Sin, Salvation and the Reality of Being

How we view sin affects how we understand salvation. When sin is framed as a legal infraction, the violation of a code, salvation becomes a forensic matter requiring a courtroom acquittal. This reduces human reality to a set of rules and transactions. Sin, however, is not the infraction of a law but the brokenness of a relationship. It is to turn away from God, from one another and is even a rejection of our own true selves. It is what St. Augustine called incurvatus in se, a curving inwardly upon ourselves, away from all else — which is not how we were created to be.

Salvation is not a legal adjudication with God delivering a verdict from some neutral corner. In Christ, God does not remain external, delivering a verdict, or granting forgiveness from afar, but unites himself with our nature, entering into our life and death so that humankind might enter into his divine life. Salvation is not an abstract transaction but the concrete reality of Christ’s life lived in us — the re-making of humanity in communion with God. For God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting our sins against us (2 Corinthians 5:19). 

The good news of the gospel is that in Jesus Christ, we become partakers of the divine nature, Christ living in us. This life is not abstract but real and tangible. It is what St. Peter and St. Paul confessed in their writings, and saints ever since have shown us what it looks like.

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:3-4)

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

In some corners, sin has been understood as a legal infraction and salvation as a legal solution. These, however, are abstractions that do not even begin to address the reality of being but distance us from it. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ, on the other hand, plunges us into the very heart and truth of what it means to be divine and what it means to be human.

Interconnected Through the Incarnation

The Incarnation is not just God entering into our world and drawing near, but God uniting with humanity in Christ. Because the Word became flesh, every human being is already bound up with Him — and therefore bound to one another in Him. The good news of the gospel is not just that we are forgiven, but that in Christ’s humanity we are united with him, and therefore with each other. In Christ, all things are brought together in unity (Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:17).

Formerly, humankind was headed up in Adam, but now it is headed up in Christ. “Consequently, just as one trespass [Adam’s] resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act [Christ’s] resulted in justification and life for all people” (Romans 5:18). “Just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). 

This is the recapitulation about which St. Irenaeus writes so famously. What was once encompassed in Adam is now recapped in Christ. For example, of the hunger, weariness and tears Christ experienced, the wounds he suffered, and the piercing of his side from which flowed blood and water, Irenaeus says, 

All these are tokens of the flesh which had been derived from the earth, which He had recapitulated in Himself, bearing salvation to His own handiwork. (Against Heresies 3.22.2)

For if He did not receive the substance of flesh from a human being, He neither was made man nor the Son of man; and if He was not made what we were, He did no great thing in what He suffered and endured. But every one will allow that we are [composed of] a body taken from the earth, and a soul receiving spirit from God. This, therefore, the Word of God was made, recapitulating in Himself His own handiwork. (Against Heresies 3.22.1) 

St. Leo the Great, in his sermon On the Feast of the Nativity, shows that Christ has taken on human nature, and by that nature conquered death and the devil: “For the Son of God in the fullness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author: in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered through that which he had conquered.” Isn’t that what we find in Hebrews? 

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15)

St. Gregory Nazianzen, in a Letter to Cledonius shows that whatever has not been assumed by Christ cannot be saved: “If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole.” 

There is only one human nature, of which we all partake, and Christ has assumed it and recapitulated it in himself. St. Gregory writes particularly about the various aspects of human being, such as body, spirit, mind and will; whatever has not been assumed by Christ cannot be made whole. But this applies just as well to all humankind. In his Treatise on 1 Corinthians 15:28, Gregory says, “Now the body of Christ, as I often have said, is the whole of humanity.”

Through baptism, we are incorporated into the body of Christ in a very tangible way. As we participate in the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of our Lord made present, we experience together what it means to become the body of Christ. 

Each of us bears the humanity Christ has made His own and are intimately and inextricably united with Christ and so also with each other. We are each created in the image of God, of Christ, who is the Image of the Invisible God, and in Christ we become partakers of the divine nature. Faith lives in that reality.

The Good News of the Gospel is that 
through the Incarnation, we are, every one of us, 
interconnected with Jesus Christ, 
and so also with one another 
through Him.  

The Church Is the Fullness of Christ

In the book of Ephesians, St. Paul speaks of God’s great and eternal plan for all creation, which has been revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ. Not only has it been made known in time but it is the purpose of time, describing the fulfillment of time. God’s purpose in Christ is all encompassing, and time is the measure of its progress. 

God made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment — to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. (Ephesians 1:9-10)

The operative word for bringing all to unity under Christ is the Greek anakephalaiomai, which means to sum up, to head up, to recapitulate — or as we like to say, to recap. God’s purpose from the beginning is to recapitulate all in heaven and on earth in Christ, with Christ as head. So shall it be at the end of time.

God put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:22-23)

Christ, as the head of all creation, fills all things in every way with himself. In this way, all creation becomes the embodiment of Christ, and this embodiment is the Church. For just as there is no body without the head, there is also no head without the body. St. John Chrysostom says,

The fullness of the head is the body and that of the body is the head. Observe how skillfully Paul writes and how he spares no word to express the glory of God. The “fullness” of the head, he says, is fulfilled through the body ... Through all members, therefore, his body is made full. Then the head is fulfilled, then the body becomes perfect, when we are all combined and gathered into one. (Homily 3 on Ephesians)

The Church is the fullness of Christ in all things and in every way, but that does not mean Christ is incomplete in himself. Rather, the Church is how his fullness is expressed and made known. Christ ever remains uniquely the head over all things. The Church embodies his fullness not by adding to him or taking from him, but by manifesting him throughout the world. The Church is the revelation of Christ.

In his Treatise on 1 Corinthians 15:28, St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “Now the body of Christ, as I often have said, is the whole of humanity.” Fr. John Behr echoes that and the logical conclusion of Ephesians 1: “The Church is the whole of Creation seen eschatologically; from which we already see islands in the present.” For all in heaven and on earth are made one and headed up in Christ, who is All in All.

Jesus Christ fills everything in every way, 
and the Church is that fullness.

In the Image of Christ Crucified

In the Beginning, God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, and in our likeness.” Jesus Christ, who is the Image of the Invisible God, is the fulfillment (Colossians 1:15). But it is Christ as the Crucified One who reveals God to us. How is this so? St. Paul shows us in Philippians 2, and it is the very heart of the gospel.

Have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had, who though he existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing in human nature. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:5-8)

Though he is God, our Lord Jesus Christ did not consider it something to be exploited to his own advantage. Rather, he emptied himself, humbled himself, sharing in our humanity, giving himself over for our sake even to the point of shameful death on the cross. This indeed is the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form, God reconciling all in heaven and on earth to himself through Jesus Christ, having made peace by the blood of the cross (Colossians 1:19-20).

This is what it is to be God — and what it is to be human. By sharing in human nature, Christ defines it for us. To be truly human is to participate in the self-giving, other-centered, cross-shaped love of God, and so to take part in the resurrection of Christ as his body, the Church.

Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection. (Romans 6:3-5)

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

My confident hope is that I will in no way be ashamed but that with complete boldness, even now as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether I live or die. For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. (Philippians 1:20-1) 

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that matters is a new creation! (Galatians 6:14-15)

To be created in the image of God 
is to be created in the image of 
Christ crucified and risen. 

Our True Identity Is In Jesus Christ

Human nature is not something we can manufacture for ourselves. Neither is our identity. These can only be revealed to us, and only through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ — Christ in us, the Hope of Glory (Colossians 1:27).

In the Beginning, when God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, and in our likeness,” Jesus Christ is the fulfillment, who is the Image of the Invisible God (Colossians 1:15). He is the Logos of God — the Reason, the Meaning, the Way of God — who became human being, dwelt among us and revealed the glory of the Father to us in bodily form (John 1:14). 

