Salvation Seminar Week 5.
Salvation – is it only a matter of a legal transaction? God merely declaring us “righteous” notwithstanding our sinfulness? Jesus taking on our sin and pronouncing us “justified” and “not guilty” as a legal declaration? We being clothed with Christ’s righteousness which hides our sin?
True, Scripture does indicate that justification, or salvation, does have a legal dimension (e.g., 1 Cor 4:4). But it is not the only dimension. Scripture tells us that salvation involves nothing less than actually being made like Christ. Not a mere cover-up. An actual transformation. That is why grace is so amazing–it is way more than our human nature could ever achieve.
There are two serious problems to thinking of salvation as only a legal transaction, a mere declaration of legal standing without corresponding reality. First, for God to declare us “righteous” while we actually remain sinners, then God would be making a declaration contrary to reality. He would be lying. Impossible.
Secondly, when God does declare something, it is with actual effect in reality. “And God said, ‘Let there be light’” (Gen 1:3). What happened? There was light. In the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus said the the demon, “Be silent and come out of him!” (Lk 4:35). What happened? The demon spoke no more and came out. “The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ... broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you’” (1 Cor 11:23-24). What happened? Bread became his Body. God’s word always has an effect consistent with his word. What he proclaims he does, manifesting the word in reality.
So, then, how does God’s word of salvation become true in reality? Moses tells us prophetically that our hearts would be “circumcised” so that we will love God with all our heart and with all our soul that we might truly live (Deut 30:6). Jeremiah’s prophecy of the New Covenant says that God’s law will be written upon our hearts (Jer 31:33). This “heart transformation” is the work of the Holy Spirit whom God promised to send through Ezekiel (36:26-27). In the NT, St. Paul confirms the actual transformation when he says we live this grace-filled life by “faith in the Son of God who loved [us] and gave himself for [us]” (Gal 2:20).
When God declares a sinner righteous, that decree corresponds to what actually happens. God truly makes the believer righteous by his grace. And grace is nothing less than the gift of Christ himself living in us and we being members of his body, the family of God.
Now we cannot earn this justification, this saving righteousness. It has no basis in works or merits, It is God’s grace. (Catechism, #2010.) It is an actual transformation in Christ. St. Paul writes, “For our sake, [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in [Christ] we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). We become righteous by God’s real act. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). “For by [Adam’s] disobedience many were made sinners, so by [Christ’s] obedience many will be made righteous” (Ro 5:19). In Adam, we are actually sinners. In Christ, we are actually righteous, a new creation. This righteousness is not our own but is God’s righteousness received through faith in Christ (Phil 3:8-9).
To be in Christ is to be more than forgiven – as tremendous as that is! It is to be conformed to the image of Christ, God’s Son (Ro 8:29), to share in the sonship of the Son. As the Catechism says (#1997), “Grace is a participation in the life of God. It introduces us into the intimacy of Trinitarian life.” (Cf., 2 Pet 1:4.)
So justification is a legal decree, but one in which God actually does what he declares (cf., Is 55:11). Christ is our righteousness (1 Cor 1:30).