Active Obedience Revisited

by Phil Johnson



've mentioned before that I am a member of the Fellowship of Reformed Evangelicals (FIRE). That organization has a very simple doctrinal statement that is Baptistic and Calvinistic but broad enough to include Sabbatarians and non-Sabbatarians; pre-, post-, and a-millennialists; congregationalist and elder-rule churches; and people of varying opinions on most secondary and tertiary doctrinal issues.

Four or five years ago a question arose within FIRE about the nature of the righteousness that is imputed to those who believe. Is it specifically Christ's righteousness, or is it the righteousness of God generally considered as an ethereal modality? Was Christ's perfect, lifelong obedience as a man born under the law (sometimes referred to as his "active obedience") any part of the righteousness that is imputed to us, or are we saved by His death on the cross ("passive obedience") alone?

What follows is a document I drafted in response to that controversy. If I recall correctly, this document was never formally adopted or published anywhere, because the conflict within FIRE was resolved by a simple appeal to the existing doctrinal statement. But the draft document enumerated several biblical reasons I am convinced Christ's whole life and death—and not His death only—was an essential aspect of the atonement He provided for us. I decided to post the document here because I think lots of Pyro-readers might benefit from the abbreviated outline of key biblical issues related to the question of Christ's active obedience.

As noted in the closing paragraphs below, I'm not entirely happy with the way classic Reformed theology bifurcates the obedience of Christ into two parts. But I'm convinced it is a far more egregious error to adopt any doctrine that suggests our justification simply overthrows or eliminates the relevance of God's law rather than fulfilling it. I also think it is absolute folly to deny that Christ's lifelong obedience to the law has anything to do with the righteousness imputed to those who are united with Him by faith.

Here's the draft document:

