God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

Listen to John Piper talk about how his and Wright's views of justification are different (9 min).

[The following is an edited transcript of the audio.]

Bob Allen: Where does N. T. Wright make a change to what you’ve just stated?

John Piper: Wright’s grasp—or expression—of the gospel itself does not include justification or a statement about how to be saved.

Let me read you a quote or two:

• “The gospel’ itself refers to the proclamation that Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, is the one, true and only Lord of the world.” (“Paul in Different Perspectives”)
• For Paul, this imperial announcement was “that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead; that he was thereby proved to be Israel’s Messiah.” (What Saint Paul Really Said, 46)

That’s great. That’s true and wonderful and glorious. He has defended the resurrection of Jesus, and I’m thankful for it. But then he says these sorts of things:

• “‘The gospel’ is not an account of how people get saved. It is . . . the proclamation of the lordship of Jesus Christ.” (133)
• “Paul’s gospel to the pagans was not a philosophy of life. Nor was it, even, a doctrine about how to get saved.” (90)
• “My proposal has been that ‘the gospel’ is not, for Paul, a message about ‘how one gets saved.’” (60)
• “The gospel is not . . . a set of techniques for making people Christians.” (153)

Now, I find that misleading at best, because to declare the lordship of Jesus and say that’s the gospel, rather than the gospel being an explanation of how to be saved overlooks the problem that, for the person who has been in treason against the Lord of the universe all his life, the resurrection is not good news. It’s really bad news. He’s going to be destroyed if the resurrected Lord has all power in heaven and on earth.

How can that be that good news for him unless you begin to explain the meaning of Jesus’ death and what he achieved. What makes the resurrection good news is that now reconciliation with God can be enjoyed by faith, and you can move from being on the wrong side to the right side. All of that is a necessary explanation of what makes the resurrection of Jesus Christ “gospel.”

Wright’s view is a shift in emphasis. He believes in the death of Christ; he believes in the substitutionary atonement; he believes in penal substitution. But he is always backgrounding these things so that the universal lordship of Christ is foregrounded.
It’s the negations he makes that are so troubling, not his affirmations.

Here’s a few more illustrations of the sentences that, when I read them, I thought, he can’t mean this:

• “Justification is not how someone becomes a Christian. It is the declaration that they have become a Christian.” (125)
• “‘Justification’ in the first century was not about how someone might establish a relationship with God. It was about God’s eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in fact, a member of his people.” (119)
• “[Justification] was not so much about ‘getting in’, or indeed about ‘staying in’, as about ‘how you could tell who was in.’” (119)

I think that is very wrong and very hurtful to the doctrine of justification, because he’s disconnecting it from the event by which we are saved, or by which we enter into favor with God. To me, that’s the main issue—at what point is God totally for me? Wrath was upon me before my conversion; wrath was upon me before I was in Christ by faith; after faith and union with Christ, wrath is no longer on me.

Justification, I believe, is the way the Bible describes that moment.. Justification is the act by which God says, “I no longer count you guilty. I count you as righteous with the righteousness of my son.” That’s a saving moment, clustered with the call. Wright sees our call as the only decisive saving moment. And I want to put with the call the work of God in justifying me.

Here’s another statement from Wright: “I must stress again that the doctrine of justification by faith is not what Paul means by ‘the gospel.’” (132)

I just think that’s a devastating way to talk. He says,

If we come to Paul with these questions in mind—the questions about how human beings come into a living and saving relationship with the living and saving God—it is not justification that springs to his lips or pen. The message about Jesus and his cross and resurrection—‘the gospel’ . . . is announced to them; through this means, God works by his Spirit upon their hearts. (116)

I think it is devastating to say that when it comes to having a living and saving relationship with the Lord, justification does not come to Paul’s lips or pen. That is not only misleading and destructive, it’s just wrong.

The clearest example of how wrong it is is in Acts 13. Paul closes his sermon in Antioch with:

Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is justified from everything from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.” (Acts 13:38-39, my translation).

So here he is bringing his sermon to a close—his gospel sermon in which he’s bringing people into an eternal relationship with god—and he brings it to a climax with justification.

So for N. T. Wright to say that justification does not come to Paul’s lips or pen when we ask him about how to find a living, saving relationship with God, I just say, No way. It’s not only misleading, it’s not true to the text and it’s going to hurt the church.

This is the fourth question in a 7-part interview that John Piper did in preparation for his forthcoming book The Future of Justification.

• Part 1, Who is this book for?
• Part 2, Who is N. T. Wright?
• Part 3, What do you believe about justification?