faith and works* are not opposed to each other, as if our works diminish Christ's work on the cross. rather, faith and works are inextricably linked. just as the Spirit occasions (not causes) faith, so does the Spirit enable (not effect) works. to live by faith is 'to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do' (Ephesians 2:10b).
*not works of the law
"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." - Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)
justification by faith is not the point at which we sit back and relax because we will no longer be justified by works. rather, justification by faith is the point at which we begin to build for the kingdom precisely because we are sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (ie. that we will be justified by works). as N.T. Wright puts it, justification by faith is the anticipation in the present that we will be justified by works in the future.
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in a previous post, i wrote that:
all things considered, it is admittedly misleading to say that 'justification' is the verdict which will be reaffirmed in the future, while 'justification by faith' is the anticipation in the present of the verdict which will be reaffirmed in the future ('faith' being the anticipation in the present).
this implies that 'justification' is a future verdict, when it is clear from Scripture that we have already been justified by Christ's finished work on the cross. this - that 'justification' is a future verdict - is not what i believe, and it is not what i believe N.T. Wright believes either. at least, i hope not.
to eliminate any ambiguity, i would say that 'justification' is the [past] verdict which will be reaffirmed in the future [by the future verdict of 'glorification']. 'justification by faith', then, is the anticipation in the present of the future verdict of 'glorification', knowing that we have already been justified by Christ's finished work on the cross, and that 'those He justified, He also glorified' (Romans 8:30, NIV).
after reading and listening to N.T. Wright (and, i hasten to add, John Piper) for a while, i would like to revise my position. instead of saying that 'since we have already been justified by Christ's finished work on the cross, therefore justification is not a future verdict', i would say that 'since we have already been justified by Christ's finished work on the cross, and we will be justified by works in the future, therefore there are two kinds of justification'.
the first kind of justification - justification by faith - is the present verdict that 'therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set [us] free from the law of sin and death' (Romans 8:1-2, NIV). the second kind of justification - justification by works - is the future verdict of glorification.
Hi Luke, it's Phil Walker. In a future "justification by works" can lurk a very subtle distinction: of "justified in accordance with our works" and "justified on the basis of our works", which would you think is the biblical position?
ReplyDeletehi phil, nice to hear from you! that's an interesting distinction to make - i would say that the biblical position of 'justification by works' is the former, that we are 'justified in accordance with our works'. these works are simply the works which God has prepared in advance for us to do, as we live by faith.
ReplyDeletei would add that we are not 'justified on the basis of our works' because we are 'justified on the basis of Christ's work on the cross'. what do you think?
I think that sounds quite right. The way I think about final justification is to look at the previous justifications. In Christ's life and death, we were justified. When we hear in faith the gospel preached to us, we discover that we are justified in Christ. At the final justification, the justification already declared will be made universally known. The declaration of the gospel thus goes, as it were, from God, through us, and onto the world. At every stage, the basis is Christ's obedience and blood to the exclusion of all other pretended bases, and works are a part (albeit never the principal part) of the evidence. The primary evidence is God's word, and the life and death of Christ.
ReplyDeleteThe difficulty with Tom Wright, as I understand it, is that for him, the first two justifications are merely prolepses for the final justification which becomes the "true" justification, rather than the latter two being increasingly public declarations of the first. You can see why one might worry that that pushes the cross out of centre-stage, and makes more of our works than they deserve. Works are a part of the gift of salvation, for which reason justification cannot be "by" works in anything like the same way it is "by" grace.