In April a NT scholar named Matthew Bates wrote a piece on Scott McKnight’s blog that summarizes their theological project and sharply criticizes TGC, T4G, and a number of leading churchmen for their emphasis on the doctrine of justification – at least, in the form in which the churches of the Reformation confess it. He’s especially keen to oppose the common but (by his lights) mistaken conviction that justification by grace through faith in Christ is central to the gospel. In this post I’ll first try to explain what Bates is contending for, then do my best to prove from Scripture why Bates – despite his virtues – is wrong to split justification off from the gospel, before at last explaining why this question of righteousness is so important for sinners, pastors, and missionaries such as myself.
What Bates gets right – and what he thinks is wrong
Drawing on earlier work by N.T. Wright and McKnight, Bates rightly urges that the gospel is the true story of Israel that reaches its climax in the life, death, resurrection and ascension/enthronement of Jesus of Nazareth, who is Messiah, kyrios, and Son of God. “The gospel is fundamentally about how Jesus came to be enthroned as the saving king.” That is the big picture that the evangelists paint for us in the four gospels, each of which – even John’s, in his marvelously idiosyncratic way – depicts the advent of the promised kingdom of God in the deeds, teaching and very person of Jesus the king. This, as Kahler had it, as extended prologues to the passion narratives, which tell the story of Messiah’s vicarious suffering for his people and – simultaneously – of his climactic battle with her enemies as her Champion. David’s Son defeats the real Goliath, not by strapping on armor, but by suffering for our sins as the Servant Isaiah saw: and this suffering King is none other than the Seed promised to Eve of old (Gen 3.15), terribly bloodied and bruised in the strife but triumphant over the powers of Death and Hell. Hence on the third day – which is also the eighth, the dawn of the new creation – Messiah rose again from the dead as the Second eschatological Adam, the victor over Satan, the Lord over Death, the – Gardener (John 20.15). Forty days and a few fish fries after that, the victorious King ascended in Adam’s flesh and bones to be enthroned in that palace that puts Cair Paravel to shame, to wit, the right hand of God (Ps 24, Dan 7.13-14). He will come again at the end of history to exercise judgment as the Son of Man (John 5.27). In the meantime, the exalted Lord has poured out his Spirit upon cowards, thieves and whores like Peter, Magdalene, and me – perhaps also you? – to create his kingdom-bearing church and to send her into the nations to proclaim the good news of his victory and rule, to summon all people to repentance, and to promise forgiveness of sins and eternal life to everyone who believes this gospel (Luke 24.47-8, Acts 2-28, John 3.16).
That is apostolic gospel. If I understand him well, Bates is with Peter, John, Paul, Luke and the rest right up to the end. That is, he agrees that the gospel is the announcement of Messiah and his saving deeds, but he asserts that forgiveness and justification – while benefits of the gospel – are not the gospel per se. When the risen Jesus said: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead” (Luke 24.46) – he declared the gospel. When he added: “And that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations” (Luke 24.47) – he did not declare the gospel, but explained benefits that accrue to whoever has enough present allegiance and long-term wherewithal to persevere in pistis to the end. Bates gets especially animated about preachers who insist that justification either is or is at the heart of the gospel.
Scripture never says our justification by faith is part of the gospel.
The Bible never says that our justification by faith is even part of the gospel, let alone its center.
Scripture never describes the gospel itself in this way. Not even close. In Scripture the gospel is the narrative of how Jesus came to be enthroned as the saving king.
T4G / TGC leaders have been misidentifying the true center and framework of the gospel for years. They have put something that the Bible does not even say is part of the gospel as its center instead.
Are things like forgiveness, justification & life part of the gospel?
There is half-truth to what Bates is after, long identified in the Reformation traditions in the very terms that he employs: the gospel itself, on the one hand, and the benefits of the gospel on the other. What Melanchthon wrote remains true: “To know Christ is to know his benefits.” If I know that Christ is God and Man, that he died and rose, etc., but do not know and trust that Christ came and died and rose for me, I do not know Christ. However, if the objective reality of Messiah is lost sight of, and the narrative of his redeeming work is replaced by my subjective experience of redemption – if the creedal fides quae is absorbed into the fides qua – then I don’t know Christ this way either. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor 15.17). The priority always lies with the objective reality of Jesus Christ and the historical reality of his deeds and sufferings and triumph as our Redeemer. First and foremost, the gospel is an announcement about him, who he is and what he has done to save his people from destruction. This is why at several places in his letters Paul describes the gospel more or less as a good Batesian should, e.g. 1 Cor 15.1-5 or Rom 1.1-6. What is the gospel? The good news that, in fulfillment of prophecy, Messiah died for our sins and rose again on the third day. Or if you like: that the Son of God became the Son of David, was vindicated by resurrection as the Spirit-anointed Messiah, and exalted over all things – Rome included – as cosmic kyrios. Insofar as Bates aims to remind the Church of the reality and priority of Jesus Christ, he does her a fair service.
