RSSRE: Grace, Merit, and Innocence… on Imputed Righteousness
I agree with Darryl Hart’s reading of Robert Rollock. Rollock was an early covenant theolgian and it is anachronistic to demand that his theological language look exactly like it would after various controversies helped us define our more precise understanding.
Rollock, like Ursinus in his Large Catechism, is rolling Christ’s active and passive obedience into His total righteousness:
Q. 87. What benefit accrues to us from the suffering and death of Christ? A. The one sacrifice, by which he has merited for us reception into the covenatn of divine grace, that is, remission of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, RIGHTEOUSNESS, and eternal life.
Now, the point is not whether you will say it the same way but whether you accept the substance. The substance is that the justified is not just forgiven but stands before God as absolutely righteous. He does not stand with a righteousness like Adam, one that is not consummated, but with the perfect righteousness of the 2nd Adam who consummated the covenant. Do you agree?
Jim Jordan’s earlier comment stated: ” affirm Christ is all in all for us, and that His perfect sinless life, His suffering on the cross, and His glorious resurrection are all credited to us. Christ is the new Adam, obeying God where the first Adam did not obey God.” I take from the is agrees with the substance. Am I right? Does Pastor Meyer’s agree?
Finally, if this is not what Meyers has in mind, please clarify where you leave the justified believer? Back where Adam was? Forgiven but in need of a personal obedience unto righteousness? Does he need to be like Adam and/or Jesus, obedient and faithful unto righteousness? Or is he already, perfectly, and eternally righteous?
To me, the gospel is at stake in the way this question is answered.
barlow
September 29th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Dr. Chellis - in your view, what is the means by which the justified stands with Christ’s righteousness? i.e., how do they “get it”?
James Jordan
September 29th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
That quotation is not from me, but I’ve no problem with it or with Ursinus’s Q & A.
The gospel is glorification by faith. Forgiveness was granted in the beforetime, but not glory. Everything awaits the fulfillment of the Adamic covenant. Jesus comes to the place Adam did not come to, and in Him so do we. We receive forgiveness and glorification in Him, in cross and resurrection. I can certainly accept “preliminary righteousness” for Adam and “perfect (in the Bible sense of mature) righteousness” in the resurrected Jesus. I receive the latter, by faith. The believer, as you say, is “perfectly and eternally righteous,” because he is “in Christ” and that is what Jesus Christ is.
In the Supper we receive childish bread, the food of priests, breakfast; but unlike under the Old Covenant, we no longer pour out the adult wine of kingship and of evening rest, but drink it also. All, from alpha to omega, is given us. Bread - birth - Tree of Life and also Wine - death - Tree of Death (of K of G & E) are given us.