In chapter four of Piper’s book, I suspect there is a little bit of Piper and Wright talking past one another. In this chapter, Piper is arguing for the “necessity of real moral righteousness” in justification.
The entire question of the atonement revolves around this question — how can God be just and the one who justifies? Piper recognizes that Wright holds to the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and this means that ultimately both men resolve the dilemma in a similar way. But it appears that they are appealing to the death of Christ to achieve a different good result. According to Piper, Wright wants to say that because of the death of Christ, the just verdict is “guilty, sentence commuted.” Piper wants to say that the just sentence is “not guilty.” Piper argues that clemency or forgiveness are not the same thing as justification (when justification is understood as the imputation of an alien righteousness). Piper wants to insist, and I think rightly, that the two concepts are interdependent.
At the conclusion of this chapter, Piper returns to the theme of the previous chapter — the claim that Wright makes that “the righteousness [we] will have will not be God’s own righteousness” (p. 79). Piper responds that “because of the work of Jesus Christ, it is not in fact nonsense to speak of the defendant in some sense sharing in the righteousness of the judge” (p. 79).
First, in his discussion of imputation, Piper uses the language of “alien” righteousness, to which we have to reply yes and no. It is an alien righteousness, in that it does not originate in any way, shape or form from us. It is important to emphasize the alien nature of this righteousness lest any man should boast. But in another sense, it is no more alien to us than the disobedience of the first Adam was alien to us. Christ’s actions are imputed to us because He is our last Adam.
A second point is related to this, and reveals something (perhaps) of what Wright was trying to get at. Note that Piper describes the whole thing as an issue of whether “divine righteousness” is imputed “to humans” (p. 80, emphasis added). But this is not what happens at all. The righteousness that is imputed to us is human righteousness, the obedience of the man Christ Jesus. Jesus was the first complete human being and, as such, His obedience is the possession of all who are reckoned as His descendants. Jesus is, of course, fully God, but His divinity is not imputed to us, nor is the righteousness that is characteristic of that divinity. Christ lived a perfect sinless life as a man, and that truly human obedience is what is credited to us.
But even with that qualification, I am still more in sympathy with Piper here than with Wright. When Wright rejects the idea of righteousness floating across the courtroom, the absurdity he rejects is not rendered less absurd by switching around who the righteousness is floating from. Wright rejects this idea because of how he conceives of the nature of righteousness (“not an object, substance or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom”), and not because some traditional expressions had the righteousness coming directly from the judge and not from the lead co-defendant. If this last expression were his reason for rejecting it, then Piper’s slip of divine righteousness > humans might be used to reinforce this point. But if righteousness (not being an object, substance or gas) cannot be passed around the courtroom without making “no sense at all,” then I cannot be represented in that court by my new father, the last Adam. And that means that things are going to go badly for Wilson when they get to my name on the docket.
But one last comment. I do believe that Wright is guilty of confusion here in his systematic sorting out of these issues, but not of rejecting something crucial. In other words, I don’t believe he denies this important point — in fact, in much of his work, he actually reinforces it in powerful ways. Wright has taught repeatedly that Jesus came to live out a “new way of being Israel,” or, more expansively, a “new way of being human.” But how do we get a piece of that? We are badly stuck in the old way of being human. By faith, Wright would say, which is exactly right. But as we exercise faith, in order for this new way of being human to become true of us, God has to justly impute the obedience of Jesus to us. Jesus did not just model for us the important lesson of how not to be human. He did not just “stay out of sin” for thirty three years. He also served God faithfully and completely, and His righteous story is now the new and complete story of the new Israel, the new humanity, and is therefore the story of everyone who is in Him.
How could His obedience not be ours? He is an Adam.