In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It’s been about two decades, I believe, since the publication of the Orthodox Study Bible in this country. I remember the early reviews of the Orthodox Study Bible by Orthodox priests, Orthodox seminary professors, and such, and I remember them as being, in large part, negative. And maybe my impression, my memory, is faulty; that’s the way I remember it.

One of the complaints made against the Orthodox Study Bible is that it had an article on justification, whereas it had no article on a number of other things to which the Orthodox are rather partial. And that criticism itself pointed to the circumstances in which the book was produced. It was largely produced by people who had joined the Orthodox Church within the previous three or four years and who were very sensitive to certain theological aspects of American culture. And the criticisms that traditional Orthodox Christians made against the publication clearly manifested the fact that they were not sensitive to the deeper dimensions of American religious culture. They were still doing what I call “boutique Orthodoxy,” that is to say, getting it all right—getting everything right—but being completely unrelated to the circumstances in which they were living and the context in which they had to proclaim the Gospel.

Now, I can make that criticism because a criticism has been made by other people far better than myself, such as Fr. Schmemann and, well, I could name some others. That’s enough name-dropping for this morning.

In fact, we’ve never had a controversy about justification in the East. We’ve never had a controversy about the holy Eucharist in the East. We’ve never had the equivalent of Berengarius; we’ve never had the equivalent of Calvin. But we have to deal with those things. The Orthodox Church has never had the equivalent of lots of things that have happened in the West, but we still have to deal with those things.

With respect to justification—that was the theme of this morning’s epistle, wasn’t it? So it’s not as though the Orthodox Church has never heard anything about this. That’s been our epistle on this particular Sunday since probably the fourth century! On the feast of the Holy Cross—pardon me, the Sunday after the feast—the Church selects for her epistle a Pauline passage about justification by faith. And that’s the reading this morning, so I’m really quite justified…. [Laughter] …in preaching about it. Paul writes to the Galatians:

A man is not justified by the works of the Torah, but by faith in Jesus the Messiah. Even as we have believed in the Messiah, Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in the Messiah, and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.

Of all the Pauline texts from which to choose to study for this important Sunday, the Christian Church picks the passage about justification through faith.

Three points I want to make this morning. Justification through faith is a living state, not a simply once-for-all act of God. It is an ongoing activity of God’s grace, God’s energy, whereby man is transformed through union with Christ. Perhaps no commentator has expressed this truth more poetically, and eloquently in my opinion, than by a 13th century Scholastic, whom I rarely quote, named Thomas Aquinas. But I have quoted him here probably half a dozen times in the last 21 years. Here’s what Thomas Aquinas writes in the [first] part of the second part of the Summa Theologica, Question [113], Article 4, “Reply to the Third Objection”: “Deus semper operetur iustificationem hominis. God always brings about the justification of man.” Very clear: justified by God. God always brings about the justification of man. “Sicut semper operatur illuminationem aeris. As the illumination of the air.” God brings about the justification of man as the illumination of the air. What does the light do to the air? It fills it. It fills it. It doesn’t change the nature of the air, but adds something to it.

St. Thomas goes on. “Grace, therefore, when it comes to a believer, is not less than when it comes to the unbeliever, because in both cases it produces faith.” Faith is produced by grace. In the one case, it does so by strengthening and perfecting, as to the believer, while in the other, the unbeliever, it does so by creating something anew, de novo creando. That is to say, we receive justifying grace minute by minute, the way the air receives the sunlight.

Justification through faith, which is God’s act, is a continuing activity whereby man is transformed. Justification through faith is an ongoing transformation of life. Paul affirms this truth today when he says, “What I now live in the flesh”—and that’s the way it says in the Greek: “What I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” The verb there is “live”—live! “What I live in the faith”—“what I live in the flesh,” rather, “I live in faith.” The important verb, the operative verb, is life, live. Justification is that which comes about by living in Christ. That puts to rest forever any idea that faith is somehow or other a once-and-for-all act by which you’re justified, and that’s settled. Nothing is yet settled with respect to human history.

Second, justification through faith is internal to man’s heart. God does not simply declare man to be righteous. God’s grace makes him righteous by doing something real in his heart. Justification in Christ does not remain external to the one who has it. When we say that man is justified through faith, we necessarily affirm that justification is internal to man, because faith is certainly something inside man.

Now, because faith is internal to the soul, that divine justification is received in faith is also internal to the soul. For this reason, only a theology of internal justification, internal operation of the Holy Spirit, is compatible with the biblical doctrine of justification through faith. It appears to me that the strange heresy that arose in Switzerland half a millennium ago cuts right at the very root of biblical teaching on justification through faith. This is why the Bible speaks of circumcision of the heart. “For no one is a Jew,” he says, “who is so outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical.” This is in Romans. “But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart.” That’s from the second chapter of Romans. By this justifying grace, according to 2 Corinthians, we are made a new creation in Christ; we become the righteousness of God through him.

Now this thesis indicates an important difference between Christian grace and the Mosaic law. The Mosaic law remained external to those who received it. A major difference between the Law and the Gospel consists in this very distinction between external form and internal form. Just check out the eighth chapter of Hebrews, about the Holy Spirit working on the new heart inside us. There’s a lengthy quotation from Jeremiah, longest quotation of the Old Testament in the New Testament, by the way, in case that question ever arises when you’re in the check-out line at Jewel-Osco. You never know what people are going to talk about. Well, in Oklahoma City, that might actually be a discussion in the check-out line—perhaps not in Chicago.

Physical circumcision changes the shape of the body. Justification through faith changes the shape of the soul. In Christ, we are rendered internally different.

And third, according to today’s epistle text, we are transformed in Christ by sharing Christ’s own faith. People don’t talk about that very much any more, about the faith of Christ. A few weeks ago, I mentioned the conscience of Christ. I don’t know why people don’t talk about that, because if he is fully human, which the Council of Chalcedon insists upon, then he has faith and has conscience, and he’s certainly anointed by the Holy Spirit.

This truth, however, is massively obscured by a common mistranslation of the passage. The reading we had this morning, by the way, of the epistle got it right. It got it right. I was standing there wondering, because I get very nervous about these things. But lots of translations do not get it right. Take, for example, the King James Bible. It’s typical of this mistranslation. The King James Bible writes, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.” “I live by faith in the Son of God”: that’s not what the Greek text says. The canonical Greek says, “I live in the faith of the Son of God.” I live in his relationship to God.

The difference is important. What Paul affirms is that we share in the faith of Christ. We don’t have any relationship to God at all except in Christ. We participate in his own relationship to the Father. By grace we share the faith through which Jesus gave complete service and obedience to God, thereby becoming the perfected Mediator between God and man.

Now if we’re to share in the Son’s faith in his Father, where do we find the concrete model of that faith? I submit to you: in the narrative of the cross, the story of the passion. This morning we listened to a reading from the gospel of Mark. Mark is not much read on Sundays in the Orthodox Church, but this is one Sunday we do, and that should remind you something of Lent, because during Lent that’s the dominant gospel on Sundays, is Mark. This is the reason for the choice of today’s gospel reading, in which Jesus invites us to participate in his faith. “Whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Taking up as our own the cross of Christ is not simply an imitation of his example. It is the inward adoption of his mind. Paul writes—this is in the epistle to the Philippians—”Phroneiti en hymin. Think inside yourselves, phroneiti. Think inside yourselves that which we have in Christ.” Paul goes on to speak about how Christ emptied himself for our sake. We are not simply to imitate Christ; we are to think as he does. Phroneiti en hymin ho kai en Christou Iesou. Think inside yourselves that which you have in Jesus Christ.” We are to share in his faith, in his relationship to the Father, in his view of life and the world. And our lives are to be transformed by the mystery of the cross.

Consequently, the union of my soul with Christ radically changes my perspectives and alters my dispositions. I begin to see things as Christ sees them, because of my communion with Christ’s own soul, Christ’s mind entering my mind. My soul is reshaped by the sustained cultivation of faith because Christ enters the soul’s activity. Now this is what it means to be justified by faith. Anything short of that is a sell-out. Without this internal transforming relationship to Christ, there’s no possibility of salvation because Christ is man’s only way to God. “I live by faith of the Son of God,” Paul says in Galatians this morning, “who loved me, gave himself up for me.” Amen.