A couple of questions for my Christian readers:
- Have you ever taken comfort in the fact that you are justified in Christ, and therefore assured of your standing before God?
- Have you ever prayed for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done on earth?
- Have you ever pointed to someone spiritual growth and seen there that sanctification is taking place?
- Do you ever think of yourself as a daughter or son who has been adopted into God’s family?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, your own understanding of life here and now has been shaped by the New Testament’s eschatology. 
The idea throughout the NT is that the end has already begun and is making itself known in the present.
One of the most profound implications of inaugurated eschatology is that there is continuity between the life we live in this age and the lives we shall live in the age to come.
When we start teasing this out, it means that we need to start weeding out those ideas that plant themselves in our minds that what we do here does no matter because, after all, “it’s all going to burn.”
Returning to my initial questions:
- Justification is the word spoken by God on the judgment day over his people: they are vindicated, acquitted. Justified. To claim that identity now is to participate in our eternal judgment in Christ before God finally renders it at the end-yet-to-come.
- The kingdom of God comes with submission to God here on earth (when people recognize and act as though God is the King God is)–but, there is a coming consummation of that reign when every knee will bow. Obedience now is a foretaste of what will be.
And so on. Any change toward God, any change in our status or persons as we identify ourselves with Christ, or, better, as God identifies us with Christ, are anticipations of what will fully be in the life to come. Our own identities walk in what we call and “already/not yet” eschatology.
Last night we had dinner with someone who works as a consultant to help create sustainable business practices. Her goal is to help companies, agencies, etc. live into a future where success is measured not merely by a financial bottom line but also bottom lines that measure social and environmentally sustainability.
As she has worked to bring this message to the church, the greatest hindrance has been bad eschatology.
Why are Christians in America disproportionately unconcerned about issues of environmental stewardship and not merely “being green” but true social, economic, and environmental sustainability?
The biggest problem is that American Christianity has drunk deeply of a future-only, entirely discontinuous vision of the age to come. The dispensationalists have painted powerful pictures through fiction and film about a world in which all we do will be destroyed and God will either simply deliver us out of it, or begin a new work ex nihilo, from scratch.
When we look to the future with a deep seated conviction that God is going to destroy everything, we hear pleas for earth-stewardship, for systemic transformation, as little more than cries to start polishing the brass on the Titanic. These sound like foreign narratives, pagan narratives that would distract us from the real work of saving souls for the age to come.
The imagination of North American Christianity needs transformation. It needs to start foreseeing a future that is intimately connected with the present, a future in which the judgment “fires” will not only consume dross, but also leave behind gold, silver, bronze, precious stones.
Eschatology matters. Eschatology shows us what the ending of the story is. And we, as people, are inherently story-bound and therefore inherently living our lives so that they will, to the best of our ability, realize the future that we believe lies ahead.
If we are going to be worth anything as a force for justice, for life, for transformation, we need to get our story straight. We need to better learn where it’s going. And we need to know that there is not merely deliverance to take us from here to there, but a path to walk as well.
I think for the sake of being faithful Christian, a person has got to be able to answer yes to all your questions. I think it is our faithfulness to God and his purposes for us that we should be living like the end story. But i still use the analogy of the polishing brass on the sinking titanic with people mainly because of the materialism and lack of other worldliness (new worldliness) in Christian’s minds. I think 2 Peter 3 gives us a strong argument that this world and it’s way of life will be destroyed by fire. I have not narrowed myself down to an entirely new creation or a renewed or restored creation after the fire that destroys the ungodly.
So do you really think there is no place for talking about destruction of this world without going to the extremes of dispensationalism? And if yes, then what is nice way to talk about “being green” while still keeping this destruction in view?
Sam, I read 2 Peter 3 as talking about judgment fires which will burn some things, but not everything. It’s the cosmic equivalent of 1 Cor 3 in that respect.
If this world has to be entirely destroyed in order to have a place where God’s people can serve him fully and freely, then evil wins: Satan has managed to so ingrain himself in God’s world that God is defeated, has to give up on this world, save as many of us out of it as he can, and start afresh with something else.
For this reason, I see the annihilation of the earth view as theologically problematic. At the same time, Andrew’s parallel of 1 Cor 15 is apt. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed…” The earth, too, must be transformed.
