John Piper
Some Exerts of his Sermons:
In the New Testament,
justification is the moment or the event when you put your faith in Jesus Christ
and at that moment God is no longer against you—he’s for you, and he counts you
as acceptable, forgiven, righteous, obedient because of your union with Christ.
You are perfectly acceptable to God and he is totally on your side. At that
moment you are declared and constituted just, even though you’re
ungodly.
Romans 4:4
talks about the justification of the ungodly, and
Romans 3: 28
says that “we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
...Justification, I believe, is the way the Bible describes that moment..
Justification is the act by which God says, “I no longer count you guilty. I
count you as righteous with the righteousness of my son.” .justification—being
counted by God as righteous with the perfect obedience and righteousness of
Jesus Christ credited to my account—is, I think, a key to the doctrine of
assurance and a key to what it means to preach the Gospel. ...the God we are to
glorify—the Christ we are to glorify—is the one who justified us on the basis of
his perfect sacrifice in our place (by taking our punishment) and his prefect
obedience in our place (by living out our righteousness). So we have a perfect
sacrifice; we have a perfect righteousness; and in union with him, by faith
alone, we stand with God totally on our side. .In order for me to glorify God as
I ought, I need to know that he is totally on my side on these bases—not mine.
Christ is my sacrifice, Christ is my obedience. What I want to say is that at
the moment when we put our childlike faith in Jesus Christ, he became our
punishment and our obedience. That is, at that moment he became the obedience
required for God to be totally for us. .If we don’t keep the doctrine of the
imputation of the obedience of Christ right there in the center of the basis of
God being totally for us, we will begin to offer our obedience as the basis of
why we are right with God, and that will turn things totally upside-down.
Notice
that he totally avoids the aspect of Faith WORKING by Love to Purity the heart
of Sin! (Gal5:6, 1Pet1:22) He is Quick to point out Abraham's Faith in Romans 4,
but FAILS to show him WALKING in the STEPS of Faith, DOING the DEEDS of Faith,
Rom4:12-22...and then showing that THIS was the Reason it was imputed to him as
Righteousness! He says that Christ Obeyed in your place, but does not explain
why Jesus Constantly told his Disciples to Follow and KEEP His Commandments.
Also WHERE is Repentance in his model? The Clearing of Wrong Doing, the Vehement
Desire Change and Purity of heart that accompany genuine repentance?
(2Cor7:10-11) And HOW can Faith Establish and Uphold the Law, Rom3:31, if Deeds
are not evident? Piper teaches the Classic Reformed Penal Substitution model of
Redemption. Which has Christ becoming Sin on the Cross and Suffering the Wrath
of God in our place. You have merely but to Trust in this arrangement and now
God sees you as Perfect, providing you are one of the 'elect'. This Teaching was
unknown to the early Saints and the fatalism of Election, absolute
predestination and reprobation were Pagan Doctrines.
Christ’s perfect faith and obedience counts as mine so that God looks on me as having done with sinless perfection everything required of me. .What Paul is saying is that the record of his own behavior is now worthless as the basis of God being totally for him. He needs the righteousness of someone else. Christ makes us his. He takes us. Seizes us. So the way Paul thinks about his pressing on in life—the living of his life of Christian obedience—is not that this living is the foundation of his acceptance, but that Christ has obtained him in such a way that he is now “found in Christ” and, as such, already has a perfect righteousness that is not his own. When you examine the flow of thought from Romans 3:20 to 4:6, it also becomes apparent that the external righteousness credited to us is God's. We have strong contextual evidence not only that Paul conceived of justification in terms of an imputation of external righteousness, but also that he thought of this righteousness as "the righteousness of God" that has been manifested now through the work of Christ and is received through faith as the remedy for us who cannot perform our own righteousness by works of the law. God reveals his own righteousness that we receive through free and gracious imputation by faith. I think Romans 3:24-26 supports the idea that justification is not liberation from sin's mastery. The issue in this passage is how God can pass over sins (past, present, and future), not how God can transform sinners. Overall, what gives some measure of plausibility to the rhetorical questions in Romans 6:1 and 6:15 is the doctrine of Romans 3-5 that justification is emphatically not liberation from the mastery of sin. It does not include sanctification. That is precisely what creates the need for Paul to write Romans 6-8: to show why God's imputing his own righteousness to us by faith apart from works does not result in lawlessness, but in fact necessarily leads to righteous living.