But is Bates right to insist that the benefits of the gospel are not the gospel – or are not part of the gospel, or are not essential to it? On the face of it this is pretty implausible, precisely because of what Bates gets right about the victory of the King. David slays Goliath with a stone, and cuts off his head with his own sword; messengers fan out to the twelve tribes to announce the good news of his victory; from Dan to Beersheba, the people rejoice. Why? Not merely because David killed Goliath, but because of the significance of his victory for their existential situation. True, the heart of this gospel is the sheer fact of David’s improbable but divinely-granted triumph: no beheaded Philistine, no gospel. But the tidings of the battle’s outcome are glad tidings – good and joyful news, gospel – because the victory of David is the deliverance of Israel from her overlords by the sea. The triumph of the Champion and the people’s salvation go hand-in-hand, as two sides of the same coin.
As in the prophetic type, so in the evangelical Reality that fulfills it. Paul’s gospel is not just that Messiah died and rose, but that Messiah died for our sins and rose for our justification (1 Cor 15.3, Rom 4.25). He urges Timothy: “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the Seed of David, as preached in my gospel!” (2 Tim 2.8). To what end? That he, like Paul, might endure everything for the sake of the elect, “that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Tim 2.9-10). The victory of the King and the salvation of his people go hand-in-hand, and together form the good news of the grace of God that Paul resolved to live and die for (Acts 20.24). Thanks be to God, in the little gospel of John 3.16 the King himself unites the objective reality of redemption and the subjective experience of salvation in a whole that is not and cannot be divided: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Does Scripture say that justification is part of the gospel?
What do we make of Bates’ claim that Scripture never says – not once; not even close – that justification is part of the gospel? Gal 3.6-9 is a good place to start, because in v. 8 Paul does what Bates asserts neither he nor any other apostle or prophet ever does, anywhere, in the whole course of the Bible – and in process, quotes Genesis not once but twice.
6 Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” 7 Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. 8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the nations by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
Again, v. 8 is our smoking gun: on Paul’s apostolic reading, when God promised Abraham that he would bless the nations through him, what that meant was that he would justify the nations by faith. The whole business – the promise of blessing as the promise of righteousness by faith – is “gospel”: in Gen 12.3, Scripture preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham. Mark it well: in Gal 3.8, Paul simply identifies the blessing of Abraham, justification by faith, and the gospel with one another as three angles on the same reality. Is a modern exegete going to appreciate Paul’s interpretation? Probably not; but before you cry eisegesis, notice that Paul doesn’t pull justification out of thin air when he appeals to Gen 12. Rather, he pulls it out of Gen 15.6, which he’d just quoted in Gal 3.6 and which he uses to flesh out the meaning of the otherwise vague “blessing” at Gen 12.3.
Now keep the narrative arc of Genesis in mind, and step back to survey the sweep of Paul’s argument in the rest of Gal 3. The antithesis of “blessing” is of course “curse,” and in vv. 10-14 he exploits the antithesis to the full. What curse? Because Paul is talking about the law, and because he cites Deut 27.26, Lev 18.5, and Deut 21.23 in short order, it’s easy to get too focused on the Sinai covenant and forget that the main track of Paul’s narrative-theological logic lies back in Genesis with Abraham – and Adam. The “curse” that the blessing of Abraham will overcome is the curse of sin and death that came into the world by the rebellion of Adam, Gen 12 meeting the disaster of Gen 3 and advancing the promise already granted in the Garden (Gen 3.15). The law came in 430 years afterward, not to secure the blessing of righteousness and life but to imprison and instruct Israel until the advent of the promised Seed (Gal 3.15-24, v. 16 referring to Gen 22.18 and the “narrowing” of Gen 12.3’s blessing to the “Seed” of Abraham). That Seed is Messiah Jesus, and he redeemed us from the curse of the law by his accursed death for us on the tree of the cross – in order that the blessing of Abraham would burst upon the nations (Gal 3.13-14). What blessing? Righteousness by faith, plus the gift of the Spirit – free justification being Paul’s main theme in Gal 2-3, new holy life in the Spirit emerging in greater force in Gal 4-5.
