In December 2021, I published four articles responding to Harrison Perkins’s criticism of my chapter, “Covenantal Life with God from Eden to Holy City.” in Progressive Covenantalism: Charting a Course between Dispensational and Covenantal Theologies. R. Scott Clark published the article on The Heidelblog. There, Perkins blatantly claimed, “In the end, Caneday does promote a salvation by works.” So outrageous was his accusation that I patiently responded with four articles demonstrating that his assessment and accusation were wrong and thus slanderous. Those accusations by Perkins, Clark, and others derive from their common failure to account for the New Testament’s presentation of the salvation of the Last Day brought forward in the person of Christ Jesus, consequently the already but not-yet character of salvation, including justification and forgiveness of sins, featured in this article.
Despite being available for more than four years, neither Perkins nor Clark have ever acknowledged their error of judgment nor repented of their published defamation. Though I did not write my recently published article at Christ Over All to counter Perkins’s false accusation published by Clark, it nonetheless does just that. Thus, though I rarely repost articles I have published elsewhere on this blog, I repost this article as a capstone to the earlier four-part series to expose the slanderous accusation written by Harrison Perkins and published on The Heidelblog.
All month, Christ Over All has focused on the question, “Whatever Happened to the Doctrine of Sin?”. Crucial as this is, it would be pointless and cruel if we did not address God’s glorious remedy for sin with its universal and individual consequences. Today, we redirect our focus to God’s merciful and gracious provision of his Son, to whom he imputed his wrath and punishment as our substitute, that he might acquit us sinners and remit our crimes against him. The Bible’s terms for these conjoined acts are “justification” and “forgiveness of sins,” featured in this article. The good news announces God’s Last Day verdict for everyone who believes in his Son—justified and sins forgiven.
God Promised the Savior at the Beginning in the Garden of Eden
In the Garden, God announced in advance his verdict of the Last Day on humans concerning sin: condemned to eternal death (Gen. 2:15–17). Thus, when the Serpent induced Adam (through Eve) to disobey God by eating fruit from the forbidden tree, sin’s indictment condemned the man and woman, with their progeny, to the punishment of death. Since then, every human born by the union of earthly parents has been subjected to the Creator’s same condemning verdict for sin, punishable by death in both the temporal and the eternal dimensions. Likewise, the Creator subjected the entire creation to futility in the hope of one day being liberated from its slavery to corruption—when God would redeem the bodies of his children by raising them from the dust (Gen. 3:19; Rom. 8:20–23). Thus, from the beginning, God revealed by way of prophetic prefiguring the ensuing cosmic war between the “Serpent’s seed” and the “woman’s seed,” the Coming One conceived not by the union of earthly parents but born of a woman nonetheless, who would crush the Serpent’s head—but not without the Serpent striking a wound to the Coming One’s heel (Gen. 3:15).[1]
Only the Coming One, born of a woman but uncreated, could remediate mankind’s and creation’s common plights—corruption and death. He entered his creation from heaven as the Second Man, the Last Adam, “a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45–49). As the head of a new humanity, he would sweep forward into time the judgment of the Last Day by his obedience unto death, even death on a cross (Rom. 5:19; Phil. 2:8). Thus, the visitation of God’s Last-Day-wrath upon Christ in his death on the cross effected both (1) that “we shall be saved” from the coming “wrath of God” (Rom. 5:9) and (2) the dawn of the New Creation “by which the world has been crucified” to Christ’s people and they “to the world” (Gal. 6:14–15). Likewise, he brought forward the resurrection of the Last Day into the midst of history when he arose from the dead, which was his “justification” before God (1 Tim. 3:16; Rom. 1:4), thus grounding our justification (Rom. 4:25). Because Christ lives, we who are in him shall be saved by his resurrection life (Rom. 5:10). Hence, he makes all his progeny righteous (Rom. 5:19), fulfilling the prophet Isaiah (53:11) by creating a people born not from flesh and blood but from the Spirit (John 1:12–13).
Christ Jesus Brought Forward the Last Day Judgment and Resurrection
The vast glory of God’s gift of salvation in Christ obligates Christians to ponder the multifaceted imageries Scripture uses to portray its grace and beauty. God’s Word reveals salvation, eternal life, adoption, justification, sanctification, reconciliation, redemption, regeneration, remission of sins, resurrection, and other imageries as isolated doctrines or primarily past referring.[2]
All biblical imageries of salvation in Christ Jesus entail two phases or aspects: what Scripture presents as already occurring but not yet exhausted as God’s triumphant salvation entering the present age ahead of the Last Day with the advent of his Son. Jesus vividly dramatizes the presence of the Last-Day-resurrection at Lazarus’s tomb. He enhances and develops Martha’s correct belief in “the resurrection on the Last Day” by announcing, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:24–26). Jesus’s raising Lazarus from death’s grip signified that he brought forward into the present time “the powers of the coming age” (Heb. 6:5). This prefigured his resurrection. Likewise, Jesus preached that the not-yet resurrection of the Last Day already begins in this present age through the proclamation of the gospel: “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (John 5:25). The Son’s rising from the dead was the dawn of the last days.
