Nov
23
2009
The Someone Else-ness
It’s the objectivity, the exteriority, the out-there-ness, the Someone Else-ness of our justification that sets us free, as John Bunyan reminds us:
“One day as I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest all was still not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Your righteousness is in heaven. And I thought as well that I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand. There, I say, is my righteousness, so that wherever I was or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he lacks my righteousness, for that was just before Him. I also saw that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, the same yesterday and today and forever.
Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. . . . I went home rejoicing for the grace and love of God. . . . Here I lived for some time, very sweetly at peace with God through Christ. Oh, I thought, Christ! Christ! There was nothing but Christ before my eyes.”
John Bunyan, Grace Abounding (Philadelphia, 1859), page 75, edited slightly.
6 Comments
[...] HT: Ray Ortlund [...]
I’m so glad for the “someone else-ness” especially so on the days when the “me-ness” is very ugly indeed. Wonderful quote, wonderful reminder.
I had read Bunyan’s comments a long time ago, but forgot about them. That’s a good quote. Thanks for posting it.
Personally, I have a hard time reconciling John Bunyan’s out-there-ness of justification with the believer’s internalized glory of Christ as irrevocably promised (Jer. 31: 31-34) and bestowed in the real gospel.(John 17; 19: 30-37)
Justification and Sanctification don’t need to be reconciled for they are inseparably united though distinguished. One (the imputed righteousness of Christ) is the basis for the other (the internal renewal into Christ’s image). We have an imputed righteousness and an infused sanctification. As Piper says, Christ is our righteousness provider – One who obeyed for us (Rom. 5:19) – as well as One who can work it in us (Rom. 8:4). As Packer says, Sanctification is glorification begun. But because our inherent righteousness can never match the perfection demanded of God, to look within is to despair of Justification. This is why Bunyan was so liberated when he realized that his righteousness by which he was accepted by God was outside himself in Another, Jesus Christ the Righteous. This is the true basis for acceptance and assurance.
Well said Doug.