Imputation, Infusion and Eternal Consequence: A Parable

Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18: 9-14).

It is an unfair, gross distortion to hold that Rome teaches justification by works, while we Protestants teach justification by faith. The more accurate distinction recognizes on both sides the necessity of the work of Christ. Rome affirms that His righteousness is necessary for our salvation, that without it we are without hope. That righteousness, however, becomes ours through infusion. Protestants affirm also that His righteousness is necessary for salvation, that we have no hope without it. It, however, becomes ours through imputation.

Some here are quick to affirm that our differences now amount to nothing more than a tempest in a teapot. We are arguing over two, thick, theological terms that are not a part of our ordinary language. Surely such a nuance must be insignificant. But it’s not, as Jesus’ parable illustrates. Let’s look at these two men, what they have in common and what separates them.

First, it is an unfair, gross distortion to hold that the Pharisee believes he justifies himself. How quickly we pass over the one good part of his pray, “Lord, I thank you…” The Pharisee knows from whence came the power to make him righteous. He knows that he needed the grace of God, that God had to work in him, that God is due all the glory for his obedience. The publican likewise looks to God and His grace as His only hope. He knows where to turn, even as the Pharisee knows whom to thank.

The difference, however, is here. The Pharisee believes that God’s grace has made him whole, that he is now, albeit by the grace of God, just in himself. God helped him out. God stood him up. But now he is standing on his own two feet. He gives thanks to God that he is better than other men, that he doesn’t commit this sin and that, that he performs this duty and that. God has poured righteousness into him, and there he stands.

The publican, on the other hand, knows what he still is, a sinner. The mercy he cries out for isn’t that he would be made a saint, but that he would be a forgiven sinner. He cannot cooperate. He cannot stand. He can only, and even this is the grace of God, cry out for the mercy of God, which is found in Christ alone.

The bigger difference than the differing approaches of these two men, however, is what it meant for their eternities. Only one of these two men went home justified. Only one of these men was an adopted son of the living God. Only one of these two men will spend eternity walking with God in paradise. The other will spend eternity weeping and gnashing teeth. Teapot tempests have no such eternal consequences.

In our feel-good, dumbed-down, ecumenical age we find distinctions distasteful. In the faithful preaching of our Lord He demonstrates the difference they make. That said, may we Reformed protest against our own propensity to cry out, “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men, Arminians, semi-Pelagians, or even this charismatic. I score high on all theology exams and have a library that is the envy of my friends.” Instead let us, consistent with our theology, beat our breasts and cry out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Life From Death

The irony does not escape me that two days after we celebrate so earnestly the resurrection of Jesus, my dear bride begins the stem cell transplant process in our battle with leukemia. There will be a few days of sundry tests, but soon she will undergo what may be the most intense chemotherapy there is. She is in remission as I type, and God willing will be when that chemo starts. Why bury your body in chemical poison when there is no known cancer therein? Just what exactly are we trying to kill this time? White blood cells. Before we sought to kill what was killing her. Now we are seeking to kill what seeks to make her well.

The trouble with Denise’s white blood cells is that they are not up to the task. They are not able to make her well enough. Trusting in her own cells will lead to certain death. What she needs are the white blood cells of another. It is, frankly and literally, her only hope. Though her white blood cells do not have the power to make her well, they are still strong enough to fight off the white blood cells of another. That is why they must be destroyed. For Denise to live she has to give up fighting on her own, and put her trust in another.

Analogies always break down, and there is danger ahead, but let us still move forward. She is not sinless like Jesus. She is not suffering the wrath of the Father like Jesus. But Denise’s sister Susan is giving of herself, her own lifeblood, that her sister might live. She is making sacrifice, as are her seven children and godly husband. They are giving of their lives that my wife might live again. And like Jesus, they do so joyfully, out of love for her.

