You can Google for more info (my attempt to include a link was apparently rejected as spammy by the blog software) or see his book “How Are We Saved?: The Understanding of Salvation in the Orthodox Tradition” which explores many different models of salvation.

If the answer is “from condemnation at the final judgment,” of course it is in the future tense. The final judgment has not yet happened.

If we mean “from sin” then yes, we are already saved, but we must still work to make our freedom an actual, lived experience.

Sorry about misunderstanding your label. But your use of it is the very first time i have seen it used, in this context, as actually describing another’s view point correctly. Most of the time it is used as the last line of the definition describes it as. So since I cannot read your facial expressions and determine from that what you may mean from a label, I took it as it is commonly used in discussions. As a negative label. So ,sorry that we misunderstood each other.

Thanks for the link, I will look into it.

And for future purposes, I am not a pastor yet, but I am studying and training to be one. I am presently in Bible college. My name comes form the book, The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter.

And you misconstrued my use of the word “dogmatic”. Dogma has a perfectly neutral, descriptive definition:

“The established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization, thought to be authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from. While in the context of religion the term is largely descriptive, outside of religion its current usage tends to carry a pejorative connotation.”

In your position on justification, you’re writing from a dogmatic Reformed perspective. No insult intended, just a statement of fact.

You entered the dialogue as one who is qualified to teach others, and you self-identify as a pastor. Accordingly, I have felt free to use theological jargon with you: but apparently you’re not hearing it as theological language.

Finally, if you’re interested in some material on the NPP, you should consider the link I recommended earlier. Doug’s five-part series in response to Piper is very clearly written, as is characteristic of him.

Faith is shown for what it is by works. True faith will produce works. it is not that works are a part of faith. they come from faith. Yet faith will have works come form it. Hopefully I am making sense. by vindication i mean that faith is shown for what it is by works. True faith. thus We are true Christians if we have works.

Jamie,

Correct! we are not MADE righteous. We are DECLARED righteous. There is a big difference. God did not take all the sin from us. But instead of looking at our sins, he looks at the perfect righteousness of Christ. He imparts Christ’s righteousness to us and see us are righteous and holy in his sight. Now, there is still sin in us. Without a doubt! But God is not looking at the sin still in us, he is looking at the righteousness of Christ. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.(1 John 2:1-2)

David: The problem is the way that we’ve viewed justification: a simple legal decree. [...] God is not one to just make legal decrees

Important observation.

I personally don’t warm to the idea of justification as a simple legal decree, because it just doesn’t reflect reality (in that the sinner is still sinning and is obviously not perfect yet). If God simply makes a legal decree, then it is almost as if he is lying, because it’s obvious that the sinner is still sinful.

I’m not totally sure about how I feel about justification as a prophetic decree (I’ll have to think about the implications some more), but to me that seems a much more reasonable interpretation of justification than the idea of a simple legal decree.

Stephen: I think there is a sense in which our justification is a completed work from God’s outside-of-time perspective.

But from a human perspective, I would continue to defend the thesis that our justification is not yet accomplished.

Valid point, but I’m not so sure that this question hangs on establishing God’s relationship to time.

Even disregarding God’s sense of time (or lack thereof), I think there is a sense in which we can be both “saved” and “being saved” and “about to be saved” all at the same time. These various ideas capture different angles on the idea of salvation. Maybe they have slightly different meanings, also, and can therefore be simultaneously true and yet not contradictory. But this can be the case regardless of how God relates to time.

Reformed Pastor:Are you saying [...]

Or something else?

I honestly had not gone so far as to define precisely what I meant, and I’m still not sure precisely how to address your questions.

I suppose my thinking on the matter was fairly simple: I was intrigued by Paul’s use of the present tense and the future tense to describe salvation, and I was intrigued because that represents a departure from how I normally think about the topic.

But I wasn’t (and still am not) terribly worried about defining precisely what Paul meant by his choice of tenses. I’m more interested in merely noticing his language and allowing it to shape and critique my thinking.

Does justification for you have to do with God declaring sinners righteous in His sight? [H]ave you thrown out the legal part entirely and made something new?

I know this question was directed at David, but I thought I’d weigh in too, because the question is a good jumping off point for me to explain my general feelings as I’ve followed this whole discussion.

I’m having a hard time engaging on the discussion about justification, mostly because I don’t have a typical protestant view of justification, and I’m actually not sure if any of us have the same understanding of the term.

I suppose that most people understand justification to mean that we are either made or declared (i.e. in a legal sense) righteous before God. My fundamental problem with that, as I stated above in my comment to David, is that we are manifestly not made righteous yet. We still sin.

Thus, one of three things is true: Either:

1) we have a misunderstanding of the meaning of justification, or
2) God lies when he says we are righteous, or
3) David is right and there is some sense in which justification is prophetic.

