Not what kind of faith, but what kind of righteousness

by Mark McCulley

Shakespeare's essay (John Shakespeare, "Justification, Works and Faith") is merely a simplified version of Don Garlington and John Piper/ Dan Fuller (and before them William Law and John Wesley). Notice how he focuses so much on the nature of faith and says NOTHING about the obedience of Christ or the blood or the cross. This is because he thinks faith is the righteousness God accepts. Thus his concern to say what kind of faith this must be.

Of course it is good to talk about what kind of faith is necessary. But before we do that, we better talk about the object of faith, and better be clear that faith is not in faith but in the righteousness of Christ. This is something that idolaters like Shakespeare do not understand. 

Like James D. G. Dunn and NT Wright and others from the "new perspective," he tells us that Jews (converted and unconverted) never thought that they had to be perfect or that their works were meritorious. (For the most sophisticated version of this argument, see Roman Catholic WTS trained Robert Sungenis). This is partly right. Unconverted Jews DID THINK THAT they could be accepted without merit and with imperfect works. This is what they called "grace". It is what many "Calvinists" today call grace.

But God is BOTH just and the Savior. This is the only God there is. This is the only gospel there is: that God has obtained a perfect righteous by the obedience and death of the God-man and that God gives His loved elect every blessing on the basis of the merit, the righteousness of our God and Savoir Jesus Christ. Even the gift of "precious faith" comes from this righteousness. (II Peter 1:1) 

Faith not only comes from the righteousness. Acceptable necessary faith has as its object this righteousness. Shakespeare is a "Calvinist". This means that he thinks he avoids self-righteousness and legalism by giving his god and grace the credit for being the source of his faith. But his faith is in an idol, because its object is not what Christ did in His death and obedience. The object of Shakespeare's faith is in what he thinks his god has given him, that is, in his faith and his works. 

But the righteousness of God is not faith, not even faith with the right object, the correct doctrine, and in the true God. To believe the true God's gospel is to believe that faith and works are not the righteousness, but the fruit and effect of righteousness. 

Shakespeare does the usual distinction between works and ceremonial works. This is not new to Dunn or Garlington: it was what the Roman Catholics tried to tell John Calvin. Moo and Westerholm and Schreiner and many others have shown that all works of any kind are being excluded in the antitheses in Gal 2:16, in Eph 2:8-9, in Romans 9:11--(the children not being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of election might stand, not of works but of him who calls), in Romans 11:6 (if by grace, it is no longer of works; if of works, no longer grace.)

The contrast is not only with ceremonial works, since God justifies THE UNGODLY WHO DO NOT WORK. Romans 4 is confirmed by Romans 9:30-31. The problem is not that some sinners try to get righteousness from the law the wrong way, where others sinners obey or believe the right way. The problem is that no sinner gets righteousness by obeying the law anyway, and that elect sinners get righteousness by imputation. And what is imputed is not faith and works, but what Christ did. By that obedience the many are constituted righteous. Romans 5:19

But that is "forensic", not transformationional, Shakespeare complains. So he attempts to ignore (but not deny, especially for the "getting in" part) the forensic part and focus on the "proper faith" transformational part. But God's law and verdict cannot be ignored, and so he ends up teaching a future justification (never in this life) based on perseverance. Perseverance is what he thinks God counts as the righteousness. No problem, no merit, he says, since God is the one who makes us persevere. 

There are major problems here. At least he does see that his is a radical departure from the Reformation. (in this he is more honest than Kevin Craig or John Piper) Two major problems. 1. He is persevering in idolatry. His faith may continue, but the object of his faith is not the righteousness obtained by Christ's fulfillment of the law, by which Christ perfected the saints. (Heb 10:14). 2. The righteousness is what Christ did, not what Christ is doing in us now. What Christ is doing in those who truly are submitted to the gospel is vital and necessary, but is not necessary for righteousness. 

Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for all who believe. Romans 10:4 That does not mean only Christ "the person" before he was incarnate, or even Christ "the person" after he was incarnate, but it means Christ's finished work has finished what the law required for all the elect. That Christ was the person He was made His work the complete satisfaction it was!  

Even submission to the true gospel is not the righteousness. Quickening, faith, repentance, conversion are all the effects and fruit of the righteousness. But it is not possible to preach this or remember it if one does not preach that Christ died only for the elect. And even if one does preach that Christ died only for the elect, if one makes what God does IN those elect to be some of the righteousness, some of the object of faith, then one has rebelled against the rule of Galatians 6:14-16 that we are to glory only in the cross and to judge by that. 

Shakespeare quotes James 1:20. "The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God". From this he infers that the non-wrath of man is the righteousness of God. One, there is a sense in which we can speak of the acts of righteousness of justified persons. Two, we should not speak of these acts of righteousness as being the object of our faith. Even these acts are "menstrual cloths" when it comes to producing the righteousness God requires so that God will bless and forgive the elect. The faith of the converted elect is in what Christ did, not in what Christ is doing in them. To base one's confidence in what God is doing in me is to be a self-righteous legalist who thinks that God will justify persons who "sin less than they did before conversion".

I am not denying transformation, nor even the sin less. Since the unconverted do nothing but sin all the time, certainly there is less sin in those whom God has made to submit to the gospel. But this less sinning, this obeying, this submitting, none of it is the righteousness which God accepts as the reason for justifying one person (in the future) rather than another. At that future judgment of works, the great question will be: was this worker a justified worker, or not. If not, all his works will be judged evil. If the worker is a justified worker, then he was justified not by what God did in him but what God did in Christ for him.

Shakespeare writes that works = faith. Thus Romans 11:6 means if works, not works, and if faith, not faith. But he cannot wish away the Biblical distinction between faith and works. Faith has an object not itself: faith receives righteousness, even the receiving of righteousness is the fruit of righteousness. Faith is not a work. The reason faith is not a work is not because faith is a gift of God. God causes and gives it to people so that they work also. (Eph 2:10 workmanship) God causes and gives it to people that they believe. The reason faith is not a work is that faith has as it object the gospel of imputed righteousness. Shakespeare has no regard for this gospel. 

But works "have a part in" our salvation, he writes. Yes, and so so faith "have a part in" it. But the question is: what part? He assumes that God counts faith (and perseverance) as the part God calls righteousness. But faith is "unto" righteousness. Faith receives righteousness. Faith receives the atonement, the reconciliation. (Romans 5:11). But the reconciliation by which God gave the Son to turn away God's wrath and to obtain right and merit before God, the atonement, this has no part in Shakespeare's gospel. Indeed, I don't think Satan will use his essay as effectively as he does others from the "new perspective", simply because Shakespeare doesn't even attempt to bring in the atonement alongside of the perseverance. All the righteousness he talks about is the perseverance of sinners in their "non-merit and non-law works"

Shakespeare expressly quotes Romans 3:21 (but now the righteousness apart from the law is revealed) and II Cor 5:21 (to be sin for us, so that we would become the righteousness) and then explains that this righteousness is not about Christ being made sin, or being made a curse under the law, or about Christ's obedience to God's covenant-mission-law. No, he explains: "Salvation is accomplished through the good work which God has implanted in us and enables us to do. There is no other sense in which these words can be understood." When I read that, I knew I was reading not only a self-righteous legalist but an exceedingly proud and stupid one. There are many many commentaries (not only "systematic" theologies) which give a very different exegesis, especially to verses like Gal 3:13, II Cor 5:21, and Rom 3:21. The only thing I can hope is that the people who listen to this particular clergyman are concerned to search the Bible and not to accept things uncritically when a man says that "no other sense is possible". 

There is no gospel in Shakespeare's essays. All he has is "believing response to God's law". Though believing the gospel is not the righteousness, it is it necessary for the elect to believe the gospel and the elect will believe the gospel. But for Shakespeare, believing on Christ only means doing what he says to do, with the idea that your future justification depends on your doing it, even though it is not meritorious and even though there is some "grace" for your less than perfect, just so you sin less than you used to and less than others still do.

