Paul's Passing Thoughts

“….so, a supposed concern for an illegitimate new birth is clearly not the concern, they reject the new birth all together as significant to sanctification.” 

If one goes to the Together For Gospel Sanctification (T4GS) infosite: t4g.org, they can observe the New Calvinist coalition’s official statement concerning the gospel. It reads as follows:

The Gospel

The Gospel is the joyous declaration that God is redeeming the world through Christ (Matt 1:21; Luke 1:68; Eph 1:7; Col 1:20), and that He calls everyone everywhere to repent from sin and trust Jesus Christ for salvation (Mark 1:15; Acts 2:38; 17:30).

Each of us has sinned against God (Rom 3:23), breaking his law and rebelling against his rule, and the penalty for our sin is death and hell (Rom 6:23). But because He loves us, God sent his Son Jesus (John 3:16; Eph 2:4; 1 John 4:10) to live for his people’s sake the perfect, obedient life God requires (Rom 8:4; 1 Cor 1:30; Heb 4:15) and to die in their place for their sin (Isa 53:5; Mat 20:28; 26:28; Mark 10:45; 14:24; Luke 22:20; John 11:50-51; Rom 3:24-25; 4:25; 1 Cor 15:3; 2 Cor 5:21; Eph 5:2; Heb 10:14; 1 Pet 3:18). On the third day, He rose bodily from the grave (Mat 28:6) and now reigns in heaven (Luke 22:69; 24:51; Heb 8:1), offering forgiveness (Eph 1:7), righteousness (Rom 5:19), resurrection (Rom 8:11), and eternal blessedness in God’s presence (Rev 22:4) to everyone who repents of sin and trusts solely in Him for salvation.

Looks pretty orthodox, but the devil is in the details. Literally. I have no specific beef with all of the statement and its Scripture citings, EXCEPT the sentence fragment that makes it a blatant false gospel:

….God sent his Son Jesus (John 3:16; Eph 2:4; 1 John 4:10) to live for his people’s sake the perfect, obedient life God requires (Rom 8:4; 1 Cor 1:30; Heb 4:15)….

Double Imputation and “Legal Fiction”

That’s not orthodoxy. First, God doesn’t require a perfect life for salvation, he requires a perfect sacrifice. And if he required a perfect life, we would all be toast, which is the very straw man New Calvinists use for their false gospel. Hang with me here. This is the belief that God’s part in salvation, justification, has to be maintained in real life in order to “stand in the judgment.” When we believe in the works of Christ for salvation, we are declared righteous and forgiven of past sins, but that REALITY must be sustained and confirmed in the future judgment by God. If not, supposedly, the declaration is “forensic/legal fiction.” This is all right out of Seventh-day Adventism and the faulty premise that drives 90% of all other false gospels.

Said another way, the law must be perfectly obeyed to establish God’s legal declaration as being true. And the declaration must be confirmed as being true at the judgment.  This is works salvation. Somebody has to work to prove the declaration true. New Calvinists then say, “EXACTLY! That is what we are trying to say! Unless it is a reality, God’s declaration is a farce!”  Or, “legal fiction.” We are declared righteous, but really we aren’t. Obviously, the best of us break the law daily. Before I get into true orthodoxy, let me tell you what their solution is and where they got it.

Their solution is a complex formula that enables believers to continually offer the perfect works of Christ to the Father in order to maintain the true reality of justification. This is the very definition of FAITH according to New Calvinists. “The just shall live by faith.” Right? Even in sanctification, we must “trust in the saving works of Christ” and not “our own.” Right? Let me pause/interject here for a moment and answer that: no. We don’t trust in the saving works of Christ for sanctification; we trust in His POWER for sanctification. We trust in His gifts for sanctification. We trust in His promises for sanctification. Huge difference! We are already totally saved; nothing or nobody has to maintain our salvation via perfect obedience to the law—it is a finished work, but sanctification isn’t.

However, if sanctification is seen as that which completes justification, as New Calvinists do, perfection would be required, and of course, practically speaking, we can’t foot that bill, someone else must do it for us. Hence, New Calvinists have a formula for offering the perfect works of Christ by faith in sanctification to make the legal declaration true.

What is it? Well, how were we saved? Same way. That way, the same faith in the same gospel that saved us, also sanctifies us. Sound familiar? What’s good for the justification, is also good for the sanctification. Yes, we do something in sanctification, but it is a formula of faith and not works. It is offering the perfect works of Christ to the Father by faith, and not our own. That’s why Christ supposedly had to live a perfect life for our justification—so his obedience can be offered up in place of our own by faith alone.

Where did they get this formula? They got it from Progressive Adventism. I substantiate this in The Truth About New Calvinism. The following is an example from Progressive Adventism’s theological journal, Present Truth Magazine. This quote will also add understanding /clarification to what I am posting as well:

We say again, Only those are justified who bring to God a life of perfect obedience to the law of God. This is what faith does—it brings to God the obedience of Jesus Christ. By faith the law is fulfilled and the sinner is justified (Present Truth: vol.7 art.2 part2).