Personally, I do not think justification is a legal issue at all. It is something…else…yet I’m not sure in my own mind exactly how to define justification. Personally, though, I think David might be on to something in his idea of justification as prophetic. I doubt that completely explains justification, but it might reflect some truth.

Again, thanks to all for the good questions and good discussion!

Thanks for your clarifications. By no means do I ever purposely misconstrue somebody’s position. Hopefully you know that.

Aye, Charlie. I know it.

I would like the Biblical texts you use to get your view. Is James the only one that you us or are there more?

This understanding of justification is rooted in the Old Testament, observing how God deals with His people all throughout – particularly in the words of the prophets. What is especially compelling to me, however, is noting that the prophetic utterances hat look toward the New Covenant talk a whole lot more about sanctification and the final redemption than justification alone. My education in the Scriptures (self-directed) immersed me in the Old Testament and it was not until the last two years or so that I REALLY got into reading Paul in-depth. So, when I read Paul, the Old Testament continually frames how I understand him.

Do explain by what you mean when you say “anti-Law” I don’t believe that Paul is anti-law at all.

It has been the tendency of Protestants (particularly those who hail from Luther’s theological tradition) to construe Paul as being a man who was against observing Torah, when in fact he continued to observe it himself. The issue in most of Paul’s epistles is not observance of the Law, but righteousness by the Law and, particularly, Gentiles seeking to observe a Torah that was not given to them to observe. Thus, my own tendency is to present Paul as a pro-Torah teacher and, truly, demonstrate that it is only the faith in Messiah that gives Torah any value (particularly Matthew demonstrates this by presenting Jesus as Torah-Incarnate, much as Jeremiah was sure to suggest).

I would love to direct you to an article, but, frankly, I don’t have one, except a rabbinic letter that may do more to challenge you than you’d like. I should clarify, however, that I’m not NPP. There is a great deal of congruence between my theology and NPP, but that is only because NPP begins to get on the right track in understanding Second Temple Judaism. My perspective is truly a Jewish one, rooted in the Old Testament Scriptures, and informed by many of the rabbinic teachings (90% of which echo or repeat the very teachings of Jesus). If you’d like to explore any of this further, I’d be happy to do so via email and/or facebook.

Does justification for you have to do with God declaring sinners righteous in His sight?

Yes…but it’s in view of the past (the cross) and the future (the resurrection of the dead). In other words, I am not separating justification from the focal points of redemptive history. Justification, were we to put it into Hebrew, is prefixed by coh amar YHWH (“This is what Yahweh says…”) and ended by ne’um YHWH (“The declaration/oracle of Yahweh”). It’s a prophetic utterance.

in other words, do you still hold that justification deals with sinners being made right in God’s standings of holiness? Do you just add the prophecy part ( Not “a simple legal decree” But more) or have you thrown out the legal part entirely and made something new?

Yes, it has to do with Yahweh’s declaration. What I am doing, however, is saying that it is primarily prophetic and, truly, only in a Gentile understanding would have any strictly legal implications. When the Hebrew hears prophetic witness, he recalls that he is hearing the covenant-prosecutors and testimonies of the King of Israel and His Torah. So, justification being prophetic does nothing to take away from its relation to Torah, because prophecy, by its own nature, is intimately connected to it. I hope that clarifies.

In the Shadow of the Cross,
David

What I hold to is that true faith in Christ causes one to delight in the things of Christ and become more and more disgusted with the ways of sin. Faith is not just affirming that you believe in some historical event. The demons do that. But true faith has an aspect of want in it. “I want Christ, not my sins.” Or one could repeat with the Apostle Paul, Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ (Phil 3:8) Faith is not some raw choice of, “I believe that Jesus was a real person. He died, rose again and sits at the right hand of the Father Almighty.” Now, believing in the truth is absolutely essential for faith. But it is not the finishing step, so to speak. There must be the want of Christ. A desire, even if it is small, to want the joy of knowing Christ.

I remember sitting across from the table from a young man, listening to his testimony. He told me of his rejection of his parents beliefs and finding pleasure in anything that the world would dish out to Him. He love the life. He loved going from party to party getting high with his buddies. He did not think about changing the way he was living. But one day, a person he new took him to a evangelistic youth gathering where he would hear the gospel. He sat there and listened to the preacher warn Him of the dangers of the path he was taking. Telling him of the person of Jesus Christ. And the punishment that awaited him if he did not turn to Christ. The Holy Spirit opened up his heart that night to hear the truth. after the service, he tossed and turned in his bed. Thinking and pondering what he had heard and what in meant for life. By the work of the Holy Spirit, the scales of error fail from his eyes and laying there on his bed he prayed, “God I love the life I am living, I love the drinking and the partying and the drugs…but God…I love you more.”

