The Evangelical Theological Society is meeting this week from Wednesday through Friday. Their theme this year is “Justification by Faith.”
Why should those of us dealing with disability care if a bunch of smart people get together to talk about these things?
Because how they reason together and think about this issue influences both this and the next generation of leaders in our colleges, seminaries and churches. Issues discussed at this gathering will impact churches.
A right understanding of justification is immensely important to this issue of disability:
What makes radical, risk-taking, sacrificial, Christ-exalting works of love possible is the fact that Christ’s perfect obedience (counted as our righteousness) and Christ’s perfect sacrifice (counted as our punishment) secured completely the glorious reality that God is for us as an omnipotent Father who works all things together for our everlasting joy in him. If we begin to deny or minimize the importance of the obedience of Christ, imputed to us through faith alone, our own works will begin to assume the role that should have been Christ’s. As that happens, over time (perhaps generations), the works of love themselves will be severed from their root in the Christ-secured assurance that God is totally for us. In this way, for the sake of exalting the importance of love, we will undermine the very thing that makes them possible.
Yet the freedom and the courage to love is what the world desperately needs to see in the church and from the church. The world does not need to see strident, triumphalistic evangelicals laying claim on their rights. The world needs to see the radical, risk-taking, Christ-exalting sacrifice of humble love that makes us willing to lay down our lives for the good of others, without the demand of reward on this earth. For the sake of this display of the glory of Christ, I plead for our allegiance to a robust, biblical, historical vision of Christ whose obedience is counted as ours through faith alone. John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright, pp. 187-188.
Disability (usually) shatters the illusion of independence we probably lived under before God graciously removed that illusion from our lives. We need God to call other people to get involved with us in our churches to make disability ministry happen; we need them to freely love without any anticipation of reward on this earth (but isn’t God good to frequently give them affections for us and for our children that feels like a reward to them!). We need God to help them see that people with disabilities are gifts to the church and have gifts for the church.
Similarly, we should be very wary of the ‘hero’ status that some people want to confer on us for parenting children with disabilities. It is God’s strength that allows us to continue every day; it is God’s grace that lets us see him for who he is – perfect in all his ways and all his works, and able to make ‘all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose’ (Romans 8:28).
This emphasis on justification would be reason enough for us to care about this gathering. But in addition to that emphasis for the plenary sessions, there will be papers presented and discussed on issues of deep importance in the areas of bioethics and health. For example, Catholic ethicist, philosopher and Baylor professor Francis Beckwith is presenting a paper, Recent Challenges to Fetal Personhood: A Critical Analysis.
So, please pray for this gathering of scholars and pastors and seminary students, that God would be given all the glory, and they would stay true to their doctrinal basis:
The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.
The Works of God 
Hi,
Maybe you could add some input here.
The issue I have with the notion of having Christ’s obedience imputed to us is that I (in total honesty) don’t see this taught in Scripture. Clearly, this component of Christ’s work is critical from the angle you and Pastor Piper are coming from…but it seems that Paul (nor anyone else) saw this critical enough to bring it up.
And that’s not all, when I sit down and look at the most major texts discussing justification, I see Christ’s Death and Resurrection as the only two components ever mentioned (forcefully and repeatedly), without anything anywhere as clear as this in terms of imputing His Obedience.
Here are some very important justification texts that come to mind: Rom 3:21-26; 4:23-25; 5:6-11; 6:1-11; 8:3, 31-34; 10:6-10; 1 Cor 1:22-23; 2:2; 5:7; 15:3-4; 2 Cor 5:21; Gal 2:19-21; 3:13-14; 6:14; Eph 2:13-16; 5:2, 25; Phil 2:5-11; 3:8-11; Col 1:19-23; 2:11-15; 3:1-3; 1 Thes 4:13-14; 5:9-10; 1 Tim 2:5-6; Titus 2:13-14; Heb 1:3, 2:9-10, 14-17; 5:1, 7-9; 6:4-6, 7:20-27; 9:11-28; 10:8-22; 12:1-2, 24; 13:12, 20-21; 1 Peter 1:17-19; 2:18-25; 3:18-22; 1 Jn 2:1-2; 3:16; 4:10, etc, etc.
Here are two pages to biblegateway.com that show these verses in full for easy referencing:
Page1 and Page2
There can be a dangerous trend to project ideas onto Scripture that don’t actually exist in Scripture – and unless I’m really off base here and missing something, I consider imputing His obedience one of those things.
Thanks. I look forward to anything you have to add
Hi Nicholas,
First of all, thanks for the comment! I’ll agree with you about dangerous trends, but I don’t think this is one of them.
And I don’t mean this as a cop-out, but I can’t answer the question as well as Pastor John does in this article: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/taste-see-articles/the-sufficiency-of-christs-obedience-in-his-life-and-death
For us to be counted as righteous requires that Christ first of all was entirely obedient. Paul talks of Christ’s obedience in Philippians 2:5-11:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
That obedience was with the full knowledge of what it would mean for him:
Hebrews 12:1-2 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
And I’m also surrounded by children who are noisily going through their evening – I’ll read your comment again tomorrow in case I completely missed the point!
Thanks, again, Nicholas.
Hi John,
I read pastor Piper’s article, and I actually agree largely with it…the catch is that I don’t see him making an argument for imputing Christ’s law-keeping obedience as opposed to just his suffering obedience.
There are two “obediences” that are commonly called – for lack of better terms – “Passive” (suffering for us) and “Active” (keeping the commandments in our place). The Passive Obedience is what I see in Scripture and what I see in Piper’s article and your comments. Jesus suffered for us not just at the Cross, but from the moment He as God humbled Himself to become man.
That, however, isn’t the same as saying Jesus kept God’s commandments in our place, or Active Obedience, which is what my list of passages above are getting at.