Calvin addressed the Pope in June!

I missed it at the time, but it seems that Calvin addressed Ratzinger in June! With a little help. Read the Christianity Today article: Christ Alone.

Quote of the day: What are you wearing?!

It matters what you wear. Whatever you do, don't go making your own clothes. You'll only be constantly wondering if it's enough. Or proud enough to imagine that it is, when everyone around you can see right through it.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;
my soul shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. [Isaiah 61.10]

I've enjoyed listening to Mike Reeves' talks on Union with Christ on my way to & from the office lately! [Oh, and if you're looking for the quotation, it's from God's word this time. Lush.]

PS Just read Stephen Dancer's paper on Calvin on Union with Christ - a helpful addition to Mike Reeves' talks.

Quote of the day: WWJD is not gospel

I've never found WWJD bracelets particularly inspiring - rather, I think if I wore one I'd find it a bit depressing! The gospel says not, "What Would Jesus Do? Go and do likewise." No, the gospel says, "What has Jesus done? Rejoice and live in Him!"

So I was interested by this snippet of discussion in the White Horse Inn broadcast from last week:

Michael Horton: So, "What Would Jesus Do?" is not the gospel?
Retired Episcopal Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison:

It is contemporary adoptionism. ... It's an ancient and classical heresy in which it reduced the work of Christ to giving us a good example. ... Jesus was baptised and we heard the Father say, "This is my beloved Son with Whom I am well pleased,"... according to the adoptionists, He did what none of the rest of us have ever done, which was to be perfect. And therefore he's like a kind of Roger Bannister, breaks the 4-minute mile, and he becomes the image by which if we just try harder, if we are scolded enough, then we will run the 4-minute mile: we will be like Jesus. And it ignores the complete OT presentation of a Messiah who came to take away the sins of the world: that God did something that we were unable to do. The Messiah came and made it all right by his actions. It leaves out 2/3 of the whole meaning of the gospel.

And yet, let's get this: neither is the gospel, "God has accepted the unacceptable: so now go and do likewise - accept yourself."
Horton, summarising Allison: It is law to tell people, "Accept yourselves," it is gospel to tell people, "This is how God has made you acceptable to Him."

So what isn't law? What is gospel? Allison says the key is imputation - not known or loved as a word because it's so awkwardly and variously translated into English (account, credit, reckon, etc.): we have no good translation for it. Of this, Allison says,

The word itself, λογιζομαι (logizomai),... is the verb form of λογος (logos). ... It's not merely that God by His action in Jesus Christ has made it possible for us to have mercy, but I am imputed as righteous, even though I am not righteous, and by that wording of me as righteous, I begin to become the kind of righteousness that we see in the second person of the Trinity.

Horton: So it is actually a speech-event: God has declared us righteous.
Amen!

Really, the Pope still isn't Protestant

A friend sent me the following:
"You will delighted to know that the pope now preaches justification by faith, ... [in] this sermon."

I'd seen about this a while ago, but thought it'd probably go unnoticed. However, given that it has been noticed, here's what I replied:

Thanks for sending on that link, it's certainly good to keep abreast of what's happening in Rome, though it must be said that the Pope's sermons have little effect to the System on the ground.

I must reply though, because although I know it's fuzzy in that sermon, and lines of it can be read in a Protestant way if we look with hope, Ratzinger does not teach the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone - in that sermon he uses those words in a context which redefines them to fit Roman doctrine. I don't want us to have a false hope [about Rome] when witnessing to Roman Catholics we meet or get to know - nor encourage them to get this truth from their Church, because it's not in the system, even if you think this sermon sounds like it in bits.

While Ratzinger is the most theologically astute Pope there's been in a long while, he has not departed from the Council of Trent where Rome anathematised Justification by grace alone through faith alone. He's a stalwart conservative in that field, but as a German theologian, he can say things subtley enough to sound [to so many evangelicals] like it fits Protestant doctrine, if you interpret one-off sentences in a Protestant way. After all, Rome has never been Pelagian in doctrine (only practice, as with many 'Protestant' churches!). Rome does not teach 'salvation by works'. (That's merely the impression you get in the System.) The actual difference is that Rome says that justification is a process of trust in Christ involving living as Christ did, whereas we protest that justification is an act of God's free grace, through trust in Christ alone, from which the life of the Spirit springs as fruit, after God's act of justification. But this is the difference between life & death, between joyful confidence in Christ & endless striving to fulfil it yourself.

In Ratzinger's words from that sermon:

"Being just simply means being with Christ and in Christ. And this suffices. Further observances are no longer necessary. For this reason Luther’s phrase: “faith alone” is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. Faith is looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ, conformed to Christ, to his life. And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love. So it is that in the Letter to the Galatians in which he primarily developed his teaching on justification St Paul speaks of faith that works through love."

