It is not enough to affirm that justification is forensic and synthetic (a justification of the ungodly that involves the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of the merits of Christ) and received by faith as the instrument that unites us to Christ who is our wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.  Rather, if the gratuity of justification is to be properly safeguarded justification must be completely abstracted from transformation of life. 

Number Ten: You define the “gospel” primarily in terms of freedom from the condemnation of sin (justification) rather than freedom from both the condemnation and the power of sin (justification and sanctification).

Number Nine:  You are much more much more concerned about legalism than antinomianism.

Number Eight:  You view sanctification as a more or less optional add-on to justification (or maybe as an evidence of justification, though you are concerned that even that concession to necessity might be potentially legalistic) rather than as grace parallel to justification that comes with our union with Christ and that is essential to the walk of faith and the path of salvation.

Number Seven:  You sense a tension between the Christ pro nobis (Christ for us) and the Christ in nobis (Christ in us).  Thus, you are very suspicious of those you deride as “unionists” who want to see justification as communicated to the Christian through spiritual union with Christ.

Number Six:  It is not enough to affirm that justification is forensic and synthetic (a justification of the ungodly that involves the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of the merits of Christ) and received by faith as the instrument that unites us to Christ who is our wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.  Rather, if the gratuity of justification is to be properly safeguarded justification must be completely abstracted from transformation of life.  Thus, if justification from eternity is too daring for you, you place heavy emphasis on an ordo salutis (order of salvation) that seeks logically and temporally to separate justification and transformation.

Number Five:  In order further to keep justification and sanctification separate you are suspicious of any real transformation intrinsic to the Christian.  Thus, your view of sanctification tends to be that of a divine actualism.

Number Four:  In order further to separate the forensic and the transformatory and to portray the forensic as independent of other considerations, you place enormous emphasis on the theme of covenant—especially on constructs such as a “covenant of redemption” between the first and second Persons of the Trinity (never mind that such a notion implies two divine wills and is thus implicitly tri-theistic) and a “covenant of works” in the Garden (never mind that, as John Murray pointed out, the term “covenant” is not used until Genesis 6:18).  Your attachment to the covenant theme is due in large measure to the fact that it gives you a vocabulary and conceptual apparatus for expressing the purely extrinsic, nominal relationships that will, you think, safeguard the doctrine of justification.  Of course, it is difficult to completely expunge the notion of conditionality from the concept of covenant and you may be dimly aware of the way that foregrounding the covenant theme has placed the Reformed tradition on the horns of the conditionality/unconditionality dilemma, and so you may eventually feel the tug of Lutheranism.

Number Three:  You are firmly committed to the notion of “immediate imputation” as an adequate description of the mode of imputation whereby both the sin of Adam the righteousness of Christ (i.e., the active and passive obedience of Christ) are credited.  This “immediate imputation” involves a purely extrinsic legal or forensic divine act that is independent of any realistic relationship between the persons involved (e.g., Christ and the Christian).  Along these lines, you are convinced that the choice between the scholastic categories of “mediate imputation” (i.e., imputation through participation in a moral quality) and immediate imputation pretty much exhausts the possibilities for thinking about the mode of imputation (despite the fact that, e.g., Calvin’s view of the mode of imputation seems to correspond to neither).

Number Two:  In keeping with the above, philosophically speaking you are basically a pretty radical nominalist rather than a realist.

And, finally, Number One:  Deep down you harbor the suspicion that John Calvin just might be a little shaky on the doctrine of justification.  In particular, passages like this trouble you greatly:

How do we receive those benefits which the Father bestowed on his only begotten Son—not for Christ’s own private use, but that he might enrich poor and needy men?  First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us (Institutes of the Christian Religion [McNeill/Battles ed.], III.1.1).

We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body—in short, because he deigns to make us one with him (Institutes of the Christian Religion [McNeill/Battles ed.], III.11.10).

William B. Evans is a minister in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church and serves as the Younts Prof. of Bible and Religion at Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina, where he teaches courses in theology, American religion, and religion and culture.  This article is used with permission.