I am still reading Borg’s “Reading the bible again for the first time” and am in the chapter where he is tackling Paul’s letters. I came across some good information on “justification by grace” that I would like to share here.

Borg gives four interpretations and a final thought.

1.  Justification by grace in opposition to justification by works of the law is NOT about the inadequacy of the Jewish law or Judaism. Paul’s attack of the law subverts a more universal way of being, found not only within Christianity and Judaism but also within secular culture. Life under the law is the life of “measuring up” in which our well-being depends upon how well we do. Life under the law is, as one contemporary scholar puts it, living according to the “performance principle.”

2. Justification by grace is NOT about forgiveness; it is not simply an affirmation that God will forgive those who repent. Forgiveness was a given for Paul even before his Damascus Road experience. The Judaism he knew did not teach that one had to observe the law perfectly; rather, it taught that God forgives repentant sinners, and it provided means for mediating forgiveness.

3. Jusification by grace is NOT about who goes to heaven, or how. The notion that it is flows out of conventional Christianity’s preoccupation with the afterlife throughout the centuries, as if that were most central to the message of Jesus and Paul and the New Testament. When justification by grace is thought about in this context, it leads to questions such as: Does this mean that everybody goes to heaven, regardless of what they believe or how they have lived (which strikes most people as unfair)? And if it doesn’t mean that, what distinguishes those who do go to heaven from those who don’t. If it’s something we do, then we are back to works. But if going to heaven doesn’t depend on something we do, then God must arbitrarily decide who goes to heaven–and then notions of predestination emerge. Here, as is much else, preoccupation with the afterlife has profoundly distorted Christianity.

4. Paul’s understanding of justification is NOT about replacement of one requirement with another. This frequently happens in Christianity when “faith” replaces “good works” as what God requires of us. The system of requirements remains; only the content has changed. Of course, faith in God and Jesus was central for Paul. But it was not a new requirement; rather, faith in God’s grace–in the God who justifies the ungodly–is the abolition of the whole system of requirements. It is thus a radically new way of seeing.

So what, then, is justification by grace about? Very simply, it is about the basis of our relationship to God in the present. Is it constituted by something we do or believe? Or is it a gift, a given? For Paul, of course, the answer is by now obvious. Justification is a gift of God, not a human accomplishment. Within the framework of justification by grace, the Christian life is about becoming conscious of and entering more deeply into an already existing relationship with God as known in Jesus. It is not about meeting requirements for salvation later but about newness of life in the present. And living by grace produces the same qualities of life “in Christ”: freedom, joy, peace, and love.

Your thoughts? Personally, I really like his third point. Lots of discussion can come from it.