The meaning of the word, justification, is clearly forensic (legal). But the deeper question remains: is that forensic verdict an accurate and true assessment of the believer when united to Christ, or is it a nominal and putative designation of a recategorization within God's mind alone? The answer is found in our union with Christ.
As some of you know, I’ve been working on writing a book for years, and I think it’s just a matter of a few months now to get it published. I’ll be using Amazon’s CreateSpace.com. Of course, I’ll announce it here when it’s published. Until then, I will not be very active here at this blog.
[Adapted from Beyond Traditionalism: Reclaiming Southern Baptist Soteriology, posted at SBC Open Forum]
There are two profound changes that happen to a man as he is saved. First: the man is changed from a man who hates God to a man who is ready to repent and turn to God. This is what the Calvinists focus on. How profound it is that a man who shakes his fist at God becomes a man on his knees at the altar! Second: God responds to the man who turns from his sin and comes to Him by justifying him, indwelling him with the Holy Spirit and bringing life back to his spirit. This is what non-Calvinists tend to focus on — the “new creation,” being “born again” and restored to communion with God.
Non-Calvinists often fail to recognize the first change for what it is — a profound change — and emphasize only the second change. In this second change, God does respond to the man’s decision to come to Him in faith. However, the second change cannot happen without the first change; and the first change only happens if God has in His grace intervened in such a way as to bring about that change. Men must freely respond to the gospel, but that response does not come out of nowhere. In every man who responds, God has done a work of preparation in his life that resulted in the first profound change.
Calvinists mostly fail to recognize that the two changes are distinct, and reserve only justification for God’s response to the sinner’s faith. But justification is grounded on the reality of spiritual union with the indwelling Christ. Justification provides the initial legal judgment of our salvation, but the union with Christ provides the substance and reality of our salvation — the ground and basis for our justification. While it is plausible that God would have reason to justify prior to union, there is no plausible reason to withhold justification once the believer is united with Christ. Continue reading
[Adapted from Beyond Traditionalism: Reclaiming Southern Baptist Soteriology, posted at SBC Open Forum]
The covenant model is merely a template by which to describe the reality, and may be discarded without loss to the traditional Baptist position. Even without any covenant, Adam’s sin would have been just as wrong and just as worthy of death (physical and spiritual). Since sin naturally enslaves and corrupts, then Adam’s sin would have corrupted his nature and enslaved him whether or not there was a covenant. And since the nature of all men was embodied in the single man, Adam, when he sinned, then that nature would be propagated to all men in its morally corrupted, spiritually dead condition — even without any covenant. So you see, while the covenant model serves as a good way to explain the reality, the reality itself does not depend on the covenant.
Baptist centrists have traditionally affirmed that the nature of all men sinned in Adam, and because of this, all men justly “inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin.” This middle position acknowledges the inherited depravity as an inclination toward sin and an aversion toward God. But rather than going to the extreme of the Calvinist and Arminian insistence on a total inability, the middle position aligns with Andrew Fuller’s teaching that the sinner’s inability is a moral inability and not a natural inability. A natural inability is like a man born blind, who cannot see no matter how much he might want to. Natural inability provides an excuse. A moral inability is like a rebellious child who holds his hands over his eyes and refuses to see. The inability in both cases is just as debilitating — both will fall into the ditch if they try to walk — but the latter inability provides no excuse. Continue reading
[Adapted from Beyond Traditionalism: Reclaiming Southern Baptist Soteriology, posted at SBC Open Forum]
God is an active Agent in His created world, unfailingly carrying out every detail of His perfect plan for human history. We find this truth in Scripture. Millard Erickson expounds on the Old Testament view of God’s plan:
For the Old Testament writers, it was virtually inconceivable that anything could happen independently of the will and working of God. As evidence of this, consider that common impersonal expressions like “It rained” are not found in the Old Testament. For the Hebrews, rain did not simply happen; God sent the rain. They saw him as the all-powerful determiner of everything that occurs. Not only is he active in everything that occurs, but he has planned it. What is happening now was planned long ago. God himself comments, for example, concerning the destruction wreaked by the king of Assyria: “Have you not heard that I determined it long ago? I planned from days of old what now I bring to pass, that you should make fortified cities crash into heaps of ruins” (Isa. 37:26) Even something as seemingly trivial as the building of reservoirs is described as having been planned long before (Isa. 22:11). There is a sense that every day has been designed and ordered by the Lord…
The Old Testament also enunciates belief in the efficaciousness of God’s plan. What is now coming to pass is doing so because it is (and has always been) part of God’s plan. He will most assuredly bring to actual occurrence everything in his plan. What he has promised, he will do. Isaiah 46:10-11 puts it this way: “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’ calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it”…
It is particularly in the wisdom literature and the prophets that the idea of an all-inclusive divine purpose is most prominent. God has from the beginning, from all eternity, had an inclusive plan encompassing the whole of reality and extending even to the minor details of life. “The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble” (Prov. 16:4; cf. 3:19-20; Job 38, especially v. 4; Isa. 40:12; Jer. 10:12-13). Even what is ordinarily thought of as an occurrence of chance, such as the casting of lots, is represented as the Lord’s doing (Prov. 16:33). Nothing can deter or frustrate the accomplishment of his purpose. Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established” (cf. 21:30-31; Jer. 10:23-24)…[1]
For those of us who recognize this Biblical truth, there is no question: God does have an eternal plan that He is perfectly carrying out. Continue reading
Gordon Clark writes, in The Atonement, “The extremely puzzling relationship between time and eternity is the worst complexity embedded… in all Biblical doctrines, for all are related to and depend on the eternal God.”[1] The relationship is puzzling and complex, but it is not entirely beyond our ability to understand. Many misconceptions can be cleared away by adhering to some basic principles of Scripture and reason.
Clark goes on to define eternity as omniscience:
There is no sequence of ideas in God’s mind: no temporal sequence. If there were, God would know some things today he did not know yesterday. But omniscience means that God always knows everything. Ideas do not come and go. His mind, that is, God himself, is immutable; he is not subject to change. Hence we talk of an eternal decree. God’s plan of the universe never began and was never altered…[2]
Creatures such as men and angels are temporal beings. Without temporal sequence (the progression from one moment to the next), our minds would not function and our very existence would be paused, waiting for the next moment. Continue reading
Gen. 18:32
“And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.”
Because we sinned in Adam, we are conceived in a spiritually fallen state. In the zygote, that is not a state of active, rebellious wickedness; but rather, it is a state which will inevitably and eventually result in active, rebellious wickedness, as soon as the child’s development allows it to gain an accountable understanding of good and evil. Being born fallen, we are not conceived as righteous. Having sinned in Adam, we are not conceived as “innocent.” However, since it was not our personal sin, but Adam’s, we are not held guilty (or, liable to penal sanction) by the God “who will judge every man according to his deeds.” Therefore, we are conceived in the unique position of both having no righteousness, and no sinful deeds for which to be held accountable.
God’s destruction of the people of Sodom was a temporal judgment against that city. It was not an eternal punishment. God numbers all our days, and has the right to end them when and how He sees fit. Ending the life of those children was not the same as sending them to hell. God has at times judged groups (nations, cities, etc.) with temporal consequences that also fell on the children and those who were not guilty of the offense that caused the judgment; however, the Bible, throughout, affirms that when it comes to eternal judgment, every man will stand alone and be judged for his own deeds. Continue reading
