Imperishable Inheritance

Gala­tians is by far the great­est let­ter in the New Tes­ta­ment espous­ing the belief that Christ—and Christ alone—is nec­es­sary for our jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. The New Per­spec­tive on Paul (NPP) crit­ics lever­age that the “Lutheran Paul,” that is, a Paul who respond­ing to Judaic legal­ism is not a true rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Paul. Their cri­tique is that Luther read into the debate of his time into Romans and Gala­tians. Is this true, or was it that the mes­sage and appli­ca­tion of Gala­tians was as impor­tant in the first cen­tury as it was in the 16th cen­tury as it is to this very day?

Theme of Gala­tians (Yesterday)

In my study I’m cur­rently exposit­ing the great let­ter of Gala­tians. There is one over­rid­ing theme in the work: faith in Jesus Christ’s death, bur­ial, and res­ur­rec­tion is all that is nec­es­sary for our jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. The Judaiz­ers of Paul’s day were syn­cretiz­ing Judaism and Chris­tian­ity. Paul is emphatic that faith alone, and not obe­di­ence to the Mosaic Law + faith, is the instru­ment of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Con­trary to the NPP crit­ics, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion was indeed the heart of Paul’s Gospel. To Paul: Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion = the Gospel.

The Judaiz­ers didn’t under­stand the griev­ous error they were mak­ing. They were turn­ing the work of Christ on the cross into one ele­ment of sal­va­tion. Phillip Ryken in his com­men­tary poses the ques­tion: What if Paul didn’t suc­ceed in defend­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone? His con­clu­sion is that Chris­tian­ity would be a very dif­fer­ent faith then it is today, and he is cer­tainly right. Chris­tian­ity is the only reli­gion that teaches that faith alone is nec­es­sary for our sal­va­tion and once we have been jus­ti­fied we will surely be glo­ri­fied (Rom 8:29–30; Eph 1:13–14; 1 Pet 1:3–9).

Paul was respond­ing to some­thing that was as per­ti­nent then as it is today. The over­rid­ing ques­tion is: What is nec­es­sary for man to become rec­on­ciled to God sote­ri­o­log­i­cally and not in an eccle­si­as­ti­cal sense? Paul’s answer is that “we may be jus­ti­fied by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law” (Gal 2:16).

Luther’s Response

Luther responded to the Catholic doc­trine of infused right­eous­ness which is the belief that the right­eous­ness of Christ is con­tin­u­ally being added the believer through the Catholic sacra­ments. He felt, and he was cor­rect, that it robbed the true Gospel that is faith alone is nec­es­sary for jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and that Christ’s right­eous­ness is imputed in its entirety dur­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. This led Luther and the reform­ers to cry: Sola Fide! Instead of “read­ing into” Gala­tians as the NPP adher­ents would have us believe, I see that Luther actu­ally saw the true essence of Paul’s mes­sage to the churches in south Gala­tia. He com­ments on Gal 2:16:

The nefar­i­ous opin­ion of the papists, which attrib­utes the merit of grace and the remis­sion of sins to works, must here be emphat­i­cally rejected. The papists say that a good work per­formed before grace has been obtained, is able to secure grace for a per­son, because it is no more than right that God should reward a good deed. When grace has already been obtained, any good work deserves ever­last­ing life as a due pay­ment and reward for merit. For the first, God is no debtor, they say; but because God is good and just, it is no more than right (they say) that He should reward a good work by grant­ing grace for the ser­vice. But when grace has already been obtained, they con­tinue, God is in the posi­tion of a debtor, and is in duty bound to reward a good work with the gift of eter­nal life. This is the wicked teach­ing of the papacy.

Now, if I could per­form any work accept­able to God and deserv­ing of grace, and once hav­ing obtained grace my good works would con­tinue to earn for me the right and reward of eter­nal life, why should I stand in need of the grace of God and the suf­fer­ing and death of Christ? Christ would be of no ben­e­fit to me. Christ’s mercy would be of no use to me.(Source)

No won­der he was so hated by the Papacy! But it was his resolve that led us to a fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of the Gospel that had been largely absent since the min­istry and writ­ings of Paul. Luther saw that the mes­sage of Gala­tians was as applic­a­ble in the first cen­tury as in his own.

The Gospel in Cri­sis (Today)

You would think that through a study of sys­tem­atic and his­tor­i­cal the­ol­ogy that we as pro­fess­ing Protes­tants would stay far away from the griev­ous errors made by both the Judaiz­ers and the Papacy. Unfor­tu­nately, the same error that per­me­ated the church then still per­me­ates the church today.

As men­tioned, the NPP folks would deny the pos­i­tive impu­ta­tion of Christ’s right­eous­ness and that Paul was con­cerned first about sote­ri­o­log­i­cal con­cerns (i.e. jus­ti­fi­ca­tion); they declare that Paul’s view was entrenched in eccle­si­as­ti­cal con­cerns about how gen­tiles can come into covenant with Yah­weh. While the later con­cern is some­thing was on Paul’s mind (he defends it fier­cly in Rom 4 and Gal 3), the focus of Paul’s Gospel was about rec­on­cil­i­a­tion; and he “nei­ther received [the Gospel] from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a rev­e­la­tion of Jesus Christ” (Gal 1:12).

I see the most rel­e­vant attack sim­i­lar to the Judaiz­ers and the Papacy is the doc­trine of bap­tismal regen­er­a­tion. This is the doc­trine that one must be bap­tized in order to be “saved.” I’m not going to take time to exegete all their proof texts as Matt Slick has done this quite aptly. I would just like to com­ment that this doc­trine fails on three accounts: (1) it has a defunct view on the value of Christ’s death, bur­ial, and res­ur­rec­tion; (2) it adds some­thing to the Gospel of free grace such as was done by the Judaiz­ers and the Papacy; and (3) it turns sal­va­tion into a process that must be com­pleted by man thereby doubt­ing the suf­fi­ciency of the Spirit in the process of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion. I feel safe to say that any Chris­t­ian who holds to bap­tismal regen­er­a­tion is, in effect, not Chris­t­ian. It is cer­tainly not Protes­tant, and it is cer­tainly anti­thet­i­cal to Paul’s mes­sage in Gala­tians (and through­out his other epis­tles as well).

The Neces­sity of the Future Defense of the Gospel (Tomorrow)

I’m quite pos­i­tive that if the Gospel deliv­ered by Paul has been attacked so mali­ciously through­out the last 2,000 years I’m sure that the attacks will not stop in my life­time or until the escha­ton. There is now, more than ever, a need for a proper under­stand­ing of both the Gospel and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion as the mod­ern mis­sions move­ments moves towards the unreached peo­ples of the world. If Paul desired to preach the Gospel of pure grace to those who have never heard then that should set a model for the direc­tion of our church today (Rom 15:20).

God is not glo­ri­fied when we rob Him of any mea­sure of glory due Him. To take the sac­ri­fice of His Son and turn it into one ele­ment of sal­va­tion is to not only mis­un­der­stand­ing the char­ac­ter and suf­fi­ciency of God embod­ied in Christ, but it also proves that we never had a true under­stand­ing of the Gospel to being with (1 John 2:18–20). I rejoice with Paul that the Gospel is not accord­ing to men (Gal 1:11). If there were any ele­ment of my sal­va­tion left to me I would be in a dire state. Praise our God and Sav­ior for His per­fect work—redemption accom­plished and applied—which brought me to Him when I had no desire for His righteousness.

“But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been cru­ci­fied to me, and I to the world. For nei­ther is cir­cum­ci­sion any­thing, nor uncir­cum­ci­sion, but a new cre­ation. And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.” — The Apos­tle Paul