Our nature is not simply biological existence but the image of God revealed in Christ. It is only in union with Christ that we are made complete and become partakers of the divine nature (Colossians 2:9-10; 2 Peter 1:4). See the many ways Scripture affirms it:

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. (1 John 3:2-3)

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)

 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:2–4)

By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world. (1 John 4:17)

And the varied ways the early Church confesses it:

He became what we are that He might make us what He is. (St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54)

You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. (St. Augustine, Confessions, I.1)

For the glory of God is a living man, and the life of man consists in beholding God. (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.20.7)

For we believe that a logos of angels preceded their creation, a logos preceded the creation of each of the beings and powers that fill the upper world, a logos preceded the creation of human beings, a logos preceded everything that receives its become from God ... This same Logos, whose goodness is revealed and multiplied in all the things that have their origin in him, with the degree of beauty appropriate to each being, recapitulates all things in himself ... Each of the intellectual and rational beings, whether angels or human beings, through the very Logos according to which each was created, who is in God and is with God, is called and indeed is a portion of God through the Logos that preexisted in God. (St. Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 7)

Christ who is the Logos of God is also our logos, our true reason, meaning and purpose — the way of our being. To live in communion with Christ is to come into our true identity, who we really are. Apart from him our identity is fragmented and distorted. Christ, the Logos of God, is expressed in each one of us, and each one of us is expressed in him. 

Our inherent nature and identity is in Jesus Christ alone. 
Only in him do we discover our true selves, 
so to become who we are. 

My Identity in Christ is Not So Fragile

Here is a trustworthy saying, St. Paul writes: “Christ came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15). He saw no contradiction between Christ saving sinners, and himself being not only one of them but the worst of them. If Christ came to save sinners, then please let me be counted among them, even the worst of them — that I might be saved. This is not an encouragement to sin but quite the opposite. St. John said: 

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father — Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:1-2)

Again, John sees no contradiction between Christ being the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world and the recognition that it is yet possible for us to sin. And if (when) we do, we have an Advocate with the Father — Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. That is a wonderful promise and comfort, and an encouragement to bring it all before the Lord. To confess our sins, to admit how screwed up we are, how poorly we behave, does not offend the Lord. It honors the Lord and appropriates his promise. Every week in the Anglican Church we make this Prayer of Confession:

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.

We pray this not because we do not believe the grace of God or the gospel of Christ but because we do. We are counting on it. We want God’s help to delight in his will and walk in his ways, because we find so often — daily, not just weekly — that we don’t. Even if I am unaware that I have sinned in thought or word or deed this week, in what I have done or have left undone, I take it as a given that I have — which is much more likely than that I haven’t — and look to God’s forgiveness and help concerning it.

We often tend to think of sin as the infraction of a law, but it is really the brokenness of a relationship, turning away from God, from others, even from ourselves, from who we truly are in Christ. It is a curving in upon ourselves and away from others. We often leave behind us a trail of broken relationships. Broken by things we have done, or said, or thought about others; or by things we ought to have done but failed to do, because of thoughtlessness or neglect, or indifference toward the plight of others.

My identity in Christ is not so fragile that I cannot admit I am still screwed up and need his help daily. Indeed, my identity in Christ is not fragile at all — precisely because it is in Christ. It is his doing, not mine.

Lord, have mercy and help me, 
because I want to be like Jesus, 
to live as he lived and love 
as he has loved. Amen. 

The Irony of Forensic Justification

There is a distinction between Law and Gospel, of course, and an important one. St. Paul says that the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good (Romans 7:12). “Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faithfulness” (Galatians 3:23-4). As we will see, and as Paul spoke about earlier in this letter, the faithfulness by which we are justified is that of Jesus Christ.

Beginning with the Reformation, some made such a sharp distinction between Law and Gospel that it became a hermeneutic, classifying and dividing passages as either Law or Gospel, with Law being not a guardian but tyrant driving us to despair. The main problem for humankind was understood to be a legal one, a matter of law. And if the problem were a legal one, then the solution offered by the gospel would need to be a legal one, too.

