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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 and life. Wright, it seems, is here making the classic paedobaptist blunder in affording the old covenant an efficacy it never possessed. Israel was never expected to keep the covenant even to secure temporal blessings, let alone anything related to the spiritual realm. Joshua was under no illusions about Israel’s position, telling the people that they were “not able to serve the LORD” (Josh 24:19).

      Continuing Exile and the Law

One of the central planks of Wright’s position is the idea that the Israel of Jesus’ time was still in exile.94 If he means the nation was disqualified from those blessings we read of in Deuteronomy 27–30 because of its disobedience he is unquestionably correct. Wright, however, goes further, believing that when Jesus became a curse, as we read of in Galatians 3:13, he did so with only the Jewish exile in mind. He sees Jesus as having brought to an end Israel’s exile, and in so doing misses the essential fact that any exile Israel may have been under was but a type of the exile which all humanity is born into as a result of Adam’s sin. Holland correctly distinguishes between these two exiles:

The Jews when sent into exile received fully what they deserved. Once they suffered what God saw was appropriate (Isa 51:17), then he delivered/redeemed them. But Paul is not talking about salvation at a temporary level where it was possible to be punished and the past put behind. Rather he means an eternal exile from the presence of God, a totally different exile from anything depicted in Israel’s history . . . The nature of the exile caused by Adam is of a different dimension and order, and required an act of cosmic redemption. The nature of this exile is of such significance that the offender cannot possibly make atonement.95

      Although there is no longer any need for typical Israel, humanity’s exile under the covenant of works has not gone away. All people remain, unless they believe in Christ, under God’s condemnation because of their transgressions and sins.

      It was only a minority from within the nation, the remnant, who saw beyond the various sacrifices and believed in the one promised. Only these knew justification. The country they looked forward to in faith was a different country from that promised to earthly Israel. They desired a “better country, that is a heavenly country: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city” (Heb 11:16). They looked not

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