as some do, that God then punished our sins in his flesh is to call God’s justice into question because a righteous judge would not punish an innocent party for the sins of another, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD” (Prov 17:15).
Caricaturing the analogy occurs when one makes a like-for-like comparison of the things being compared without allowing for the differences that might exist between them. For example, the human court analogy can only go so far in drawing out certain principles. It must not be pressed too far. There are aspects of God’s judgment that simply do not fit with our human categories. When Jesus was punished in our stead he was not an unrelated third-party. It is not as if one who is separate from us suffered for our wrongdoing. No, Christ, because of our union with him and his union with us, became liable for the consequences of our sins. It is a union which ensures that God the Father views Christ and his people as constituting one body, Christ being the head, and we his members. As John Owen puts it:
[God] might punish the elect either in their own persons, or in their surety standing in their room and stead [as their substitute]; and when he is punished, they also are punished [in their representative]: for in this point of view the federal head and those represented by him are not considered as distinct, but as one; for although they are not one in respect of personal unity, they are, however, one,-that is, one body in mystical union, yea one mystical Christ;-namely, the surety is the head, those represented by him the members; and when the head is punished, the members also are punished.91
In the application of redemption, our union with Christ was communicated to us when God effectively called us into fellowship with himself at a point in time (1 Cor 1:9). Having said this, in another sense, one can say that our union with Christ began before the foundation of the world in the covenant of redemption, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph 1:3-5). It is important to realize that we have been blessed because, even before our salvation, we were in some sense “in Christ.” God the Father gave a people to the Son (John 6:37–39), and it was for these that Christ carried out his redemptive work. All those whose names are written in the book, as it were, are those for whom Christ suffered and died. This is why, even before our union with Christ in time, Jesus could justly suffer for his people’s sins because the union that exists between him and his people makes him liable for his people’s sins and righteousness.
One also needs to take into account that in the death of Christ the Father was not an entirely separate being, an onlooker, so to speak. He was not like the human judge who remains distanced from the acts of the accused. The Father too suffered in the death of Christ. This is something of a mystery; one that lies in the union that exists between the persons of the Trinity. One must, of course, avoid modalism, which teaches that the one God can appear in three different modes, where the Son can become the Father etc., this leads to patripassionism, a teaching which maintains that it was the Father who died upon the cross. I point this out because it is often not taken into consideration when human analogies are used in speaking about Christ’s sufferings. For example, Wright, in criticising the human categories of the law court metaphor does tend to caricature the analogy, not sufficiently expressing the limits of such language, the fact that it can at best be compared to looking through opaque glass into the mind of God.
Justification should not be viewed in isolation from the believer’s union with Christ. They must go together. The idea of a judge somehow walking across a courtroom and giving something of his own to the defendant is, to say the least, liable to misunderstanding. It is at best a somewhat imperfect attempt to capture an aspect of what justification involves. Wright overplays the human aspect, not alluding to the fact that God’s courtroom is very different from that of which we are familiar with. Talking in human terms, if I do a good work for someone else, say, serve a prison sentence so that the person in question does not have to, I will always remain external to the person. This is not what happens in justification. The believer is in possession of Christ’s actual righteousness because he is in Christ. In my simple example, for it to bear any resemblance to justification, one would have to say that not only did I serve the prison sentence, but that the person on whose behalf I did so must be looked upon by the appropriate authorities as if he actually served the sentence with me. This could not occur because, unlike with the relationship that exists between the believer and Christ, there cannot exist the necessary union between us. So, of course, righteousness cannot be given to one who is external from the giver; it can, however, become one’s very own in virtue of a person being made at one with him who possesses the righteousness. This is why the apostle keeps using the phrase “in Christ,” it is because of being “in him” that the believer possesses all that belongs to him. Our union with Christ and our resulting justification exist in a dimension unavailable to human courts in that it is the result of the Spirit’s supernatural activity whereby we are engrafted into Christ, where we possess all that he achieved in his redemptive work.
Furthermore, in a human court, if the judge pronounces a guilty criminal innocent it is because he has made a mistake. It is a mistake based on his lack of knowledge about the crimes of the accused. This, however, cannot happen in God’s law court because God is omniscient. He will never acquit the guilty. If he did he would be a very unjust judge. That he does so is entirely because of the fact that when he looks upon the sinner he sees Christ’s righteousness and sacrificial death. He sees this rather than the sinner because the sinner is in Christ’s body; flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. One does not separate Christ, the head from the body, and neither must one separate justification from union with Christ.
Again, Wright does not see justification as a one-time past event in the believer’s life, but simply the first of two justifications. So while acknowledging the believer’s present justification, he emphasizes an eschatological aspect or a future justification. Although one may be considered as presently or provisionally justified, with the final verdict being brought forward, one’s works now begin to play a role. They do so to the point where one’s future justification will be based on these works, on the life one has lived. He is essentially applying to the Christian what Sanders said about Israel, where God by his grace rescued Israel and placed her within the land; having done so he made her continuance in the land dependent upon works, in a similar manner the believer is placed in the covenant community, but abiding there depends on his works.
Wright is somewhat remiss in not adequately explaining how those within the nation were saved in the time preceding Christ’s arrival, and in discerning the different covenants and their respective ends. He leaves one asking a number of questions. Is he saying that prior to Christ’s arrival salvation was possible by keeping the law? Is he telling us that faith became the badge of covenantal membership only for New Testament believers? He does, however, state, that “Those who adhered in the proper way to the ancestral covenant charter, the Torah, were assured in the present that they were the people who would be vindicated in the future.”92What does he mean by “ancestral covenant charter”? This is where he appears to mix up or confuse the covenants. If he has the old Mosaic covenant in mind he is remiss of the fact that no salvation was available under this covenant. Paul, in the third chapter of his second letter to the Corinthians, “contrasted his own ministry with the ministry of Moses. Moses ministry was incapable of bringing life, what it did bring condemnation; the apostle refers to the law as a “ministry of death” (2 Cor 3:7). Indeed, if it were possible to bring in a law life, then righteousness would have been by the law (Gal 3:21–22). As Holland reminds us: “Whatever Rabbinic Judaism thought of Israel’s status, Paul’s point seems diametrically opposed to it. The law is not evidence of acceptance, but of separation. Israel was a prisoner to sin.”93 Paul’s own ministry, on the other hand, brings righteousness
