divine nature that is active in this obedience throughout his life. So we don't want to divide up the natures of Jesus in the acts of redemption. The New Testaments continually just bounces back and forth between describing him with divine names and human names in nearly everything that Jesus does. And if you want more detail on this, I have that lengthy series on Christology on the channel. If you want to find that playlist, and there's plenty of detail on these matters there. So here we have this definition of justification that, as I said, mentions, does mention that aspect of adoption as an essential element of justification. But here I'm gonna look at this statement just below that, that is, again, a precise definition of justification. This is in nine, poor, sinful people are justified before God, that is. Okay, so here is the definition. What does it mean to be justified before God? So one of the reasons why I think the formula of concord is necessary in our confessions. And I know that there are some Lutheran churches that don't adopt the formula of concord officially and only adopt the small catechism and Augsburg confession. But there's this kind of precision you get here that's so helpful in the formula of concord. Okay, so what exactly is justification? Obsolved, pronounced free of all sins and of the judgment of damnation that they deserve and accepted as children and heirs of eternal life, without the least bit of our own merit or worthiness apart from all proceeding, present, or subsequent quent works. We are justified on the basis of sheer grace because of the soul merit, the entire obedience and the bitter suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ alone, whose obedience is reckoned to us as righteousness. So there is a very concise summary of exactly what it is that we mean by the term justification. And notice that the first word here to describe justification is simply to be absolved. We are absolved. And that's places justification, just within what is standard Christian teaching in the medieval period as well, that of course we have an absolution that is given by the priest in the midst of private confession and absolution. This is a necessity for all medieval Christians so that when we're talking about justification, we are speaking simply about an absolution. If we're gonna define justification as simply and clearly as we can, it is absolution. How is it that you are absolved? What is the cause of your absolution? Is it the righteousness and merit of Christ alone and his work alone? Or is it that's plus something else? That's really what we're saying when we're talking about justification. So this is a pronouncement of being free from all sins, it says here. So it does not mean the actual freedom from sins inherently internally. Justification does not mean that you don't have any sins within your actual heart. That doesn't mean that you no longer have a sin nature. What it means is that you are pronounced free from sins. And particularly you are free from the judgment of damnation that they deserve. So you are free from the judgment over your sins, that your sins merit eternal damnation and judgment before God because you have offended an infinite and holy God and therefore you deserve an infinite and perfect punishment for the injustice that you have done because you have broken a law against a perfect infinite being. And so with that being the case, justification means that freedom from that guilt and eternal damnation. And it also is mentioned that this is becoming children of God. And so this helps to clarify, I think what is a very common misunderstanding of the doctrine of justification. Oftentimes you run into this critique that when Lutherans are talking about justification, they're just seeing salvation as this completely impersonal legal act. And you have maybe God over here as this judge and you're in a courtroom and the judge just kind of pronounces something to be true about you, but there's no relational element of what's going on here. You've impersonalized the gospel, you've impersonalized the benefits of salvation. And that's just never the way that we have spoken about the doctrine of justification. Now we do use that legal terminology because scripture uses it. And when you look at something like Romans 3 in that great crescendo in Romans 3.20, where St. Paul tells us that the whole world is guilty before God, every mouth is stopped. It's very clear that he is evoking this courtroom image of I have no defense before God who is my judge. I am on the stand and I am confronted with the facts I'm confronted with the guilt of my sin and I simply cannot say anything to defend myself. Now of course, a Jewish courtroom in the first century is not exactly the same as it is today, but many of the central elements are still there. So we have the courtroom imagery, but it's used in scripture. But remember that when we're talking about any kind of motif, soteriologically, whether it is adoption, whether it's the familial language or the language of redemption or the language of ransom or legal terminology, we are using these human concepts that God has used to relate the benefits of salvation to us. And we should not take those things too far. We should recognize them as they are. Not just say, oh well, if this is true in a human courtroom and there's this court language and in a human court, the judge doesn't have any relationship to the defendant, therefore God doesn't have any relationship to us. And it's the word separated from, these are metaphors or words, pictures, to describe something that is true about salvation as it is applied to us. We just gotta be careful with understanding that not taking things in weird directions. Use the metaphors as they are used in scripture and don't go farther than that. And the great example of this that is always talked about in this context is the idea of ransom. This notion