Feb 17, 2010
On the Accomplishment and Application of Redemption in Romans 5:10-11 # 3
This is my third blog on the tension between historical reconciliation in Christ's death and personal reconciliation by faith in Christ. In this blog I want to point out several further observations on this tension.
(5) Anyone who believes in particular redemption has—whether he wants it or not—a tension to deal with in regard to the accomplishment and application of redemption. If you want to avoid such a tension you will have to give up particular redemption and fall back on the Amyraldian’s hypothetical universalism or full-blown Arminianism. You will also (according to John Owen) in the process have to jettison (logically speaking) substitutionary atonement. If you believe in a finished atonement and a particular redemption of some men at the cross, then you must somehow embrace the tension about which I was asked with regard to reconciliation.
Are elect men still under the wrath of God before they believe? Are elect men un-reconciled before they believe? Are they un-redeemed before they believe? Are their sins un-propitiated before they believe? Are their sins un-atoned for before they believe? I affirm that no one who believes in particular redemption can give an unqualified answer to such questions. They must make the very distinction my message required with regard to reconciliation. They must say that in some sense they were and in some sense they were not reconciled before they believe. They must say this or give up particular redemption and logically substitutionary atonement.
(6) What can be said by way of explaining and alleviating the tension that everyone who believes in particular redemption and (to coin a phrase) limited reconciliation must—as I have pointed out—feel? I think Paul points the way for us by his speaking of receiving the reconciliation in Romans 5:11. Paul, I think, is implying the very tension of which we are thinking. Reconciliation was made for all His people at His death on the cross and by His life in His entrance as their representative into heaven. But they have not yet received it personally.
This leads me to suggest that we must distinguish a representative and historical reconciliation in our head in heaven and a personal and experiential reconciliation in us on earth. Such a distinction ought not to be strange to us if we are a little acquainted with the helpful insights of biblical theology with regard to the Scriptures. As my colleague Richard Barcelos pointed out to me during this discussion, what we are dealing with here is simply one facet of the tension between redemptive history (the historia salutis) and our personal salvation (the ordo salutis). So just as there is a redemptive-historical dimension of adoption, for instance, and the church is adopted historically with the coming of the New Covenant, so also there is a personal salvation dimension of adoption in which at various points in time when we believe we are adopted as God's sons. Similarly we must distinguish reconciliation and redemption redemptive-historically considered and their application in our personal salvation histories.
In my message I used an illustration of the a Medieval hero who rescues the king's daughter from a fate worse than death. When he returns the king's daughter to the royal castle, he ascends to the throne room in its highest tower and presents the daughter to the king. In response he offers any reward the hero would like. The hero requests the freedom of those confined in the deepest dungeons of the castle. In response the king has the jailer hand the keys to the hero. Later the hero goes to the dungeon and frees each captive. When were the captives freed? In one sense when the king gave the hero the keys in the throne room. In another sense when the hero went to the dungeons and unlocked their cells one at a time. Both actions (the one in the throne room and the one in the dungeons) are the liberation of the captives, but in different senses and ways.
We must distinguish the achievement of reconciliation in the throne room and the application of reconciliation in the dungeon. Both are reconciliation, both are redemption, but in different senses.
(7) So are men by nature the children of wrath before they are born again and believe the gospel (Ephesians 2:1-3)? Yes, of course. But the elect are not by representation the children of wrath before they believe. No, rather Christ already represents and intercedes for them in heaven, and this is why they come to be born again.
In this regard let me refer to another text which seems problematic to some. John 3:36 reads: "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." The problem is that some, I think, read this text as if it said that until a person believes in the Son the wrath of God abides on Him. This is, however, not exactly what the text says. It says that the wrath of God abides or remains on the one who does not obey the Son—present tense. The present tense, it seems to me, speaks of the final response of a person to the gospel. Jesus, in other words, is not thinking of a point of conversion, but of the abiding response of an individual to the gospel. If this is the thought, then there is no difficulty. For the one whose abiding response to the gospel is unbelief never was reconciled at the cross and the wrath of God surely does remain upon him.
Even if we ignore this exegetical point, we could make the very distinction I made above. We could say, in other words, that the wrath of God remains on the one for whom Christ died not in His representative, but in Himself. It remains on Him personally, but not on His substitute, but only until he believes.
Comments
Brandon Adams on Mar 1, 2010 11:20am
Thanks again for this series. It's a difficult topic to work out. I've been considering the analogy you offered. While I think it works in and of itself to explain how one act can be accomplished in 2 stages, I'm not certain it applies to this discussion of justification. The problem is that justification is a declaration, thus for the king to say it is to make it so. If the king tells the hero the people are free, then they are justified.
The given analogy would seem to apply more to regeneration (our souls are set free from enslavement upon regeneration), rather than declarative justification which does not require us to be freed from a prison for it to be effectual.
So, again, I'm not convinced there's any way we can say we are reconciled to God at the cross, but not justified until faith.