R Scott Clark says:

"We agree that being just means being “with Christ” and “in Christ” by faith alone, i.e., by a “certain knowledge and a hearty trust,” by “resting and receiving” Christ and his perfect righteousness imputed by the unmerited favor of God alone. This is not what Benedict means.

We agree that “observances are no longer necessary.” We agree that faith is “looking at Christ, entrusting oneself to Christ, being united to Christ” but that’s not all Benedict says. He adds the qualifier, “conformed to Christ, to his life.” Oops. Justification by faith alone absolutely results in becoming gradually conformed to Christ, but the supreme pontiff has it that justification is predicated upon our being “conformed to Christ.” There’s more. “And the form, the life of Christ, is love; hence to believe is to conform to Christ and to enter into his love.”

You could say that it's a bit confused, and could be read either way. I'd say that's the problem - Rome confuses justification and sanctification and so undermines hope and confidence in the cross (in fact, anathematises such confidence). If my justification is based, in any way, on my love - I have no hope. (If you want to make more sense of that specific sermon, read the rest of Scott Clark's article.)

I'm saying this with tears, because it's only through God's mercy that we see the light of the gospel at all; but the Pope has not gone Protestant. He's not Pelagian, either, but that doesn't do much good for those in the system on the ground. If I sound negative or nit-picking in this, no problem: I cry over this - Life hangs on this - that justification is an act of God's free grace whereby he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, received by faith alone. Otherwise you get what Ratzinger ended with:

"And thus, transformed by his love, by the love of God and neighbour, we can truly be just in God’s eyes."

That is no hope to those who hang on his words, and no good news. It's no good news to all those RC friends I have and those students I meet.

Sorry. Still praying for reformation of grace in all churches, only hope is the active righteousness of Christ.

In Him,

Rosemary

Quote of the year: no hope without it

This year has been one of increasing thankfulness for the active righteousness of Christ. My salvation lies outside of me. It is not in my faith, nor in my feelings, nor in my ability to look to Christ. It is in Christ alone. He is my justification, and Him my righteousness.

How are you righteous before God? Only by true faith in Jesus Christ: that is, although my conscience accuses me, that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have never kept any of them, and am still prone always to all evil; yet God, without any merit of mine, of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never committed nor had any sins, and had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me; if only I accept such a benefit with a believing heart. [Heidelberg Catechism ans.60]

Thank God for the active obedience of Christ; no hope without it. [Machen]

Jesus paid it all

I hear the Saviour say,
“Thy strength indeed is small;
Child of weakness, watch and pray,
Find in Me thine all in all.”

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

For nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim;
I’ll wash my garments white
In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.

And now complete in Him,
My robe, His righteousness,
Close sheltered ’neath His side,
I am divinely blest.

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy pow’r, and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.

When from my dying bed
My ransomed soul shall rise,
“Jesus died my soul to save,”
Shall rend the vaulted skies.

And when before the throne
I stand in Him complete,
I’ll lay my trophies down,
All down at Jesus’ feet.

- Elvina Hall, 1865. Free mp3 recording from Sovereign Grace Music.

[I'd rather she'd not written only, "Jesus died my soul to save," but more: "Jesus died my all to save," or something else which would fit - but as she lifts our eyes to when we stand before the throne complete in Christ, there's a resurrection body in there too, albeit vaguely!]

I need an alien...

...righteousness. I've been looking with some student ladies at Mahaney's Living the Cross-centred life and today was on battling our inherent tendency to legalism. Is my faith enough? Am I disciplined enough? Is God pleased with me now? The answers are all in Christ. It's alien to me - because God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him I might become the righteousness of God. "Our righteousness consists in Christ's obedience imputed to me because I am unified with Him - I am in Him." (Piper, from Theology Network's latest tabletalk podcast.) Or Bunyan:

"One day as I was passing into the field . . . this sentence fell upon my soul. Thy righteousness is in heaven. And methought, withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand; there, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants [lacks] my righteousness, for that was just before [in front of] him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, "The same yesterday, today and, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from my afflictions and irons; my temptations also fled away; so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now went I also home rejoicing for the grace and love of God."

Jesus said to His Father, of those who would believe in Him through the word of the apostles: "...you sent me and loved them even as you loved me." You've failed today? Of course. But will the Father reject the sacrifice of His Son? Will he reject the perfect righteousness of the Son of Man? Will he not delight in Him eternally? Will he not fulfil every promise in Him? Do not be so arrogant as to think that your guilt can get in the way of what Christ has done.