As we move out of this season of focused remembrance of the resurrection of Jesus, let us remember why we have this focus- that we would remember all year long. Resurrection is not something we will have done, but is the very air we breath. When we proclaim each day, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” we are not merely speaking of His creational power. This is the day that the Lord, by walking out of that tomb, has remade. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. We live in the days of hope and promise. We live in the new creation.

Jesus has not promised that the difficult and painful process my dear wife is going through will give her forty more years to serve Him here. He has, however, promised that it will make her more like Him, that whatever the outcome, she will be beautified. He has promised that either way He will be holding her, dancing with her, laughing with her. Whatever the result, the resurrection wins. No, whatever the result, the Resurrected One wins His bride. He gave her to me. Each day I give her back. Each day He makes her more beautiful. Each day I give thanks. Every day is Resurrection Day. The Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Hallelujah.

Ask RC: Why was Jesus raised from the dead?

It is a good thing to enter into the pathos of the disciples during those dark days between the crucifixion and the resurrection. It is easy for us to forget that they haven’t read the rest of the story. We live on this side of the resurrection, and its explication in Scripture. We have Truth revealed. They had only anguish and uncertainty. They had lost their Lord. Their trouble, however, was not ultimately that they missed Jesus. Their heartache was rooted in something more substantial than personal sadness. In His death we would have had to conclude one of two things. Either it means that in the end the bad guys can win, that God’s sovereignty can be overcome by the forces of darkness. Or it means something even worse, that Jesus was a sinner. Death, after all, is a function of sin. No sin, no death. Either the bad guys win, or Jesus is a bad guy. Not a choice anyone would want to make.

No sin, no death. Which is true of Jesus as well. Had He had no sin, He could not have died. What the disciples missed, and we would have missed also was that the sins that brought His death were not properly His own. Forensically, legally, by sovereign decree they were. In Himself, however, He knew no sin. He died because of our sins. God the Father poured out His wrath on Jesus that was due for the sins of His people. His wrath is finished. We are forgiven. We have peace with the Father, and so the celebration could begin, right, even with Jesus still in the tomb? His spirit had already been commended to the Father, so He is already in paradise. Why should we care what happens with His mere earthly body?

Our celebration, in principle, could have begun while His body was still in the tomb, had we known about the atonement. Without the resurrection, however, we wouldn’t know whose sins Jesus died for. Maybe He was guilty, in which case our sins are still our own. In His resurrection, however, we have not merely the salvation of His body, though that is a good thing. Not merely the hope of the salvation of our bodies, though that is a good thing. What we have is a vindication of His innocence. What we have is the Father’s declaration, “This is My Son in whom I am well pleased.” His death was because of His unity with us. His resurrection, on the other hand, because of that same unity, is in turn a vindication of us. Through His resurrection we hear our heavenly Father’s declaration of us, though we are sinners in ourselves, “This is My beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”

In His death, guilt is defeated. In His resurrection, innocence is declared. In us, He is guilty. In Him we are innocent. Good has overcome evil, because Jesus is good. The Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Hallelujah, hallelujah.

What in the World?

I posted a few days ago, on facebook and twitter, the following bit of wisdom- “Too often we train our children to make their way in the world. I want to train my children to make war on the world.” In the days that have passed I have been asked by several different people not what such training would look like, not how my children make war on the world, not what are the weapons of their warfare, but what do I mean by “the world.”

That expression, the world, is in fact used in different ways in the Bible. Sometimes it refers to the whole of the created order. Sometimes it refers to the whole of humanity, as in John 3:16. Other times, however, it refers clearly to the city of man, to the army of the serpent. When John warns us that “If anyone loves the world the love of the Father is not in him” (I John 2:15) he is not suggesting that God’s love for the world in John 3:16 means that the love of the Father is not in the Father. Here “world” refers to the world system, that realm of darkness out of which we have been called.

It is a sure sign of our worldliness that warring with the world is seen as someone unspiritual, rather than the zenith of spiritual maturity. We have come to believe that we love the world in a John 3:16 sense by loving the world in a I John 2:15 sense, and the devil just laughs.

