In the midst of some very kind comments about my visit to Mississippi, Steven Wedgeworth said this:
“This was clearly the case on imputation. He kept proposing that the imputation of Christ’s active obedience was equivalent with recapitulation. Jesus is the new Israel, so there ya go. While I can see some of this, I think it is theologically imprecise, and I wonder if Wilson wouldn’t find himself more ‘FV dark’ if he were stricter with his use of terms.”
There are two issues going on here, and together they result in an amber ale — or perhaps, depending on the day, a black and tan. Let me try to sort it out.
The first concerns the simple fact of the imputation of Christ’s active obedience to somebody else, to anybody else. Every form of recapitulation requires this. This question addresses the objection that the life Christ lived was simply a necessary precondition for Him being a spotless sacrifice, which everyone in this dispute believes. But those who affirm the imputation of Christ’s obedience throughout the course of His life are saying more than that. They are saying that somehow, on some level, everything that Christ said and did is ours by faith. I have not just paid the penalty for my sins, but I have also passed the probationary test that makes continued maturation possible. This test — that of obeying God throughout the course of my life — was a test I flunked in my first father Adam, and which I passed with flying colors in the founder of the last humanity, the Lord Jesus.
“Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are your’s; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are your’s; And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21-23).
If all things are mine, then how could it be possible for the obedience of Christ to not be mine? The fact that the New Testament goes out of its way to show the life of Christ as a recapitulation of the history of Israel, but with this time Israel doing it right, makes this, in my view, undeniable. In all that He is and does, Christ is Christ for us. He does not recapitulate the history of Israel to show off how much He knows. It is not literary doodling. It is clearly redemptive — His entire life is salvific. The fact of it in the Incarnation is salvific, the trajectory of it in His recapitulation of Israel’s history is also, and the culmination of it in His death and resurrection is the capstone of our salvation.
But it is the second issue which makes all this seem imprecise to Steven. But I don’t believe it really is imprecise. Try this on. The real issue that is confounding the Reformed world is the relationship of Christ to the individual believer and the relationship of Christ to His corporate body, and then the relationship of the individual believer to that corporate body. Put this question another way — this recapitulation of Israel’s history, this active obedience of Christ — is it imputed to the reprobate covenant member? If we say that Christ’s active obedience is imputed to each elect covenant member only, one at a time, thus building up the body of the elect (as an abstracted roster), then we are disparaging the role of the organic Church. But if we say that the imputation of Christ’s obedience is “for the new Israel,” and I am a covenant member of that new Israel, then His obedience is mine, right? Q.E.D. But this leaves us to puzzle over the differences between the elect covenant member and the reprobate covenant member, and leaves the classic TR (rightly) suspicious. The imputation of the active obedience of Christ cannot be taken as simple handwaving over the entire visible Church. In my appeal to the recapitulation of Israel’s history in the life of Christ, that is not what I am trying to do.
This is how I understand the difference between the elect and reprobate covenant member in their enjoyment of the benefits of that covenant. By “benefits of that covenant” let us use the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, but I believe the same thing applies to all the blessings of the covenant. The elect enjoys them with the result of ultimate salvation at the last day. The reprobate enjoys them temporarily as the common operations of the Spirit, to use the language of Westminster.
If this following illustration helps, great. If not, then maybe we can find a better one later. We are all in the car of salvation, barreling along at a high rate of speed, headed toward the eucatastrophic wall that bars the road at the end of history, and which we will all hit at that high rate of speed. We are all in the car, we all have a seat, we all have equal access to the drinks and snacks in the cooler, and we are all buckled up, except for some sons of Belial in the way back. We have all been expressly told to buckle up, and we have mostly done so. Some of those buckled have just shoved the thing in thoughtlessly, but the converted covenant members hear the click. That click makes all the difference, for everyone and in everything.
So the qualitative difference between the elect and reprobate extends to their enjoyment of every blessing. It affects every blessing, and it affects it totally. Is the obedience of Christ given to the reprobate car-rider? Yes, but no click. Is the obedience of Christ rendered to every elect covenant member? Absolutely . . . and click. In this respect, the reprobate covenant member’s enjoyment of the common operations of the Spirit is exactly like the reprobate non-covenant member’s enjoyment of rain and sunshine. The greater the enjoyment, the more we should have a sense of gathering tragedy and doom. As C.S. Lewis points out somewhere, damnation works backwards.