that will scripture says there is a ransom. He's a ransom payment. And just like a ransom, you're taken captive, you're kidnapped and someone has to pay the ransom in order for you to be set free. And if you take that too far, you start saying, well, that means the devil owned us and he has some kind of real ownership of us and God literally has to pay something to the devil. Well, God doesn't owe the devil anything. He has no claim over us at all. Ransom is an image. And it's an image to say that as we are owned by the devil and Jesus gives himself for us, we are set free from the devil. We don't want to start going too far with that image or you end up in very odd places. So it's the same with these kind of metaphors as well. So this is to say then that this is also relational. When we are talking about justification, it is legal and it is relational. And so this being absolved has the benefit or ultimate goal of bringing us into the family of God. Why do I need to be absolved? Because it is the guilt of my sin that is separating me from fellowship with the Father. It is the guilt of the sin of Adam and Eve that made them leave the garden. They were kicked out of the garden because there is this barrier that is guilt that is visible in the garden. You have an angel with a flaming sword. So this visible image of you are cut off from the divine presence. What absolution does is it's like the animal skins that Adam and Eve are given to cover their shame. It is the letting down of the flaming sword so that you can enter into the promised land. And so it's not just legal in the abstract. It is legal in that it breaks down that legal barrier between us and the divine presence so that we enter into the presence of God. And that means that we are part of the family of Abraham that's we now are our temples of God ourselves where the Holy Spirit dwells within us. And so it is not barely legal as is often portrayed in a kind of a caricature, a bare legal declaration. It is a legal declaration, but that cannot be isolated from all of these other elements of justification that go along with it. Okay, within that definition, we also have the very clear explanation that it is the merit and entire obedience, suffering and death of Jesus that constitute our righteousness. There is a, not a significant debate, but there was something of a debate within the 16th century about the nature of the active obedience of Christ. So the, there are still debates about the active obedience of Christ. This is one of the major debates among Protestants. It tends to be a more kind of reformed debate. And there has been a lot written on it. There was a lot written on it when the federal vision issue was what everybody was talking about before everybody just started talking about politics and stopped talking about theology. But when I started studying theology, everybody was debating justification. It was the new perspective on Paul and the federal vision and there were distinctive nuances to justification that they were debating. Those are my favorite debates. Why? Because I think this is the stuff that actually matters more than other things. And I care about the cultural, political stuff too, but I would much rather us be arguing about justification because I think that's the really important stuff. So like, I kind of have a, I don't know, I'm a bit nostalgic for those days sometimes as heated as those debates got and how as uncharitable as those debates often got as well. It is nice when people are debating about the things that matter most. And it seems like people don't really even have an interest in the particulars of justification anymore as they used to, unfortunately. But there is a debate and has continually been a debate over what the act of obedience of Christ is or if it is an element of our justification. So quick overview of active passive obedience. So essentially the passive obedience of Christ is everything that Christ does to suffer for our sakes. And the height of this is the cross, but it's not exclusively his death, but we're talking about that which leads toward his death. So the passive obedience is the nature of Christ's obedience where he takes upon himself the punishment of human sin, the guilt of human sin. Going back to the garden, death is the result of sin. Everything that Jesus does vicariously in order to take that debt, that punishment of death on himself, all of that is passive obedience. And the passive obedience of Christ then is something that exists throughout his life because Jesus is continually living a life under the effects of sin. Any time he gets sick in a way, you could say that this, and we don't have like extensive explanations of times when Jesus got sick as a child, but the assumption is he probably did. But anytime Jesus would have gotten sick or suffered the effects of sin, when he and their biblical examples that are more explicit, the clearest one is the baptism of Jesus. Jesus gets baptized, this is a baptism of repentance. Jesus doesn't need to repent. Why the heck does Jesus need to get baptized? That's John the Baptist question. Like what, you don't need to get baptized, what are you doing? Why do you want me to baptize you? It doesn't make any sense 'cause this is a baptism for sinners. Well, in that baptism, Jesus is being baptized vicariously for us. He's putting himself in the position of a sinner. It's kind of a vicarious repentance, as some people have said. Anatolios, the Eastern Orthodox writer, has a book on these atonement motifs that's, I found pretty helpful. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but it was an interesting work. And he uses this language of this vicarious repentance. And I think there is that going on essentially in this instance of the baptism of Jesus. So all of these elements of the passive obedience of Christ is taking on the debts of sin. But then we have the active obedience of Christ. And the active obedience of Christ is Jesus' actual lived life in his positive fulfillment of the demands of God. So not only does Jesus suffer for us, but he also lives for us. The active obedience of Christ and its connection to justification has always been a bit unclear in some ways, both in church history as well as in scripture. Now, I will say you have very clearly in someone like Aronaeus with his notion of recapitulation. And a very clear affirmation that there is something saving not only about Jesus' death, but also about his positive life lived in that Jesus fulfills all of the elements of human life and stages of human life and therefore sanctifies them, makes them holy for us that we might be made holy in each of those stages of life. So there is this sanctifying, saving element of the actual obedience of Jesus' life. But scripture does not so clearly and fully lay this out. It's really clear that there are a number of texts that specifically identify the death of Jesus with our justification and the resurrection of Jesus with our justification, which I also think is missed sometimes and is very essential. But it's not quite as explicit that you can go to one particular text that says that Jesus lived for us and that constitutes our justification. The primary text that people are gonna go to to defend this is the obedience of Christ as mentioned in Romans 5, which is contrasted with Adam's disobedience. Just textually and exegetically, I am not compelled by that at all. I don't think that the obedience mentioned there is the entire obedience of Jesus' life. It's specified that this is one act of obedience. And there are plenty of arguments that are made that, well, one act technically could be multiple acts. And I just not compelled by it from the text itself. I have an essay on this if you want to read it. It's in our volume on justification, which is a series of essays we put out with the Widener Institute. I have an essay on this particular idea. And I defend the act of obedience of Christ. It may sound like I'm denying it, but I just don't think it is something that can be gained through one text. I think it's more of a biblical theological reality of kind of taking the broad themes of what's going on Old Testament, New Testament, the role of Jesus as fulfilling the calling of Israel in his obedience. And then you do have things like the temptation of Christ where he is fulfilling the role of Israel in being in the wilderness 40 days, but not listening to the temptations of the devil, instead refusing the temptations of the devil. I think that is vicarious. And there is a saving reality that is being brought about by the act of obedience of Jesus there. I just am not compelled by the Romans 5 text. I think there are other arguments that are more compelling than that. So this debate shows up within Lutherans in this, at this time. And nobody's saying, to be clear, today too, nobody's saying Jesus' obedience isn't important for our salvation, but they're, well, they're more than two, but two basic ways among Protestants, I guess, to describe how that happens. So on the one hand, you have a view that says, essentially that the saving work really happens through his death, the act of life of obedience is really just preparing Jesus to be a spotless lamb who gives himself for us. So there's no kind of separate, perfect obedience, act of obedience that's granted to us. It's really just preparation for the cross. Or the other says that this constitutes a positive righteousness that is imputed to us, that is related to, though distinct from, the suffering of Jesus on the cross. Certainly there's an element of that that is he has to be the spotless lamb, he has to be sinless in order to die, but there's more to it than just that. So this is a debate. This guy named George Karg takes basically the first view that says that his act of obedience is necessary, but it really is just preparation for him to die on the cross, which is really where salvation is centered only. And in response to that, this is stated in 15, his obedience consists not only in his suffering and death, but also in the fact that he freely put himself in our place under the law and fulfilled the law with his obedience and reckoned it to us as righteousness. As a result of his total obedience, which he performed on our behalf for God in his deeds and suffering in life and death, God forgives our sins, considers us upright and righteous and grants us eternal salvation. So there you go. There's the summary to say the act of obedience of Christ is also part of our justification. That's all that's said here. It's not a huge debate in the act of obedience of Christ is really not probably as central among Lutherans as it is among many of the Reformed. And I think that the reason for that is the centrality of theology and federal headship in the Adam Christ parallel and the idea of the covenant of works within Reformed thought. So this is the act of obedience is clearly affirmed here, but it doesn't become quite as central as it is in some other redemptive schemas. Clear, another clear distinction that I think is really important here is the question of, okay, why does faith make us righteous? Why is it that faith justifies? Very common question. You could say you believe in justification by faith, but also define faith as a good work and believe that faith justifies because faith is a good work. Okay, that would be one approach to justification by faith. So the question is, why is it that faith justifies? Thirteen faith does not make people righteous because it is such a good work or such a fine virtue. And so it is true that when we talk about theological virtues, faith, hope, and love, faith can be described as a virtue. Scripture speaks in that way of faith being compared to love and we have this idea of the degrees of faith or measure of faith, but this is not what we're talking about