Of course, there are some variations among New Calvinists concerning the formula, but some elements seem to be pretty consistent. The idea that can be seen in the aforementioned fragment that is the crux of this post alludes to one—the idea that Christ’s perfect obedience was imputed to us for obedience in sanctification. If Christ’s perfect obedience was imputed to our sanctification, that makes the perfect obedience required by the law a reality for us because we offer Christ’s obedience by faith, and the legal declaration is therefore found true. But you say, “Yes Paul, but we are the ones specifically declared righteous.” And they would say, “Yes, but that has to be seen in its gospel context—we are righteous IN CHRIST, he is our sanctification.”  Sound familiar?

The New Birth Becomes a Problem

Secondly, if Christ is our sanctification in the sense of completely fulfilling sanctification in our stead because it must be done perfectly in order for the legal declaration of justification to be found true, our “ENABLEMENT” for valid participation in sanctification becomes a huge problem because we cannot participate perfectly as required to make the forensic declaration true. Ie., something must be done with the new birth. Therefore, New Calvinists subtly deny it.  PPT has written extensively on how New Calvinists reject the new birth and I will not recite it here, but primarily, they don’t reject it out of hand, but relegate it to a subjective/inferior sphere while emphasizing the objective truth of the gospel. They often warn of “eclipsing Christ” with an overemphasis on the “subjective new birth.” Yet, Christ said: “You must be born again.”

In fact, John Piper plainly states that recognition of the new birth “infuses grace” into the believer and “reverses the relationship of sanctification and justification” making “sanctification the basis of our justification.” Piper believes that even a view of Christ working within us (ie., only a partial view of the new birth) is an “upside down Gospel” (Desiring God blog, June 25, 2009: Goldsworthy on Why the Reformation Was Necessary). You say, “Yes Paul, but he was talking about people who believe that Christ works within us to help us keep ourselves justified.” That’s exactly my point: Piper, as well as all New Calvinists, believe that anything we do in sanctification is an attempt to do that because the two are connected for the purpose of sanctification completing justification. Therefore, believing that Christ does a work within us can subjectively lead us to an effort to maintain our justification. The only safe bet is the objective works of Christ completely outside of us. Hence, the following quotes from many contemporary New Calvinists:

When the ground of justification moves from Christ outside of us to the work of Christ inside of us, the gospel (and the human soul) is imperiled. It is an upside down gospel

~John Piper

Thus, it will inevitably lead not to self-examination that leads us to despair of ourselves and seek Christ alone outside of us, but to a labyrinth of self-absorption.

~ Michael Horton

So what does this objective Gospel look like? Most importantly, it is outside of us.

~ Tullian Tchividjian

The blessings of the gospel come to us from outside of us and down to us.

~ John Fonville

If we happen to say No to one self-destructive behavior, our self-absorption will merely express itself in another, perhaps less obvious, form of self-destruction. Jesus sympathizes with our weaknesses. He was tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin. We need help from outside ourselves—and he helps.

~ David Powlison

Now, observe carefully: again, one could argue that New Calvinists are talking about people who think we can maintain justification with the help of Jesus inside of us. Specifically, a new birth/regeneration that enables us to maintain our just standing until the judgment.  So, they could say they don’t object to the new birth per se, but only a new birth that is for purposes of maintaining our just standing before God.

But they ALSO believe in the fusion of justification and sanctification. They believe that sanctification must necessarily finish justification, so anything done in sanctification must be done according to perfection (see note 1).  This can be illustrated from the above quotes. As can be clearly seen by the Tchividjian and Fonville quotes, and to a lesser degree in the other two, they believe that the power of the gospel for sanctification STILL comes from outside of believers. Remember, all of these men think the same gospel that saved us also sanctifies us (see note 2); so, a supposed concern for an illegitimate new birth is clearly not the concern, they reject the new birth all together as significant to sanctification.

New Calvinists vary on how this fleshes out; I will touch on it lightly. Some believe that the Spirit’s work is done in a heavenly realm, and the “flesh” speaks of a worldly, sinful realm. Both realms exert a pressure on us, and at any given moment, we “yield” to one or the other. This is not considered works by us, but rather a passive yielding. But the key is that it still remains faithful to everything remaining outside of us.

Yet another approach, and the most popular, is the idea that we are spiritually dead and full of idols that replace God. These idols are exhibited through desires that we have. When we find these idols and repent of them, it empties our heart and the void is filled by Christ which results in a manifestation of good works. This is a “filling of Christ” rather than a filling of the Holy Spirit. The eradication of the idols that creates the void is called “deep repentance.” The works that result from the filling of Christ are called “new obedience.”

Though Christ does the works in us, our role is a completely outward focus on the gospel, so it remains faithful to the primary formula. This also remains true to the salvation model; we are sanctified the same way we were justified—by faith and repentance only. The works are not ours, but those wrought by Christ (new obedience). This formula is articulated in the book, How People Change, written by Paul David Tripp and based on David Powlison’s Dynamics of Biblical Change.