Which leads to the question: why did Paul write this letter in the first place? He knew the Galatians believed in Jesus the Messiah, who came in our flesh, died on the cross, rose on the third day, and ascended on high as King of kings. He knew that they were a creedally orthodox bunch; he recognized that the new perspective of their theologians had deepened their sense of indebtedness to the Scriptures; perhaps he begrudgingly marveled at their grasp of the contours of Second Temple Judaism. Yet for all that, Paul insisted that they had lost the gospel: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ” (Gal 1.6-7). Why?
Because the gospel is the good news that in these last days, God kept his ancient promise to justify the nations by faith in his crucified Son. This is what makes the gospel gospel: not merely that Messiah died, but that by dying he gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age (Gal 1.4), break the curse’s power (3.13), secure for us a righteousness based exclusively on his death (2.21), and redeem us for adoption as the Spirit-filled children of God (4.4-7). So much as try to take justification out of the gospel, and you’re left with no gospel at all. “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law: you have fallen away from grace” (Gal 5.4).
The chief of sinners will have nothing of it. Unlike those who trouble the church by distorting the gospel, Paul asserts: “I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for nothing” (Gal 2.21). Think about that; let Paul’s warning sink into your ears, and the gospel’s either/or pierce and heal your heart. Mess around with justification, and you imply that Messiah died for nothing – and that the grace of God is nothing much either. But Messiah did not die for nothing. He died for the ungodly, that God the just might vindicate us in judgment despite our heinous sins, hollow holiness, and other endless follies (Rom 3.24-6, 4.5, 5.6-10, 8.1-4, 30-34). This is why the grace of God is not nothing: the crucified Messiah is our righteousness (1 Cor 1.30, Jer 23.6). Why grace is not nothing? You can almost see Paul, that man blameless under the law and violent in zeal, shaking his head in pity. Grace is everything, and thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift.
Can you imagine being told by St Paul that your theology is an attempt to nullify the grace of God? Yet that is what happens when you dissociate the death of Messiah on the tree from the free gift of righteousness to faith alone.
Why does this matter?
Every Wednesday for the past six weeks a young man – let’s call him Martin – has come to my office crippled by guilt, shame, and anxiety. Martin is an orthodox and earnest Christian; he scours the Scriptures, devours the latest books by the right authors to try to understand and to grow, comes to church (well he did before COVID-19) and makes these weekly visits to talk with his pastor. But he has two big problems. The first is that he is a sinner, and deserves eternal punishment. The second and more decisive is that he refuses to be the kind of sinner who – while confessing his wretchedness – dares to believe the promise of the gospel, that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, that Christ bore our sins in his body on the tree, that by Messiah’s wounds we are healed, and so forth, and blessedly so forth. Someday, when Martin begins to believe in grace a little more than he does so far, I intend to teach him as best I can about the promises of the OT, their fulfillment in Jesus the Messiah, the good news of the kingdom of God, our hope in the coming resurrection of the dead, the new heavens and the new earth and the city of God, and a whole host of other things that Matthew Bates may or may not approve of. But right now, what Martin needs to hear is the good news that 20 centuries before he was born, Jesus Christ saved him from the wrath of God by his death on the cross, made a public mockery of the demons that accuse and afflict him, and set him free. Martin, Martin: you must learn to yield to the scandal of the gospel, and join us here in this holy catholic church of Christ, this blood-washed Bride of the Lamb. Fear not, brother Martin: it is our Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, for it was our Father’s good pleasure to give you his Son. What can he withhold from you now? Christ is your righteousness; and unless you wish to make yourself an enemy of the cross, I dare say you will agree with me and St Paul that Christ is enough. The Lord has put away your sins; go in peace, and pray for me, a sinner.
Do you suppose Martin is the only Christian who doesn’t trust the grace of God? The church of the Messiah is full of Martins, desperate to hear the good news of righteousness won for them by his death and given to them as a sheer gift in the word of the gospel. And as for the world: despite its opposition to Christianity as a religion – which of course it is not, except where we have wrecked it – there are yet those in the earthly city who yearn to see the Son of Man gather a grace-saved band of prostitutes and heroin addicts and pastors to himself. Like it or not, mean to or not, if you take justification out of the gospel of the King, you end up shutting the door to the kingdom in their faces. But play the man and preach the gospel of that sinner-saving God whose name is Jesus Christ, and just you watch: the Spirit will come down through this word, and the damned will be lifted up by faith, and the kingdom of God will advance in power as we await the return of the King.
Phil Anderas is a Reformed pastor and missionary theologian with operations based in Milwaukee. He holds a PhD in Theology from Marquette. He is a member of the St. Basil Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
