The OPC Republication Report, Part 12

May 30, 2017 at 12:00 pm (Covenant, Mosaic Law)

With this post, we delve into Chapter 4, section 1, of the report dealing with merit and demerit. Most of the section is taken up with defining what condign merit is. There are five categories that explain condign merit, and these categories prove that humans have never been in a position to condignly merit anything, even in the case of Adam before the Fall.

The five categories are: 1. free (the performer of merit must be himself free of debt); 2. perfect; 3. personal (meaning we cannot borrow the merits of others); 4. profitable (must be above and beyond what is required, in other words); and 5. proportional to the reward. While the authors take some pains to prove that Christ’s work is meritorious in these five categories, a question remains in my mind. While I have no problem ascribing full condign merit to Christ’s work, I wonder how and if the situation is complicated by the pactum salutis. Would the Son’s agreement with the Father before time began have an impact on our definitions of Christ’s merit? Would it negate the possibility of condign merit? Or would the idea of pactum merit co-exist alongside condign merit in the case of Jesus’ righteousness? This issue has nagged away at my mind for quite some time, and I am not at a point of cognitive rest on the matter yet. My current leaning is that we cannot take away condign merit from what Christ has done, because He has earned our right to heaven. I also think that if any ideas of pactum merit are introduced into any understanding of Christ’s merit, it would have to be heavily qualified such that any idea of disproportionality between work and reward would be eliminated. So, is there a way of saying that Christ’s work both inherently earns eschatological blessing and saying simultaneously that the Father and the Son agreed to this?

78 Comments

Psalm 1 Prayer

May 28, 2017 at 6:24 pm (OT-Psalms, Prayer, Worship)

I have taken to praying the Psalms in corporate worship, and what I am doing is making the wording corporate, interpreting the Psalm christologically, and seeking to make the Psalm ours. This is my effort at praying Psalm 1:

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you have revealed to us that we are blessed if we do not walk in the council of the wicked, stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of the scoffer. Make us instead to delight in your law, that we might meditate on it day and night. Make us to be like trees planted by streams of water, yielding their fruit in their season, never withering, gaining an internal, invisible nourishment so that, in anything that we do for you and for your kingdom, we will prosper. Make us not like the wicked, who have so little weight that the wind can drive them away. Though we feel alone in this, though we see and feel the pressures against righteousness by the world outside, we know, Father, that the whole congregation of the righteous will stand with us. Above all, you stand with us, for you know our path, the end from the beginning. You know that path of wisdom, and you delight to show it to us. You also illuminate for us the path of the wicked, and you show us its end. We praise you that Jesus walked not in the counsel of the wicked, nor did he stand in the way of sinners, nor ever sit in the seat of scoffers. We praise you that He delighted to do your will, that He delighted in your law, that He always meditated on it, that He therefore has become for us the life-giving vine who nourishes our faith always.

7 Comments