“Gospel-Centered” Pitfalls Part 2- Everything is Justification…

This is the 2nd post in a series called “Gospel-Centered Pitfalls”. You can read the intro and Part 1- Defining Gospel Centrality before heading into this one.

One of the first dangers I see possible for the “Gospel-centered” movement is an unhealthy emphasis on “justification.” Hold on with the pitchforks and torches, my theology of justification is fairly traditional. I think Luther was right in his context to say that “justification is the issue on which the church rises or falls.” I think justification is a wonderful part of the Gospel, even one of the central New Testament metaphors for describing how the death and resurrection of Jesus conquer the sin and death problem and bring us back into God’s family.

There’s a danger, though. I’ve noticed that some talk about Gospel-centrality almost purely in terms of justification. Every issue of our Christian life, every temptation we face or trial we endure, every conflict with another human being is a justification issue. Every sin is an issue of self-justification. The central problem of every story of Scripture is whether the person knows that they are justified by faith alone in Christ alone. Part of this is simply that because the topic of justification was at the heartbeat of the Protestant Reformation and we are its descendants. Another reason is the perceived (and sometimes real) attack on Justification from the New Perspective on Paul, especially the work of NT Wright in recent years. Also, the Lutheran hermeneutic of dividing all scripture into categories of Law and Gospel makes every text a justification text. Add to that the late Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde’s work on making other categories like sanctification essentially subsets of justification, a good example of which can be found in Christian Spirituality: 5 Views of Sanctification.

The issue here is not that the topic of  justification doesn’t pop up in places besides Romans and Galatians. It shows up in Luke’s Gospel, Job, and other places. But it’s not the only thing that pops up there. In fact, let’s revisit my statement about justification being “one of the central New Testament metaphors for describing how the death and resurrection of Jesus conquer the sin and death problem and bring us back into God’s family.” Even in describing justification, note how other Biblical metaphors showed up: victory, adoption. In fact, no less than J.I. Packer in Knowing God said that he would define the New Testament message about Jesus as “adoption through propitiation.” No mention of justification there.

Once again, it’s not that justification isn’t a major teaching of the New Testament. It’s not that it has relevance only to our entry into Christianity but not to our ongoing Christian life. That’s one of the key points of Galatians, that we don’t start something new after our Christianity. And Romans, the other major treatment of justification, is a letter sent to Christians, and there Paul rehearses justification to exhort the house churches in Rome to “accept one another in the Lord” since there is no difference between Jew and Gentile.

But note that justification isn’t the only metaphor Paul uses, even in Romans. Paul is willing to use any facet of the Gospel story to empower his readers to follow Jesus. Just in that letter, he talks about  the Gospel in terms like mortification/resurrection, adoption, acceptance, unification of Jew/Gentile into one people, peacemaking.

Understanding justification is a key part of Gospel-centrality, but not the only part. Don’t withhold from yourself and those you disciple the vast richness of Gospel facets we find in Scripture. Yes, one person you meet may need to hear that she doesn’t have to prove herself to God and can rest assured in her justified status before him, but another may need to hear that they are adopted as God’s children as they face a difficult family past. Another may need to hear that the Gospel declares they have died to sin in Christ and no longer have to be enslaved to a particular habit. Someone might need to know the Gospel truth that Christ has broken down the dividing wall between ethnicities in his death and we can love those different from us.  And there are so many more that could be used! 

Avoid the pitfall of reducing the Gospel to “justification” only. It is not less, but it is so much more.

(A helpful book that deals with showing multi-faceted Gospel applications from a variety of Scriptures is A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God’s Love by Milton Vincent.)