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 Haggedah, 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.