with justification. Why does faith justify? Not because it is a virtue or because faith, you have a certain strength of faith or value in your faith. Instead, because it lays hold of and accepts the merit of Christ in the promise of the Holy Gospel. So faith does not justify because it is a virtue. Faith justifies because it crasps Christ and looks to his promises. And what is the argument for this? Well, I think the very clear argument is Romans 4. There is a very clear contrast between faith and works such that faith is described in Romans 4 as not working. It is the opposite of doing a good work. And so if Paul opposes faith and works in that way, when talking justification, we have to echo him in doing the same. Okay, then we have another clarification that needs to be made here because this is true about Luther and Melanchthon as well, especially earlier Melanchthon. The concepts of justification and regeneration and other elements of what we generally call the ordo salutus, the order of salvation, are often conflated. They often are used interchangeably. One element of the ordo is used to refer to another element of the ordo. Sometimes these things are not clearly distinguished. So is there a difference between regeneration and justification? Well, 18 here solves that. Since the word regeneratio or rebirth is sometimes used for the word used of a cattio or justification, it is necessary to explain this term in its true sense so that renewal, which results from justification by faith, will not be confused with justification by faith, but that in their narrow sense, the two are distinguished from each other. So this is a very common theme within Lutheran thought is that we distinguish between a broad sense of a term and a narrow sense of a term. This can sound very confusing to people sometimes. People can say, why on earth do you use broad and narrow sense of every word? Because that seems very confusing. Well, the simple reason is scripture often is not that precise with its language. Scripture itself uses terms in a variety of ways. Because scripture, the authors of the New Testament did not have a theological dictionary before them. They didn't sit down and say, okay, what are our systematic theological categories that we are all going to be using? And let's, Paul doesn't say, hey, John, let's sit and figure this out. What term are we using to refer to this reality? What term are we using to refer to this reality? Let's make sure we don't confuse these things. That's not what's going on. So the authors of texts in the New Testament, while they are agreed in their theology, they are going to use different vocabulary sometimes, which is I think what resolves that entire James Paul conflict is just the term justification. When we think of it as being used in Paul, we assume that James has the same theological understanding of the term justification. I don't think that's what James is doing. And I think he's using the term justification in a different sense. So because of that, we have to do things like, say we're talking about sanctification. Scripture very clearly uses the term sanctification in a number of totally different ways. Sometimes sanctification is referring to a reality that is already completed in Christ. In other times, it's referring to some kind of process, which is generally how we refer to these things. So what we are left to do is say there's one sense of the word and another sense of the word, a broad sense and a narrow sense. We do this with law and gospel. So that in the broad sense, we can speak about the gospel as the life and teachings of Jesus as a whole. So we have the gospels. However, we also have this restricted sense that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15. What is the gospel? It is the good news. It is the good news of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. And that the gospel does not include all of the commandments and good works that we are to follow. We are to do those things and those are good, but those are the law. We also see the word law used as a reference to the Old Testament versus the commandments of God. Saint Paul uses the term namas in at least three different ways, term namas for law, in at least three different ways, just within the book of Romans. So we have to be biblical in how we're using terms. And if we are doing that, we're stuck with a broad and narrow sense of a lot of things. So maybe it's annoying, but it is the way that Scripture does things. And it's an attempt to recognize the fullness of what Scripture means by the terms that it uses. So regeneration, justification, we can use them maybe in broader senses. The term regeneration is used twice in the New Testament. It's used once in the book of Titus, the washing of regeneration, which in Titus 3, I think is very clearly just a reference to baptism. And then Jesus refers to the regeneration as the renewal of all things, two different senses of the word right there related because we're talking new creation. Baptism brings a new creation in me or me into the new creation. And then this is the final real consummation of the new creation at the return of Jesus, to the paracia. So we see these different senses of terms used here. Justification is really just talking about righteousness, language of righteousness is used in all sorts of ways in Scripture. So here we're saying that, yeah, sure, we can find places where theologians use one term to mean another thing. And it's not worth wrangling about how you're using your terms. What really matters is the essence of your doctrine. What is it that you are actually trying to get across? Regardless of whatever terms you're using for what. But when we're talking in the narrow, most particular sense of regeneration, it is distinct from justification. There is a new birth and internal change that occurs within the Christian that is distinct from the counting of righteousness