Of course, when you consider all of this, it’s obvious that the law has to be dealt with in some way. The Scriptures are a primary concern in regard to believers participating in God’s work. Therefore, the Scriptures need to be relegated to something other than a means for believers to participate in sanctification. PPT has posted many articles concerning this and I will not stop here to elaborate, but the New Calvinist approach to the Scriptures is necessarily antinomian.

Let’s now look at the Scripture citations by T4GS that supposedly affirm the idea that Christ lived a perfect life to impute His perfect obedience to our sanctification because such perfection is required to maintain justification and the validity of the legal declaration:

Romans 8:4

in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

What does this verse have to do with Jesus living a perfect life in our place for sanctification? The subject of the verse is the believer. The verses before and after do not speak of an imputation of obedience from the perfect life lived by Christ. Nevertheless, New Calvinists use this verse to teach that a utilization of Christ’s learn and do formula (Matthew 7:24-27) is living “according to the flesh” (or the flesh realm), and living by the Spirit is through Gospel Contemplationism.

1 Corinthians 1:30

It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

The subject of this verse is God the Father, not a perfect life live by Christ of which his obedience was imputed to us. The subject of Christ’s incarnate life appears nowhere in this verse.

Hebrews 4:15

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.

Again, this verse does not speak directly to an imputed obedience by Christ—it speaks to his empathy for us and the fact that He has experienced what we experience firsthand, but without sin.

So when all of this is considered, what makes New Calvinism a false gospel?

First, it skews what becoming a Christian is (via the initial gospel presentation). It’s the good news of salvation ONLY, and not the good news of kingdom citizenship. Prime examples are the “five word” and “one sentence” gospel presentations that exclude any reference to a commitment in recognizing Christ as Lord in kingdom living (see note 3).

Second, it skews the true meaning of repentance in the gospel message. The repentance is not ours; it was imputed to us by Christ’s perfect life. Therefore, this presentation presents the gospel as salvation by faith alone [ok so far], but then goes on and presents kingdom living by faith alone as well. That’s a half gospel. It is a gospel that requires faith alone for BOTH justification and sanctification. John 13:8-10 makes it clear that repentance in sanctification is not the same as repentance for justification. One is for the washing of the whole body, and the other is daily forgiveness for how we fail in kingdom living.

Third, it makes our righteous life part of the atonement. Hence, works in kingdom living is synonymous with works for justification. Therefore, the supposed believer enters into a one-sided relationship with Christ. And it makes living out sanctification a virtual walking through a minefield. Because the two are fused, what we do in sanctification can effect our justification.

Fourth, it skews Trinitarian involvement in salvation, even though we baptize in the name of all three. If the perfect obedience of Christ is imputed to our sanctification, the generative work of the Holy Spirit is not needed.

Fifth, It plainly denies the significance of the new birth, regardless of Jesus stating: “You must be born again.”

Sixth, it clearly devalues the Scriptures in regard to instruction and obedience, since obedience has already been imputed to us.

Seventh, for a true believer, it will rob him of  assurance as a result of endeavoring to live out sanctification by faith alone (see 2Peter, ch.1).

Eighth, it skews the truth about what really justifies us. Clearly, the T4GS statement says that we are justified by the many acts of Christ in His perfect life being imputed to us. This is in brazen contradiction to Romans 5:18 and Hebrews 10:14.

Ninth, it implies a future judgment for Christians to determine their righteous standing. Christians will stand in no such judgment, and this inflicts a fearful and false duty upon the Christian to not take action in sanctification that could affect justification.

Tenth, it skews the use of the full armor of God in sanctification, hinders our love for Christ in obedience, and Robs the Father of His due glory through our lack of obedient acts that are supposedly already accomplished by someone else.

Notes

[1] “Christ has already done the imperatives on our behalf because we couldn’t. When I can’t do any given imperative perfectly (failing miserably), I rest in the One who has. Christ’s imputed active obedience is never far from the indicative-imperative rhythm of the Pauline ethic” (Pastor Chad Bresson: The Gospel Coalition blog, Imperatives-Indicatives =Impossibilities, May 3, 2010, online source: http://goo.gl/ttdZR).

[2] “I once assumed the gospel was simply what non-Christians must believe in order to be saved, while afterward we advance to deeper theological waters. But I’ve come to realize that the gospel isn’t the first step in a stairway of truths, but more like the hub in a wheel of truth. As Tim Keller explains it, the gospel isn’t simply the ABCs of Christianity, but the A-through-Z. In other words, once God rescues sinners, his plan isn’t to steer them beyond the gospel, but to move them more deeply into it (Tullian Tchividjian: The Everyday Gospel).

[3] CJ Mahaney states on page 20 of The Cross Centered Life that “Christ died for our sins” should define every part of who we are. In The Gospel in 6 Minutes video, John Piper states the following: “What’s the gospel? I’ll put it in a sentence. The Gospel is the news that Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, died for our sins and rose again, eternally triumphant over all his enemies, so that there is now no condemnation for those who believe, but only everlasting joy. That’s the gospel.”