Union with Christ VI: The Objective Result, pt 2

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm Jon Snyder, and with me again is A .C. Floyd, and we are looking at the doctrine of union with Christ, really the central doctrine of the

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New Testament letters, because it is at the hub of all of redemption in the way that it reaches us.

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Some aspects of union with Christ and the work of Christ and the impact it has upon the believer are what we would say these are objective facts.

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These are things that the old writers just summarized under the phrase Christ for us.

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So what in the great Trinitarian work of God, what has the Father sent the

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Son to accomplish? And these great transactions have occurred and they are real, but they are not something that happened inside of us.

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They're not something we feel occur. We may feel the impact of them, you know, a sense of peace following forgiveness, but that's

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Christ for us. And then there are other aspects, and we'll be looking at that in coming weeks. There are other aspects of union with Christ which are very experiential, or they are the subjective realities.

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They are equally real. They are rooted in the objective realities, what

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God did for us, but they are things that God is doing in us. And in Christ, and Christ in the believers, there is a transforming work going on, but we're going to save that for next week.

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When it comes to justification, we're looking at that legal declaration. To justify does not mean that God transforms or makes a person morally better.

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It is a legal term, forensic term, where a judge looks at a situation and declares a man who is right with the law to be right with the law.

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He is innocent of what he's being charged with. Or he looks at the facts, and he sees a man who is guilty, and he condemns him.

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He declares him not to be right with the law. He is against the law, and the law is against him. Now, we talked about that last week, the difference between this forensic and objective declaration and, you know, the transforming of a soul.

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When we go to court, if we're declared right in a case where we're accused unjustly, that declaration by the judge does not make me a morally better person.

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It simply declares what I am. I'm not guilty of this, or I am guilty of this. And the declaration of guilty before the law does not make me a morally worse man.

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That declaration doesn't affect the moral character of my soul. So, that brings us to a really big question.

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How can the holy and just God, who never alters in that aspect of perfect moral straightness, how can he appear to be doing what he hates when he sees it occur in humanity?

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He appears to be a judge that looks at the guilty person, but declares him to be right.

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And God says throughout Scripture, which we looked at last week, that that is a miscarriage of justice, and it offends him.

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So, A .C., pick that up and help us to understand, you know, why does that bother us, or how does

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Paul handle that question? Yeah. So, as we would think about justification, and what occurs in it for God, what occurs in it for the person who comes to Christ by faith,

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I think the first thing that we have to consider is, like I just said, it's God's character.

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We see that in his attributes, that he's gracious, he's loving, he's merciful, while at the same time, he is holy, and just, and righteous.

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So, we know that, you know, all six of those attributes that I just mentioned, those are simultaneously occurring in him.

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They're equal in him. One doesn't sacrifice for the other, and that brings us to justification.

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How is he going to be, at the same time, toward a guilty sinner who comes to Christ by faith, how is he going to be gracious, and merciful, and loving, and holy, and righteous, and just?

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So, that's what we have to think about first in justification. What about God's character and his activities, in a sense, hold that tension perfectly, so that he can declare someone who is guilty, but coming to Christ by faith, then declare them righteous?

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Yeah, and the good news for us is that we're not left to ourselves to ask and answer the question, because Paul, loving the

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God who loved him first, is concerned to clarify that God has not sacrificed one aspect of his moral purity and straightness in this great work of justification, and we find that as he deals with the question in the second half of Romans 3.

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Why don't you read those verses that apply to that? Yeah, in Romans chapter 3, verses 25 and 26, the

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Apostle Paul writes, this was to demonstrate his righteousness, because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed.

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For the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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So, what we find in these verses and in other passages, like in 2

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Corinthians, we find that God is able, as a judge, to do something unique.

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It is not unjust, it is just, but it is something above the ability of an earthly judge.

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What God is able to do is, he's able to make a guilty person not guilty, and then constituting them, as theologians say, constituting them righteous before the law, he is then free to declare them right or righteous in face of all that the law requires and all that their sin has deserved.

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We want to realize that in the work of forgiving, of washing away our sins, and of giving us a righteousness that satisfies every requirement of the law, justification never occurs because God, out of a sense of great love for us, you know, out of this kind of tenderheartedness, simply ignores what anyone could see about us, that we don't deserve to be right with God.

