 What are we to believe about N.T. Wright's doctrine of imputation? What does the new perspectives on Paul do to solo fide? Destroys it. And the gospel with it. Is his view heretical? What? Is his view heretical? If it isn't, then there's no such thing as heresy. When you hear the term solo fide, what it really means is that we are saved by Christ's atoning work. We are justified in that regard. And so there's nothing that we do on our own to merit salvation, but what he has done. And that sin has been imputed to him, and then his righteousness has therefore been imputed to us by faith. And so when someone tears that down, the only label that can be offered to that person is heresy. There is in many circles a highly popular understanding, sometimes called a covenant of works, which could be simplified by saying, okay, this is how it goes. First God creates humans and tells them they've got to obey certain laws so that they will be righteous and have life. They break those laws. Then God sends Jesus, who did manage to keep God's law, thus he acquired righteousness and so life. And then God transfers, imputes, reckons whatever that righteousness of Christ to believers. So though they don't have any righteousness of their own, they now have Christ's instead. That view is a caricature. N.T. Wright is an English theologian who when you look at him, when you hear him, he sounds like a grandpa. He sounds like a well-educated person, a smart wise person, and after all, here in America for some reason we seem to place some sort of value on that British accent. But make no mistake about it. What he is saying is wrong. It's heresy. Why is that? Because it is another gospel. It is a works-based gospel. View of justification that I hold is the view that has been held by Protestants since the Reformation. And that is that justification in New Testament teaching is God's declaration, his legal declaration that we are not guilty in his sight but righteous because of Christ bearing the guilt of our sins and the punishment for our sins and Christ earning a life of perfect righteousness, a record of perfect righteousness for us. N.T. Wright and some others have come along with something called a new perspective on Paul which has a different view of justification. The idea they say is that not that we're declared legally righteous, but that God declares us to be a part of his people, members of the body of Christ. My concern about the new perspective on Paul led me to include a section, a longer section on N.T. Wright's view of justification in this second edition of Systematic Theology and here I quote from N.T. Wright. He says the basis of justification, traditionally, Protestants believed that we're justified on the basis of Christ's redemptive work. He took our penalty for our sin and his righteousness was given to us, imputed to us. But he says Wright says the basis for justification in the future on the last day will be on the basis of the entire life. In other words, God works in us and makes us righteous and then we produce a righteous life and God judges us on the last day on the basis of our whole life lived. Then Wright says that gospel is not about how to be saved. The gospel is not about how to be saved? No, it's a proclamation that Christ is Lord. What that really is is a works-based salvation, meaning that we're not justified now. We're justified based on how we live and how we are when we get there. Well, one, that even nullifies what it means to be justified. That's just not what the Greek word means. The Greek word dekaouson means that we have been declared right and that we are to be treated as such. And so if we are declared right, meaning we are declared right now, then we don't have to wait until the end as NT Wright states. We don't have to wait to the end to become justified based on how we live. That would nullify Christ's purpose in coming to be this substitutionary atonement and see therein lies the greater issue that NT Wright has. He's got this view called the New Perspective on Paul, where he has kind of muddied up how we ought to view what Christ did and what the meaning of justification actually is and what the meaning of the atonement actually was. Penal substitution can be expressed in very damaging ways. And even when preachers don't intend to do this, it is quite clearly the case that this is how many, many people, particularly young people, hear it. The idea being that there is this big, bullying, angry God who's very cross with us all and he's got a big stick and he's about to lash out, and fortunately somebody gets in the way, happens to be his own son, so that somehow makes it all right, and we get off. So he rejects substitutionary atonement. He rejects Jesus as the sacrifice that God chose to die for our sins. He is very clear on what he rejects. He rejects the idea that our sins are imputed to Christ. He rejects the idea that his righteousness is imputed to us. This is not the gospel, he says, this is paganism. To worship God as one who justifies by imputation, he says, is nonsense. I quote, if we use the language of the law court, it makes no sense whatsoever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys, or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. This is not an object, a substance, or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom. This gives the impression of a legal transaction, a cold piece of business, almost a trick of thought performed by a God who is logical and correct, but hardly one we want to worship. It goes on to say, no one will be justified until he reaches heaven. Another he says, I must stress again that the doctrine of justification by faith is not what Paul means by the gospel. The gospel is not an account of how people get saved. Really. So now, if that is what people have heard in our hearing, then we've got some serious work to do because we have taken John 3.16, God so loved the world that he gave his only son. And what people have heard is God so hated the world that he killed his only son. And then when you say that in a world where there is child abuse and domestic violence and so on, people think, I know that bully of a God and I hate him. And then the whole thing goes horribly, horribly wrong. Now it is clear when you listen to him speak, he is going to speak in such a way to where even if you listen closely and intently, it's going to be hard to kind of pin down what he does believe. So as MacArthur says, what he doesn't believe, and he's pretty emphatic