“…the gospel of Jesus reveals God’s righteousness, in that God is himself righteous, and, as part of that, God is the one who declares the believer to be righteous. Once again we must insist that there is of course a “righteous” standing, a status, which human beings have as a result of God’s gracious verdict in Christ… He has been true to the covenant, which always aimed to deal with the sin of the world; he has dealt with sin on the cross; he has done so impartially, making a way of salvation for Jew and Gentile alike; and he now, as the righteous judge, helps and saves the helpless who cast themselves on his mercy” (What St. Paul Really Said, p. 107).
That “Christ takes our sin and we his righteousness” is one of the things “that people ought to say, to preach about, to believe.” (What St. Paul Really Said, p. 41).
“The whole Christian gospel could be summed up in this point: that when the living God looks at us, at every baptized and believing Christian, he says to us what he said to Jesus on that day. He sees us, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Jesus Christ. It sometimes seems impossible, especially to people who have never had this kind of support from their earthly parents, but it’s true: God looks at us, and says ‘You are my dear, dear child; I’m delighted with you’” (Mark for Everyone, pp. 4, 5).
[The Last Supper] was, first and foremost, a Passover meal. Luke has told us all along that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to “accomplish his Exodus” (9.31). he has come to do for Israel and the whole world what God did through Moses and Aaron in the first Exodus. When the powers of evil that were enslaving God’s people were at their worst, God acted to judge Egypt and save Israel. And the sign and means of both judgment and rescue was the Passover: the angel of death struck down the firstborn of all Egypt, but spared Israel as the firstborn of God, “passing over” their houses because of the blood of the lamb on the doorposts (Exodus 12). Now the judgment that had hung over Israel and Jerusalem, the judgment Jesus had spoken of so often, was to be meted out; and Jesus would deliver his people by taking its force upon himself. His own death would enable his people to escape…Luke describe the event in such a way that we can hardly miss the point. Barabbas is guilty of some of the crimes of which Jesus, though innocent, is charged: stirring up the people, leading a rebellion… Jesus ends up dying the death appropriate for the violent rebel. He predicted he would be “reckoned with the lawless” (22.37), and it has happened all too soon… [T]his is in fact the climax of the whole gospel. This is the point for which Luke has been preparing us all along. All sinners, all rebels, all the human race are invited to see themselves in the figure of Barabbas; and, as we do so, we discover in this story that Jesus comes to take our place, under condemnation for sins and wickedness great and small. In the strange justice of God, which overrules the unjust “justice” of Rome and every human system, God’s mercy reaches out where human mercy could not, not only sharing, but in this case substituting for, the sinner’s fate (Luke22.1-3; 23.13-26; Luke for Everyone, 262, 279, 280).
“[Christ] and the people are bound together in such a way that what is true of the one is true in principle of the other” (Climax of the Covenant, p. 47).
In Romans 6.11, the result of being baptized “into Christ”… is that one is now “in Christ,” so that what is true of him is true of the one baptized–here, death and resurrection. This occurs within the overall context of the Adam-Christ argument of chapter 5, with its two family solidarities; the Christian has now left the old solidarity (Romans 6.6) and entered the new one. 6.23 may be read by analogy with 6.11; whose who are “in Christ” receive the gift of the life of the new age, which is already Christ’s in virtue of his resurrection–that is, which belongs to Israel’s representative, the Messiah in virtue of his having drawn Israel’s climactic destiny on to himself. Similarly, in Romans 8.1, 2 the point of the expression “in Christ” is that what is true of Christ is true of his people: Christ has come through the judgment of death and out into the new life which death can no longer touch (8.3-4; 8.10-11), and that is now predicated of those who are “in him.” In Galatians 3.26 the ex-pagan Christians are told that they are all sons of God (a regular term for Israel…) in Christ, through faith. It is because of who the Messiah is–the true seed of Abraham, and so on–that Christians are this too, since they are “in” him. Thus in v. 27, explaining this point, Paul speaks of being baptized “into” Christ and so “putting on Christ,” with the result that (3.28) [translating Wright’s reproduction of Paul’s Greek here:] you are all one in Christ Jesus. It is this firm conclusion, with all its overtones of membership in the true people of God, the real people of Abraham, that is then expressed concisely in 3.29 with the genitive [again translating]: and if you are of Christ… When we consider Galatians 3 as a whole, with its essentially historical argument from Abraham through Moses to the fulfillment of God’s promises in the coming of Christ, a strong presupposition is surely created in faovor both of reading Xpistos as “Messaiah,” Israel’s representative, and of understanding the incorporative phrases at the end of the chapter as gaining their meaning from this sens. Because Jesus is the Messiah, he sums up his people in himself, os that what is true of him is true of them (Climax of the Covenant, pp. 47-48; boldface added).
Dude, quit confusing us with the facts.
Is Wright pushing WCF justification onto the cross then? God did everything to deal with my sin and his acceptance of me in Jesus on the cross, and theres nothing left but for me to come to realize that and hear the declaration?
Mark,
The quote from p.41 of WSPRS seems to me to be misleading when abstracted from its context. Wright is there describing the view of others, not his own. Alarm bells went off as soon as I read it, because I know that such a way of putting things is not generally characteristic of Wright.
He undoubtedly says similar things himself, but he does not generally put things in such familiar Reformed language. He knows how to speak like a Reformed evangelical if he wants to, but I think that he usually purposefully avoids such language.
OK, I’ll add to it, but he plainly says such things should be taught–i.e. they are in the Bible.
Again, my point is not so much Wright as his PCA appreciators.
Mark,
You have clearly read Wright which only proves how unreliable you are as a guide to his thought.
David
And also his gospel commentaries bear this out. Jesus receives the judgment we deserve and the Father sees us not as we are in ourselves but as we are in Christ. Furthermore, what Christ has done counts because of his incorporative and representative office, as what his people have done.
David, what is funny is that I don’t find Wright always clear or convincing in some of the statements quoted by the report, but 1) aren’t you supposed to criticize a person at his best, and 2) the report is fabricating a false theology not of Wright but of his alleged “followers” in the PCA.
Mark,
You touch on very important points.
I will simply add that a failure to read someone at his or her best reveals more than that we are not being charitable, it reveals that we are arrogant.
To read Wright as badly as he is often read starts with the assumption that we already know everything and are simply grading his work without any notion that we might have something to learn (and therefore change). Inevitably this results in reading the Bible for illustrations of what we already believe rather than as God’s word which must constantly be renewing our minds and transforming our own theology.
The lack of a charitable reading of others is interwoven with a practical denial of Sola Scriptura. How could it be otherwise? As John puts it: “… he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he hasn’t seen (1 John 4:20).”
Of course, I am not suggesting that when we treat one brother poorly that we have no love for the brethren or love for God – only that these two issues are ALWAYS linked to each other.
David