This painting by Jason Jasperson is found in the seminary lobby. The painting depicts Martin Luther (top), through whom God restored the Gospel in the Reformation; Martin Chemnitz (middle), the leading light in Lutheranism after Luther; and C.F.W. Walther (bottom), the principal founder of confessional Lutheranism in this country. Their confession centers in the sacrificial death of the Lamb of God on the cross and His glorious resurrection, by which the whole world was declared righteous in Christ.
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GJ - I am looking for the verse where God declared everyone righteous. Calvinistic logic is not edifying for this question - or any other matter.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Which Men Do Not Belong in This Picture? Guilt by A...":
2 Corinthians 5:19, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.
Just because you say this verse doesn't apply, that doesn't make it so. Reconciling=justifying.
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GJ - That was a maladroit change of subject. I am still looking for the passage which reveals, "And God said, The entire world is justified and has My grace from now on, without the Word, without the Means of Grace, without faith."
UOJ fanatics equate the Atonement with justification. All Lutheran Church Growthers are UOJ disciples too.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Which Men Do Not Belong in This Picture?Guilt by A...":
Ok Dr. Jackson, How are Atonement and Justification different.
How is saying, "The entire world is atoned of all sin" and "The entire world is declared not guilty of all sin" different?
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GJ - I am glad you asked. The UOJ disciples confuse the Atonement with justification. In the 1980s, when Robert Preus was still promoting Norwegian Pietism's UOJ (and a Church Growth faculty at The Surrendered Fort), he used that style of argumentation.
In Preus' last book, Justification and Rome, he abandoned his former position. He stated with great clarity that justification is only through faith. I have quoted that section many times.
Briefly, the reconciliation sections in Corinthians are about the universal Atonement. The Gospel message is, "Jesus died for the sins of the world." When that message, or treasure, is distributed by the Holy Spirit through the Means of Grace, people believe (a gift of the Holy Spirit through the efficacious Word) and they are declared innocent, justified by faith.
Romans 4 and 5 are instructive. Abraham is the father of faith (Romans 4), a beautiful chapter climaxing with the opening of Romans 5:
KJV Romans 5:1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: 2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
The double-justification language of Franz Pieper was being used in Knapp's Pietistic dogmatics book, in English, long before the Loehe missionaries invited the Missouri guys to join their group. Triumphalism triumphed and the real founders of Missouri were deleted from its official history. Here is one example.