That is true faith. Even if it is in the baby stages as it was for that young man. Faith has a aspect of it that wants what it believes. It is believing that wonderful truth of Christ and wanting Him above all else.

So, how does this play into works? If faith is an aspect of the desires then works must follow. if I desire Christ, even if it is a small desire, I will change the ways am living to match the standard I want to achieve. Christ is the most satisfying person. Knowing Him cannot be compared to the fleeting pleasures of sin. Therefore, I will fight to remove the things that keep me from know Christ. Faith then will make one conform into the pattern of life that is pleasing to Christ by the fact that it is faith.

That is the way I see faith to be by way of what I read from the scriptures. If one can prove other wise by means of the Scriptures I am willing to listen.

hopefully that answers the question of my view of faith and works. If you want anything cleared up, please ask.

David:

Thanks for your clarifications. By no means do I ever purposely misconstrue somebody’s position. Hopefully you know that.

Your belief of Justification as prophecy is something very knew to me. When one rewrites the definition of a very familiar word, it is hard to get the new definition away from the old one. That is why I had (and will have) a tough time separating your interpretation from mine.

I would like the Biblical texts you use to get your view. Is James the only one that you us or are there more?

Do explain by what you mean when you say “anti-Law” I don’t believe that Paul is anti-law at all. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law. (Rom 3:31) But the law is not the end or our hope for salvation. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” (Gal 3:10) The law was given to tell us of the holiness of God . It was to guide us from sin, Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions,(Gal 3:19a) But it was never intended to be our means of salvation. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. (Gal 3:24) The law was in place until Christ came to redeem us. So please explain yourself.

(I know that I am getting into the NPP views. I don’t know where I disagree with you on this. I am just plopping down verses, but I am well aware that you might, or do, have different meanings for what Paul is saying here. So, forgive me if I seem to be using Paul in a wrong way, by your standards. I just don’t know your views on this. If you don’t want to type everything out, you can direct me to a article online or some where.)

A new question about justification David. Does justification for you have to do with God declaring sinners righteous in His sight? I want to see if we are not having a more or less debate. in other words, do you still hold that justification deals with sinners being made right in God’s standings of holiness? Do you just add the prophecy part ( Not “a simple legal decree” But more) or have you thrown out the legal part entirely and made something new?

Stephen (aka Q):

“But, with respect, I think your dogmatic Reformed position is a somewhat superficial reading of scripture.”

Obviously, you have some ill feelings with Reformed Theology. I would like to here how I have been “dogmatic” so far. Is it my confusion with your position? Or are you just throwing me into your general view of reformed Christians. Yes, some of us in the Reformed camp can come across as not being very flexible with our views, (of course, with some beliefs one should not be flexible) or kind in how we disagree. for that I apologies. And if you every find me as coming across as such, please let me know. But, If I have not done that personally, don’t label me as such.

Or is it my position that is dogmatic in itself? I don’t know.

When people use such labels, they generally using it to poison the well for others, or even for their own minds. I am not saying that you did such. But, if you don’t tell me how I have been dogmatic, It does not help the conversation.

“And I don’t think you’ve made an honest effort to consider what I’ve written, except to dismiss it as confusing.”

When I say that I was confused by what you said…I mean that I was confused by what you said. Please don’t start attributing things to me that I don’t do or mean.

I full agree that we have not attained what we strive for. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Phil 3:12-14)

We are getting pretty deep in NNP here. I am not too familiar with the belief system. As I asked David, if you know where to get good material on the subject please link me to it. I have John Piper’s book and plan to read it in the future. So, until I have more understanding on this subject, it may be best if I set back and learn some more.

But thanks for the discussion so far James, David and Stephen, I have a lot to think about, learn and ponder.

If any of you have anymore questions, feel free to ask.

Soli Deo Gloria
Charlie Albright

Romans 3:28 —
For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

James 2:24 —
You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

If I understand him correctly, Reformed Pastor is advocating the translation, “You see that a person is vindicated by works and not by faith alone.” So it isn’t faith that is vindicated; rather the believer is vindicated by faith.

I’m not persuaded that changing the translation makes the problem go away.

Liberal that I am, I think the dispute between Paul and James is substantive, not merely verbal. James stands in the non-pauline Christian tradition that was later represented by the Ebionites, who “insisted on a universal necessity of following Jewish religious law and rites …, revered [Jesus'] brother James as the head of the Jerusalem Church and rejected Paul of Tarsus as an “apostate of the Law.”

Thus one can trace a clear line from James and Matthew (who said that not a jot or tittle of the law would pass away) through Paul’s “Judaizing” opponents (see in particular Gal. 2) to the Ebionites.

In my view, James meant exactly what the ESV translation asserts: we are justified by works of the law and not by faith alone. In other words, James is familiar with Paul’s position and explicitly repudiates it.