And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1Corinthians 1:30)
The doctrine of imputed righteousness—the idea that we can appear before God with Jesus’ righteousness rather than our own—has been a great comfort to Christians through the centuries. George Whitefield (1714-1770), in a sermon on 1Corinthians 1:30, puts it like this:
Christ’s whole personal righteousness is made over to, and accounted theirs. They are enabled to lay hold on Christ by faith, and God the Father blots out their transgressions, as with a thick cloud … In one sense, God now sees no sin in them … By having Christ’s righteousness imputed to them, they are dead to the law, as a covenant of works; Christ has fulfilled it for them, and in their stead.
Whitefield indeed stands in the great stream of reformed thinkers who used 1Corinthians 1:30 as a famous “proof-text” for imputed righteousness. He “stood on” this text and others like it in his open-air and other forms of preaching.[1] 1Corinthians 1:30 in particular provided him a handy summation for the essential gospel doctrines, about which his hearers, who may have had neither a Bible nor knowledge of its contents, could talk on their way home. They returned home with that memory verse and all the theology Whitefield had piled into it. Whitefield had loaded the text with the protestant doctrine of salvation, packaged neatly in 1Corinthians 1:30.
Modern Challenges
But is Whitefield right, at least insofar as imputed righteousness is concerned? In recent years the doctrine of imputed righteousness has been challenged repeatedly by Bible scholars on the grounds that the Bible just doesn’t teach it. And in particular, this sort of use of 1Corinthians 1:30 has also been subject to a reductio ad absurdum criticism. It has been expressed by N T Wright, who argues that if we claim that 1Corinthians 1:30 teaches “the imputed righteousness of Christ”, “we must also be prepared to talk of the imputed wisdom of Christ, the imputed sanctification of Christ, and the imputed redemption of Christ”.[2] In a similar way, Michael Bird argues that “there is no need to infer that righteousness is imputed any more than the holiness, redemption and wisdom are imputed”.[3]
Calvin took it as quite obvious that the righteousness which Christ had been made was received by believers by the mode of imputation, but that the sanctification was received by believers by regeneration by the Spirit
This requirement from these scholars that the mode of communication of each of the benefits mentioned in 1Corinthians 1:30 be uniform would have taken Calvin by surprise. He took it as quite obvious that the righteousness which Christ had been made was received by believers by the mode of imputation, but that the sanctification was received by believers by regeneration by the Spirit—and this distinction was one for which he became famous.[4]
My purpose in this article is simply to point out that:
- “reckoning”, “crediting”, or “imputation” is the normal way Paul says a person receives the special righteousness of God in Christ, and;
- that the particular construction in 1Corinthians 1:30 does not require that “wisdom”, “sanctification”, or “redemption” must also be imputed if righteousness is, but that Paul intends nothing more than that the normal ways each of those benefits are given to sinners is to be presumed.
Made Righteous?
In 1Corinthians 1:30, we find one instance of the passive verb translated “become” or “has been made”. It is completed by four different nouns: “wisdom”, “righteousness”, “holiness”, and “redemption”. This rhetorical feature is made possible by the very broad range of potential meanings of that particular verb (ginomai), which essentially denotes a change of state without specifying the nature of that change. The nature of the change, in this particular way of speaking, is in fact only indicated by, and to be implied from, each of the nouns.
The LXX (or Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew OT made 200 BC) has several instances where the same verb for “become” has two or more noun complements—the same construction found in 1Corinthians 1:30. Yet, in each of these examples from the LXX, each instance of the completing noun describes or implies a distinguishable process that is appropriate to it, despite the fact that syntactically the two or more nouns are complements of the one verb. The examples are LXX Exod 9:28; 19:16; [cf. Rev 8:5,7; 11:19; 16:18]; Lev 22:13; 2 Chron 17:5; 18:1; 32:27; Ps 108:9; Prov 4:3; Sirach 4:29. They show that a process implied by one complement need not be inferred into—and should not be imposed upon—another complement in the construction, just because they complete one and the same verb. Rather, it is the meaning of the noun itself constituting the complement that determines the specific process that is to be implied.
An example of this is John 10:16: “And there will come about one flock, one shepherd”. The process of becoming a flock is not the same as the process of becoming a shepherd. It is true that in this instance, the church becoming gathered into one flock, and Jesus becoming its one shepherd, will indeed come about through the same person and events—the death and resurrection of the good shepherd, and the subsequent preaching of the gospel. However, becoming one shepherd and becoming one flock are different processes–as different as being sheep and being a shepherd! There is nothing about the construction itself that obscures this distinction. But there is rhetorical power in the two complements completing the one verb.
Christ has “become wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption” from God is an example of a mode of speech where the person of Christ stands for the benefit he brings.