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We certainly see that. God has not ignored that because his tender heart has kind of overwhelmed his intention to be just.

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God has actually done something to make us right, and making us right with him, he is able to declare us right.

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He constitutes a new and right legal standing before his law, and then declares to all the universe, once and for all, we are not guilty, we are right.

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And that is where the doctrine of union with Christ is central to the doctrine of justification, and Paul explains that further, not in Romans 3, but over in Romans 5, in the half, particularly of chapter 5, dealing with the issue of Adam and his representation with us, or Christ and his representation of the believer.

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A .C., will you read verse 17 through 21 of Romans 5? For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man,

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Jesus Christ. So, A .C., explain, just give us like, you know, the thumbnail explanation of what is going on here with the first Adam and the second

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Adam, the first representative and the second. What's going on is simply this.

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Adam is the one who represented all humanity, so in him, prior to the fall, everything was as it ought to be.

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But Adam, as we know of the account in Genesis chapters 1 through 3, Adam sins, he transgresses the law of God, and Adam becomes guilty, and therefore, as Adam represents us, so we also become guilty.

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But flipping it on its head and thinking about in Christ, Christ is a representative of his people.

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So, we look at Christ and we look at his life on the pages of Scripture and the

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Gospels, further explained in the rest of the New Testament, and we see that he is the righteous one, the holy one of God, who only ever did what was pleasing to the

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Father. And as he is a representative of his people, so his people gain back and tenfold over, a hundredfold over what

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Adam lost, they gain in his life, in his death, his resurrection, they gain life, eternal life in him.

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So, the second half of Romans 5 is one of the key places for us understanding the covenantal relationship between the believer and God, but also a covenantal relationship between an unbeliever and God.

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That is, that God doesn't merely deal with us as individuals, though he does, he also deals with us in a corporate identity.

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He made a covenant with Adam. We find this, you know, the obligations, the promises, the warnings, and Adam breaks faith with God, choosing to believe the liar.

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So, what Adam does affects all who are connected with Adam in that covenant.

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It's not just that Adam stood for humanity, it's— the Bible says, but we were actually in Adam, you know, we are—well, we are genetically from Adam, but we are spiritually connected with Adam.

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If we don't like the fact that Adam's sin has resulted in the corruption of all human nature from that point forward, and the guilt that Adam incurred becomes a guilt that we are born under, so we're born sinners, we're born isolated or exiled in a sense from our own creator, born enemies of God in the way that we view him, preferring ourselves above him.

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That's the family of Adam. That's the context of our life. That explains death,

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Paul says. That explains sorrow of every form. If we don't like that, and we feel that it's unfair that Adam would be our representative, you know, we do need to realize that we have heartily joined

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Adam in all—in our choices, you know. We have come into this world agreeing with Adam, not forced like robots, but free to choose self above God.

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Again and again and again, we choose self. So, we've joined Adam in his choice, but the option that is other than Adam, the only other option, is to be in Christ.

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And if we are in Christ, he is the mediator of a new covenant, of a gracious covenant, and there were promises, and there would, you know, if he, you know, hypothetically, if Christ obeys, certain things occur, and that's spelled out in the new covenant.

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And if Christ would have disobeyed, you know, and that's the hypothetical aspect. Well, Christ obeys, of course, and in his obedience as our representative or our substitute, what he does is done on our behalf.

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And when a man or a woman or a young person embraces Christ through the gospel commands, then all that Christ did for them or in their place as the mediator is attributed to them.

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So, union with Christ is at the heart of the second half of Romans 5, just like union with Adam is at the heart of our sin, union with Christ is at the heart of our hope and our salvation.

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We are in him, and in him there is this great sharing.

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Now, that brings us to another important word when it comes to justification, and union with Christ is the reason this word can exist, and that's the word imputation.

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So, to impute or to place upon the account, it's a bookkeeping term. So, we have legal terms and we have bookkeeping terms, all right?

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So, on the account, on the ledgers, our soul and God is looking at that ledger, here's all this debt we have not obeyed, and here's all this that we've earned by disobedience, the paycheck is death, and all of that is placed upon Christ.

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It is imputed to him as Adam's guilt and sin is imputed to those whom he represents.

