Signature Justification Made Easy

Signature justification

the word justification as Alister McGrath said in his comprehensive history of the book changed its meaning with Augustine so that since Augustine the word justification has regularly been used as a way of talking about if you like either conversion or some aspect of conversion the initiator a moment of a Christian life now many reformed theologians have actually been more subtle than that and have divided it more more neatly and there are different orders salutis schemes running around in which they do that but as I as I read Paul he has a very strong theological analysis of how somebody gets to become a Christian from cold as it were a pagan and it goes like this a pagan hears the word of the gospel which is the good news that Jesus Christ crucified and risen is the Lord and Savior of the world this is absolutely crazy it's folly to two Greeks and a scandal to Jews as Paul himself knew and yet when that word is announced God's Spirit is at work through it as he says in Romans 1 in 1st Thessalonians 1 etc and people discover that they believe it that is the key moment when the gospel does its work in people's lives now when somebody believes it then God declares this person is in the right that is justification not that first moment justification is that very fine moment there and then we get to one of the key things which I simply can't see why people can't see it if you suit I mean the earliest writing Paul has on this is Galatians the earliest mention of justification in Galatians is in chapter 2 and in Galatians chapter 2 what is at stake is who are you allowed to sit down and eat with right and the question between Paul and Peter is these are Jewish Christians so they're the inner circle these are uncircumcised Gentile Christians so they are not allowed to eat together and the question of justification which is raised there is if we all believe in Jesus we all belong at the same table that is Galatians 2 11 to 21 it is not in other words in its first exposition by Paul a doctrine about how somebody gets to be in the family it's about how God has declared them to be in the family and how therefore they belong at the same table so to put it succinctly you're happy to say that Ephesians 2 which talks about being saved by grace through faith he is talking about that initial moment or how one gets in by grace yeah but when he talks about justification he's talking about the declaration you're in right standing with God as a result of coming in by grace absolutely and it's interesting that he doesn't say by grace you're justified I mean it's a different argument there it says saved and that's a very interesting point and many Christians have slid together justification on salvation as though they're the same thing and we need to be terribly careful we need to lay them out perhaps write them out what does this word actually mean how does Paul use it in these different contexts and it's very interesting that in fact the so called new perspective on Paul is at least as old as Ephesians because if you take Romans and Galatians and then move to Ephesians you'll see that in Ephesians you've got Ephesians 2:1 to 10 which is we were all sinners grace comes we are saved by grace through faith and then immediately therefore of course you Gentiles who are once outside have now been brought near and we're all part of the one family that is the immediate reference of justification by faith just as at the end of Romans three in the bit that some of John Piper's friends I'm sure Piper himself is a careful person might not do this but some of his friends and people have made similar points they cut the passage off at about verse 29 and just when Paul is saying or is God the God of Jews only is he not the god of Gentiles also and it's very interesting if you look at translations of verse 29 the Greek begins with the little word a which means or so verse 28 is we reckon that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law or is God the God of the Jews only the words that's often missing in many translations if it weren't justification by faith it would mean that God is the God of the Jews and only secondarily if at all of the Gentiles this is what justification is all about and we in the Reformation tradition I say we because I still want standing the Reformation tradition have systematically misread Paul because we weren't interested in the things that he was really interested in and it's just time that we woke up to that [Music]