A Properly Reformed Theme

The topic of the speech that I am to give is “Union with Christ: His Meritorious Work.” Let me first direct your attention to the adjective in the theme: meritorious. If the word meritorious had been omitted, so that the theme was “Union with Christ: His Work,” would that have changed the subject matter of this speech? Not essentially. If instead of “Union with Christ: His Meritorious Work,” the theme had been “Union with Christ: His Satisfaction” or “Union with Christ: His High-Priestly Work,” would that have changed the subject matter of this speech? Not essentially. But I was given the task to speak about Christ’s meritorious work. And I am pleased that this adjective was included in the theme.

To speak of Christ’s work as meritorious is Reformed and confessional.

It is the concerted effort of certain theologians who call themselves Reformed to get rid of the word merit in their theology. I have in mind the theologians of the federal vision who hate and mock the term merit. Within their circle the idea that Christ’s work for the justification of God’s people was meritorious has been dismissed as a hangover from medieval theology.¹ These theologians reject the term merit under a guise of extolling their god of love and mercy. But in the end, they shamelessly denigrate and seek viciously to scrub from their theology the glorious and strict justice of Jehovah God. They teach and serve a god with a little g—a god who is not just and therefore a god with no eyes, no ears, no hands, and no feet.

The Reformed confessions are full of the term merit. Christ’s merits are imputed to you and are your righteousness before God. This is made explicit in Belgic Confession article 22:

Jesus Christ, imputing to us all His merits and so many holy works which He has done for us and in our stead, is our righteousness. (Confessions and Church Order, 50, emphasis added)

If we are to understand the heart of the gospel, which is our justification by faith alone, then we must speak of Christ’s merits.

Furthermore, because Christ’s merits justify the elect sinner before the righteous tribunal of God, Christ with all his merits is the exclusive object of faith. That is the teaching of Belgic Confession article 22:

The Holy Ghost kindleth in our hearts an upright faith, which embraces Jesus Christ with all His merits, appropriates Him, and seeks nothing more besides Him. (Confessions and Church Order, 49, emphasis added)

That is also the teaching of Lord’s Day 7:

Q. 21. What is true faith?

A. True faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word, but also an assured confidence, which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel in my heart; that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness, and salvation are, freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits. (Confessions and Church Order, 90–91, emphasis added)

Faith cleaves to Christ with all his merits. You cannot understand faith, and more specifically the object of faith, without understanding Christ with all his merits.

Moreover, because Christ’s merits justify the elect sinner before God, the Lord Jesus Christ uses the proclamation of his merits in connection with the promise of the gospel to open and shut the kingdom of heaven. This is the teaching of Lord’s Day 31:

Q. 84. How is the kingdom of heaven opened and shut by the preaching of the holy gospel?

A. Thus: when according to the command of Christ it is declared and publicly testified to all and every believer, that, whenever they receive the promise of the gospel by a true faith, all their sins are really forgiven them of God, for the sake of Christ’s merits; and on the contrary, when it is declared and testified to all unbelievers, and such as do not sincerely repent, that they stand exposed to the wrath of God and eternal condemnation, so long as they are unconverted. (Confessions and Church Order, 118, emphasis added)

Finally, the Reformed confessions show us that the justifying—and thus saving—power of Christ with all his merits gives nourishment, strength, and comfort to the vexed soul of an elect sinner. Article 35 of the Belgic Confession teaches this in connection with the Lord’s table:

This feast is a spiritual table, at which Christ communicates Himself with all His benefits to us, and gives us there to enjoy both Himself and the merits of His sufferings and death, nourishing, strengthening, and comforting our poor comfortless souls by the eating of His flesh, quickening and refreshing them by the drinking of His blood. (Confessions and Church Order, 72, emphasis added)

The perfect sufficiency of the comfort of Christ’s merits for the elect sinner stands over against the impossibility of drawing comfort from our own works and activities, which is the explicit teaching of article 24 of the Belgic Confession:

Though we do good works, we do not found our salvation upon them; for we can do no work but what is polluted by our flesh, and also punishable; and although we could perform such works, still the remembrance of one sin is sufficient to make God reject them. Thus, then, we would always be in doubt, tossed to and fro without any certainty, and our poor consciences continually vexed, if they relied not on the merits of the suffering and death of our Savior. (Confessions and Church Order, 55, emphasis added)

Vital and sufficient for the assurance and certainty of salvation is Christ with his merits. Nothing else, no work that you do, can give that certainty and assurance. Looking to anything else besides Christ with his merits causes a soul to be vexed and tossed to and fro with uncertainty.

Therefore, we see that the Reformed confessions use the term merit, and I am pleased that that adjective was included in the theme of the speech. It is Reformed and confessional to speak of Christ’s work as meritorious.

A Theme of Heavenly Origins

Additionally, the inclusion of the word meritorious in the theme of the speech gives me an opportunity to purge away any misconceptions about the nature of Christ’s merit. When you think of merit in connection with Christ’s work, you must not think of some cold piece of business. You must think of something altogether heavenly; something that belongs to God’s wonder of grace; something that eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered the heart of man. Christ’s meritorious work is the wisdom of God to reveal his glory by doing what is impossible for man to do. That is the idea of merit.

But that heavenly thought is widely carnalized today by the doctrine of the covenant of works. Nearly every Reformed theologian holds to, promotes, or at least permits the conception of a covenant of works. The covenant of works separates merit from God’s wonder of grace. Adam could conceive of merit before God’s marvelous revelation that he would do the impossible through the seed of the woman. Adam could obtain heavenly, immortal life by the performance of his duties and apart from the wonder of grace. The covenant of works teaches that Adam by the performance of the stipulations that God had given to him would receive everlasting life in heaven. A mere man could merit. A mere man could merit heavenly life by his earthly obedience. This teaching takes the heavenly thought of merit—that which belongs to what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered the heart of man—and makes it carnal. It makes merit an earthly possibility even before the revelation of the seed of the woman and God’s promise of Jesus Christ.

However, I emphasize at the outset that Christ’s meritorious work was the eternal wisdom of God’s counsel to bring to light life and immortality in heaven by doing what is impossible for man, yea, by doing what no wise man could have ever dreamt. When Adam sunk himself and all his posterity into an unpayable debt of guilt, then God came by his promise and said, “I will do what is impossible for man. I will pay his unpayable debt.” But that is not all. God not only promised to pay the unpayable debt, but God also promised, “I will bring man up out of his depths of sin not only to return him to an earthly plane of existence, but also to exalt man up into the heavenly. I will give him immortality, life beyond any possibility of sin and death and condemnation. And I will do all this as the revelation that I am the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy unto thousands and forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and I will by no means clear the guilty.”

What is the idea of merit? It is God’s doing what man could never do or even dream up in service of the glorification of God’s name in highest wisdom.

Because of the importance of the doctrine of Christ’s meritorious work, I give my definition of Christ’s meritorious work. The meritorious work of Jesus Christ is the totality of the labors of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, in his state of humiliation by which he, through the satisfaction of all punishment and obedience demanded by the law, received as head of God’s covenant his appointed and proper end, namely, immortal life in heaven to the praise of God’s grace and justice.

Labors in the State of Humiliation

Consider first that Christ’s meritorious work is the totality of his labors in the state of humiliation. The state of humiliation was Christ’s legal position under the law of God, wherein Christ stood guilty inasmuch as he bore the sins of God’s people as their head. The state of humiliation began at Christ’s conception, and in that state of humiliation he went down.

In dogmatics we normally speak of five degrees of Christ’s state of humiliation, degrees that are concerned with the increasing intensity of his humiliation rather than with the chronology of his life. These five degrees correspond to our apostolic confession. Christ “was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell” (Confessions and Church Order, 9). Those five degrees— his incarnation and virgin birth, his lifelong suffering, his crucifixion, his death and burial, and his descension into hell—all belong to his state of humiliation. But what you can say about that state of humiliation is simply this: in his state of humiliation, Jesus Christ went down.

In Christ’s state of humiliation, God imputed to Christ as the head of his elect people all their sins. By that imputation God constituted Christ the most loathsome and disgusting thing in all the universe. Then God judged Christ guilty, and God sunk Christ down and away from God’s presence. From the moment Christ was conceived, he went down, down under the reproaches of God, down under God’s curse, down into the depths of all depths, down into the very pit of hell. That was the state of humiliation for Jesus Christ, whose condition, you must remember, was perfectly holy and righteous. To this condition the angel Gabriel bore witness, calling that babe to be born of the virgin Mary a holy child. According to this condition, the Lord could charge all his adversaries: “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” (John 8:45). To that holy one God imputed sin, and Christ went down. That was his whole earthly life.

And the meritorious work of Jesus Christ is the totality of his labors in the state of humiliation. There was no time-out during the thirty-three years of his earthly ministry. There was no breather. There was no break under God’s wrath. There was no moment for a sigh of relief because God had relinquished that curse. No, not until Christ had drunk the bitter dregs of God’s cup of wrath and endured every torment and anguish of the depths of hell did that labor cease. This is what we confess in the Form for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper:

We are confidently persuaded in our hearts that our Lord Jesus Christ…bore for us the wrath of God (under which we should have perished everlastingly) from the beginning of His incarnation to the end of His life upon earth. (Confessions and Church Order, 270)

This is also taught in Lord’s Day 15:

Q. 37. What dost thou understand by the words, “He suffered”?

A. That He, all the time that He lived on earth, but especially at the end of His life, sustained in body and soul the wrath of God against the sins of all mankind. (Confessions and Church Order, 98)

The totality of Christ’s life is in view when we speak of his meritorious work.

In that state of humiliation, Jesus Christ labored. Oh, he labored. He labored in the preaching and instruction of the people. He so spent himself in that work that he would collapse in exhaustion, such as when he fell into such deep sleep in the back of a boat that not even the storm roused him. He was wearied from all the temptations and mocking and plots against his life by men. But the particular labor that I have in mind is the labor of his sin-life in the state of humiliation. His whole life was under a living word of intense, infinite weight. That living word was the word of God, which said, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Gal. 3:10). Christ labored; he sweated; he toiled under that living word. That word burdened him every moment of his whole life. You could see it all over his face, for there was no form nor comeliness that man would desire him. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. So toilsome was that burden of sin that it brought him to his knees in the garden of Gethsemane, where he peered down into the abyss of wrath that awaited him. That burden pressed out of his pores big, bloody drops of sweat that fell upon the ground where his disciples slumbered.

Christ labored.

Labored he did under the burden of that accursed tree, as he was led from the place of judgment to the place of crucifixion. Labored he did on the cross, stripped of all his clothes, like a working man in the field. And labored he did under the billowing, thick, black cloud that plunged him down into the fiery agonies of hell, where he drank every drop of God’s cup of wrath against the guilt of the sins that he bore.

Christ labored.

Or in the word of the conference theme text, Galatians 2:20, Christ was “crucified.” You could summarize the totality of the labors of Jesus Christ in the state of humiliation simply as that: he was crucified. The moment he was conceived, the cross cast a gigantic shadow into the life of Jesus Christ, so that he labored all his life under the shadow of the cross. Think about that this way: in every experience of the Lord Jesus Christ—whatever he endured on the earth, whatever he went through—he heard this speech from God: “You have no place on earth. You have no place in heaven. The only place you can go is to hell.” And Christ’s state of humiliation culminated in the cross. He went to hell. He endured its torments and agonies.

Through Satisfaction of God’s Justice

And the totality of all Christ’s labors was meritorious.

It is very important to understand how it is that the totality of all Christ’s labors was meritorious, for neither crucifixions, sufferings, deaths, obedience, nor toil are in themselves meritorious. But Christ’s were. And the totality of Christ’s labors was meritorious because he satisfied God’s justice.

Christ’s satisfaction had two aspects to it. First, Christ exhausted God’s wrath against every sin that he bore— every sin of his people that they did commit, are committing, and will commit. Second, he suffered while rendering to God the obedience that God is due according to the law. God’s law requires that man love him. Man must love God with the totality of the human nature that God has given to man. Man must use every quality, every ability, that the human nature has in service of God’s name. Man must glorify God. And Christ rendered such obedience. He rendered such obedience his whole life while suffering the intense and infinite agonies of God’s wrath. Christ rendered such obedience even while fixed by nails to the accursed tree and plunged into the torments of hell. Christ satisfied all punishment and obedience demanded by the law. He merited because he paid in full an infinitely weighty debt and satisfied God’s justice.

And I emphasize that Christ’s meritorious work is an entirely heavenly thought. Christ’s meritorious work belongs to God’s wonder of grace that he determined from before the foundation of the world to extol his marvelous wisdom.

Christ’s meritorious work is a heavenly thought because from man’s perspective as the corrupt sinner who fell in the garden, man has no way out. Man in Adam has an unpayable debt to God. Man in Adam has an unpayable debt to God because God is just. God is the Lord who will by no means clear the guilty. God cannot deny himself. God is just only if he blesses the righteous and punishes the unrighteous. Even the lightest infraction against the most high majesty of God, even the smallest inclination that is not wholly wrapped up in holy zeal for God’s glory, is a most wicked snarl and hatred of God’s infinite holiness. As we know so well by the instruction of the Heidelberg Catechism in Lord’s Day 4,

His justice requires that sin which is committed against the most high majesty of God be also punished with extreme, that is, with everlasting punishment of body and soul. (Confessions and Church Order, 87)

Since the sinner with his unpayable debt cannot escape God’s justice and by no means can sustain the burden of God’s wrath while simultaneously satisfying the law’s demand for perfect obedience out of a perfect nature, there is no way out for the sinner. But God came and said to his people, “Not only will I deliver you from your unpayable debt, but also I will give to you life and immortality. I will wash you of all your sins and bring you to heaven.”

The meritorious work of Christ is a heavenly thought too because as far as man is concerned, who can know if God would have his justice satisfied? That is no mean point. To speak foolishly, if God had not willed that his justice be satisfied, then the labors of Jesus would have been in vain. But this is the heavenly thought: God wills to have his justice satisfied. He calls his Son Christ. That God calls his Son Christ means that Jesus is God’s eternally appointed and God’s authorized man to accomplish a meritorious work. That is a heavenly thought.

Christ satisfied all punishment and obedience demanded by the law. He merited because he paid that infinitely weighty debt in full. By that he extolled the truth that God is just.

What is peculiarly devilish about the teachers of the federal vision in their shameless attempts to jettison the term merit from their covenant theology is that at bottom they deny that God is just. They cloak their objection to merit by saying that a meritorious work of Jesus Christ is contrary to the relationship of love between the Father and the Son and that the idea of merit turns Christ’s labors into fulfilling the terms of a contract or earning wages. But federal vision theologians do not understand Christ’s meritorious work. What these theologians willfully overlook is that it was exactly in love for God that Jesus Christ rendered such satisfaction and obedience.

Do you want to see love? Look at the cross. Look at Christ’s love for God’s justice. As that justice rightly pummeled Christ down, down, down, Christ said, “It is good. It is comely. It is right that I suffer because God is a God of justice who by no means acquits the guilty, and I love that God of justice.” And Christ rendered to God all that the law requires.

Receiving His Heavenly End

The meritorious work of Christ is the totality of the labors of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, in his state of humiliation by which he, through the satisfaction of punishment and obedience, received his appointed and proper end.

The Lord Jesus Christ justly received his proper end. What is the proper end of Jesus Christ? It is not the earth. It is heaven. It is heaven because he is the Lord from glory. It is heaven because the person of Jesus Christ is God of God and light of light. He is the eternal and natural Son of God, eternally begotten and not made. And when that Lord from glory came down from heaven to satisfy God’s justice, then there was only one end for him. Having assumed a real human nature and gone down, down, down, Christ must go up in that same human nature. His person is heavenly, and so having united himself to that human nature, he makes that human nature heavenly.

That is what was shown on the Mount of Transfiguration. For a moment the earthly veil of Christ’s flesh was pulled back, and his heavenly glory shown through. That is the testimony of the resurrection. When Christ arose, he arose not to an earthly life. His life was otherworldly.

That Jesus Christ is the Lord from glory is central to God’s wonder of grace. God appointed Jesus Christ for this end. Why did Christ’s suffering pay an unpayable debt? Why did his obedience establish everlasting righteousness? When he brought his sin-life to a close, why was heaven his only proper end? Because he is the Lord from glory. The eternal wisdom of God’s counsel was always to bring man far above the earthly into the heavenly through the sending of the Lord of glory into the earth. God’s eternal purpose when he created man after the image of the earthly was to fashion man after the image of the heavenly.

To this truth those who teach a covenant of works can never do justice. They say that Adam could have merited immortality in heaven. And though they will distinguish between the merit that Adam could have had and the merit that Christ had,² they still fail to do justice to the truth because they do not explain that heavenly, immortal life strictly in terms of the person of Jesus Christ. Had Adam obeyed God’s law, all that his earthly righteousness could have done was to keep an earthly life. Adam never could have obtained the heavenly. That no mere man can do. Besides, such hypothetical scenarios concerning Adam’s obedience are vain because God is one and God’s purpose is always one. “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive… The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.” (1 Cor. 15:21–22, 47).

The truth is that only the work of one could be meritorious—that is, the totality of the labors of Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. He paid the unfathomable debt of punishment and obedience under the law. And having brought his sin-life as the sin-bearer to an end, he received his proper end. He went up to immortal life in heaven.

Union with Christ’s Merits

Now we apply that truth of Christ’s meritorious work to the profound mystery that is the mystical union. Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ.” When the apostle says “I am crucified with Christ,” he does not speak figuratively. He speaks literally. And when he says “I am crucified with Christ,” there are three things that we must note.

