The Atonement Part 9: Legal Atonement Framework 1 of 2- Righteousness and Justification

observed on justification.


1.The question of justification is a matter of
covenant membership. The
underlying question in (for instance) Gal. 3 and 4 is: Who are
the true children of Abraham?  Paul’s answer is that
membership belongs to all who believe in the gospel of Jesus,
whatever their racial or moral background.


2.The basis of this
declaration is the representative death and
resurrection of Jesus himself. The
resurrection is God’s declaration that Sin has been dealt with
and Jesus and his people are in the right before God (Rom.
4:24-25).


3.Justification establishes the
church, the renewed Israel, Jew and Greek alike,
transcending racial and social barriers (Gal. 3:28). Pagan
converts to Christianity did not need to become Jews in order
fully to belong to God’s people, the attempt to do so was in
itself a renunciation of the gospel, implying that Christ’s
achievement was insufficient or even unnecessary (Gal. 2:21;
5:4—6).


4.Justification by faith’ is thus a shorthand for ‘justification
by grace through faith’, and in Paul’s thought at least has
nothing to do with a suspicious attitude towards good behavior.
His polemic against ‘works of the law’ is not directed
against those who attempted to earn
covenant membership through keeping the Jewish
law (such people do not seem to have existed in the 1st
century) but against those who sought to demonstrate their
membership in the covenant through obeying the Jewish law.
 Against these people Paul argues that the law cannot in
fact be kept perfectly — it merely shows sin. And that this
attempt would reduce the covenant to a single race, those who
possess the Jewish law, whereas God desires a world-wide family
(Rom. 3:27-31; Gal. 3:15-22).


Justification in short is not ‘how someone becomes a Christian’.
It is God’s declaration about the person who has
just become a Christian. They are a covenant member. It’s about
the church more than salvation. Ecclesiology is primary,
salvation is secondary (a benefit of justification, not
justification itself).