Justification Part One

Today, we continue looking at Justification from Michael Gorman’s book Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology. Picking up on the last post, Gorman notes, “justification is not merely or even primarily juridical or judicial – the image of a divine judge announcing pardon or acquittal. That is part but only part, of the significance of justification. The judicial image must be understood within a wider covenantal, relational, participatory, and transformative framework.” (55)

That a wider covenantal and relational framework is necessary is demonstrated by Romans 5:1-11. In this passage, Paul situates justification and reconciliation in a parallel structure. This happens first in vs. 9-10:

9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (NASB)

In this text, justification means reconciliation to God. This is a divine act, as the three occurrences of the passive voice demonstrate, not a human act. In addition, it is not a “private act of reconciliation but one both intended by God and experienced by people in community, as a people; the subject of the verbs in Romans 5 is ‘we,’ not ‘I.’” (55)

This is also evident in the next verse (Rom 5:11). It uses an active verb with passive semantic weight (”we have now been received”) to indicate the gift of reconciliation. The verse forms an inclusio with the first verse in the passage, which has already used the passive voice in speaking of justification and already indicates its relational character as “peace with God”.

Similarly, 2 Cor 5:14-21 give further evidence of this reconciliation/justification connection. Justification as reconciliation “includes both the forgiveness of sins (plural; ie transgressions: Rom 3:25; 2 Cor 5:19) and liberation from Sin (singular) as a power (Rom 3:24; 5:15-21). Since both sins and Sin affect human relationships with God and with others, forgiveness and liberation are inherently realities that can only be experienced in connection with others, that is in community and in relation to a wider world.” (56)

Furthermore, 2 Cor 5:14-21 indicates that native within the idea of reconciliation/justification are both participation and transformation. Participation is found in phrases such as “in Christ” and “in him”. “These references to participation…should be be understood both individually and corporately. Each believer is in Christ, but Christ himself constitutes a body, a covenant community of Jews and Gentiles. To be in Christ is a corporate reality, but it is experienced by individuals.” (56)

Transformation is inherent to the reconciliation/justification equivalency in 2 Cor 5:14-21 through the references of “new creation,” “become the righteousness of God,” and in the image of death and resurrection resulting in living for Christ rather than self. Therefore, “Paul’s understanding of justification is inseparable from the experience of death and resurrection, which is grounded in Christ’s own death and resurrection (Rom 4:25).”

For Paul, then, in light of Romans 5 and 2 Corinthians 4, justification has:

1. an objective basis, or means, which is Christ’s death as a gift of God’s gracious initiative (Rom 5:1, 6-8, 9-11; 2 Cor 5:18, 21), together (implicitly) with Christ’s resurrection as God’s life-giving power;
2. a required subjective response, or mode, that effects justification/reconciliation, which is usually (though not always) explicitly labeled pistis, normally translated “faith” or (in its verbal form) “believe” (Rom 5:1; 2 Cor 5:20)
3. substantive content, which includes reconciliation, participation, and transformation (Rom 5:1-2, 9-11; 2 Cor 5:14-15, 17, 21)

The essential content of this transformation is fidelity to God and love for neighbor, the very heart of the covenant.

To demonstrate this, Gorman sets out to address three questions arising from these conclusions:

• What is the distinctive meaning of Christ’s death for Paul?
• What is his distinctive understanding of pistis? and
• What is the connection between the meaning of Christ’s death and the meaning of pistis, on the one hand, and the significance and character of the transformation inherent in justification, on the other?

We will address these questions next Thursday.

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through me.”

This is a beautiful verse. I have used it more times than I can count in the past two years to talk about truth. Jesus is The Truth. There is none greater. To think of truth in any other way is to think of a lesser truth. The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus was the highest revelation of God. Truth is found in Christ and through Christ. And it is only found through relationship. Truth is not a proposition, but a relationship. How else do you get to know Truth, Christ, except to be in relationship with Him?

While I enjoy the Truth, I had not spend time on the Way until I read Eugene Peterson’s book,The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way, in 2007. The book is a conversation on how people go about following the way of Jesus (1) It peaked my thoughts and pricked my heart. I found myself falling in love with the Way in a new way.

The way Jesus loves and interacts with the world is personal. It is the incarnation. Flesh and blood. Relational. Particular. Local.

The ways of our Western culture are quite the opposite. It focuses on programs, organizations, and detachment. It honors numbers over names, ideologies over ideas, and abstraction over interaction. (2)

Unfortunately, so many who have embraced the Way and wish to follow the Way have given themselves over to the culture’s way of doing things. The way of Jesus is not a supplement; it is the highest expression of life. To live any other way is to live a lesser life. Just as Jesus is the highest expression of the Truth, He is also the highest expression of the Way. Again, the interaction with the way requires relationship. To fill it with anything else is to at best weaken the Way and at worst abandon the Way.

Culturally, we have moved into the realm of consumeristic capitalism where life is about transactions of devoid of personal interaction. According to Benjamin Barber, there was a time when “a productivistict capitalism prospered by meeting the real needs of real people…Today, however, consumerist capitalism profits only when it can address those whose essential needs have already been satisfied but who have the means to assuage ‘new’ and invented needs…” (3) America has become the most consumer-oriented society in the world according to Juliet B. Schor. (4) Is it any wonder, then, that when 9/11 happened, and President Bush was looking for a metaphor to help us gain a sense of normalcy, he focused on shopping? (5)

This move towards consumerism is a move that results from the loss of our identity and the filling of our felt needs with transactions. Even our most intimate moments relationally, have culturally moved from intimate times of oneness to sexual transactions. We are filling our lives with transactions while our real needs, our deepest needs of emotional health and wholeness are hidden behind a credit card payment.

The transition from the Jesus way to the culture’s way has become the “get me stuff to bring me short-term comfort and keep me from addressing the real needs” way. That is the Western way.

Now the great American invention now has turned the church into a similar consumer enterprise. We have embraced culture’s way, not the Jesus Way.

We Americans have developed a culture of acquisition, an economy that is dependent on wanting more and requiring more. It is about getting our needs met. As a result, we have a huge advertising industry designed to stir up appetites and needs we didn’t even know we had. We are insatiable.

It didn’t take long for some of Christian to develop a way to meet those needs. In doing so, they created consumer-oriented congregations. If we have a nation of consumers, obviously the quickest and more effective way to get them into our congregations is to identify what they want and offer it to them, satisfy their felt needs and recast the gospel in consumer terms: entertainment, satisfaction, excitement, adventure, problem-solving are some examples. This is the language we Americans grew up on. It is the language we understand. We are the world’s champion consumers so why shouldn’t we have state-of-the-art consumer churches? (6) Church now is about getting my needs met and having a non-boring experience.

Alan Hirsch, in Forgotten Ways, The: Reactivating the Missional Church, argues a similar point. He states,

In the modern and postmodern situation, the church is forced into the role of being little more than a vendor of religious goods and services. And the end-users of the church’s services (namely, us) easily slip into the role of discerning individualistic consumers, devouring the religious goods and services offered by the latest and best vendor. Worship, rather than being entertaining through creatively engaging the hearts and minds of the hearers, now becomes mere entertainment that aims at giving the participants transcendent emotional highs, much like the role of the “feelies” in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where people to the movies merely to get a buzz.

Church growth exponents have explicitly taught us how to market and tailor the product to suit target audiences. They told us to mimic the shopping mall, apply it to church, and create a one-stop shopping experience catering to our every need. In this they were sincere and well intentioned, but they must have been also totally ignorant of the ramifications of their counsel – because in the end the medium has so easily overwhelmed the message. (7)

He goes on to say:

Speaking to the insecurity of the human situation, it was Jesus who said “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But first seek his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things well be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:31-33, emphasis mine). Consumerism is thoroughly pagan. Pagans run after these things. (8)

The way of church is as important as who is behind the church.

In the wilderness setting of Matthew 4, we find the enemy trying to divert Jesus not from the end (or goal) but the way. Satan is not concerned with the end, because the end is not important if the way isn’t followed. In fact, the end is different if the way is not followed. Therefore, he attempts to keep Jesus from following God’s way.

His first temptation is to turn stones into bread. Jesus is hungry and Satan attempts to get Jesus to feed his own need. He urges Jesus to turn the creation into a commodity (stones to bread) and do something productive with it. The idea was that once he meet his own needs, he could then meet the needs of others in the same manner.

The temptation he uses for us it to do the same. We can follow Jesus but use Jesus to meet needs; our own first and then the needs of others. The temptation is “to deal with myself and others first and foremost as consumers. It is the temptation to define life in consumer terms and then devise plans and programs to accomplish them ‘in Jesus’ name.”. (9) We think people need to be entertained so they won’t be in a bored worship gathering so we meet that need by creating a production that rivals many rock concerts. We hope that the show will meet their need for entertainment and when that need is met they can hear Gospel. Or there is a program and organization for every member of the family so they get entertaining environments with good productions so that their needs are met and they can then hear the Gospel. Which leads us into the second temptation.

The second temptation was to jump off the roof of the temple. “The devil wants to use Jesus to dazzle the crowds of people on the street below with a miracle, to put a little excitement into their dull lives. ‘Jump, Jesus – these people will never forget it; it will change their lives…The temptation is to embark on a circus career in miracles. And what could be better than a career in God-miracles, religious miracles, entertaining crowds, supplying ecstasy on demand.” (10) Our temptation is to use Jesus as a commodity for weekend diversions. It is not a relational experience. It is a religious diversion that, for most, is in effect a transaction.

The third temptation was ruling the world. “The devil wants to use Jesus to run the world, take charge of the world…But of course it would have to be in the devil’s terms, a rule conditioned by the unholy if – ‘if you fall down and worship me.’ The devil’s way would necessarily be an imposed, impersonal way. The devil’s way would be absolutely perfect in its functions, but with no personal relations.” (11) The devil, according to Peterson, wants us to use Jesus to run our families, our neighborhoods, our schools and governments efficiently. But there is no love or forgiveness. It is the only way to have a just, peaceful, and prosperous government. Letting people have a voice will just cause problems. (12) So we use the words of Jesus to develop a smooth running organization devoid of the personal touch and spiritual investment. It is a way to achieve our goals of a growing (numerically) organization thinking we are doing great things for God.

What does this consumerism do to the church in America? Large churches are growing, medium-size churches are declining, and smaller churches are struggling. The larger a church grows, the smaller the kingdom grows, because in America, those larger churches are pulling from the smaller churches who cannot offer the same goods and services as the larger churches. The religious consumer, wanting the needs of their family met heads off to the big church where they are busy with activity and have entertainment for all ages. The smaller church suffers, to the point of having to shut down because it cannot sustain itself.

The churches who are surviving are trying to put together the right programs and activities that will attract those religious consumers. They are spending time, money and other resources on buildings and productions so that people will enjoy (or be entertained) by the show that is put on in the church.

But is this real success? The Jesus goal cannot be achieved unless the Jesus way is followed. The end does not justify the means. God’s goal is that we become like Him, conformed to His image and the image of His Son Jesus. The goal is not heaven, the goal is Cruciformity, or conformity to the Cross of Jesus. It happens through Faith, which for Paul was a “total response to obedience to the gospel (Rom 1:5;16:26). It is also…a death experience in which one enters into the experience of Jesus’ crucifixion.” (13) The Jesus Way is a process where God seeks to re-shape and re-form that person into his or her original identity, and to re-fill that person with His original purpose of relationship with God. In embracing the gospel of Christ, a person embarks on a journey out of brokenness and into wholeness that will only be complete as God works to restore all of creation. (14) The Jesus Way does not have as its goal the creation of people looking to have their own needs met. Why then perpetuate the climate of the consumer church in an attempt to see people conformed into the image of God?

Success then is not following the consuming way, but the Jesus way. Maybe our measure of success should be an expression of people being conformed to the image of Christ, obeying the Gospel, and living the crucified life that is an expression of Faith.

Notes

1. The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way, 1

2. Ibid.

3. Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, 9

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid, 41.

6. The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way, 6.

7. Forgotten Ways, The: Reactivating the Missional Church, 110.

8. Ibid.

9. The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way, 30-31.

10. Ibid, 31.

11. Ibid, 33.

12. Ibid.

13. Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology, 80.

14. The Doctrine of Humanity (Contours of Christian Theology), 50.

A Spring Harrow

This is a highlight of a message I preached May 23, 2009 at Mission Fellowship Church in Middletown, DE.

Isaiah 41:8-16
Context: Is. 41:1-20

In this section of the chapter, Isaiah reminds Israel that Yahweh was the decisive actor in their life. At the begining and end of the chapter, Isaiah uses a speech of disputation, presenting the arguments of Yahweh over and against the ideological claims of Babylon. To do this, Isaiah invites the reader to imagine a courtroom scene, a law court, where different witnesses bring evidence about the identity of the one true God. Evidence is presented for Yahweh. There is no compelling evidence offered for the Babylonian gods leading to the verdict that Yahweh is the real God.

Between the two disputation speeches, Isaiah presents a series of salvation oracles that offer an assurance of Yahweh’s caring, attentive presence in the midst of Israel. The mode of speech completely focuses on on Israel’s needs.

While these two different type of speeches seem to move in opposite directions, together they all the community of God’s people to see and experience Yahweh as the one who makes the decisive difference in their lives. The massive, powerful Yahweh moves history, manipulates nations, and empowers His people. This is where we intersect our text.

God will not let go of his chosen people. He empowers them to risk (8-10)

“But you, Israel, are my servant.
You’re Jacob, my first choice,
descendants of my good friend Abraham.
I pulled you in from all over the world,
called you in from every dark corner of the earth,
Telling you, ‘You’re my servant, serving on my side.
I’ve picked you. I haven’t dropped you.’
Don’t panic. I’m with you.
There’s no need to fear for I’m your God.
I’ll give you strength. I’ll help you.
I’ll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you. The Message translation

We are held in the firm grip of God’s almighty hand. He is our rock, strength, support, and stability. Knowing that, not intellectually but experientially, empowers us to live a dynamic, audacious faith. In knowing through our relationship with God that support structure, we now have a launching pad with which we can take God-sized risks. We know that there is a net below us that will catch us were we to struggle so we can risk it all in obedience to God.

What also helps is knowing we are called. Called people know they are called. Called people live out their calling empowered by the all-powerful God. A strong, secure foundation and a true sense of calling not only empower us to live a risky faith, they drive us to live a risky, audacious faith. It is not something we might do, it is something we have to do.

These are the people that God will use to re-shape the world (14-16)
“Do you feel like a lowly worm, Jacob?
Don’t be afraid.
Feel like a fragile insect, Israel?
I’ll help you.
I, God, want to reassure you.
The God who buys you back, The Holy of Israel.
I’m transforming you from worm to harrow,
from insect to iron.
As a sharp-toothed harrow you’ll smooth out the mountains,
turn those tough old hills into loamy soil.
You’ll open the rough ground to the weather,
to the blasts of sun and wind and rain.
But you’ll be confident and exuberant,
expansive in The Holy of Israel!

The insignificant will become a strong force. The lowly worm and fragile insects are transformed into a sharp-toothed harrow. A harrow is an implement for cultivating the surface of the soil. This distinguishes it from the plough, which is used for deeper cultivation. Harrowing is often carried out on fields to follow the rough finish left by ploughing operations. The purpose of this harrowing is generally to break up clods and lumps of soil and to provide a finer finish, a good soil structure that is suitable for seeding and planting operations. Coarser harrowing may also be used to remove weeds and to cover seed after sowing.

God wants to transform the insignificant into a instrument that can break apart the rough ground and prepare it for the seed of the Gospel. We don’t often enjoy the hard work of breaking up hard soil, but it must be done for the seed to be productive. It is the same in our culture. God transforms empowered, called people into dirt-busters, powerful instruments of His redemptive plan.

Ironically, God has only one verb in the Hebrew – “to make”. All the other verbs are associated with Israel. Therefore, Yahweh energizes, authorizes and empowers; Israel appropriates the “making” of God, taking initiative and responsibility as it carries out a re-shaping and re-making of culture.

As the church, if we can truly know in our hearts the empowerment and calling God has given to us and live our lives out of that calling and empowerment, we could see culture re-shaped into the Kingdom of God. It would not be perfect, as we are imperfect people. But it would have a God-like quality about it where people strive for justice, live out kindness and walk humbly with God.