I understand the temptation. The very first time I broke open the Word publicly, when I was 9, I followed in the same path. At Bible camp I had been chosen by my cabin to be counselor for the day. My duties included leading evening devotions. My brilliant theme? What if, I wondered, the biblical account of creation, and the scientific theory of evolution could both be true?!?!? And so that evening I shared by insights with my little troop. My hope was that not only might I not offend anyone but I might help my charges not to offend others in the future.

CS Lewis, in his brilliant Screwtape Letters, warns us against the temptation of Christianity and… It doesn’t matter what we add. Vegetarianism, socialism, nudism, libertarianism, if added to the Christian faith will swallow the Christian faith. He was right. But there is another danger, Christianity minus… We are always looking for ways to make keep the faith, and lose its hard edges. Nowhere is this more so than our desire to hold on the faith, and jettison the truth that we will be hated by the world. Every generation we find new ways to try the same folly. Hipster Christianity is just a younger demographic of the same spirit that wafts through Willow Creek and Saddleback. Let us remove the offense, and keep, what exactly?

What the world hates about us isn’t our conservative politics. It isn’t our disapproval of their sexual escapades. It isn’t our insistence in disbelieving Darwin. What the world hates about us is Jesus in us. If they don’t hate us, John is telling us, Jesus isn’t in us. There is no safe, reasonable, palatable Christian faith. There is only faith and unbelief. If the world does not hate you, fear for your soul. If the world does hate you, blessed are you for great is your reward in heaven.

Ask RC: What are your thoughts on alternative medicine?

The medical profession suffers from undue honor, and unwarranted suspicion. There are those, both patients and some medical professionals themselves, that mistake their great training with omniscience, their great skills with omnipotence. Much of this is driven by modernist presumption, the dual silly notions that man is a simple machine and that simple men can operate the machine well. The human body is knit together by God and is grand and mysterious. If technology is the god who limps, such proud doctors are just broken crutches.

On the other hand, doctors, as a profession, are not all evil conspirators or ignorant rubes who just are just too blind to see the magic healing power of: insert-home-remedy-here. Because homeschooling families as a general rule tend toward self-sufficiency and away from dependence on experts, many of them think a good root cellar and the chapters on medicine in the Foxfire books are all we really need. We think we can defeat the willful pride of some in the medical profession with our own willful pride. That’s bad medicine.

Doctors who think too highly of themselves will tend to look for technological, typically pharmacological solutions to what ails us. Alternative medicine, on the other hand, will tend toward a greater faith in the body’s own healing powers, and seek to tap into those powers. I’m sympathetic to thinking in that direction. Whether it is a nagging cough, a dripping pipe under the sink, or a sputtering exhaust in my truck, my first, natural response is always, “Leave it alone and eventually it will take care of itself.” It drives my dear wife crazy. Trouble is, sometimes a nagging cough is lung cancer, a dripping pipe is eating away at the house’s foundation, and the exhaust is leaking carbon monoxide into the cab. That’s when you want a doctor, a plumber, and a mechanic, not someone who learned their craft from their up-line in their herbal network marketing program.

I never want to discount the experiences others have had with alternative medicine. I am happy to hear about how people are made better, and to believe that there are many good men and women outside the establishment that want to help and are able to do so. Yay and amen to people getting better without the blessing of the AMA. All I ask of those in the alternative medicine cage stage is that they afford me the same honor. I’ve had my own experience as well. The traditional doctor who has cared for my family for the past fifteen years is literally one of the finest men I know. He is caring, thoughtful, gifted, humble, and the loving homeschooling father of eight. He’s far too aware of his own limitations to buy into modernist notions of the doctor as god. He knows the best thing he can do for any of his patients is what we can all do, pray to the Great Physician. We trust him, not because he is a doctor, but because he trusts Him. Moderation then is what is called for. It’s good for what ails us.