Pandering to the Populace

In this blog post “populace” refers to those who sit in the pews on Sundays and who pay the pastor’s salary and by “pandering” I mean that pastors and preachers teach a softer theology than either the Bible teaches or what that pastor believes but fears, if taught, he or she would get sacked.

No one who reads the Bible carefully can believe that final salvation occurs without transformation. One way pastors pander to the populace is by radically distinguishing between justification and sanctification, making it a two-step process — justification referring to the moment of being declared right along with its guarantee of salvation (without conditions, unconditional love, grace as pure gift) and sanctification referring to a life of progress (or not) that has nothing do with final salvation but with blessing in the here and now and (perhaps) degrees of reward in the final heaven.

David de Silva, however, says both terms are being misinterpreted and that final redemption, as Simon Gathercole has said, is at the same time a “vindication on the basis of an obedient life.” I’m referring to David de Silva, Transformation: The Heart of Paul’s Gospel (Lexham, 2014), 8 n 2. Here are the six arguments of de Silva contending that transformation is necessary for salvation (I reformat for clarity, from p. 10):

First, Paul speaks of our transformation as the goal of his preaching and of God’s intervention, not merely about our acquittal (whether initial, final, or both).

Second, such transformation is essential, because God will not show favoritism in the judgment.

Third, Paul clearly attaches conditions to our attaining God’s goal for us beyond settling upon a certain belief and making a certain confession, which has bearing on what “faith” means for Paul in such formulations as “justified by faith.”

Fourth, Paul talks about “justification” as the result of having been brought in line with God’s righteousness and as a future experience of being acquitted at the Last Judgment on the basis of a life lived as well as an accomplished event of being reconciled to God after our estrangement in sin. Any assessment of Paul’s gospel must accour- for the connection between initial and final justification.

Fifth, Paul also speaks of “salvation” as something we will enjoy or experience in the future, not merely as something already accomplished. Again, any assessment of Paul’s gospel has to take this whole range of usage into account.

Sixth and finally, God expects us not just to “receive” his gifts but to make the use of and response to his gifts that show an appropriate assessment of their value—in this case, a life for a life!

Now some support.

1. The goal of his preaching is transformation: Galatians 2:19-20; Philippians 3:8-11; Galatians 4:19; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Ephesians 4:22-24;  2 Corinthians 5:17 and Romans 8:28-29.

2. The necessity of transformation, which is Spirit-empowered and Spirit-directed. But he focuses on Romans 2:2-11, and it ends with this line: “For God shows no partiality.” The partiality is about God’s judgment of the works of all humans. The just Judge, God, judges justly.

3. Conditions beyond mere belief. Notice Romans 8:11-14 and Galatians 5:19-21 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and Ephesians 5:5-6.

4. Justification — what is involved? de Silva thinks this term means more than forensic declaration and refers as well to conformity to God’s standards (a solid view when rooted in the Jewish evidence — on which see the important study by Benno Przybylski, Righteousness in Matthew and His World of Thought). de Silva argues dikaiosis means the result of a legal action while dikaiosyne refers to the ethical virtue (as in Matt 5:17-48). The verb dikaioo means to declare in a way that makes a person just/right. de Silva sees transformation right here.

Justification is, in the legal or forensic sense, the recognition by God before all at the Last Judgment that one has lived in line with God’s righteous standards (27).

In this de Silva does not minimize grace or God’s work in us but instead sees God’s work in us as the inevitable and necessary implication of justification, and in that term he nests sanctification. Sanctification does not mean perfection or sinlessness but it means a life of obedience. Thus,

The many passages from Paul that we have been exploring push us in the direction of a view of justification in which God brings into being within us the righteousness that Christ exhibited, changing us to become more like him, indeed inviting us to become vessels through which Christ’s righteousness continues to express itself in real, effective ways in the communities and world around us (33).

[In disagreement with NT Wright and using Wright’s image of the whole car reduced to the steering wheel, de Silva says:] I would suggest, however, that if we are to understand justification from Paul’s point of view it ought not to be likened to any part of the car itself. Wright would agree that justification has to do with something that happens now in Christ and happens eschatologically at the judgment. It would be truer to Paul’s thought to think of justification, then, as the destination toward which we are driving—or, better, toward which we are being chauffeured by the Spirit—the destination at which we would surely arrive if we just stopped grabbing the wheel ourselves, or, worse, jumping out of the car and making the Spirit take detours to try to find us again and coax us back into the vehicle (34).

5. Salvation as future, too. Clearly, salvation is past, present, and future. [Aspect theory has to nuance this in special ways, but the substance does not change.] Ephesians 2:8-9 and 1 Corinthians 1:18 and Romans 13:11-14 and Philippians 2:12-13.

6. Response is necessary. 2 Corinthians 5:15 and Galatians 2:19-20.

He concludes by reframing the questions:

When we ask, “What is necessary for me to be saved?” we are not asking the right question. We should be asking instead, “Since Jesus gave his life for me and brought me the gifts of a fresh start with God and the Spirit of God to dwell within me, what is it right for me to do for him in return?” Or, “Where can I reasonably draw the line between living for him and living to serve my own interests and desires, since he, in his generous kindness, did not draw such lines?” We move from a minimalist question to a maximalist question—which only seems fair if we really believe that God gave his all to provide us with a way out and a way back, rather than giving the minimum that was necessary (42).