We need to note, however, that Isaiah is not talking about a Christian political power taking over. We should not be fighting for a “Christian” government. There are two reasons (at least) for this. One is that you cannot legislate morality. You can attempt to legislate behavior, but a kingdom lifestyle is not formed by a legislative act. It is formed by an encounter with God. In addition, a “Christian” government does not result the transformation of people. People are only transformed by the power of the Triune God working in their life.

What Isaiah is talking about, and what we need to be striving for, is this: the gospel of Christ, proclaimed in human weakness triumphs over opposition and our timid faith. And it overcome the powers of this world. The growth of the early church was not a result of any kind of power structure. It was a result of humble people living out an authentic love for God and others. They were grounded in God’s love and calling and were freed and empowered to live a radical, audacious faith that was evident among the peoples of the world. In doing so, they transformed the world in which they lived. In that, we can also see the world transformed.

Reframing Succes: Success in Our Evangelism

Sadly, people are treated like projects, not meaningful, long-term relationships

Margaret Fienberg tells the story of her best friend in high school. Her friend was Jewish.  They truly enjoyed being around each other and had only one issue that created tension between them – the Messiah-ship of Jesus.  Margaret believed he was the Messiah.  Her friend did not.  Margaret confesses that during this time, “Though I didn’t talk to her about God, I did talk to God about her.  A lot.  More than anything, I wanted my best friend to know Jesus.” (1)

One semester, Feinberg believed her prayers had been answered when her friend began coming to her youth group meetings on Sunday evenings.  Though a lot of talk and discussion occurred, her friend decided to maintain her Jewish beliefs.  A crevice occurred in their relationship.  And it only grew wider.

Fienberg recounts a phone conversation between the two one evening:

I remember one evening she called me to talk about our different beliefs. She pointedly asked me what I believed would happen to her if she died without choosing to follow Jesus.  I dodged the question, but she persisted.  So I finally told her what I thought, and I can still remember the deafening silence.  In that moment, she uncovered the naked truth of my heart:  I was more concerned about her eternal destiny than I was about her.  When she finally spoke, she asked me to stop trying to convince, convert, or coax her into believing something different. (2)

Because of this conversation, their relationship began to fade.  Though they have spent time together since then, the friendship is not the same.  And it may never be.  Margaret, reflecting back over that time, shares:

I care for her deeply and pray for her more than she will ever know, but looking back, I realize that she was right – my motives were mixed and complex.  I wanted her to become a Christian more for me than for her.  I wanted her to have what I had, whatever the cost.  My agenda became more important than our relationship, and I became more concerned with my own righteousness than with her redemption.  The salvation I was offering her was centered on myself – making her believe what I did – rather than having her believe God. (3)

This story has haunted me, as it still does her.  I have thought about the times when the sole purpose for my eating at a restaurant or going to a business or building a relationship was to be involved in seeing a person or persons engage Jesus in a relationship.  I have spent lots of time and money specifically targeting people.  And the question I have to ask myself now is this:  would I hang out with those people if my purpose didn’t involve leading them to Christ? Were they easy and convenient or did I truly care for them as people, not as a project?

I grew up in a denomination that prided itself on evangelism.  We were the soul winners!  We were going door to door with our handy presentations trying to argue people into believing what we believe.  We were developing one program or plan after another.  Some of these were and still are theologically questionable.  But the whole goal was to get them to a point to profess an intellectual belief in Christ. That way, we could mark them on a report, drag them into a baptismal pool, and proclaim that we had helped people experience a relationship with God through Jesus. Unfortunately, I truly believe we have failed. We have caused people to think they have a relationship with God, but all we may have really done is given them a false sense of security.

In 2008, I was looking through the roster of people who were going to be voted on as leaders at our denomination’s general meeting that year.  The statistics of one pastor’s church were amazing.  Over the past ten years they had averaged 140 baptisms per year under this particular pastor’s leadership. In that same time frame, attendance grew from 700 to 1,100. (4)  I sat speechless.  Over ten years they have averaged 140 people baptized per year.  140 x 10 = 1,400.  Do you see the problem?  Where are the 1,000 people who are not at church now?  If you would accept the possibility that there was zero transfer growth that means that only forty of the one hundred forty that they did baptize were still regular attenders in that church.  One hundred are not consistently involved in that church. That is a retention rate of less than thirty percent. The question must be asked if the 1,000 people who are no longer participating in that church’s worship gatherings really have a relationship with God through Jesus.

Despite this incredibly low retention rate, however, this pastor is considered a success and his church is considered a successful church because of the 1,400 people they baptized over a ten year period. We have created an environment where success is getting people into the baptismal pool.

I have said in a previous post that what is celebrated is measured, and what is measured determines success.  In my tribe, success is found in how many people a church has baptized.  It is found in how many people are members.

Our attempts at evangelism have become attempts to make us look good and to make us feel good through the use of numbers.  It is ruining our churches and creating environments where those who toil and labor in smaller venues struggle. They feel that they are standing before God as failures.

Evangelism has become a matter of productivity.

We all want to get the most done in the least amount of time.  The more we get done, the better we feel about ourselves.  It makes us feel great to accomplish tasks.  What is even easier, is when we can accomplish those tasks with minimal effort.  The less effort we have to put into something, the less time it takes and the more we can get done.  Evangelism has become a matter of productivity for our cultural Christianity.

Think of all the plans that exist for sharing the Gospel.  The Romans Road has five verses.  The Southern Baptist Convention’s F.A.I.T.H. plan is also five verses.  You have the colored beads plan, made up of five colored beads.  You have Evangelism Explosion, which back in the day was made up of four points.  Then there is Bill Bright’s Four Spiritual Laws.

So we are sent out with these nice packaged plans that we are to memorize.  But they do not help us deal with one thing:  we were never taught to do apologetics (among a lot of things we are not taught).  These plans were supposed to get you in and get you out of a spiritual conversation.  If people didn’t accept Jesus, then move on.  The goal is to share the message and if they don’t accept he message, shake the dust off your feet and go to the next house.

It’s easier to pick low hanging fruit than the work the soil.  But if we don’t work the soil, there can be no fruit trees planted.

The parable of the soil in Matthew 13 has as many different understandings as translations of the Bible it seems.  So while I do not wish to spend time on the interpretation, I do want to make what appear to be obvious statements about the passage:

“Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. 4 As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them. 5 Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn’t have deep roots, they died. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. 8 Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! (Matthew 13:3b-8, NLT)

The one thing that strikes me as being more important to the productivity of the seeds is the quality of the soil.  It is obvious whether we are trying to interpret this passage or grow tomatoes that the soil makes the difference.  The seeds do not take root and bear fruit until they find good soil.  Whatever else Jesus is saying here, He is making a direct observation about the need to work the soil so that it is productive.  Hard soil must be broken up.  Rocky and overgrown soil must be cleaned out.  Shallow soil must be properly built up.  Of course Jesus could also be making another point, one of even greater importance.  Do not plant the seeds in soil that is not ready for it.

If that last statement is true, we have a determination to make.  We have to determine if the soil is ready for the seed of the Gospel.  How do we do that with a hit and run, share and move on experience?  It seems to me that if we are going to make a soil determination, we have to know the soil, examine the soil, and spend time with the soil.  If the soil is not ready for seed, do we still try to plant the seed anyway?  Or do we work the soil until it can handle the seed? In other words, are we just broadcasting the seed with no regard to the heart of the hearer or are we developing the relationships with people because we love them and want to be around them?  Then if the soil becomes ready, we make the effort to plant the seed when the time is appropriate and God opens the opportunity.

Evangelism must be a love relationship, not a project

Evangelism requires an investment in the lives of people. Success in evangelism is in doing your part to develop the soil so that the seed of the gospel is ready for planting, not a drive-by sharing of the Gospel. I Corinthians 3: 5-9 reminds of how Paul viewed success in evangelism:

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. (NIV)

For each person that comes into your life you have a responsibility to simply do the task assigned to you by God. Again, this is a matter of obedience, not a matter of seeing conversions or a matter of presenting some plan of salvation. Success for you may be simply preparing the soil, creating a true picture of Jesus and the transformative change and perfect love He brings in to a person’s life. Some people are more oriented to soil development while some are more oriented to picking the fruit. For some relationships you may be the fruit picker and for another you develop the soil or water the seeds. Success in evangelism is fulfilling your role in the life cycle of the person’s life. Success in not presenting the gospel message to every one you know through a canned presentation, often attempting to guilt them into a decision. This requires us to be in tune with the Holy Spirit, depending on Him to help us see our role and to see and take advantage of the opportunities presented to us.

