Book Review: Counted Righteous in Christ

Click on image to purchase at Amazon.comShould We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness by John Piper.

I decided to read Counted Righteous in Christ because Piper refers to it repeatedly in the footnotes of his more recent book, The Future of Justification, particularly when he is giving biblical support for the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness by exegeting relevant passages. Since imputed righteousness is one of my favorite subjects, how could I not check this book out?

While the arguments in it are aimed at all challenges to the doctrine of imputation, this book is a specific response to arguments made by Robert Gundry, because Piper considers him to be “one of the most courageous and straightforward and explicit and clearheaded” of those who challenge the traditional doctrine. Besides, it was two articles Gundry wrote for Books and Culture in 2001 that served as impetus for Piper to tackle this issue.

Gundry believes that God decided to count our own faith as our righteousness. There is no such thing as positive imputation of Christ’s righteousness to those who believe. And justification, according to Gundry, includes freeing the believer from “sin’s mastery,” something that has traditionally been called sanctification and kept distinct from justification. 

The middle section and greatest part of this short book (66 of 125 pages) contains Piper’s exegetical basis for the traditional Protestant view that justification includes the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer, and that it is not faith that is counted as as our righteousness. This bit is difficult reading. I had to work to follow the arguments, and there are sections I’ve marked to go over yet again. It was, however, worth the effort, because Piper builds what is, in the end, an airtight case for the historical Protestant view of justification as the biblical one. 

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Book Review: Grieving, Hope and Solace

Click on image for more info on Grieving, Hope and Solace from Cruciform Press.When a Loved One Dies in Christ by Albert N. Martin.

A few weeks after Albert Martin’s wife died, he began preaching the series of sermons from which this excellent little book came. He was answering the question of what it means to grieve a loved one who has died in Christ, for himself first and also for his congregation.

What I appreciated most was Martin’s biblical description (as much as it can be described) of the intermediate state—the time between the death of a believer and the resurrection of the dead. It’s a neglected subject, I’d say. For one, we are not told much about it in scripture; and two, we prefer to skip right over to the best part—the final state and the believer’s glorification. But I know from experience that when a loved one dies, the question that nags is “Where are they? What is happening to them right now?”

Thankfully, we are told enough that we can be comforted by what we know. What we can know about the intermediate state gives us the ability to grieve as people who have a solid hope. And thankfully, Albert Martin has worked through what the Bible tells us about what happens directly after the death of a believer and presented it to us in Grieving, Hope and Solace.

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Book Review: 40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law

by Thomas R. Schreiner.

This is another book in the excellent 40 Question Series edited by Benjamin Merkle and published by Kregel Academic & Professional. (See my previous review of another book in this series, 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible.) This time round, the subject is biblical law, a tricky subject, if you ask me.

According to Tom Schreiner, it’s also an important one, because the way we put the whole Bible together depends on our understanding of the law. What’s more—and relatedly—those who study the law can better evaluate the theological systems. In addition, the law relates to justification. How we understand the law affects how we understand salvation. And last, those who want to please God need to understand how the law relates to them as believers.

To work through these issues Schreiner answers questions about

• The Law in the Old Testament
• The Law in Paul (This section makes up over half the book, because “Paul’s theology of the law is the most crucial in determining one’s view of the law canonically….”) 
• The Law in the Gospels and Acts
• The Law in the General Epistles
• The Law and Contemporary Issues

When it comes to his view of the law, Schreiner is not a typical Covenant Theologian. He argues that while the categories of civil, ceremonial and moral law may be useful in some ways, the scripture doesn’t divide the law this way, and sometimes exact distinctions are difficult to make. He disagrees with the common view that the ceremonial and civil law have been done away with in Christ while the moral law remains binding, teaching instead that the whole Mosaic law is no longer in force since the coming of Christ.

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