Henry Krabbendam - James - World Evangelical Alliance

nation among the three is as follows. While all three are simultaneously bestowed
upon union with Christ, the internal relationship has regeneration, evidenced in repentance
and faith, as the root and both justification and sanctification as the twofold fruit
in God’s saving activity. After all, we are both justified and sanctified by faith.
This has at least two implications. First, if there is “no twofold fruit,” there can
be “no root!” Christ could not be any clearer in Matthew 7:21ff. Second, the same repentance
and faith that secures the righteousness of Christ for the ungodly before they
enter into the family of God also produces the holiness of Christ for the godly after
they have been ushered into that family. Together with regeneration they are all three
“once and for all,” or “definitive” in the terminology of Systematic Theology, regeneration
(John 3:5), justification (Rom. 5:1) as well as sanctification (Heb. 10:10, 14a).
After all, the union with Christ, which encompasses the cross, the resurrection, the ascension
and the session in the heavenlies, is “once and for all.” All Christ’s younger
brothers and sisters have already arrived with him in those heavenlies (Eph. 1:20), and
there already possess his heart, his righteousness and his holiness in perfection. At the
same time in all three areas there is also a continuing “outflow,” daily repentance
(Acts 20:21), daily forgiveness (1 John 1:9), and daily renewal (Heb. 10:14b). This
“outflow” takes place on earth. In fact, no one can conscientiously claim that he is in
the heavenlies united with Christ who does not display or wholeheartedly seek the
continuing outflow of that union on earth, and has convincing evidence of its presence.
Frankly, this is what James is after and brings to expression both in the totality of his
Epistle and in the present context in his adage that “faith without works is dead!” In
short, both Christ and James are discriminating/applicatory preachers. Jesus calls those
who do not possess the threefold, once-and-for-all, reality “outsiders” in the very
strongest of discriminating terms (See for regeneration John 3:3, 5, for justification
John 4:16-18, and for sanctification John 8:31, 44). James questions in applicatory
terminology that is equally strong, whether those who claim to possess this reality, but
play foot loose with its threefold continuing outflow, are truly “insiders” (See specifically
James 1:22, 26; 5:1). It makes no difference, whether their addressees belong to
the covenant community or not. It is hardly surprising that Paul’s message in its summons
to self-examination (2 Cor. 13:5) is woven of the same cloth as that of “his older
brother,” Jesus, and “his elder colleague,” James!
All this warrants a number of conclusions regarding two hot-button issues that
(regrettably) occupy the Church today, the so-called “New Perspective on Paul,” and
the so-called “New Covenant Obedience in Justification.”
First, the notion that the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith follows
either an errant Paul or a misunderstood Paul must be opposed to the hilt. In the former
case Paul supposedly erred in attributing a merit-based legalism as the instrumental
basis of salvation to the Judaizers of his day. In the process he confused this with the
perfectly acceptable, gracious covenantal nomism of Palestinian Judaism that was
poles apart from a religion of legalistic works-righteousness as way of salvation. If all
this is true, Paul is not a reliable guide, and the Reformation has eggs on its face for
relying on him. In the latter case Paul in his Galatians or Romans allegedly did not oppose
a salvific merit-based legalism at all. His only “bone of contention with Judaism”
was “prideful insistence upon its covenantal racial exclusiveness: Israel shut Gentiles
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