Paul wept for those who did not have a relationship with Jesus. But he also knew his role in the lives of those he met.

The danger of numbers and evangelism as indicators of success

Success in a church is not seeing thousands get baptized. It is not a numbers game, and failure to let that go creates an environment where we view ourselves as failures when we may be successful in God’s formula. All this talk of numbers is an attempt to take on the role of the Holy Spirit and convict people to present a presentation and get people into a baptistery.

It is true that over 3,000 men became Christ-followers at Pentecost. Many more became Christ-followers along the way, but in the 60 years following, the estimates about the total number of Christians in the Roman Empire range from 7,535 (5) to 50,000 (6) at the end of the first century. Sociologist Rodney Stark estimates that Christians first passed the 100,000 mark around 180 a.d., 160 years or so after Pentecost. (7) That means that Christianity had a net growth each year of 625, going from 0 to 100,000 in 160 years. By our current standards, the early, first century church was a complete failure.

However, the soil was being developed. Those early Christ-followers laid did the hard work of soil development, creating an environment for a movement start. They had no plan of salvation, no revivals, no Christian movies or them parks or global media. They simply loved God with all their heart and loved those they came in contact with the same way, serving them through the love of Christ. The result was that by 350 a.d., there were over 33 million true Christians. They went from .36% of the population of the Roman empire to over 50%. (8)

Were the Christians who lived from 200-350 more successful than those from the first 160 years of Christianity? No. Each one did their part.

Success in evangelism is not seeing a lot of people baptized. It is being obedient to task laid out for you by God for each person as they journey toward a deeper relationship with God.

Notes —

1 The Organic God, 45.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid, 46.
4. Ed Litton to be Pastors’ Conf. nominee, http://baptistpress.com/bpnews.asp?id=28044 Accessed June 4, 2008
5. The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History by Rodney Stark, 9.
6. The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius by Paul Trebilco, 592, note 10.
7. Stark, 9.
8. Ibid, 9-10.

Wright's Newest Book: Justification

NT Wright has taken on one of the most important topics in theology, that of the meaning of righteousness and justification in Paul. Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision was necessitated by John Piper’s critic of Wright’s understanding of the topic, found in his book The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright. The main argument concerns the concept of imputed righteous of Christ. Imputed righteousness “means that upon repentance and belief in Christ, individuals are forensically declared righteous. This righteousness is not the believer’s own, rather it is Christ’s own righteousness ‘imputed’ to the believer.” (1) This particular form of imputed righteousness insists that Jesus had to live a sinless life (in addition to dying a representative, substitutionary, atoning death for the sins of humanity, which having heard him in person I know he affirms) so that the “active” obedience of his life and not just the “passive” obedience of his death could replace our sinful status in Gods eyes.(2)

He is saying that if that is such an important focus in theology, why it not found explicitly in scripture even in Paul. For Wright, we have been reading into Paul a more contextual understanding of the concepts rather than letting the the first century context of the text teach us. In other words, is it the text or tradition?

On a side note, I have a friend who was able to talk to Wright about Piper’s book. According to my friend, Piper sent Wright the text, which generated a 40,000 word response from Wright on how he had failed to understand Wright’s position. Little, if any, of that was included in the published copy of Piper’s book. NT thus determined to explain his position clearly through the publication of this book.

The Issues

The issues that need to be discussed when considering this vital theological topic, according to Wright, are: God’s righteous and its meaning, the focus of soteriology -- an individual vs total creation focus -- and what was the purpose of the Law.

The Law, according to Wright, was a covenantal law for God’s people. Now that they were God’s people through the covenant God established with Abraham, they received the Law as defined through the ten commandments and the Torah. This Law was not meant to be a means by which people, either individually or the nation as a whole, gained entrance into eternal life with God. The Law was set up to provide a guideline by which they would live now that they were covenant people. This redefines how so many of us were taught and now teach/preach the religion of Judaism. It was not a works-based salvation. It was a covenant lifestyle.