FIRE's doctrinal statement explicitly affirms the imputation of Christ's righteousness as the ground of justification: We believe the elect, who are called by grace, are justified in the sight of God on account of the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is received by faith alone. Also expressly affirmed in the FIRE statement of faith (under the heading "Christ Our Representative") is the principle of Christ's active obedience, meaning that Christ's whole lifetime of perfect conformity to God's law was an integral part of the vicarious work He did for His people: We believe that God sent His Son into the world, conceived of the virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, unchangeably sinless, both God and man, born under the law, to live a perfect life of righteousness on behalf of His elect people. (emphasis added) The doctrine of Christ's active obedience is currently under attack on several fronts: It is a favorite target of those who advocate the so-called "New Perspective on Paul" (an increasingly popular position influenced by the writings of N. T. Wright). In 2001 a controversial article by Robert Gundry appeared in Christianity Today claiming "the doctrine that Christ's righteousness is imputed to believing sinners needs to be abandoned." (That article prompted a fine defense by John Piper in his book Counted Righteous in Christ). The principle of Christ's active obedience has long been rejected by many in the mainstream of traditional Scofield/Dallas dispensationalism. Norman Shepherd (whose controversial teaching seeks to modify the standard Reformed definition of sola fide) argues against the role of Christ's active obedience in our justification. And the principle of Christ's active obedience has also lately been renounced by some of the proponents of "New Covenant Theology." FIRE remains committed to the truth that Christ's lifetime of legal obedience was an essential aspect of his vicarious work on behalf of the elect. We affirm this doctrine not because of any doctrinaire commitment to Reformed tradition, creeds, or theological systems, but because we are convinced it is biblical. Here is a summary of some of the chief biblical reasons for holding fast to this doctrine: In Matthew 3:15, Christ explicitly said His baptism was necessary "to fulfill all righteousness." Those who deny Christ's active obedience are in effect claiming that nothing but the absence of sin and guilt is necessary to fulfill all righteousness. Of course, Christ was completely devoid of any sin or guilt; yet He insisted on undergoing John's baptism (symbolic of repentance) in order to "fulfill . . . righteousness." On whose behalf did He submit to this ordinance? Clearly He did not do it for His own sake. He had no need of repentance. But He was identifying with—and substituting for—His people. That is why He rendered an obedience that was by no means obligatory for His own sake, and yet He regarded it as necessary. Romans 10:4 says "Christ is the end ["telos"—the completion or the goal and fulfillment] of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." To deny the role of Christ's active obedience is to teach that the law and Christ's relationship to it are utterly irrelevant to the reckoning of righteousness to believers. In other words, those who deny Christ's active obedience are teaching that redemption is accomplished by the setting aside of the law's absolute demands, not by Christ's perfectly fulfilling the law on our behalf. That overturns the clear teaching of Christ in Matthew 5:17: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Second Corinthians 5:21 teaches that Christ's righteousness is imputed to believers in exactly the same sense that our guilt was imputed to Him. In other words, justification involves a double imputation: Just as our violation of the law was imputed to Christ, His fulfillment of the law is imputed to us. Any other view destroys the parallelism of that verse. Romans 5:19 clearly teaches that Christ's obedience is the ground of our righteous legal standing. Since a single act of disobedience makes a person disobedient by definition and sets the full weight of the law against him (James 2:10), the "obedience" of Christ in this context must include the whole course of His lifetime of obedience to God. A host of other verses also make legal obedience (not merely forgiveness) essential to true righteousness. "And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the LORD our God, as he hath commanded us" (Deuteronomy 6:25; cf. Psalm 15:2; 106:3; 119:172; Proverbs 12:17; Isaiah 58:2; Romans 6:16; 8:4; 10:5). The distinction often made between "active" and "passive" obedience does not nullify this point: righteousness and obedience are inextricably linked in Scripture. A perfect righteousness clearly requires something more than just the forgiveness of sin. To deny the role of Christ's active obedience in justification is to distort what Paul meant when he described believers as "in Christ"—united with Him in such a way that our very life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). We are clothed in His perfect righteousness—not merely stripped of our guilt (Isaiah 61:10). Indeed, Christ is our righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6; 1 Corinthians 1:30). Furthermore, Christ's "righteousness" consists not merely in His sufferings, but in all his actions (1 John 2:29). Philippians 2:8 suggests that Christ's obedience only culminated in His death. The full scope of the obedience He rendered on our behalf was manifest in His whole life, not merely in His dying. See also Romans 8:3-4. Christ became man for us, not for Himself (2 Corinthians 8:9); and therefore the obedience He owed to the law was for us, not for Himself (Galatians 4:4). Scripture teaches that God's own righteousness involves numerous positive elements—His goodness, His love, His mercy, and so on. So God's righteousness (Romans 10:3) is certainly something more than merely the absence of guilt. The law's promise of life to those who obey would seem to be pointless if Christ somehow obtained life for us without obeying the law on our behalf. Why else would the law promise life for obedience (Leviticus 18:5; Ezekiel 20:11; Luke 10:28)? Note that the law promises life not to the one who suffers, but to the one who obeys. If Christ's active obedience has no relevance to our justification, those promises would add up to nothing but an empty, pointless bluff. The context of Philippians 3:9 makes clear that the ground of the believer's justification is an alien righteousness, not any degree of righteousness we obtain for ourselves. To deny that this is the righteousness of Christ is to diminish His unique role as our proxy, our mediator, and our substitute. There are also several important theological reasons for affirming the role of Christ's active obedience in our justification: Denying Christ's active obedience sets one on a course that inevitably leads to a minimalist, downgraded view of justification. That is why so many of the leading critics of "active obedience" have concluded (quite logically, given the arguments they employ) that nothing positive is imputed to believers at justification. They teach instead that justification is nothing more than the forgiveness of sins, period. That kind of justification would leave believers with no better standing than Adam had before the fall. To portray justification as forgiveness only without any positive imputation is to undermine the biblical doctrine of the atonement. That view actually contains an echo of the Socinian argument, by claiming that merit is unnecessary where you have satisfaction. Some who deny the vicarious efficacy of Christ's active obedience have embraced a principle that is inherently antinomian. The law of God did not need to be fulfilled on our behalf, they say. It was simply overturned and abolished. Thus they relegate the law of God to complete irrelevancy as far as redemption is concerned. Others who deny the vicarious efficacy of Christ's active obedience teach a kind of neonomianism. They make the believer's own legal obedience a condition of final justification. This is a form of works salvation. Justification is a richer, fuller concept than forgiveness. (Christ Himself was "justified in the Spirit"—1 Timothy 3:16.) Justification is a declaration that God regards the believer as fully righteous, perfectly faithful, wholly acceptable to Him. It is not merely an edict that the believer is free from the penalty of sin. To eliminate the declaration of righteousness from our concept of justification (or to tone it down by redefining it as a pronouncement of forgiveness only) is to miss the profoundest aspect of the biblical doctrine of justification (Romans 3:22; 4:6, 11, 22-25; 1 Corinthians 6:11; see also Isaiah 54:17; Daniel 9:24). In effect, any denial of the efficacy of Christ's active obedience renounces the very heart and soul of Reformation theology. For all those reasons we regard any denial of Christ's active obedience as a serious and significant departure from orthodoxy. It diminishes the biblical meaning of justification, waters down the biblical definition of righteousness, and attenuates the biblical doctrine of substitutionary atonement. While we see a legitimate distinction that can be made between Christ's active and passive obedience, we deny that these aspects of Christ's obedience can be bifurcated in any way that makes one or the other unnecessary. The righteousness of Christ is a seamless garment. We refuse to divide what should not be divided. When Scripture speaks of Christ's obedience as the ground of our justification (Romans 5:19), it clearly comprises all the obedience He rendered to God (cf. Hebrews 5:8). Therefore it is our strong conviction that Christ's perfect life of obedience as a man was rendered to God on our behalf, and that any denial or diminishing of this truth that is a disavowal of the plain meaning of the FIRE statement of faith.

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