It is a striking fact that one particular sentence from St. Paul occurs in three foundational documents of the Reformation. And it is not Romans 1:17! Moreover, each document uses this sentence to highlight some aspect of the doctrine of justification. (1)
The sentence is from Romans 4:25. Martin Luther places it at the head of Part Two of the Schmalkaldic Articles (1527): "Here is the first and chief article: (1) That Jesus Christ our God and Lord, 'was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification' (Rom. 4:25)." The Augsburg Confession, the first official Protestant Confession of Faith, quotes the verse generally in the 1530 version and cites it specifically in the 1540 revision. (2) And Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549 organized his Fifteenth Collect for the First Sunday of Easter entirely around the Pauline text: "Almighty Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve Thee in pureness of living and truth; Through the merits of the same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." Significantly, St. Augustine in his Enchiridion, chapter 52, had long before used St. Paul's words to link the present justification of man through word and faith to the Resurrection of Christ: "in illo vera resurrectio, ita in nobis vera justificatio," ("in his true resurrection is our true justification").
The classic sentence itself, in its original form, was composed by Paul in the mid- to late-50s a.d. It occurs as a sort of climax to the argument that childless Abraham's justifying faith (Gen. 15:6), according to which he believed God's Word that he would have countless descendants, resulted in a proleptic (anticipatory as if already accomplished) "resurrection of the body," by which he and Sarah were able to conceive a son. In the same way that Abraham's faith was connected with God's motion that took his body from death to life, so is our faith connected with God's motion that takes us from death to life in ultimate eternal terms. Paul then follows with the associated truth that Jesus' Resurrection results in the believer's justification before God.
No distrust made [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was "reckoned to him as righteousness." But the words, "it was reckoned to him," were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him that raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification (Rom. 4:20-25).
As happens so often in the teachings of St. Paul, a biblical story suggests parallels that prove fruitful for theology, in this case extremely fruitful!
Paul emphasizes that our justification before God, our being restored from a position before God based on guilt and estrangement to a relationship based on acceptance and positive regard, is accomplished by means of the Resurrection. This Resurrection emphasis is different from another common emphasis within the cluster of ideas concerning the doctrine of justification by faith. The other emphasis, which has been ascendant in the Protestant tradition of thinking about justification, occasionally so focuses on Good Friday (atonement) that the link between justification and the Resurrection is downplayed.
Certainly we are justified because we have been forgiven on account of the atonement of Christ on the cross: our justification hinges on the forgiveness of our sin. Within this emphasis, Good Friday becomes the central moment in the history of justification. It is more a question of emphasis than fundamental teaching-no one ever denied Paul's linking justification to Easter. But the focus has shifted from Easter to Good Friday, from Resurrection to atonement, even from present vitality to mere remembrance of the past.
We can observe that Paul's lightning-rod connection of new resurrected life with the justification of sinners represents an aspect of justification that has been subordinated to the atonement emphasis, and in some ways neglected in our Reformation tradition. Justification, the mark of a living Church, moves quite rapidly in the later decades of the sixteenth century from an electric word for the here and now to an assertion based primarily on memory. Justification anchored principally to Calvary threatens to become a talisman tied up to the past without being pivoted to the future. The point is that the doctrine of justification in the "mature" period of Reformation thought began to lose its dynamism and Lebendigkeit, or vitality, when only one strand of truth was emphasized.
It is important to discover, or re-discover, the connection in theology (let alone in the real living of Christianity), between the Resurrection of Jesus then and our status as forgiven sinners now. Forgiveness is the fulcrum for a new life. This is as true in everyday life as the fact that the sun shines. When you confess your sin and are truly forgiven and know it, then there is a potent awakening of hope in the human spirit. Such confession meshes the reality-principle (i.e., repentance) and the God-reality (i.e., grace and absolution) to create this conviction. I could stop here and give dozens of examples of this from personal pastoral experience. I could witness from my own life. I could even point to parables from the arts, such as John Ford's 1953 masterpiece, The Sun Shines Bright (or from any number of other movies, plays, or books, among which Les Miserables of Victor Hugo would have to top the list). In The Sun Shines Bright, there is one central act of forgiveness in a small Kentucky town that is riven with divisions stemming from the Civil War. This act of forgiveness brings together all the factions in the town in such a way that no one is left out in the provision for future good.
With the Apostle Paul, we link our future to the Resurrection. The atonement, or forgiveness of sin once and for all achieved on the cross, weighs in, and heavily. But the atonement is confirmed, ratified, sealed, and made enduringly good by virtue of Christ's rising from death. Our justification hinges on a risen life, present in us now because Christ is present with us now.
Note the actuality of this. Jesus in his bodily substance rose from death. It was the molecules (according to John Updike, in his poem "Seven Stanzas for Easter")! The New Testament is at pains to underline the corporeality of this. Thomas touched Jesus' side and his hands (John 20:27). Paul stressed the appearances of Jesus, their number and the specific disciples who saw him (I Cor. 15:1-11). The Gospels are all rich in their accounts of the risen Jesus, who ate with and even cooked for his disciples (e.g., Luke 24). John's account of Mary Magdalene's encounter with Jesus in the garden is among the most riveting and plausible reports because of its very strangeness (John 20:11-18). Her touch and his recoil (Noli me tangere) are vividly remembered.
For Paul, the Resurrection of Jesus is also the ultimate case of creatio ex nihilo, the creation of something (life) from nothing (death). The Old Testament case of this par excellence (not to mention God's creation of the world) was the physical enabling of Abraham and Sarah to conceive a child. The New Testament case of this par excellence, following from the virgin birth of Jesus, is the raising of Jesus from death. These are not cases of amelioration. They are cases of the quantum leap!
Thus the individual person today, and in all periods, is able to derive hope for the future based on God's forgiveness of past trespasses (Rom. 4:25a) and established for all time in God's Resurrection of Christ (4:25b). Justification is present truth because Christ is not dead but alive. And it is the molecules. Justification carried forward into the present and future by the Resurrection is Easter truth.
We owe it to ourselves and our fellow sufferers (i.e., our fellow human beings) to give due weight to the insight of Romans 4:25. Luther saw it and passed it on, although the insight faded somewhat over time. Cranmer picked it up and prayed it. The Reformation was born through it. We can close with the words of W. H. Griffith-Thomas, that bright light of Edwardian Protestant Anglicanism, who wrote in 1904:
Justification is much more than pardon. Forgiveness is only part of Justification, and to identify them is to cause spiritual trouble and loss…. Forgiveness is only negative, the removal of the condemnation. Justification is also positive, the removal of guilt (ital., sic), and the bestowal of a perfect standing before God. Forgiveness is an act, and a succession of isolated acts from time to time. Justification is an act which results in a permanent relation or position in the sight of God. Forgiveness is repeated throughout our life. Justification is complete and never repeated … it covers the whole of our life, past, present, and future (ital., PZ).
Christ the Lord is ris'n today! Alleluia!
2 [ Back ] Of Article IV, "Concerning Justification."