In 1Corinthians 1:30, that Christ has “become wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and redemption” from God is an example of a mode of speech where the person of Christ stands for the benefit he brings. “In his person, Jesus Christ brings God”s wisdom to human beings willing to accept it by faith”.[5] Christ gives other benefits to his people (that is, “wisdom”, “holiness”, and “redemption”), as well as “righteousness”. While these gifts likewise involve the recipients undergoing a change of state or process of becoming something which they were not previously, Paul elsewhere describes the process of receiving those benefits in different ways. The nouns he uses draws on images from different and specialised uses of language, and call upon distinct worlds of ideas. There is nothing wrong with this. But this means that the reductio ad absurdum argument is invalid.
For example, if the benefit of “redemption” is only ever said to be communicated by the process of “redeeming”—the paying of a ransom price to purchase the freedom of a person facing a terrible fate—then this fact is strictly irrelevant to us determining how Paul understood the benefit of either “sanctification” or “righteousness” would be communicated. Redemptions are worked by redeeming things. The things redeemed were once lost and must be bought back. The redemption is not wrought by imputing righteousness. That is a confusion of categories. Nor are redemptions wrought by sanctifying something as holy. That is a mistake in categories also. So once Paul has decided to speak about “redemption”, he is directing our minds to a different world of thought to those of “sanctification” (the religious world of the cultus and sacrificial system), or “righteousness” and “justification” (the forensic or legal world of the court room, which of necessity also is an ethical world—courts must make “just” judgements). But “redemption” takes us to the slave market, the situation of the prisoner of war, or the condemned criminal. As Ciampa and Rosner point out:
Instead, all three offer different perspectives on the wisdom of God, which is salvation in Christ, drawing on different metaphors. Righteousness recalls the law court and speaks of vindication and acquittal, holiness brings to mind the temple and being set apart for God, and redemption evokes the slave market and emancipation on the analogy of Israel”s deliverance in the exodus.[6]
The fact that the other benefits (wisdom, sanctification, redemption) are or aren”t said to be attributed by imputation is strictly irrelevant to determining whether the particular benefit of righteousness is credited or imputed.
The fact that the other benefits (wisdom, sanctification, redemption) are or aren”t said to be attributed by imputation is strictly irrelevant to determining whether the particular benefit of righteousness is credited or imputed.
In regard to “righteousness” in Paul, this quality is typically said to be attributed to a sinful human by the verb translated “to reckon, credit, impute, consider, think” (logizomai). This is clear from Romans 4:3, 5, 6, 11, etc. The related adjective translated “just” or “righteous”—attributed to sinful humans who believe in Christ in Romans 5:19, by the verb kathistemi (here meaning, “to judicially establish”).[7] As seen in 1Corinthians 6:11, the verb that is in the same family as that for “righteousness” is often translated “justify”. It is a legal or courtroom term meaning the declaration or proclamation that someone is righteous. So it is the well-established Pauline usage of the “righteousness” terms that suggests that it is given to a sinful person by imputation. The extrinsic features within the context of 1Corinthians 1:30 (“Christ has been made … from God … for us”) operate to confirm it.
[1] I was introduced to Whitefield”s preaching through Select Sermons of George Whitefield With and Account of His Life by J C Ryle (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1990). Many of his sermons are now available freely on the web: see https://reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=https://reformed.org/documents/Whitefield.html. Whitefield”s gave the imputation of both the active and passive righteousness of Christ a central place in his theology of salvation, but he was aware of the arguments against it, its misuse, and that it was not the only important doctrine of salvation. See particularly his sermons on “Christ, the Believer’s Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption” ( 1 Cor 1:30), “The Lord our Righteousness” (Jer 23:6), “Of Justification by Christ” (1 Cor 6:11), “The Folly and Danger of not being righteous enough” (Eccles 7:16), and “The Righteousness of Christ an everlasting Righteousness” (Dan 9:24).
[2] Tom Wright, What St Paul Really Said (Lion: Oxford, 1997), 122-3.
[3] Michael F Bird, “Progressive Reformed View” in James K Beilby & Paul Rhodes Eddy (eds), Justification: Five Views (Downers Grove: IVP, 2011), 148-9.
[4] For example, Calvin Comm 1 Cor 1:30, in CC, XX:93; Mark A Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin”s Theology (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), 219-241. Cf. F Godet, Commentary on St Paul”s First Epistle to the Corinthians (ET: A Cusin: T & T Clark: Edinburgh, 1889), 1:116, who takes a similar view.
[5] J A Fitzmyer, First Corinthians: AYB (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2008), 164.
[6] R E Ciampa and B S Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians: Pillar (Apollos: Grand Rapids, 2010), 109.
[7] J –A Bühner, “καθίστημι”, in H Balz, G Schneider (eds) Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 3 Vols, 3:225 (Hereafter EDNT); Seifrid, Christ, Our Righteousness (2000), 71; F W Danker, “Under Contract: A Form-Critical Study of Linguistic Adaptation in Romans”, in E W Barth & R E Cocroft, Festschrift to Honor F Wilbur Gingrich (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 91-114 at 106 and fn 3.