OK, not everything will be destroyed. How do we know what will be saved our of the fire and what will not? Do you think our trash heaps or land fills will survive into the restored creation? Does being green have a new creation effect or is it more of an ethic?
I don’t think I’m qualified to make a list. But I imagine that things that faithfully represent humanities calling to cultivate the earth and rule over it and take care of it in God’s name will come through.
OK .. i see what you are saying. In fact it does fit in my view of the first Genesis story which neither creationism nor evolution nor intelligent design.
I think this is exactly what Paul is getting at when he mysteriously ends 1 Cor. 15 with “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (v. 58, NIV). To what is he referring with the “therefore”? The fact of the resurrection and the consummation of Jesus’ kingdom over death and sin. I think Paul is saying precisely to work today to create what will remain and be glorified in the new earth. If we give ourselves to those things, we know they won’t be in vain, because these are the things of the kingdom. They will last.
2 Peter 3 does say that the whole universe will be destroyed by fire as at the Flood. But at the Flood the world was remade and renewed, springing from what lasted from what came beforehand. Not all was destroyed, thought it was purified and reworked. So it may also be with the Fire to come at the Day of the Lord.
I would strongly agree that “eschatology matters,” but I would say your description of justification doesn’t fit the Bible’s teaching on eschatology.
You said: “Justification is the word spoken by God on the judgment day over his people: they are vindicated, acquitted. Justified. To claim that identity now is to participate in our eternal judgment in Christ before God finally renders it at the end-yet-to-come.”
Where does the Bible say Justification is what is spoken on judgment day, such that you’re receiving a “not guilty” now that corresponds to the end of time “not guilty”? I’m being serious about this question. In Paul’s talks on the issue of justification, I don’t see him using the term “eternal life” or “judgment.” Virtually every time I see Paul speak of “eternal life,” he is speaking in regards to how our good works or bad works directly impact whether we’re saved or not (e.g. Rom 2:7; 6:22f; 1 Tim 6:11f,18f; Gal 6:7-9). And the Final Judgment passages (e.g. Mat 25) speak of Jesus letting us in Heaven based on whether we did good works or not, and not based on some already settled verdict years earlier in their life.
I think it is the mistaken understanding of justification that teaches the final verdict is already settled that causes North American Christianity to be improperly focused since the outcome is guaranteed and the “now” is an after-thought.
Nick, Andrew gives a thorough and extensive reply to some of the particular connections I’m drawing that you’re questioning.
I’ll just add that I agree that the final judgment is based on works, and that somehow those two things hold together: a present justification of the sinner and a final realization of that judgment in accordance with a life lived in faithfulness to God.
@Nick “And the Final Judgment passages (e.g. Mat 25) speak of Jesus letting us in Heaven based on whether we did good works or not, and not based on some already settled verdict years earlier in their life.”
Paul’s idea of justification in the present does in fact show that our justification is a present possession which secures our future, eschatological hope at the judgment seat of God. “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). The participle shows that this is a present condition or status of the Christian which procures our peace with God, the fact that there is no condemnation for those in Christ (8:1).
“Since therefore we have been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (Rom. 5:9, cf. v. 10). Paul says that because we are already so surely justified, acquitted, even “much more” surely shall we be saved (future) from God’s wrath. Paul says that the justifying-reconciling death of Christ, a past event, is so rock-solid and indisputable before God that our final end-day acquittal is a foregone conclusion.
Paul also says that just as Jesus was delivered to death on the cross because of our sins, so too was he raised for our justification (Rom. 4:25). That is, he has already secured our justification in the event of his own justification or vindication in the resurrection. However, we will only FULLY experience our justification–claim the full blessings of it–when we too are raised from death.
Regarding Jesus’ or anyone else speaking of “eternal life” as an exclusively future possession, this is easily ruled out, as I see it, on the basis of myriad verses such as John 3:36, “Whoever believes in the Son has [at present] eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (cf. 3:16; 5:24; 6:54; 10:28; 1 Tim. 6:12; 1 Jn 3:15; 5:11). All of these show eternal life is a present possession of the believer as well as a future hope.