In the same way, Scripture portrays salvation as already ours in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:5, 8; Titus 3:5), but we have not yet received it exhaustively (Rom. 8:24; 13:11). Thus, Jesus instructs us that everyone who comes to faith in him to receive salvation must persevere to the end to be saved (Matt. 10:22). Hence, the frequent biblical imagery of the athlete sprinting forward from faith’s starting blocks endeavoring to lay hold of the prize who is Christ Jesus, to be found in him, to attain unto the resurrection from the dead (Phil. 3:8–11). As we ponder these imageries of God’s salvation in Christ Jesus, we need to believe and speak even-handedly, avoiding errors by exaggerating either the already or the not yet aspect to the suppression or exclusion of the other.[3] Among Christians, the error regularly occurs, overstating the already to the neglect of the not yet, portraying salvation as already possessed exhaustively. Hence, most Christians think of salvation as exclusively taking place in the past, testifying, “I am saved,” or asking, “Are you saved?”
Likewise, caution is necessary because of another mistake. Scripture does not present any of its multiple imageries of salvation in Christ Jesus as standalone doctrines to be detached from the many other portrayals. The Bible presents the revelation of God’s salvation through multiple variegated imageries, each like a single facet of a finely cut multifaceted diamond, together reflecting the glorious light shining forth from our Savior, Jesus Christ. No solitary imagery adequately displays the richness or fullness of Christ as our redeemer. Hence, when pondering Scripture’s theology, inevitably, we discern theological categories and thus do some level of systematic theology. For this reason, Christian theology is the activity of every believer, not just pastors, teachers, and academic theologians. Yet, we must never separate the many distinguishable imageries as isolated doctrines. For example, we must distinguish two imageries from the legal realm—justification and forgiveness of sins—but not isolate them. To emphasize this point, the remainder of this article will show how the Apostle Paul’s teaching obligates us to hold these two together.
Two Correlated Imageries—Forgiveness of Sins & Justification
Paul contends that Jesus has already brought resurrection and divine judgment forward from the Last Day because God has already poured out his wrath on his Son on the cross. The Righteous One from heaven bore God’s wrath in the place of unrighteous people (Rom. 3:21–31). With his first advent, God’s Son brought forward two correlated acts of God—resurrection and judgment—that belong to the Last Day, which consummates the present age and ushers in the coming age. The gospel orients everyone to Christ’s cross as the public display of God’s wrathful judgment against sin, for Christ, who knew no sin yet was made sin for us, being condemned as our substitute (Rom. 3:21–31; 1 Cor. 1:18; 2 Cor. 5:21). Likewise, the gospel orients us to Christ’s resurrection as God’s vindication of his Son; Christ, the Righteous One, was acquitted by being raised from the dead for our acquittal (Rom. 1:4; 4:25; 1 Tim. 3:16). These two acts stand together as the advance visitation of God’s Last Day courtroom. All those in Christ Jesus are assured that Christ’s acquittal will be ours on that day. Thus, Paul preaches already “everyone who believes is justified” (Acts 13:39).
Thus, with the advent of God’s Son (cf. John 3:16–21), the gospel already announces God’s Last Day verdict ahead of time: (1) “guilty and condemned” to all who disbelieve; (2) “sins forgiven and justified” to all who believe. Paul presents the forgiveness of sins and justification as correlated because to be justified is to have one’s sins forgiven, as Paul indicates concerning Abraham and David (Gen. 15:6; Ps. 32:1–2; Rom. 4:3–8). Accordingly, “sins forgiven” means “no condemnation” (Rom. 8:1). When Paul states, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” he uses a figure of speech called litotes which uses a negated understatement to express an emphatic affirmative.[4] Rom. 5:16, 18 supports this; the opposite of condemnation is justification. Thus, Christ Jesus does not simply expunge our criminal record against our Creator, wiping out the past charges against us and giving us a fresh start. The litotes mean, “Everyone in Christ Jesus is most assuredly justified already”—that is, we’ve been declared righteous on account of Christ’s resurrection (Rom. 4:25).
It is crucial to recognize that when the gospel announces the forgiveness of our sins and our acquittal (justification) to all who believe in Jesus Christ, the proper reference point is the Last Day, the Day of Judgment, and not the moment we first believe the gospel message. God’s pronouncement of justification and forgiveness does not concern only our present or past sins but all our sins reaching forward to the Last Day (Rom. 4:4–8; Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14; 2:13).[5] This does not nullify our need to confess our sins to receive God’s forgiveness or our need for deeds commensurate with justification (1 John 1:9; James 2:14–26).