An interesting angle in this discussion is the difference, according to Wright, between how John Calvin and Martin Luther viewed the Law. Wright notes, “For Martin Luther, Moses was regularly cast as the bad guy, the one who gave the wicked law that did nothing but condemn. For John Calvin, the Mosaic law was given as the way of life for a people already redeemed.” (53) Wright notes that he has for some time thought that if the Calvinistic view of the law and Paul had dominated biblical scholarship rather than the Lutheran view, there would have not been the need for the “new perspective” on Paul nor the polarizing debates that have existed for the past several centuries.

Another issue is the focus of salvation. For Wright, God planned to save all creation through Israel, culminating in the “Faithful Israelite” who was Jesus the Messiah. Wright states it this way: “God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah.” (19) However, so many simply focus on the goal of salvation being individual. Salvation is only individualistic when placed in the sphere of the complete salvation of creation.

The big issue in all of this discussion, however, is the topic of righteousness. Wright states:

But if ‘righteousness’, within the lawcourt context refers to the status of the vindicated person after the court has announced its verdict, we have undercut in a singe stroke the age-old problem highlighted in Augustine’s interpretation of ‘justify’ as ‘make righteous’. That always meant, for Augustine and his followers, that God, in justification, was actually transforming the character of the person, albeit in small, preliminary ways (by, for instance, implanting the beginnings of love and faith within them). The result was a subtle but crucial shifting of metaphors: the lawcourt scene is now replaced with a medical one, a kind of remedial spiritual surgery, involving a ‘righteous implant’ which, like an artificial heart, begins to enable the patient to do things previously impossible.

But part of the point of Paul’s own language, rightly stressed by those who have analyzed the verb dikaioo, ‘to justify’, is that it does not denote an action which transforms someone so much as a declaration which grants them a status. It is the status of the person which is transformed by the action of ‘justification’, not the character. (70)

Thus for Wright, Paul’s view of justification is the action of pronouncing that a person is in right standing before God, not a transformation of the character of a person or imputation of Christ’s character onto a person. Righteousness, therefore, is the status a person has before God and justification is the pronouncement of that status.

The argument against this reasons that “God requires a moral righteousness of us, and that since we have none of our own God must reckon or impute such a moral righteousness from somewhere else” which, in Piper’s scheme is the righteousness of Christ. (71) While understanding this scheme, Wright argues that in the precise language of the lawcourt, righteousness is not ‘moral righteousness’ but the status of the person whom the court has vindicated.

Analysis

I confess that I have not read Piper’s critic of Wright’s view of justification so I do not have first-hand knowledge of his research. With that said, if Wright has accurately expressed Piper’s research, Piper has left out important issues and exegesis that Wright has included that seems important to the discussion. That goes to the credibility and comprehension of the topic. Because of the exhaustive nature of his exegesis, in fact the majority of the book is his exegesis of important and relevant Pauline texts, Wright demonstrates a complete grasp of all the issues. While someone may disagree with his exegesis, one cannot discount his thoroughness.

Wright makes his case extremely well. He sometimes is known for painting with broad strokes and not going into the details. That is not the case here. From my perspective, he is clear and articulate on the topic. However, he is not burdensome in his presentation. His thoroughness should not be taken to mean boring or uninteresting. In fact, it is quite the opposite. He is quite passionate in his arguments, and having met him myself, I can hear him saying the words of the book in his own unique way.

As well, Wright does not argue against other important reformation topics such topics as substitutionary atonement.

While there may be minor disagreements on exegesis, one cannot dismiss the major and important contribution that Wright makes to biblical theology with his book. His research and writing clarify an important theological principle and understanding of what it means to be justified before God from a biblical, not a systematic theology perspective. While I have great respect for Piper, and others like him, I believe Wright makes his case in such a way that I would agree with his premise.

Other Reviews

Tony Stiff at Sets ‘N’ Service has put together a list of reviews of both Piper and Wright in addition to writing his own 4 part review. In addition, IVP has put out a video of Wright summarizing his position.

Notes:
1. http://www.theopedia.com/index.php?title=Imputed_righteousness&oldid=38179, accessed May 18, 2009
2. http://www.denverseminary.edu/news/justification-gods-plan-and-pauls-vision/, accessed May 18, 2009