Paul even combines justification by grace through faith now with a guarantee of future eternal life in Titus 3:7: “so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
If the “outcome is not guaranteed,” then Jesus is not a Savior. If he doesn’t actually save anyone, but it’s all left up to the outcome of their own obedience–and the Bible is clear on the point that no amount of good deeds will ever save anyone–then he is never decisively anyone’s savior. At best we would be left with a Roman Catholic version of justification where really all we’re doing is relying upon our own good works to achieve our justification, rather than doing good works because we’re already justified and in God’s love, free from the law. In which case our good works will be evidence of our faith and possession of the Spirit and will acquit us on judgment day.
Hi,
Sorry for the delay, I’ve been busy.
Andrew, thank you for your comments. Here are mine:
You said Justification for Paul “secures our future, eschatological hope at the judgment seat of God,” but I don’t think this is accurate. The way I understand Paul’s teaching on justification is of Adoption, and persevering and maturing in this Adoption leads to being given your Heavenly Inheritance. The two are related but not the same.
Having “peace with God” is true, but this does not entail a “forever secure” peace, and when Paul says “there is no condemnation” he is speaking in the context of “the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death”. In other words, we are called to live a new life, but we cannot and should not abuse this calling by turning back to sin.
As for Romans 5:9f, if you look closely, it goes against the very notion of justification being a thing that secures heaven. The wrath here is a future wrath that will come upon all the disobedient, and only persevering in God’s Friendship will one escape it. The notion that this wrath is already taken care of through Christ’s death is plainly contradicted here – Christ provided a way to escape the future wrath, not take it in substitution for you. Justification puts you in position to avoid the wrath, but it doesn’t in itself secure any final outcome. This is why Paul in Romans 6 and elsewhere speaks of how we are now called to persevere in good works, and this is why Paul speaks of “will be saved” in the future since it is not something secured now.
You mentioned “eternal life” in John, but I don’t think he is using the term in the same sense Paul is. John uses the term “eternal life” when speaking of God’s life and love currently dwelling in the soul of someone, and that’s why 1 John 3:15 says if a Christian hates his brother he no longer has “eternal life abiding in himself”. And this is confirmed when John 17:3 defines “eternal life” as being in an present intimate relationship with the Trinity. As for your quote of John 3:36, if you look carefully here, “believes” is paralleled to “does not obey,” so the “believe” here is short for obedience to Christ’s teachings, not a one time belief that forever justifies and secures eternal life.
But Paul uses “eternal life” differently, in reference to being worthy to enter Heaven, and that’s why almost every context he uses the phrase it is speaking of persevering in good works. And your Titus 3:7 example distinguishes justification which makes one an adopted child with the different but related hope of eternal life which one only receives in persevering in Christian life (Romans 8:17).
I believe the distinction I’m making between Justification/Adoption and Persevering/Maturing harmonizes the “eternal life” texts of Paul (Rom 2:7; 6:22f; 1 Tim 6:11f,18f; Gal 6:7-9) without having to explain them away or twist them beyond their plain reading.
You said: “If the “outcome is not guaranteed,” then Jesus is not a Savior.”
This is incorrect because you’re not distinguishing between present and future salvation; and I believe your understanding of justification has conflated the two. Texts like Hebrews 5:9 say, Jesus’ Passion made Him “the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” – meaning Jesus is only savior in the future sense if you obey (i.e. not guaranteed).
There are two main “phases” of salvation: (a) salvation to Adoption, and (b) persevering in that Adoption to the End. These cannot be confused or conflated.
Think of it as (a) being hired with a company and (b) receiving a paycheck for your work. The two cannot be confused! Being hired doesn’t in any way guarantee your paycheck, but you must be hired to receive a paycheck (after working).
Your last line, I believe, actually highlights what I’ve been arguing: “our good works will be evidence of our faith and possession of the Spirit and will acquit us on judgment day.”
Note that it is “*our* good works” (even if enabled by the Holy Spirit) that are the *ground* that acquit us on judgment day. This is precisely the Biblical model, and goes against the notion we are acquitted at an earlier time, on another basis. The notion of Christ’s Active Obedience (which Daniel rightly rejects) is plainly refuted by this realization.
Thank you Nick. What you said seems to make more sense and fit into scripture better. I especially think of 1 Cor 10 where Paul compares our Christian life to the wilderness journey of Israel.
Sam,
That is an excellent passage that distinguishes between the two types of “saved”. The first is the exodus, the second is the journey through the desert. The exodus didn’t guarantee entrance to the Promise land, but was a precondition.
Jude 1:5 echos these same sentiments: “I want to remind you that the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe.”