to the Christian, the absolution of the Christian, the forgiveness of sins covering with the blood and righteousness of Jesus. Okay, let's look here at a statement about the relationship between justification and regeneration in 20. For when a human being is justified through faith, which the Holy Spirit alone bestows, faith is a gift of the spirit, which we looked at last time in article two. It is truly a rebirth because a child of wrath becomes a child of God and is therefore brought from death to life. So we see this connection with justification, rebirth, being brought from death to life. These are all interconnected realities that we really can't divorce and separate. I want to look at, let's see, a couple other things here. The first is, this isn't 22. Justification by faith does not mean that you have freedom to continue to sin. Okay, in 22. This does not mean, on the other hand, that we may or should pursue sinning or remain and continue in sin without repentance, conversion, or improvement. And so we're not saying that just because good works do not justify or that regeneration is not justification. You're not saying that you can just remain justified and sin as much as you want. That's clarified over and over again in this article. Okay, 23. The Holy Spirit is given to those who, as has been said, are righteous before God. That is, that is, have been received into grace, out of sheer grace because of the only mediator, Christ, through faith alone, apart from all works or merit. He renews them and sanctifies them. He creates in them love toward God and the neighbor. This is then referred to as the beginnings of renewal in this life, which are incomplete. So the major point here is that we all agree that there is this inner renewal, that there is no justification without a love for God and neighbor. The Holy Spirit is given to those who have faith. The Holy Spirit both creates the faith and indwells the one who is righteous. We become temples of God, places where God's presence dwells because we are absolved, because that barrier of sin has been broken down. And we become holy places for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And let's continue reading here. I'm gonna read this, I think this is important. Okay, because the beginnings of renewal in this life remain incomplete and sin continues to dwell on the flesh, even of the reborn, therefore the righteousness of faith before God consists of the gracious reckoning of Christ's righteousness, apart from any addition of our works. So this is the major point. So we all agree on those elements, but the problem is if you're saying your justification is in any way dependent on what is an incomplete righteousness, you cannot stand before God. You have to have an absolution that covers whatever remnants of sin exist within you because we are not going to be completely renewed in this life. And the judgment of God is perfect. It's a perfect judgment. The judgment of God does not simply take a 51% obedience and say, "Ah, good enough." What is required is perfection before God. And of course that's the case. He is a perfect judge. His law is perfect, which means any violation of the law is an infinite violation, which is deserving of infinite punishment. Therefore, all of that needs to be taken away. There is no sense in which my internal righteousness can ever stand before the throne of God. I need something perfect. And that's why I have justification. So none of this is in any way a denial of that inherent righteousness or the necessity of good works or the necessity of the fight against sin within the life of the Christian. But it is a recognition that whatever inherent internal righteousness I have, whatever growth there is spiritually, all of that is going to remain very much incomplete and therefore cannot pass judgment. It cannot stand in the face of final judgment. Okay. Now let's look at further distinction between justification and conversion. So in 25 here, here is a distinguishing between what is justification, what is conversion. The only essential and necessary elements of justification are the grace of God, the merit of Christ and the fate that receives this grace and merit in the gospel's promise through which Christ's righteousness is reckoned to us. Okay. That's all that's needed for justification. That is distinct from this conversion and regeneration and ongoing fight against sin which we often call sanctification. Okay. Then we see that 27 love is a fruit that certainly and necessarily results from a true faith. For all who do not love surely indicate that they are not justified, but rather are still in death and have or have lost the righteousness of faith. And so we acknowledge that one can lose a state of justification and can do so through on repentance, continual sin. So this is certainly not grounds for some kind of antinomian not caring about the way that your life is lived. Your good works can certainly never earn justification in any way. However, your continual sins can lead to a loss of faith and justification. I'm gonna read to this other section about the two kinds of righteousness. And the two kinds of righteousness being this, what we commonly call the distinction between justification and sanctification, though it's not exactly the same as the reforms used that distinction. But this is a recognition of when Oceander says that there is this inherent righteousness that is Christ himself that transforms us, he is 100% correct. But that is distinct from the righteousness that is counted to us that we refer to as justification. So this isn't 32. It is correct to say that in this life, believers who have become righteous through faith in Christ have first of all the righteousness of faith that is reckoned to them and then thereafter the righteousness of new obedience or good works that are begun in them. But these two kinds of righteousness dare not be mixed with each other or simultaneously introduced into the article on justification by faith before God. For because this righteousness that is begun in us, this renewal is imperfect and impure in this life because of our flesh, a person cannot use it in any way to stand before God's judgment thrown. Instead, only the righteousness of the obedience, suffering and death of Christ, which is reckoned to faith, can stand before God's tribunal. Even following their renewal, when they already are producing many good works and living the best kind of life, human beings, please God, are acceptable to him and receive adoption as children and heirs of eternal life only because of Christ's obedience. Gonna read just below 35, "Even if the converted and believers "have the beginnings of renewal, sanctification, "love, virtues and good works, "yet these cannot and should not "and must not be introduced or mixed "with the article of justification before God, "so that the proper honor may continue "to be accorded to our Redeemer Christ." So the necessity of distinguishing between these two kinds of righteousness, it is not an ignoring of one kind of righteousness for the sake of the other, but it is simply a proper distinction. We need to make the right distinctions between the righteousness that justifies and then the righteousness that is internal, intrinsic, inherent, whatever language you wanna use infused righteousness, which I know is the typical Rome in term of justification, but it is occasionally used by Lutherans to refer to this active righteousness as well. Okay, so once you have this justification, the passive righteousness, good works necessarily follow 41. Once people are justified, the Holy Spirit also renews and sanctifies them from this renewal and sanctification, the fruits of good works follow. So that there is a necessity in sanctification. There's no option to be sanctified or not to be sanctified. All right. Well, there is a distinction here. I'm trying to think of exactly each. Okay, okay. I think I can go through the rest of what I have here. There is a distinction here that is used between this dead and living faith, talking about the book of James, so in 42. When the question is asked, how and in what way a Christian may recognize a true living faith, go on, distinguish it from a feigned dead faith, the apology of answers, James calls us a dead faith, which is not resolved in all kinds of good works for the spirit. So there is a, there is a distinction between actual faith and then what you call dead faith. So James clearly is talking about something that does not actually save us. This is not genuine faith. You know, in the book of James, when he's talking about this faith without works, this faith that is dead, he is not using the term faith in the way that Paul does. Again, this is an issue of understanding that terms have different definitions depending on the person using them, because James and Paul didn't sit down together and say, what do we mean by faith exactly? Let's kind of write down our notes and make sure we're working with the same definition here. James is clearly talking about faith as really just an acceptance of truths in an intellectual sense. This tends to be the way that faith is used among many of the medieval scholastics when you're talking this discussion of what's the relationship between faith and reason. In general, you're thinking that an intellectual sense of faith, a ascent to what is true. So this is why James uses the language of demons. Even the demons believe and shudder. The demons know the truths about who Jesus is, but they're afraid of those things. They're not like trusting in that. They are simply acknowledging intellectually what's going on. So when we're talking that kind of faith, that is not a living faith. A living faith is not just an acceptance of propositional truths. Faith is not just, well, I acknowledge that Jesus lived and died. Faith in the way that Paul defines faith within this example of Abraham is trust. He believed against hope. He was promised that he was going to have a child and the promise didn't make sense in terms of just earthly realities. His wife is barren. They're both very old. Abraham cannot have a child. Yet he hopes and he trusts in God's word and his promises that God is going to do what he said for him. That kind of faith, what we're talking about it in the example of justifying faith, as Paul uses it, it's clearly not just intellectual assent. We're talking about something very different. So a living faith is an actual trust in Christ. It is not merely an intellectual apprehension of the facts. And so if we trust in Christ, that trust is going to result in the good works that James talks about. You don't want to go too far with this idea of a living versus a dead faith in the way that, say, the Puritans do. And there are many within the Reformed camp that constantly want to make people re-evaluate whether their faith is living or dead. This is not what the formula is doing. It's not trying to set up some kind of a test that you say, well, here are the 10 proofs that your faith is really living faith versus dead faith. Yeah, it's not what we're doing here. To be clear, 'cause, you know, you could hear this from that perspective and think of how someone like John MacArthur treats living versus dead faith. But this is clearly to make the distinction that somebody who simply intellectually apprehends, oh, the truths of Christianity, sure, sure, I believe that Jesus thing, and have no fruit of repentance in their lives. They're not looking at the nature of their sin. They don't really care about repentance at all in their daily life. That's not real faith, right? That's what we call dead faith. It's just an intellectual apprehension, which does not constitute actual faith. 54 here, there is an affirmation of what we refer to as the mystical union, the uniomistica. I've written two books on this. One is Christification, the other is my union with Christ book, which was more recent. And this is the reality that God does indwell us. And this is what Oceander was saying was justification. So they're going to say, no, that's not justification. That's distinct from justification, though it is a true reality. To be sure, God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who is the eternal and essential righteousness, dwells through faith in the elect, who have become righteous through Christ and are reconciled with God. So we really do have this divine indwell and God indwells us. He lives in me, I live in him. We have this, not in the sense that Christ does, as he describes, but there is this, there is this real intimacy of union that we have with God. Then it says, for all Christians are temples of God, the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, who moves them to act properly. However, this indwelling of God is not the righteousness of faith, which St. Paul treats. It calls the Eustitia dei, or the righteousness of God, for the sake of which we are pronounced righteous before God. Rather, this indwelling is a result of the righteousness of faith, which precedes it and this righteousness is nothing else than the forgiveness of sins and the acceptance of poor sinners by grace only because of Christ's obedience and merit. And this is, just as I was saying before, look at the Eden, it is that guilt of sin that is the barrier between the people of God and God's presence. And so the barrier of sin has to be broken down, and it's because that barrier has been broken down by the absolution that now you are a dwelling place of God. But you just have to have the proper ordering, correct. Now, ordering here, to be clear, does not always mean temporal. We're not saying that justification is a one-time thing that happens then, and then everything else after that is this inherent internal righteousness. We're really speaking more causally because Lutherans often do speak about justification as a continual reality. We are continually forgiven of our sins, but it is causative. It is logically what precedes what? Why is it that I have God's righteousness inherently in me? That is the case because I have the absolution. You don't wanna get too weird to instruct with this distinction, as people sometimes do. So faith brings me into the reality that is Christ, and through that reality that is Christ, I am absolved, I receive His justification, His righteousness, and because of that, I have Him in me. Christ lives in me. The Spirit lives in me. And note that there is a discussion here of the triune Godhead dwelling within me. This is not just the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is the one to whom the indwelling is most often attributed in the New Testament, but in the most proper sense, it's not like the Holy Spirit just lives apart from the Father and Son is in me and is in me. There is a mutual indwelling of the divine persons of the Trinity, what we call pericaresis, so that if I have the Spirit, I also have the Son and I also have the Father. And this is why Jesus continually, especially in John's gospel, speaks about knowledge of the Son, being knowledge of the Father, because they're where the Son is the Father is, where the Father is, the Son is, and the Spirit is the same way. So to know one is to know the three. So if I have the indwelling of the Spirit, I also have the indwelling of the Father and the Son. It is impossible to have one without the others. That's the unity of the trying Godhead. Now we're getting to the end of this article here. There are a number of condemnations at the very end. So here I'm just gonna read a few of these things that are condemned. It is condemned that, let's see, Christ is our righteousness only according to the human nature. Christ is our righteousness before God only according to his divine nature, okay? Let's see then that faith looks not to Christ's obedience alone, but to his divine nature as it dwells in us, works in us, in that through this indwelling our sins are covered in God's sight, that faith is the kind of trust in Christ's obedience that can be in a human being and remain there, even when this person has no true repentance, repentance when no love results from faith, but in fact persist and sin against conscience. And here, number six, that not God, but only the gifts of God dwell in believers. So this was actually a medieval view that God himself, there was no inherent indwelling of the divine nature within believers, but there were simply divine gifts given in believers, and that is that is adamantly rejected. This is God himself who dwells within believers in this intimate union. Finally, the very end of this points to the Galatians commentary of Martin Luther to say, if you want to read more about this, go read the Galatians commentary. So, and it's a wonderful, and as I said, it's my favorite text of Luther, along with on Christian liberty and the catechisms. I guess I should say that too, of course, but I guess I just think that's kind of a given. So, but this is the, this article on justification. There's a lot more that I didn't talk about here. It is a really wonderful treatment of the doctrine of justification, something that I always love talking about, I have to love talking about it, because I'm Lutheran, and this is kind of our thing. So, well, make sure you subscribe, if you have not yet, on YouTube and on your podcast app, if you want to listen to these while you're driving in your car, or doing something else, going for a run or whatever. So, all of the hour long videos are also audio podcasts. The short videos don't go on the podcast app though, 'cause I have to have something to entice people to subscribe who just listened to the audio podcast. So, thanks so much, and we'll see you in the next one. God bless. (gentle music) (upbeat music) [ Silence ]