Classic Double-Speak! NOTHING in the Scripture even slightly implies that Christ's Obedience Counts as mine. Abraham OBEYED God, he Patiently Endured! (Heb6:15, 11:8) WHERE in the Teaching of Christ is this Doctrine of 'imputation'? Did He tell anyone that is was His Job to KEEP the Commandments or Be Perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect? If the CUP He was to drink contained the Wrath of God (as Piper would say) WHY did He tell His Disciples they too would Drink from it? (Mk10:38-39) Surly Righteousness comes by Faith, Rom1:17, but it's he who DOES what is Right is Righteous! (1John3;5-6) WHY? Because a man is Justified by what he DOES and NOT by Faith Alone! (James2:24) If Justification has Nothing to do with Sanctification, WHY is it associated with Repentance in Acts26:18 & 1Cor6:11. It's Repentance for Remission that equals Justification, Lk24:47, in this the Flesh with its passions and desires is Crucified with Christ! (Gal5:24) The Bondage of sin is broken, the person is no longer a Slave to Sin, Sin Shall NOT have Dominion over him! (Rom6:4-14) BY Separating Sanctification and Justification all this is made 'PROVISIONAL' (something God provided, not actual) What leads to Righteous living is a Faith WORKING by Love Purifying the heart built on a foundation of Obedience to God's Commands. (1Pet1:22, Matt7:21-23)
As to the question of whether the divine righteousness that is imputed to believers is the righteousness of Christ, I would go to Romans 5:12-19. This is one of the most crucial texts for the traditional Protestant teaching that Christ's righteousness and obedience are the expression of God's righteousness that is imputed to us by faith. This passage brings Paul's exposition of justification in Romans 3-5 to a climax with a stunning comparison between the effect of Adam's disobedience on those who are in him and the effect of Christ's obedience on those who are in him....The full meaning of justification, as pardon and imputed perfection, has proved to be a mighty antidote to despair for the saints. John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim's Progress, was tormented with uncertainty about his standing with God until this doctrine broke in on his soul. We know that our measure of obedience, even on our best days, falls short of this standard. Our hope for acceptance with God and eternal life is the provision of Christ. Alongside the pastoral preciousness of the doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ is the great truth that this doctrine bestows on Jesus Christ the full honor that he deserves. Not only should he be honored as the one who died to pardon us, and not only should he be honored as the one who sovereignty works faith and obedience in us, but he should also be honored as the one who provided a perfect righteousness.
Imputation is a Myth based on the Pagan teaching that that Disciple 'takes on' the attributes of the Deity he is following. Piper, like many other Calvinist preachers, has Christ imputed to you as Righteousness, instead of Faith. (Rom4:9) To them, it's one in the same thing, since God 'elects' you and gives you the faith to believe as a Gift. Yet the Bible expressed says that 'YOU OBEYED' from your heart! (Rom6:17) ....Not Christ for you. If man is wholly incapable of rendering this Obedience to God because of the sin 'BORN' into him from Adam, WHY did God tell Cain, 'Sin lies at the door, it's desire is for thee, but YOU should rule over it!' Gen4:7 Certainly Christ deserves FULL honor and Glory, but at the Same time He has provided ALL things that pertain to life and godliness through His exceeding great and precious promises, that through these we can ESCAPE the Corruption that in the world through Lust! (2Pet1:3-4) He Set an Example for us to FOLLOW, 1Pet2:22-24, we Share in His sufferings by dying to Self. What Piper teaches is heresy and keeps people on bondage to their sin.