By Faith, Not By Sight Quotes

“How so? Briefly, apart from the gospel and outside of Christ, the law is my enemy and condemns me. Why? Because God is my enemy and condemns me. But with the gospel and in Christ, united to him by faith, the law is no longer my enemy but my friend. Why? Because now God is no longer my enemy but my friend, and the law, his will—the law in its moral core, as reflective of his character and of concerns eternally inherent in his own person and so of what pleases him—is now my friendly guide for life in fellowship with God.”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation

“From this perspective, it should be appreciated that the antithesis between law and gospel is not an end in itself. It is not a theological ultimate. That antithesis arises not by virtue of creation, but as the consequence of sin, and the gospel functions to overcome it. The gospel removes an absolute law-gospel antithesis in the life of the believer.”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation

“For Christians, then, Christ’s justification, given with his resurrection, becomes theirs.”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation

“The notion that one applied benefit can cause another applied benefit has always perplexed me. But when union with Christ structures the whole of applied redemption, the aforementioned errors are dealt with better.”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation

“Paul does not teach a “faith alone” position, as I have sometimes heard it put. Rather, his is a “by faith alone” position. This is not just a verbal quibble; the “by” is all-important here. The faith by which sinners are justified, as it unites them to Christ and so secures for them all the benefits of salvation that there are in him, perseveres to the end and in persevering is never alone. Faith is, as Luther is reported to have said, “a busy little thing.”86”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation

“To summarize, the “outer man” of the believer does not yet experience the saving benefits of union with Christ, either transformative or forensic. So far as I am “outer man,” I am not yet justified (openly), any more than I am resurrected (bodily). And that is so, without diminishing either the reality that I am already and irreversibly justified or the future certainty of my being justified in the resurrection of the body at the final judgment. Here again, in terms of the principle of 2 Corinthians 5:7, I am justified “by faith,” but not (yet) “by sight.”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation

“For Christians, then, Christ’s justification, given with his resurrection, becomes theirs. When they are united to the resurrected and justified Christ by faith, his righteousness is reckoned as theirs, or imputed to them.”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation

“is 100 percent the work of God and, just for that reason, it is to engage 100 percent of the activity of the believer.”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation

“it is not an overstatement to say, as Paul sees things, that at the core of their being, in the deepest recesses of who they are—in other words, in “the inner self”—believers will never be more resurrected than they already are. God has done a work in each believer, a work of nothing less than resurrection proportions, that will not be undone.”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation

“Christ’s passivity in his resurrection reflects his identification and solidarity with believers in being raised from the dead. For Paul—certainly not in conflict with, but other than, the way it is often understood—the resurrection is not the especially evident display and powerful proof of Christ’s divinity, but rather the vindication of the incarnate Christ in his suffering and obedience unto death, and with that vindication, the powerful transformation of him in his humanity. In the terms of Romans 1:4, by virtue of the resurrection he is now, comparatively, what he was not previously, “the Son of God in power.”54”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation

“For him it does not go far enough to say, as it is often put, that Christ’s resurrection is the guarantee of our resurrection, in the sense of being certain because of God’s eternal purpose or his word of promise to the church, although both are certainly true for Paul. Rather, Christ’s resurrection is a guarantee in the sense that it is nothing less than the actual and, as such, representative beginning of the “general epochal event.” In Paul’s view, the general resurrection, as it includes believers, begins with Christ’s resurrection.51”
― Richard B. Jr. Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation