Maybe it’s partly because I’m a Celtophile, but I have a tremendous appreciation for the Torrance brothers of Scotland (Thomas F. and James B.). They don’t seem to be all that well-known on the American side of the big puddle, but I think both were among the great theologians of the past half-century. I’m particularly grateful for J. B. Torrance’s strongly Trinitarian and covenantal understanding of Reformed theology, which I think provides a powerful corrective to the tendency toward gracelessness in certain strains of the Reformed communions, and for T. F. Torrance’s work on theology and science (a good brief introduction to his thought in this area can be found in the little book Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and Scientific Thinking).
I mention this to highlight the fact that the two most recent quotes posted on Of First Importance are both from T. F. Torrance, and both wonderful and important statements. Yesterday’s lays out the implications of our union with Christ (a doctrine on which the Scots seem to be a good bit stronger than most Americans):
From beginning to end what Jesus Christ has done for you he has done not only as God but as man. He has acted in your place in the whole range of your human life and activity, including your personal decisions, and your responses to God’s love, and even your acts of faith. He has believed for you, fulfilled your human response to God, even made your personal decision for you, so that he acknowledges you before God as one who has already responded to God in him, who has already believed in God through him, and whose personal decision is already implicated in Christ’s self-offering to the Father, in all of which he has been fully and completely accepted by the Father, so that in Jesus Christ you are already accepted by him. Therefore, renounce yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus as your Lord and Saviour.
Today’s shows how that underpins the gospel of grace:
To preach the Gospel of the unconditional grace of God in that unconditional way is to set before people the astonishingly good news of what God has freely provided for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus. To repent and believe in Jesus Christ and commit myself to him on that basis means that I do not need to look over my shoulder all the time to see whether I have really given myself personally to him, whether I really believe and trust him, whether my faith is at all adequate, for in faith it is not upon my faith, my believing or my personal commitment that I rely, but solely upon what Jesus Christ has done for me, in my place and on my behalf, and what he is and always will be as he stands in for me before the face of the Father. That means that I am completely liberated from all ulterior motives in believing or following Jesus Christ, for on the ground of his vicarious human response for me, I am free for spontaneous joyful response and worship and service as I could not otherwise be.
This radical understanding, that life is all of Christ, and all in Christ, and none of me, is the heart of the gospel; it’s what we as Christians are called to preach and to live out.