What of justification, then? Paul does speak of it, and he makes some important points concerning it — but not as a question of Law.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:23-4)

The problem of sin is not the it is infraction of Law but that by our sins we fall short of the glory of God — the glory we were created to share. Infraction of Law is an abstraction, but to come up short of the glory of God is a matter of ontology, a matter of our very being, turning away from God.

And yet, Paul says that we are justified freely by the grace of God through redemption in Christ Jesus. That is the grace by which we are saved — through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. Which brings me to Galatians 2:16:

We know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. (NET)

The justification Paul speaks of is not a legal solution. A solution to a legal problem would be a legal one. But Paul denies a legal solution when he says, “not by the works of the law,” for they do not justify. What is needed is not a forensic solution but a transformation. Transformation is what we find a few verses later:  

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 NET) 

Christ now lives in us, and we live by the faithfulness of Christ — the faithfulness by which we are justified. That is justification not as forensic declaration but as transformation.

Those who make the sharpest distinction between Law and Gospel, who see the problem as a legal one, generally insist that justification is forensic — legal in nature. It means that God’s act of justification creates a legal fiction: We are declared to be righteous as a matter of Law, but it does not actually make us righteous; it is a change in status but not a change within our being.

Further, justification as forensic declaration is abstract. It relies on an idea of imputation of righteousness, something not found in either the Scriptures or in the early Church. Righteousness is not actually a transferable thing, nor are there any actual accounts for merits to be credited or debited to or from. 

The early Church had no doctrine of imputed righteousness. In their understanding, the solution the Gospel offers us is one that actually makes us righteous. The justification it brings is transformative. The life of Christ who lives in us and by which we now live actually changes us; it is the faithfulness of Christ by which we are justified actually at work in us. It is not an abstraction, not a legal fiction, not an accounting maneuver. Rather, it is an ontological reality that is dynamic and transformative, changing us to become more and more like Christ, until we are fully conformed to the image of the Son, through whom we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

The early Church had no interest in Gospel as legal solution, or justification as forensic declaration. Below are three writings* from the Fathers that, by the nature of their subject, we should expect to see descriptions of a pressing legal problem and how it is solved by Christ — if justification as forensic declaration were of any concept or concern to them.

• St. Irenaeus, in his book, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, gives extensive example about how the gospel as it was handed down from the Apostles was preached in his day (mid to late 2nd century). There are a couple of significant things to note about it. First, virtually every point about the gospel is drawn from the Old Testament, revealing our Lord Jesus Christ throughout. Second, through he does speak of the Law, it is preparatory to the Gospel; and though he does speak of justification, it is not about a forensic declaration. He sees justification as a matter of faith, not of Law, and it is transformative, for in justification we receive a new heart and a new spirit.
• St. Melito of Sardis, in his book, On Pascha, also in the mid to late 2nd century, writes what appears to be the oldest known Passover Haggadah, fully on the death and resurrection of Christ, that he is our Pascha, our Passover. Yet he says nothing about a forensic declaration of justification being secured — or even necessary.
• St. Athanasius in, On the Incarnation, describes the pitiful condition of humankind and asks what was God to do about it. But the problem he lays out is not about a detrimental legal situation we were in, nor is the solution he identifies in the Incarnation and the Cross. He shows no interest in justification as forensic declaration. For him, Incarnation and Cross are about our transformation: Christ was incarnate that we might be made divine.

For the Fathers, the gospel and justification are transformative in nature: Christ became human being so that we could be divine, becoming by grace what he is by nature. 

So, it is ironic that those who are most insistent on a sharp distinction between Law and Gospel are also most insistent that justification is forensic. Such an idea was not known in the Church until about the 16th century.

* These three books, by the way, are a great place to begin reading the Church Fathers.