on this, is what the atonement actually did. He does in the end believe in penal substitution. But Wright has this way of writing, whereby he caricatures traditional atonement theories to be the doctrine that there is an angry, bloodthirsty God and that somehow Jesus got in the way and prevented this wrathful tyrant from sticking it to us. And the reason he does this is that then this straw man can serve as sort of a foil for his own views on the atonement. So right at the end of the day, will affirm things like penal substitution. He won't affirm the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us. And part of that is because he has a defective concept of divine righteousness. It says Dr. Craig stated that he does kind of distort what we believe and brings about this caricature of God, what's happened on this end of atonement. That it is, we think that there is this angry God who is, as he says, bloodthirsty and is after his pound of flesh. And how does he put it that we think that God so hated the world that he killed his son? No, that's not how we view this and how it actually is. Does God hate sin? Absolutely. And does he love his creation? Yes. And so what does he do about sin that his creation is infested with? He sends his son to die as a payment that he demands because of his dislike, his hatred towards sin. Not his hatred towards us. It's his love towards us that wants to rid us from the penalty that this sin has brought to us. This is why the Bible is clear to continually point back to the atonement under the law, what it did. And also to let us know how the atonement under the law, how it was insufficient, how it was just not simply enough. And so now we've got someone to make a better sacrifice, someone who would be a better priest, that being Jesus versus the old covenant priest, Aaron and so forth. We also have a better scapegoat, someone who takes the sins of the world and they're taken away for good, not having to have this thing, this ritual done every year, year after year after year. And there is this reminder of our guilt. And then we have the better sacrifice, this better substitutionary atonement, this better blood that is shed for us and that God accepts. God demands a shedding of blood to satisfy his wrath, to satisfy our being atoned and being reconciled to him. Then what Jews understood and what we understand as well is that if that is done, if in faith we recognize what Christ has done and we trust in what he's done, then we stand justified. And for anyone to teach something different, that is, without question, a different gospel. And I don't care how you put it. I don't care if it's a charming man like him, an older, distinguished-looking man who speaks in a grandfatherly way. I don't care who says it, even if it's him. That's heresy. That's a different gospel. And a different gospel, no matter how you wrap it, is heretical. And so is it fair to call him heretical? It absolutely is. Now, it should not come as no surprise that you're seeing this view kind of spilling over into other people. I've talked about before how Tim Mackey of the Bible Project is espousing some of these same views as it relates to heaven and hell, and also how it relates to substitutionary atonement. He didn't take it the same way that traditional Christianity has. And one thing that you ought to be aware of when traditional Christianity, what we've grown up understanding and knowing all these years is now, all of a sudden, changed because someone decided to re-examine what we've always believed as though no one else had the Holy Spirit before, as though no one else understood the gospel that no one else could read. Well, when you start getting a departure, a red light ought to go up. And NT Wright's view on Paul, this new perspective on Paul, is causing him to look at things a different way and come up with a different conclusion, which is that we are not ultimately justified until we get there. Well, that's heresy. What amazes me is that people can do this and have no fear and propagate it. And many, many young men, evangelical young men in seminary and training are influenced by Wright to believe the wrong thing, to be propagating a false gospel and denying the true gospel and have absolutely no fear and no angst and no guilt and no dread and no terror and no torture is to be void of the work of the Holy Spirit who convicts of sin and righteousness and judgment. And that's why we ought to caution people against listing someone like an NT Wright. And for that matter, the Bible Project and Tim Mackey. Here's the problem, guys. The heresies that are going to destroy and bring down different churches and hinder believers or potential believers is not coming from the outside. It's coming from the inside, people that we trust, people that we thought were believing Christians, people that we felt like had a firm grasp on doctrine, but then they start spending too much time thinking and espousing different beliefs. The Bible tells us that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ from the law of sin and death. Notice what it says. It says it has set you free. Not will set you free, but has set you free. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. So Paul is pretty clear here. The issue is though that NT Wright says that no, that's not necessarily what he means, but it seems pretty clear to us. Paul also goes on to say something more about this and he brings this term in that is not fully understood. This term justification, verse 29 of chapter eight, he says, for those whom he foreknew, he also protested to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the first born among many brothers. Here it is verse 30. And those whom he protested, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. And now we drop down to verse 33. Look what it says, who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies, who is to condemn. Christ Jesus, the one who died more than that, who was raised, who was also at the right hand of God who indeed is interceding for us. The sufficiency of what Christ did, his blood and him declaring us justified, him declaring us in right standing. If anyone comes to negate that, to nullify that, to preach differently, then that person is indeed preaching a different gospel. We are not saved by our actions as the logical conclusion of N.T. Wright's belief would state that we are justified at the end by our life. No, that's a different gospel. It's heresy and it should be shunned. Amen.