Here is the precise point where, while affirming the already aspect of forgiveness of sins and justification, we must not relinquish affirming equally firmly our need to heed the gospel’s perpetual call to persevere in Christ Jesus. This is why, though Paul’s emphasis is on the gift of justification already received by belief in God who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead (Rom. 4:24; 5:1, 9; 8:30; Gal. 3:6; Tit. 3:7), he also presents justification as the future hope not yet exhaustively received, for which believers yearn. “For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness” (Gal. 5:5). Justification is a gift “we eagerly await” because it is what we “hope for.” Paul affirms, “We have now been justified” by the death of Christ (Rom. 5:9), yet, he locates the gift of justification as coming to us in the gospel from the final day, when he confidently exclaims, “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:8).
Believers are already justified, yet believers await the crown of justification not yet awarded to us until the Day of Redemption. To be justified already provides no basis to behave as though the crown of righteous were already in hand so that our behavior is irrelevant to our justification, for “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). The gift of justification is not yet exhaustively ours as if our speech doesn’t matter, for Jesus affirms, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt. 12:36–37). With its even-handed presentation of the gift of justification as both already ours but not yet exhaustively possessed, the gospel constrains us to obey the Lord Jesus Christ so that the good work God has begun in us may be brought to completion until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6).
Conclusion
Doing theology responsibly requires our capability to distinguish concepts without separating them. Severing the already and not yet aspects or phases from one another, as if justification and forgiveness of sins consisted of two separate proclamations by God, is to flirt with (if not fall into) serious error. Scripture holds the two aspects together harmoniously. This obligates us to distinguish the two phases of justification and forgiveness of sins without separating them. Thus, to claim that any attempt to account for the not-yet aspect of justification and forgiveness of sins is tantamount to embracing a Roman Catholic doctrine of works-righteousness is to dismiss a vital truth to which Scripture testifies. It is also necessary to distinguish the basis of our justification—Christ’s bearing the Father’s wrath on our behalf and being raised from the dead—and the means of our justification—belief in Christ Jesus, who alone bore our deserved wrath and rose from death on our behalf. We are wrong to isolate the gospel’s proclamation of justification and condemnation from God’s verdict on the Last Day. We must learn how to affirm that the announcement of God’s justifying verdict in the gospel’s proclamation to everyone who believes is also the individually assured advanced declaration of God’s published verdict of acquittal on the Last Day. Justification and forgiveness of sins are singular with discernible but inextricable aspects, both now and not yet. The already and not yet aspects of justification and forgiveness of sins are no more divisible than the moon’s first crescent and full phase. The same and singular moon reflects light with discernible and distinguishable phases, the crescent as the promise of the full. There are not two moons. Likewise, there are not two justifications or two remissions of sin, one when we believe in Christ and a second on the Last Day. Whether Scripture speaks of justification and forgiveness of sins now or not yet, it is the singular Last-Day-verdict with distinguishable aspects, the advance announcement testified to by the Holy Spirit as the promise of the public pronouncement on the Last Day. God already assures us, his children, by Spirit-bequeathed-faith that we stand justified before him with our sins forgiven, but not yet do we have the published verdict of justification and forgiveness of sins when we will be publicly revealed as God’s sons (Rom. 8:19).[6] At that time, the Creator will at last liberate creation from its bondage to corruption due to Adam’s disobedience, then set right by the Last Adam who obeyed for us.
[1] The remarkable expression, “the woman’s seed,” should give pause to every reader to contemplate how noteworthy it is. Everyone knows that when conception occurs, the man, not the woman, contributes the “seed.” Hence, this is an early prophecy that a virgin would conceive the Coming Redeemer. Of course, the “woman’s seed” also gives rise to a people born not of flesh and blood but of the Spirit, a people who will participate in the trampling of the Serpent underfoot (Rom. 16:20).
[2] In The Race Set Before Us, Thomas Schreiner and I identify five categories within which these portrayals may fit: (1) deliverance, (2) renewal, (3) family, (4) cultic, and (5) legal. This abbreviated presentation does not include all the categories or imageries. See the rich and full discussion of the multitude of biblical imageries or metaphors for salvation in Thomas R. Schreiner & Ardel B. Caneday, The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance & Assurance (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2001), 47–86.
[3] Exaggerating the already while suppressing the not-yet aspect inclines one toward antinomianism. Exaggerating the not-yet while suppressing the already aspect inclines one toward a system of works-righteousness.
[4] Litotes is a much more common figure of speech than many might suppose. For example, to say, “This is no small matter,” means, “This is a very important matter.”
[5] See Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1938; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979), 55.
[6] “By faith” and “by sight” derives from Paul’s rule, “for we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7), with which John agrees, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared” (1 John 3:2). See also Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., By Faith, Not By Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster), 93.