Why is it just for God to forgive the sins of His elect? This is something Shakespeare cannot tell us. He seems to think that God forgives because of a combination of His grace and the sinner's perseverance. Some sinners are more forgivable than others, because some sinners persevere more than others. This is self-righteousness. God is just to forgive the elect sinners God loves because Christ obtained a righteousness which demands that these sinners be forgiven. If these sinners are not forgiven, then God is not just and the work of Christ hasn't enough value. Every sinner God forgives will be given knowledge, commitment, faith and perseverance to abide in the true gospel.

No, the Jews (converted and unconverted) never thought they could keep the law perfectly. And yet those who were unconverted ignorantly tried to establish their own righteousness. (Romans 10:3) They said that they would be saved not by the merit of their works but by God's "grace" accepting their works as righteousness established. (This is the argument of Sungenis). In other works, unconverted Jews believed the same thing as lost Calvinists like Shakespeare still believe. They have not submitted to the righteousness revealed in the gospel. They say 1. our works God causes us to do. 2. our works are not merit. 3. our works are faith 4. God's "grace" accepts our works as the righteousness required. 

But God never has and never will accept anything as that required for justification but that GOD-righteousness produced by the God-man when He finished the work of reconciliation by His death and resurrection. Even though God works in the hearts of the elect to transform them, that transformation is a result of what Christ's finished work. We must not put that work in us alongside of what Christ did in his life and death for the elect. The work in the elect is the necessary result of the work for the elect. The work in the elect is not perfect, and is not the righteousness God requires. 

The righteousness of faith is not faith. The righteousness of faith is the object of faith; the message to be believed is about what Christ did to satisfy the covenant will of God by which Christ the "Servant" did all that was necessary to merit every blessing for all those He was given. (John 17; Hebrews 10; Ephesians 1). At this point, if I had been reading this when I was a proud lost Calvinist, I would have asked: do you mean "the covenant of grace", and are you a "covenant theologian?". I was easily distracted by many many things, and only the grace of God undistracted me so I attended to the important questions and stopped chasing all the others. I don't care what you call it (God's law, God's covenant of redemption, the suretyship, whatever), but I know that the only true peace and joy found in this world is to be found by resting in what Christ did and not in my resting, not in my abiding.

When I say resting and abiding in the gospel, I mean that I will not agree that people who have another gospel (the way Shakespeare does) are Christians. I mean that I am dogmatic about what the gospel is and about who God is and about who Christ is and therefore about who I am and who my brothers and sisters are who believe the same gospel as Jesus taught. God will not justify the one who thanks God for producing in him a righteousness which is not like that of another sinner. 

Shakespeare is worried about those whose conversions "leave them no less sinful than they were.". As I have already stated, those still in Adam do nothing but sin, cannot bring forth good fruit. Those not yet delivered to obeying the doctrine of the gospel do nothing but sin. But my concern is those whose conversions to Calvinism leave them more self-righteous than they were before: when they were Arminians, they boasted in their decision, but now they boast in their perseverance (even as they like the Pharisee give their god the credit for it). But they still do not glory only in the cross, they still have much confidence in their flesh (though they call what their flesh does "mortification" or "sanctification" or "God's Implanting"). Shakespeare, like most evangelicals and Roman Catholics, is teaching justification by regeneration and infusion, and not by the imputation of what Christ did for the elect.

Shakespeare writes about the "unbiblical and dangerous doctrine of justification by faith alone". I agree that faith alone is not the reason any man is justified. If that is what Luther taught, he was wrong. But the issue is not if Luther is wrong, or even if Shakespeare is wrong. The issue is that Christ did something for the elect and that this something that Christ did is itself (without anything added) all that is needed to guarantee and entitle the elect to every spiritual blessing in Christ. The blessings of faith, of commitment, of works, of perseverance are all results of that obedience of Christ, by which he made an end of the law for the elect FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS.