Chief of Sinners, Really

In the next chapter, Wright addresses Philippians, Corinthians, and Ephesians. As before, I am going to tackle this piecemeal, starting with Philippians. But before getting into the text, I need to address a couple of things that have come up in the comments which, if we don’t deal with, will continue to be gum on our shoe.

The first was the question of how “merit” got to be so bad all of a sudden. Isn’t the song of the Revelation centered on the fact that the Lamb is worthy? Yes, and I don’t have any problem using merit in this sense. We are saved by the merits of Jesus Christ, plus nothing. Whenever we sing a hymn that refers to the merits of Christ, it is poetically glorious, and just like the song of the myriads of angels.

The problem is over a particular thelogical mechanism that was devised to help people understand how that merit does any good for us. Merit was depersonalized and stored in fifty-gallon drums in a celestial warehouse, and then was shipped out to us as we had need of it. This got so bad that it began to thought that various saints who had done works of “above and beyond” supererogation could even contribute to the stores in the warehouse. Some Protestants kept this mechanism, while insisting that only Christ’s merit could be transferred in that way. And of course, I prefer that to the other option, but still think the mechanism leaves much to be desired. Wright’s problem is that he believes that to believe in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to believers is to believe in this particular mechanism. But that is not true at all. The celestial warehouse may have burned down, for all I know, and Christ was still obedient throughout His life, on the cross, and in His resurreection, and that obedience is still reckoned as mine.

The second question is related. I said earlier that I believed in a non-caricatured version of the “transfer” view. So what would that look like? In the first place, I agree emphatically with Wright that justification is a status, not a quality. So what is transferred is the status of vindicated, not the quality of being a good fellow. It comes about as the result of God’s forensic declaration that we, the people of God, are in the right. We are vindicated. God can do this and not become unrighteous Himself because He is doing on the basis of the obedience of the Messiah, the true representataive of true Israel. Now mark it — representation is a form of imputation, and Wright is as dependent on it as I am.

Moreover, God makes the same declaration of those individuals within the justified people that are also genuinely in the right. Individauls are justified as well as the nation. These are the elect, and they at some point in their lives are converted to God. When they are converted to God, God makes the same kind of declaration over them — because Jesus Christ was obedient, went to the cross and rose agin, He will consider or reckon me to have been equally obedient, equally dead to sin, and equally raised to life. He does all this because I am represented by a federal head, the final Adam. And I cannot be represented by someone in this way without being blessed by imputation.

Now to Philippians. This passage really is a difficult one for Wright’s thesis because it deals overtly with Saul in his pre-converted state, and it becomes obvious that Wright has to engage in some special pleading. And because of this, his conclusion is kind of stark — having decided that the best defense is a good offense.

“Paul describes a rich, complex Christian reality, and even the most venerable traditions are capable of forcing the jigsaw of what he says into composite patterns that do not do justice either to the pieces themselves or to the larger picture they are supposed to form” (p. 130).

Indeed. This can be done by venerable traditions. It can also be done by venerable bishops.

There are three problems in this section. First, Wright believes that he can present alternatives by saying something over again in a different way.

“The conclusion is not ‘so that he may be my saviour’, but ‘so that I may be found in him‘ (p. 127).

Yes, and when I am found in Him, He becomes my savior.

Secondly, Wright persists in battling with a straw man in his insistence that Paul is not talking about an infusion of righteousness straight from God on the judgment seat.

“‘Righteousness’ here is not, despite a multitude of attempts to assert such a thing, the status which God himself posseses, and somehow grants or reckons or passes over to the believer” (p. 127, emphasis mine).

Multitudes of attempts? How about naming a couple? Honestly, the only place I have even heard of this view is from Wright. If righteousness could be transferred straight from God to the sinner, then the Incarnation was superfluous, and the death and resurrection of Jesus was unnecessary. No orthodox Protestant believes that — it is always about Jesus. The righteousness of the Father does come to me, but the mechanism for bringing it is through perfect obedience of the one who is the visible image of the invisible God. It is the righteousness of Jesus which is imputed to us, not the righteousness of the Father. Despite Wright’s throwaway acknowledgement of this view’s existence in one sentence (p. 128), he simply is not dealing with the view that Piper and multitudes of others actually hold.

And last, let me make a couple brief observations about Philippians 3:1-7 that will simply collide with what Wright argues in this section.

“Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (Phil. 3:1-7).

First, the dogs and mutilators of the flesh in v. 2 are blameless in the same way that Paul was blameless in v. 6. They still were doing what Paul was doing, and to the extent that there was a difference between them, it was because Saul would have been the worst jackal of the pack, ahead of all the others. This means that Saul was not blameless in the same way that Zacharias and Elizabeth were (Luke 1:6). He was the kind of man who would not have minded voting to hand Jesus over to death, provided that minutes were properly kept, and that the returned betrayal money was placed in the proper account. He was a wicked man, but it was not the kind of wickedness you find in a back alley of a major city. He was respectably wicked, a favorite option of a particular kind of man. I don’t know why this is so hard to grasp — we have no shortage of such men in our day.

Second, as he describes it here, he was not a man of faith. This means that he was not like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, or anyone in Hebrews 11. He believed in the Torah in a way that enabled him to believe in himself, wanting to have confidence in the flesh, and that is what every unconverted sinner is always after. Gideon was not like that, and neither was David. Anna was not like that, and neither was Simeon. He claimed Abraham as his father, but did it in such a manner as established beyond all doubt that his actual father was the devil.

As I have said before, and will say many times again, everything comes down to the biography of Saul. Was he really the chief of sinners? Or was he (or some other lying scribe) just saying that?