First, when the apostle says “I am crucified with Christ,” he speaks as an elect member of God’s covenant who was with Christ at the moment of Christ’s incarnation. Christ entered the state of humiliation because I was with him. What happened to Christ happened to me. For thirty-three years my life was a rapid descent under the wrath and reproaches of God against sin, a rapid descent due to being forsaken by God. There was no breather, no time-out, during the thirty-three years of that sin-life. There was no moment for a sigh of relief because God relinquished that curse upon me for a time. I labored under the living word of God, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” I heard that speech of God, pressing me down and burdening me. I was brought to my knees in the garden of Gethsemane, where I peered down into the abyss that awaited me. I was found guilty when tried by Pontius Pilate. I was led under the burden of that accursed tree from the place of judgment to Calvary. I was stripped of all my clothes and labored under the billowing, thick, black cloud that plunged me down into the fiery agonies of hell where I drank the cup of God’s wrath to its bitter dregs. I gave up the ghost. I was buried in the tomb. Two thousand years ago, I was crucified with Christ. The crucifixion of Christ was my crucifixion.

Second, that crucifixion with Christ took place because it is an eternal reality. The word that the Spirit chose in Galatians 2:20 for the word “crucified” is a delightful term. It is deep. It means that eternally in God’s living counsel, the abiding reality is that I was crucified with Christ, so that what was unfolded two thousand years ago was the eternal reality of God’s living decree. Always I am crucified with Christ.

But these two things are not all that must be said about that truth “I am crucified with Christ.” We must note, third, that the text brings this truth into the present. The text brings this truth to me in the present, as one who is confronted with the reality of my sins every single day. Every single day my sins prevail against me. Every single day I see how disgusting and vile and loathsome I am. I am guilty. I deserve to go to hell. And the Spirit comes as the Spirit of Jesus Christ; the Spirit comes as the one who unites me to Jesus Christ; and the Spirit abides in me to bring the saving efficacy of what literally took place two thousand years ago. I am crucified with Christ. My old, guilty, polluted, sinful, and damn-worthy sin-life is dead. I already have been cursed and sent to hell.

Now I live. I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me. The fact that when Christ died, I died means that now I live. I live the life that he lives. After I died and was buried two thousand years ago, I justly received my proper end—namely, immortal life in heaven. However, according to Galatians 2:20, I have this life now in the flesh.

But this life in the flesh cannot be understood apart from Jesus Christ. According to the profound reality of the spiritual union of the elect children of God with Jesus Christ, he cannot be separated from his people. There are things that we do in the flesh: we love God; we hate our sins; we delight in good works; we want to pray; we want to obey. But that life cannot be explained in terms of what our flesh does or in terms of our minds, souls, thoughts, and inclinations. We live that life in the flesh, but it is not we who live but Christ in us. The life that we live, the heavenly life of obedience and faith and repentance, is not us but Christ who lives in us. We cannot be joined too closely to Jesus Christ.

Since we are crucified with Christ and now we live, that life is through the satisfaction of all punishment and obedience demanded by the law and is a life beyond and above any condemnation by the law. The law never can come to any of God’s people and say, “You have sinned; you must die. You have sinned; you must suffer wrath. You have sinned; you must be punished.” No. Christ received his life through the satisfaction of all the punishment demanded by the law. And Christ lives in us. The law cannot condemn us. Nor can the law come to any of us and say, “You must obey me to be blessed; you must obey me to have and experience God’s favor.” No. Christ received his life through satisfaction of the demands of the law for obedience. And Christ lives in us. That is the life that we now live, yet not we.

That life explains so many things about the experiences of the children of God. Why do the children of God suffer the reproaches of the world? Why are the children of God mocked and ridiculed and persecuted? Why are the children of God treated as the offscouring of the earth? Why do the children of God feel that in their lives they go from fire to fire and that all men hate them? You cannot explain that in terms of the flesh. The only way to explain that is the life of Christ in us. When men persecute us, it is not us they persecute but Jesus Christ. When men mock us, it is not us they mock but Jesus Christ.

We confess with Paul, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

That is no clearer than when we die, are put into caskets, and are buried six feet under the ground. There is no life in the flesh there. That flesh corrupts. But scripture says that our bodies sleep. And scripture is not using a euphemism. Our bodies sleep because Christ, the living Lord, is always with our bodies by his Spirit. And because Christ lives in us, he will draw our corpses out of the ground, unite them to our souls, and fashion them like unto his glorious body. Such is the power of the life that Christ lives in us.

Then at that time, we will receive the perfection of that life, that immortal life, in heaven before the face of God, and we will know even as we are known.