The Bible can be frustrating sometimes. It is not a catechism or a treatise on systematic theology, so it doesn’t always present its teachings in a straightforward manner. Instead, if we want to learn what it teaches on a particular subject, we often have to look below the surface. For example, take one of the biggest issues that has divided Catholics and Protestants ever since the Reformation. When the New Testament talks about our salvation, it often refers to it as our justification before God, but it never explicitly tells us what that means.
Defining Justification
In traditional Protestant theology, justification is simply a change of status before God without any real change in our hearts. Essentially, it means that God just overlooks our sinfulness and considers us just or righteous (in the Greek New Testament, “just” and “righteous” are the same word) without actually making us so. In this view, He sanctifies us and makes us holy later, but at the start, He simply considers us righteous even though we’re really not.
However, the Catholic concept is that justification actually changes us. God does not just overlook our sinfulness and deal with it later. No, when He justifies us, He also sanctifies us and makes us holy as well, so He considers us righteous because we actually are righteous. Granted, this is a lifelong process, but in the Catholic understanding of righteousness, the change is real right from the beginning.
So which understanding of justification is correct? Unfortunately, Scripture doesn’t lay out an explicit answer the way we might like it to. Instead, to find out which side in this debate is right, we have to do some deep digging. We have to pay attention to the way the New Testament talks about justification and righteousness and figure out which understanding fits those passages better.
“The Dispensation of Righteousness”
That term may sound abstract, so let’s put some flesh on those conceptual bones. Let’s take a look at a key text that talks about righteousness, and we will see whether the Protestant or Catholic understanding of justification fits it better:
“For if there was splendor in the dispensation of condemnation, the dispensation of righteousness must far exceed it in splendor.” (2 Corinthians 3:9)
In this verse, St. Paul is contrasting the Old Covenant, the one God made with Moses and the Israelites on Mt. Sinai, with the New Covenant that Jesus made with His followers through His passion, death, and resurrection. He calls the Old Covenant “the dispensation of condemnation” and the New Covenant “the dispensation of righteousness.”
Now, at first, this passage doesn’t seem all that helpful. Paul doesn’t tell us which understanding of righteousness he is working with, so it looks like a dead end.
Old Testament Allusions
However, if we look at the surrounding context of that passage in 2 Corinthians, the answer becomes clear (I have highlighted the important phrases):
You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all men; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our sufficiency is from God, who has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:2-6)
By talking about “a new covenant” written on people’s “hearts” with the “Spirit” rather than “on tablets of stone,” Paul is alluding to two very telling prophecies from the Old Testament:
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:31-33)
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
When we read Paul’s words side-by-side with these prophecies, the connections are pretty clear. For starters, the text from Jeremiah is the only place the Old Testament talks about “a new covenant,” so by using this phrase, Paul is obviously alluding to that passage. Jeremiah also talks about the law written on people’s hearts, which clearly parallels Paul’s words that the Corinthians themselves are a “letter of recommendation” written “on tablets of human hearts.”
“Letters of Recommendation”
Now, at first, this second parallel might seem a bit superficial, but let’s think about what Paul really means. The Corinthians are a “letter of recommendation” because they’re living out the life of faith from their hearts, and that is exactly what Jeremiah says people will do under the “new covenant.” So it is not just a coincidence that these passages use similar language. No, Paul is referring to the same reality that Jeremiah prophesied all those centuries before him.
And when we turn to the passage from Ezekiel, the connection becomes even stronger. Although he doesn’t use the phrase “new covenant,” he is clearly talking about it. He is prophesying about the day when God will write His law on people’s hearts, just like Jeremiah did. He also adds two new elements that Jeremiah did not mention: God will remove the people’s hearts “of stone” and replace them with hearts “of flesh,” and God will empower them to follow His law by giving them His “spirit.”
The Spirit
Does that sound familiar to you? It should. Paul tells the Corinthians pretty much the exact same thing. He says that they are a letter of recommendation written “with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts,” so once again he is clearly referring to the same reality that Ezekiel and Jeremiah foretold.Once we understand all this, the kind of righteousness Paul is talking about a few verses later becomes clear. When he calls the New Covenant the “dispensation of righteousness,” he is referring to the kind of righteousness prophesied by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. He is talking about actual righteousness, about people being empowered by the Spirit to follow God’s law from their hearts; he is not saying that God simply considers us righteous even though we’re really not. No, the New Covenant brings true righteousness, righteousness from the heart, so on this issue, the Catholic view is the clear winner.