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Christ's perfect obedience, his sacrificial death, his justifying resurrection is imputed to all who are connected to him, not genetically, but through faith.

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This great imputation goes both ways. So, AC, if someone were to come to you on the street and say,

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I heard someone mention at church a double imputation, and that that is at the heart of the hope of a sinner.

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What's this double imputation they're talking about, and where do you find it in Scripture? Yeah. So, the double imputation that we would explain to them is that it's this great occurrence on the cross.

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It's what Luther called the great exchange. So, on that cross, all of the sin of Christ's people, past, present, and future, were placed on him, and on the cross he became the sin bearer for his people.

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And as well as that happening, Christ's righteousness that he had earned for his people, both active and passive, was put upon the account of his people.

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So, maybe a more poetic way of thinking about it, we sing a hymn here at Christ Church often, and one of the lines goes,

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In my place condemned he stood. That's what Christ received when our sin was placed upon him.

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But flipping it, we could think about it like this for us in regard to his righteousness. In his place, righteous, we stand.

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It's this transfer, like you said, it's this transaction of what we never could have earned in and of ourselves because we are unrighteous, represented in Adam, and it's never what he ever should have earned because of his righteousness.

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But in that instant on the cross, that is exactly what happened.

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Christ received our sin and became our sin bearer. We received his righteousness and became his justified people.

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Second Corinthians 5, verse 19, and then down in verse 21, speak of this transaction.

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In verse 19, Paul writes, well, let's back up to verse 18. Now, all these things are from God who reconciled us to himself.

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So, how does God reconcile a guilty people to himself? Well, that requires the removal of what separates a just God and an unjust people.

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There is an offense between us. So, he must remove this so that we can be brought to him and this friendship restored.

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He reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation,

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Paul says, namely, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

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So, he doesn't count our sin against us. Well, is that unjust?

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We talked about last time, if a man gets drunk and on the way home from a party, he hits someone's child in his car because he's drunk, if the judge looks at him and does not charge him with his criminal behavior, then we look at that judge with disgust.

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We say he is an unjust judge. So, how can that be? How can God not count our trespasses against us?

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Well, in verse 21, he gives the answer. He, that is the father, made him the son who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

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So, there's the dual transaction. Our sin placed upon him as our representative, as our substitute.

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In our place, on behalf of us, he dies, paying the full and legal requirement of the curse of the law.

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And then, the result is, not only that our shame is removed, our guilt is removed, but his positive righteousness, his actual obedience to all that the father required, his perfectly pleasing life is placed upon our account.

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So, it's not just that God has washed us and we are afraid, you know, what if I get dirty again?

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Or now that I'm clean with God, what if I fail tomorrow to do all that he requires?

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Well, then you would lose that standing. But the righteousness of Christ, what he actually did, not just what he suffered, which you pointed out is commonly called the passive, you know, what he endured on the cross, and the active, what he did throughout his life in obedience, both of those are applied to us and our sin is applied to him.

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So, that leads to a couple of concluding points that I think are important. One is this. It answers the question of why our sanctification, you know, our progressive alteration of our heart and life into conformity with Christ's heart and life, why is that not able to be part of my justification?

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Why isn't that part of why God says to all the universe, John Snyder or A .C.

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Floyd is right with me? So, if someone says to me or to you, why can't the work of God within you,

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A .C., be a part of what makes you right before his law? What would you say? Well, you know, just in the context of this conversation,

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I would try to very quickly contrast justification and sanctification. Justification is occurrence in time and space, and there it is.

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It occurs once, it's unalterable, it cannot be broken.

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Yeah, and it can't progress. It's complete. Right. Immediate and complete.

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But when you think of sanctification, it is, like you'd said, imperfect and progressive.

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I think that's why Paul says in Philippians chapter 1, verse 6, that very familiar verse to us, that he who has begun a good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

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That work isn't completed when we're justified. It's brought to completion at that day.

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It's progressive. It's ongoing. It's, you know, you think of life as, maybe this isn't the best illustration, but like a roller coaster, ups and downs, three steps forward, two steps back.

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We're not going to be exactly, perfectly who we ought to be in this life in sanctification.

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So, sanctification and justification are both a work of God that is...and

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both of these are essential in our rescue, in redemption. Both of them are guaranteed through the new covenant, and both of them are actually possessed.

