JUSTIFICATION: δικαιωμα/δικαιωσις

[Arsenios]

In parallel with trying to explain traditional Reformed soteriology I’ve been thinking about my own.

Glory to God!

Here are some preliminary conclusions:

* I believe the idea that faith is following Jesus may be misleading. Looking at Rom 4, where Paul’s definition seems clearest, he seems to use it for trust in God. Jesus doesn’t talk about faith as much as Paul does, but in using children, he seems also to be pointing at trust. That’s particularly explicit in Rom 4:5.

I think he is pointing to their simplicity of utterly living poised in the present moment...

* When Paul says that God justifies the ungodly, the context seems to be clear that he is reckoning them as forgiven, not in some way fixing their ungodliness.

We are all ungodly prior to our turning away from evil and toward God... And all who turn to Him in repentance He will justify, as he did the Publican Tax Collector...

* In what sense does justification depend upon faith? In Rom 4:5 Paul says that our trust in God’s forgiveness independent of works is reckoned as righteousness. I’m not convinced that Paul is setting up some test that replaces works, that our forgiveness depends upon God detecting some specific kind of belief. I think what he’s saying is that those who realize God’s forgiveness doesn’t depend upon anything they’ve done are right are accepted on that basis, but I’m not convinced that Paul thinks his opponents are damned. They’re just wrong.

The very effort of turning from the Old Man towards God IF done in a genuine and repentant and humbled and sincere manner brings one nigh unto God already - The prodigal 'came to himself' and remembered what he had forgotten and lost, and decided to return to his father as but a servant, rather than serve those who hated him and would not even let him eat with the pigs.... And his Father saw him coming from a long way off, and rushed to meet him and take him into His arms... You see... Yet full Justification comes when we become members of the Body of Christ... We are baptized INTO Christ, as Scripture makes utterly clear...

I’m actually not convinced that Paul even intended to be giving us a full soteriology here. Rather, he’s dealing with a specific misunderstanding, and saying that God’s forgiveness doesn’t depend upon circumcision or any other specific action, including moral living.

Hear O Israel... I the Lord thy God am a jealous God...
You cannot love sin and God...
God will depart from you...

Moral living is departing from sin...

Pulling back from Paul, I would say roughly the following:

* God loves everyone and has called us all to be part of his people. We start out accepted by God. I’m not sure about Orthodoxy, but almost all Western Christians believe that all infants and children are accepted. This is explicit in baptism, where’s God’s claim on us is made visible.

The Call of God is to the prodigal, not to the other Son... In Orthodoxy, we baptize infants into Christ and rear them as servants of God...

* We are expected to respond to this call, and will be held accountable for our response. This doesn’t mean that if we don’t meet some moral standard God rejects us. You can hold someone accountable without rejecting them.

* I do think some people are fundamentally opposed to God. It’s not that God is checking off good deeds and bad deeds and counting which predominate. But some people don’t accept his standards, and don’t care how they treat others and how they relate to God. Those people are in danger of being condemned in God’s judgement. This is often characterized as unrepentant sin.

Yes, there is Good AND evil in the world...

I don’t want to turn repentance into another legalistic system. If God is sitting there with a list of everything we’ve ever done wrong and checking off whether we’ve repented of each one, we’re in trouble.

It is profoundly a God-quest of Love and courage and truth at any cost whatsoever... It is a journey of healing for the prodigal soul returning to his or her home and source and father, the profound cleansing of the heart from any evil that might (and will) be found lurking therein, with no regard to self, in service to God and God's Love for all mankind, to become one with God in Spirit and in Truth... This is what the discipling of the Church does for man... It is what gave Christians the power to overcome the world...

* But at least among Christians, that should be rare. Short of this kind of fundamental opposition to God, we are forgiven, and when we disobey we are disobedient children, not strangers.

If you look at Jesus’ teaching on judgement, where he talks about people being rejected it’s people who have spend their lives abusing others or those who reject him and what he teaches.

Those latter do not do well in eternity... They have signed their own tickets to the quality of resurrected life they will find there by way of the manner of life they have lived here on earth... Which is true for all of us, and the greater our Gifts, the greater the judgement...

What man DOES with whatever he finds himself able to do here on earth matters to God... Man has the power to turn toward evil and to turn toward Good... The results of that turning are in God's Holy Hands... But the turning itself is for us to embrace or or reject... And the God-Quest is simultaneously a reality-quest... One divinized human soul is worth more that the whole of fallen creation...

Arsenios

 

[ladodgers6]

Yes, Arsenios, this shows how Lovely and Gracious our Father in heaven is. That he provided what we could not do, but God did it in His Son for the ungodly! And its "FREE", not earn, or any hidden stipulations in the fine print to be fulfilled by us. All of it was perfectly accomplish in the "Promised Seed" for those who believe in God who justifies the ungodly apart from works.

Abraham's Justification by Faith
Romans 4​

1What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? 2For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. 3For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. 4Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. 5But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. 6Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,

7Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

8Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

Romans 8
​

No Condemnation in Christ

1There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: 4That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

 

[ladodgers6]

So if I have this aright, it is one's own personal believing that Christ's Righteousness is imputed to us that GIVES us Christ's Gift of the imputation of Christ's righteousness. Is that right? By my believing, I have the imputation, but not the fact, of the Righteousness of Christ... And this is what Salvation actually IS in the Reformed Church, yes?

Getting closer. Let me explain.

"Faith is a steady and certain knowledge of the Divine benevolence towards us, which, being founded on the truth of the gratuitous promise in Christ, is both revealed to our minds, and confirmed to our hearts, by the Holy Spirit.” - John Calvin

Through the proclamation of the Gospel, we believe, in what God promises sinners, in His Son. That Christ killed sin in the flesh, lived a perfect life without a single blemish of sin, die and bore our sins, propitiated the wrath of God, reconciles us to the Father through His works, and is resurrected for our justification. Christ sits at the right hand of the Father in Full Glory. So By Christ killing sin, and defeating death for us. His righteousness is given to us; we are clothed in it; until we receive our glorified bodies. So we trust in God, his word, and in His Son. In who they are, and what they have done for us!

Related Topic: Sola Fide

Justification is an instantaneous legal act of God in which he (1) thinks of our sins as forgiven and Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us, and (2) declares us to be righteous in his sight.
Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology (pg. 723)

Scripture, when it treats of justification by faith, leads us in a very different direction. Turning away our view from our own works, it bids us look only to the mercy of God and the perfection of Christ. The order of justification which it sets before us is this: first, God of his mere gratuitous goodness is pleased to embrace the sinner, in whom he sees nothing that can move him to mercy but wretchedness, because he sees him altogether naked and destitute of good works. He, therefore, seeks the cause of kindness in himself, that thus he may affect the sinner by a sense of his goodness, and induce him, in distrust of his own works, to cast himself entirely upon his mercy for salvation. This is the meaning of faith by which the sinner comes into the possession of salvation, when, according to the doctrine of the Gospel, he perceives that he is reconciled by God; when, by the intercession of Christ, he obtains the pardon of his sins, and is justified; and, though renewed by the Spirit of God, considers that, instead of leaning on his own works, he must look solely to the righteousness which is treasured up for him in Christ.
John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion (3.11.16)

Final note: This is why the Reformers said its by Faith Alone. Because they is nothing we can contribute to our salvation, but sin. Salvation is a divine act of God Alone! And God's gives it freely to sinners! Not the righteous, or good people. There are none! Which is why we need salvation!!!!