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Luther writes (Commentary on Gal 2:20), \u201cChrist and I must be joined together so that He lives in me and I in Him \u2013 and what a wonderful way of speaking that is. For because He lives in me, whatever there is in me of grace, righteousness, life, peace, salvation is all His but in such a way that it is mine through this inseparable union and conjunction which I have with Him through faith. Through this faith Christ and I are made one body, as it were, and spirit. Now because Christ lives in me there must be present with Him grace, righteousness, life, and salvation whereas the Law, sin, and death are absent: in fact, the Law is crucified and devoured and destroyed along with sin, death, and the devil. Thus, Paul tries to draw us wholly away from ourselves and transplant us into Christ by faith in Him.\u201d <\/p>\n
Seems that Luther is grounding justification in union with Christ, no? \u201cBECAUSE Christ lives in me there must be present with Him . . . righteousness.\u201d <\/p>\n
No, says Preus. Imputation is not a \u201cmetaphor\u201d or \u201cfigure\u201d but a description of what actually takes place in justification. This \u201cblessed exchange\u201d can, however, be set in a \u201cmetaphorical pattern of thought\u201d such as \u201cmarriage, union with Christ, crucifixion of Law, sin, and death, etc.).\u201d \u201cIt is not possible to understand Luther as grounding the blessed exchange in the fact of the believer\u2019s union with Christ. To do so would deny that the justitia aliena <\/i> is imputed and would put the two motifs [of imputation and union] in opposition to each other. Furthermore, union with Christ is the result of justification, not the other way around.\u201d <\/p>\n
Curious, that. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Luther writes (Commentary on Gal 2:20), \u201cChrist and I must be joined together so that He lives in me and I in Him \u2013 and what a wonderful way of speaking that is. For because He lives in me, whatever there is in me of grace, righteousness, life, peace, salvation is all His but in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology-soteriology"],"yoast_head":"\n