Whatever We Call It

The next to last chapter of Piper’s book (not counting appendices) returns to the question of imputed righteousness.

“Wright regards the imputation of God’s righteousness as something that can be imputed to us or counted as ours as at best a category mistake” (p. 163).

And of course, we need to return to a distinction made earlier in this discussion. Wright sees the “righteousness of God” as that which describes His keeping His covenant promises, and, since we are the recipients of that faithfulness, it makes no sense to speak of His covenant faithfulness becoming our covenant faithfulness to us. But there is another aspect of this. In other words, we see the righteousness of God in Christ, and when we speak of imputation, we are speaking of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. I am aware of no one who believes that the Father’s heavenly righteousness is imputed to us directly. Christ is the new Israel, and because I have faith in Him, His obedience as that new Israel is my obedience. I have been enabled to become a new Israelite, and this new Israel is not a loser like the old one. And every new Israelite is righteous by virtue of his union with Jesus Christ by faith. What is this but imputation? What is this but the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, which was lived out and made available to us by God’s righteousness. In other words, what we get from God is by virtue of the Incarnation, Cross and Resurrection.

The righteousness of God’s (His covenant faithfulness) caused Him to send Christ. But He didn’t just send Him, He also reckoned that His righteousness was ours in the same way that He reckoned that our unrighteousness was His on the cross.

Piper quotes Wright (referring to 1 Thess. 2:18-20) as saying this:

“This is why, when Paul looks ahead to the future and asks, as well one might, what God will say on the last day, he holds up as his joy and crown, not the merits and death of Jesus, but the churches he has planted who remain faithful to the gospel” (pp. 165-166).

Piper rightly takes him to task for this by citing 1 Thess. 5:9-10: “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that . . .” Paul does appeal to the death of Jesus when contemplating the final judgment. But of course, if this is not understood in either/or terms, both men are right. It is false to say that Paul has no thought of the churches he planted when he contemplates the last day. It is equally false to say that he has no thought of the death of Jesus Christ for him. Think of Galatians 2:20 — why would that cease to be his basis for living the closer he gets to the day of judgment? Is he going to live his life by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave Himself up for him, and then quit trusting in that as he approaches the judgment? But the death of Jesus does not displace other aspects of our life — rightly understood, it is foundational to everything else. There is no inconsistency between resting on Christ alone and His death on the cross and resurrection on the day of judgment, and also saying, “Here am I, and the children you have given me.”

I am on the road, and just got back from a wonderful lunch with a group of very sharp seminary students from RTS in Jackson. We spent a good bit of time talking about these issues of imputation, and the active and passive obedience of Christ. If Wright is arguing with the merit paradigm, and he is rejecting it while using the language of imputation, I am sympathetic. If I may speak in a cryptic fashion, merit bad. Merit no good. So to speak. But the obedience of Jesus, all of it, is ours. Christ recapitulated the history of Israel in His life, and He did not do this as a type of typological doodling. There was a point — there was a need for it. Israel needed to do it right, and Christ as the new Israel did it right. This is nothing other than the good news of imputation. I needed to have that obedience, and now, by faith in Jesus who did have it, I do have that obedience.

But if Wright is rejecting more than the brownie points system, and is rejecting the idea of imputation itself, then I am with Piper. But I don’t know how Wright could be rejecting imputation itself — provided we define our terms carefully. Wright knows that Jesus recapitulates the history of Israel, only doing so in obedience instead of the old Israel’s disobedience. Since He was not simply amusing Himself, that recapitulation is ours. And if it is ours, it has to be ours by imputation, whether righteousness floats across a courtroom or not, and whatever you call it.

Why am I a sinner? It is because my covenant representative, my covenant head, disobeyed in the Garden. How did that unrighteousness get to me? It did so by covenant representation. The whole federal vision controversy boils down to this — the Latin word foedus means covenant. The original meaning of the word federal means covenantal. The federal vision constitutes an attempt to get Reformed Christians to see life (that’s the vision part) more covenantally. But covenant theology does not refer to God making countless covenants with countless individuals. He made one new testament, in which we all participate by faith. And when we participate in the covenant, we are united to the head of that covenant. When we are united to Him, all that He is, all that He has, and all that He has done, becomes ours. That is imputation, however we dance around, or whatever we call it.

Now, one of you will say, what about the reprobate covenant member? Is he united to Christ in the same way, in such a way that he enjoys the benefits of this imputation. No, of course not. The elect covenant member and the reprobate covenant member are not united to Christ in the same way, with duration being the only difference. There is a qualitative difference between them all along.

To summarize, anyone who believes that Jesus is a covenant head, anyone who believes that Jesus is the new humanity, anyone who believes that Jesus is the new Israel, believes in the imputation of Christ’s obedience, all kinds. And I am glad, because otherwise we should worry.