Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission > Status Update

"A person is righteous before God because Christ shares his righteous standing with those who are united to him. Sinners have the righteous status of Jesus himself by faith, by trusting in Christ and entrusting themselves to the Father, by self-abandonment and loyalty to their Savior. Yet as a judicial act justification transforms a person's life-situation as well as their status. A justified person dies and rises in Christ, and so is delivered from sin, death and the domination of flesh. Justification is, to introduce my neologism, a "deliverdict" (a delivering-verdict), a forensic act, a judicial verdict that in its very forensic character is an act of deliverance. It is a favorable judgment in the form of resurrection."

"Paul uses the term "justified" not merely, or primarily, to describe what happens to sinners when they are accepted by God (though he does that as well) but primarily to describe what happened once-for-all in the cross and resurrection of Jesus."
Justification, the delivering-verdict, "though pro- nounced over all humanity and creation in the cross and resurrection, is realized in individuals and communities only by baptism and faith." (That is to say, justification-as-atonement avoids universalistic implicarions by its clear integration with ecclesiology.)

The assertion of justification as deliverdict needs defending.

Let's start with an early confession of the Church found in 1 Timothy 3:16: "By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness: He was revealed in the flesh, Justified in the Spirit [edikaiothe en pneumati], Beheld by angels, Proclaimed among the nations, Believed on in the world, Taken up in glory." Jesus is the obvious referent to all of these lines which trace His historical movement from incarnation to glory, from appearance to removal from sight.

Jesus was "Justified in the Spirit": "Before we specify what event Paul refers to by this phrase, we should pause to recognize that he is referring to an event in the history of Jesus, one recorded in the Gospels or, at the least, in the book of Acts. Here at least Paul uses the verb dikaioo not to refer to what happens to sinners when they believe in Jesus or to God's declaration that one is part of the Christian family. It refers instead to some historical event in the life story of Jesus. Whatever event it is, Paul believes that something that can be called justification happened between Christ's "revelation in the flesh" (his incarnation) and his being "taken up in glory" (his ascension). That conclusion does not depend on specifying what event Paul is talking about. Even without going further, this raises the possibility that, for Paul, justification is historia-salutis language, not merely ordo-salutis language. Taking "justify" in the forensic sense of "favorable verdict," we can say that at some point between Jesus' appearance and his disappearance, someone, presumably God, rendered a favorable verdict on his behalf through the agency of the Spirit. Justification is at the heart of the mystery of godliness, but, perhaps surprisingly, the justification at the heart of the mystery of godliness is the justification of Jesus."

The only "event" in the life of Jesus that this can be describing is the resurrection. If Jesus is dead, we are still in sin (1 Cor 15:17), thus Jesus was "raised for our justification" (Rom 4:25).

So, if the resurrection is THE justification in the life of Jesus, and we can also clearly see that the resurrection was no mere verdict (as if the Father pronounced Him innocent of the charges, but did nothing further), then the resurrection is a verdict, yes, AND a deliverance, a rescue from unjust death.

"If Paul can describe the resurrection as a justification, then it seems plausible to think he might be able to reverse that identification and see "justification" itself as a resurrection. And if Jesus' justification takes the form of resurrection, then perhaps resurrection simply is the form of justification. The verdict of "justified," whenever it occurs, is a judgment of life from the dead."

"Justification, then, is the liberating verdict that takes the form of resurrection. It happens to Jesus in his death and resurrection: he is the first justified man, the only man justified because of his obedience. Every other deliverdict depends entirely on his vindication in the Spirit. Justification happens to the whole human race as God condemns sinful flesh and enables humans in flesh to live, as Jesus did, by the Spirit. Sin, death, flesh used to reign over the human race, but now there is a new regime of the Spirit. It happens to the church, and it happens to individuals in the church as they are justified from sin in baptism and raised to live lives of justice, as they keep nomos (law) by living according to the nomos of the Spirit."

"On the one hand, Paul himself can sound quite universalist ("through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men," Rom 5:18). Yet Paul equally emphasizes that only those who are "in Christ" and trust him are justified from sin to walk in newness of life. To capture both, we have to say that justification occurs in the cross and resurrection in distinct senses: On the one hand, Jesus' death and resurrection affect the world in general, all humanity; but there is a specific, saving effect in those who are incorporated into Christ" (i.e., united to His Body through the sacraments of His Church). Justification happened to Jesus who was liberated from flesh and death, "and we are included in that liberating event not by works but by the grace of baptismal union with the Justified One."

With all this in mind, let's apply what we have learned to Galatians 2:16: "Knowing that a man does not receive the delivering-verdict by what the law does but through Jesus Christ's faithfulness, we have trusted in Christ Jesus, so that we may receive the delivering-verdict by Christ's faithfulness and not by what the law does, since by what the law does no flesh shall receive the delivering-verdict."

This makes far better sense than the usual rendering, which, though often doctored up through subtle variation by translators to hide the fact, has Paul simply repeating himself three times in a row: "Knowing that a man is not justified by works of the Law, but through belief in Jesus, so we have believed in Jesus, so we can be justified by believing in Jesus and not by works of the Law, since by works of the Law no flesh will be justified."

"This means that in Galatians 2 dikaioo (justified) has a liberative connotation, specifically referring to liberation from Torah. As a Jew, Peter has been observing the rules of purity that are implied and imposed by circumcision. Beyond the strict requirement of Torah, he has been observing the Jewish custom of refraining from table fellowship with Gentiles. Paul has to remind Peter of the good news of justification, the fact that Jesus died to justify Jews as well as Gentiles. The faithful work of Christ that justifies heals the post-Babel tears within the human race. As we have seen, the law cannot break the oppositions and obstacles of Babel because the law assumes the obstacles and oppositions of Babel and because Torah had been overtaken by flesh. Something new has happened in Jesus, though: the faith of Jesus breaks the barriers, condemning flesh, condemning the law as manipulated by flesh and thereby releasing Jews from the old covenant, and justifying them by resurrection into a new covenant, a new order of worship and life. Paul reminds Peter that Jesus achieved a deliverdict in the cross and resurrection: he has liberated the world from the old age by his faithful death and his justifying resurrection."