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They actually occur by our union with Christ.

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And yet, though both are essential works of God in our rescue, one, as you mentioned, is immediately accomplished.

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It's complete. The righteousness of Christ, the payment of our debt, that cannot increase.

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And so, it is once and forever accomplished. But then the transformation, the sanctification, the gradual progressive conforming of the believer from within, you know, moving outward, that day by day work of God within us, it is imperfect.

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And so, God cannot use that as the foundation for our rightness with him.

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We would never be right enough. Now, that leads to the final thing, and that is, do we see that because of union with Christ, what

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Christ has done on our behalf as a substitute or as a representative in this covenant of grace, when we embrace him by faith, we are united to him.

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The Spirit places us in Christ, so we are vitally and eternally or everlastingly connected with Christ.

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We are not just...it's not just Christ in my place, Christ acting for me, it is me in him.

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And so, as he does these things, it is attributed to me or to the believer. Because of that, do we see that salvation or forgiveness or rightness with God, the inability to ever be condemned by God's law,

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Romans 8 .1, there is therefore now no condemnation for those that are in Christ. Can we see that this great work of justification, of forgiveness and pardon is as much an act of God's justice, if we could say it that way, as God damning people who have rejected him and lived for themselves is an act of justice.

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In fact, because of our union with Christ and because of the imputation of our guilt to Christ and his guilt and his righteousness, pardon me, to us, when

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Christ becomes the sin bearer on the cross by the Father's doing, placing our sin upon him, it would have been immoral for God not to judge him.

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It would have been wicked for God not to have punished the Son. Now, placing our sin on Christ is an act of mercy, but once that transaction is accomplished, it is an act of justice for the

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Son to be crushed by the Father in the outpouring of a fair and just and equitable payment for our sins.

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In the same way, God placing our sin upon Christ and his righteousness upon our account because of our union with him, being treated as if we had obeyed as he's obeyed, that aspect of justification, which makes us right with God's law, means that for God to treat us as lawbreakers, you know, in the sense of in the camp of lawbreakers, exiled from him, separated from him, would be unjust.

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To place Christ's righteousness on our account is an act of pure mercy, but once that is done, for God to refuse to receive us in Christ, for God to turn his back upon us and say,

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I'm no longer your father, you're no longer my subjects, you are not right with my law any longer, would be an act of injustice.

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It would be immoral for God not to apply the forgiving work of Christ to the believer day by day as we need that in our conscience, in our relationship with him.

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You know, our fellowship is broken with sin, so we need the constant application of that.

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Think of 1 John 1, 9, where we see this fact. John says, if we confess our sins, he's speaking to the believer, agreeing with God that you blew it does not make you right with God.

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Speaking of the believer, we see that we sin, we confess, or we agree with God about what we see.

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We agree with him about our sin, what it deserves, but we also agree with him about the great work of his son.

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If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, or faithful and righteous, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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So, if we don't speed over that, there is something about that verse that seems contradictory.

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Why doesn't John say, if you confess your sin, Christian, he is faithful and merciful to forgive you?

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Why does he say faithful and just? And the reason is, because of union with Christ, what

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Christ has earned for you, what Christ has removed from you, it would be immoral for God now to refuse to pardon you.

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Let me close with an illustration. How do we understand all of this in a simple way?

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Well, I believe it was Jeremy Walker, and it was when we were filming the second

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Behold Your God study, The Weight of Majesty. Jeremy was talking about God's character and this work of salvation, and he gave an illustration that he got from Spurgeon.

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Spurgeon said that on the cross, the sword of God's justice pierced his son and was then hammered into a shield for the believer.

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I think the illustration is so wonderful because it gives us the reality that the same stuff that crushed the son is the stuff that shields the believer from an angry law.

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It is the mercy and justice of God that Christ was crushed or put to death as a sacrifice, and it is the same mercy and justice of God that is now fashioned into a shield where we know that we are forever right with God and safe from any possibility of the law's righteous anger or condemnation.

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Next week, what we want to do is look at union with Christ and this justification, how it flows out inevitably into a life where God's work in us as we are in Christ guarantees that we will no longer be under the old tyrant sin, and we see that in Romans 6.