Jonathan Edwards’s View Of That Great Act Of Obedience: Jesus’ Laying Down His Life

By Ryan M. Hurd

[Ryan M. Hurd is an MDiv and ThM student at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI.]

Within the work of Christ, theologians typically distinguish between an active and passive obedience. While artificial, this distinction helps explain the two-step work required for justification, namely: (1) satisfying for the penalty of death incurred by disobedience and (2) meriting the reward of eternal life. Christ’s active obedience provides the latter. It is that obedience Christ wrought by walking according to the commands of God. The former—Christ’s penal suffering (primarily on the cross)—is his passive obedience whereby he satisfied God’s wrath.

For Jonathan Edwards, however, defining and distinguishing between active and passive obedience is not a simple matter, and he formulates his conception differently than most. Edwards employs both terms in explaining Christ’s work. However, he views Christ’s whole work as supremely active obedience, even in his suffering (which theologians typically label as passive obedience). For Edwards, Christ’s passive work of suffering was the greatest part of his active obedience.

This might appear to be contradictory if viewed through the lens theologians often use when examining the active and passive distinction. Such would argue that passive obedience, by very definition, is not to be considered meritorious. Further, passive obedience is understood as satisfying the law negatively, while active obedience fulfills the law positively. Thus, Edwards’s construction, taken at face value, appears incongruous. Nonetheless, his understanding of the active and passive relationship, as this article examines, remedies the discrepancies.

Edwards’s underlying thesis is that Christ’s passive obedience is subsumed under his active obedience. This thesis differs from that of other theologians who typically hold both the active and passive forms together equally. For Edwards, however, what theologians typically distinguish as passive obedience actually was active (meritorious) in itself.

A necessary caveat here needs to be inserted. Edwards’s system is not asserting that Christ’s passive obedience was active in the sense that Christ was purposeful or intentional (rather than being a victim, inactive in suffering).

Edwards of course would not deny that Christ’s death was not active in this sense, but his proposal is different. Because Christ’s passive obedience was an obedience to God’s commands, it therefore comprises Christ’s active obedience unto eternal life. Christ’s passive obedience is therefore viewed as constituting his active obedience.

Explaining Edwards’s view requires first an examination of the nature of active obedience itself. It is necessary to belabor Edwards’s understanding of active obedience in order to explain later his conception of passive obedience. Our discussion will also be prefaced by a brief introduction to Edwards’s view of justification. Second, Edwards’s formulation of the inter-relationship between active and passive obedience will be surveyed. Third, both of these thoughts will be brought together to examine Edwards’s main proposition: Christ’s penal suffering was his chief active obedience. It was “that great act of obedience, his laying down his life.”[1]

I. Introduction To Edwards On Justification In General

Perry Miller’s work of 1973[2] revived contemporary scholarly interest in Edwards.[3] Since then, the amount of research on Edwards has been monumental. Scholars, however, have divided over Edwards’s theological leanings. Gerstner, Logan, and Bogue are examples of scholars who affirm Edwards’s Reformed orthodoxy;[4] Schafer, Hunsinger, and Morimoto represent those who deny it.[5] Examination of Edwards himself reveals a theologian standing decidedly in line with the Reformed tradition, particularly, for present purposes, in his understanding of justification.

Noting the voluminous nature of Edwards’s works in general, McClenahan rightly notes that Edwards often dealt with justification in particular.[6] Edwards’s master’s thesis, Quaestio (1723), was his first work on justification.[7] This was primarily in response to the threat of Arminianism in Edwards’s day.[8] Edwards also has a number of important “Miscellanies” on justification. Most important are the following entry numbers: 245, 507, 568, 637, 663, 669, 687, 712, 714, 725, 729, 797, 812, 829, 856, 877, 996, 1042, 1250, 1260a, 1279–1280, 1346, and 1354. These deal with a variety of facets of justification.[9]

Edwards’s principal work on justification was entitled “Justification by Faith Alone” (1738).[10] This work was an extended version of two public lectures on justification that Edwards preached in November of 1734.[11] The resultant treatise likely leaned heavily on Edwards’s prior work in his Quaestio and various “Miscellanies.” McClenahan notes that Edwards added to these works considerably and developed his argumentation significantly.[12] The final product serves as a “most elaborate and sustained articulation of his position.”[13] Therefore, “Justification by Faith Alone” provides significant insight into Edwards’s understanding of justification[14]—particularly his understanding of the active and passive relationship.

Edwards also handled the doctrine of justification throughout his 1,200 sermons.[15] Several stand out as significant for the present work, such as “None Are Saved by Their Own Righteousness,” “Even as I Have Kept My Father’s Commandments,” and, most importantly, “The Threefold Work of the Holy Spirit,” which is particularly significant, as Edwards gave a lengthy explanation of justification that sprang particularly from Trinitarian thought.[16] In summary, Edwards throughout his writings recognized that “the highest glory of the gospel and the delight of the Scriptures is this very doctrine of justification.”[17]

II. The Nature And Necessity Of Active Obedience

1. The Nature Of Active Obedience

Edwards notes that justification according to the obedience of Christ is “a doctrine that the Scripture teaches in very full terms.”[18] For Edwards, the nature of this obedience is best understood by working through Rom 5, a passage long noted to be foundational in understanding the work of the Second Adam. Edwards employs the parallels between Adam and Christ to demonstrate the necessity of a positive fulfillment of the law. For either man, “the thing required was perfect obedience” to the commands of God. This, Edwards explains, is Christ’s active obedience—an “obedience to the same law that Adam was made under.”[19] The requirement for life was and has always been perfect obedience.

Moreover, as Biehl noted, Adam’s sin does not cancel or alter God’s rule of righteousness.[20] Edwards writes:

If Adam had finished his course of perfect obedience, he would have been justified. And certainly his justification would have implied something more than what is merely negative; he would have been entitled to the reward of it. So Christ, our second surety (in whose justification all whose surety he is, are virtually justified), was not justified till he had done the work the Father had appointed for him, and the Father’s Commandments through all his trials—and then, in his resurrection, he was justified.[21]

Whereas Adam failed in this full course of obedience, Christ succeeded. Biehl suggests that Edwards’s Trinitarian focus contributes significantly to his understanding of Christ’s work. For Edwards, Christ’s work was a “meritorious obedience to God’s unalterable rule of righteousness, in his accomplishment of the ultimate Trinitarian purpose of the display and communication of God’s glory.”[22] Though no person of the Trinity is “by nature above another” or has “natural superiority,” Christ submitted himself to the commands of God.[23] His whole heart, as a man, was set upon obedience. When God “had a mind to save men,” Christ obeyed his Father’s will and therefore “infinitely laid out himself” in obedience.[24] It is this whole obedience to God the Father that was the merit necessary for eternal life. It was a positive obedience to the moral law of God.

Just as Adam’s disobedience evidenced itself in death, Christ’s perfect obedience was evidenced by his resurrection.[25] Edwards explains from Rom 4:25, Heb 6:20, and Eph 2:6 “that Christ’s resurrection and exaltation were given to him as rewards for his obedience.”[26] “God justified him as a mediator, declaring by his open prison doors that what he had done was sufficient.”[27]

Edwards soundly answers those who would object and claim that active obedience is not the grounds for justification. He writes:

Here in one verse [Rom 5:18] we are told that we have justification by Christ’s righteousness, and that there might be no room to understand the righteousness spoken of merely of Christ’s atonement, by his suffering the penalty. In the next verse, ‘tis put in other terms, and asserted that ‘tis by Christ’s obedience that we are made righteous. ‘Tis scarce possible anything should be more full and determined.[28]

Just as it was one man’s disobedience that earned death, so it is one man’s full active obedience that merits life. Furthermore, “however sinful we have been in how many instances so ever, we have not obeyed God’s commands and broken them, yet Christ has obeyed and we may safely trust in his obedience.”[29] He has secured what is necessary for heaven by earning the right to life by obedience. Moreover, this active obedience is imputed to the believer so surely that it is as though “we had performed it ourselves.”[30]

Therefore, it is Christ’s active obedience that merits life, both for himself as well as for his people. “He stands as the tree of life … [and] we are immediately invited and called to Christ, to come to him, to take and eat, without any other terms, because the condition of righteousness [obedience to the law] is fulfilled already by our surety.”[31]

2. The Necessity Of Active Obedience

From the earliest of Edwards’s thought (between November 1722 and April 1723),[32] there is evidence that Edwards taught that the active obedience of Christ is imputed to the believer. Regarding this, he writes, “What Christ has done in [active] obedience is the believer’s…. This is a great doctrine of Christianity.”[33]

Edwards consistently sees a two-step work for justification. McClenaham notes, “In Edwards’ definition, justification is both the remission of sins and a title to eternal life based on the positive righteousness of Christ.”[34] This corresponds with Christ’s passive and active obedience, respectively. A man is justified “when he is approved of God as free from the guilt of sin, and its deserved punishment, and as having that righteousness belonging to him that entitles to the reward of life.”[35]

Justification then takes a sinner from the place of damnation to the place of eternal glory. Recognizing that justification was a legal and forensic idea,[36] Edwards framed his understanding of justification within the context of the law.[37] A man’s state is judged in reference to either his guilt or obedience—never his neutrality. To suggest the latter would be to return to Adam’s state, which, while lacking sin that merited hell, there was no righteousness to merit heaven.[38] We would return to Adam’s state and be “no more fit, that we should obtain eternal life,” because we lacked obedience.[39] Indeed, if it were possible for Adam, in his innocence and state of neutrality, to be rewarded thereby with eternal life, “he would have had it fixed upon him at once, as soon as ever he was created; for he was as innocent then as he could be.”[40]

Innocence alone is insufficient. “Mere pardon can in no propriety be called justification.”[41] A pardon simply remedies guilt incurred by disobedience. It lacks the requirement for justification: an active obedience to God’s commands. This alone merits eternal life. Edwards writes:

His sins being removed by Christ’s atonement, is not sufficient for his justification; for justifying a man, as has been already shown, is not merely pronouncing him innocent or without guilt, but standing right, with regard to the rule that he is under, and righteous unto life; but this, according to the established rule of nature, reason, and divine appointment, is a positive perfect righteousness.[42]

In essence, justification could never mean only the absence of guilt; it necessitates the inclusion of full and perfect obedience. This is why, for the sinner who stands in a place of disobedience in Adam, justification entails two steps: both the removal of guilt and the imputation of righteousness. Edwards is very clear:

Justification consists in these two things, viz. in removing guilt in the pardon of sin and reconciliation, which is only a negative righteousness and a mere removal of God’s anger; and then second, a looking upon the sinner as positively righteous and receiving him as the object of favor, not only as merely not the object of anger.[43] 

By justification we mean an act of divine favor towards the sinner which forgives sins and approves him as righteous…. There can be no doubt that justification is a certain act of positive favor that not only frees a person from sin but is also understood in fact as the approval of him as righteous through the righteousness of Christ, both active and passive in both obedience and satisfaction.[44]

To Edwards, to justify without a positive obedience would be laughable and “very strange”—indeed, a contradiction in terms.[45] Sinful man requires an active obedience. “We desire not merely the forgiveness of sins, since that by itself renders a man righteous in the sight of God no differently than it does the very trees and rocks.”[46] For a sinner to be accepted before God there must be a “real righteousness,” which Edwards notes is not just a conceptual notion but a reality. It is a proper positive obedience to the whole law of God.[47] “Our judge cannot justify us unless he sees a perfect righteousness, in some way belonging to us, either performed by ourselves or by another, and justly and duly reckoned to our account.”[48]

Thus, for Edwards, the inclusion of Christ’s active obedience is necessary to understand Christ’s work. This is against those who would recognize strictly Christ’s work as only a passive obedience. In Edwards’s eyes, this is impossible: “There must be some fulfillment of obedience to the law for there to rightly be a judgment of justification.”[49] A work that satisfies the penalty of the broken law is only part of what is necessary. Indeed, this alone would not merit salvation. “God … saw it meet that he should not only be free from guilt, but should be required to perform an active righteousness before he should have eternal life confirmed to him.”[50]

Therefore, “to suppose that all Christ does is only to make atonement for us by suffering, is to make him our savior but in part. It is to rob him of half his glory as Savior.”[51] Active obedience is necessary for justification.[52] A complete obedience to God’s commands—called Christ’s active obedience—allows God to be “just, and the justifier” of the unjust (Rom 3:26).

Edwards further provides abundant evidence for this necessity. He does not rely exclusively on extended exegesis of scriptural passages. Rather, Edwards deduces the doctrine from his broader theological system, most prominently his conception of the very nature of God himself and the nature of the law.

The character of God necessitates Christ’s active obedience. If God were to bestow eternal life without the necessary “active righteousness” of Christ’s perfect obedience, then “the honor of his law would not be sufficiently vindicated.”[53] To declare a man righteous—or obedient to the law—requires a true obedience. Because it is the grounds of justification, to deny that Christ’s work includes an actual obedience would abrogate God’s “unchanging rule of righteousness.” This rule “reflects the nature of God.”[54] Its demise would confound the Godhead. “Perfect obedience to God’s unchanging rule of righteousness according to the terms of the covenant is the necessary and sufficient condition for the redemption of the elect in a manner consistent with God’s justice.”[55]

Consistency with the requirements found in the law demands an active obedience. If the law exacted satisfaction for breaking it, then the same law requires fulfillment by obedience. Edwards provides extensive argumentation from Gal 3:10–13:

For this the Scripture plainly teaches: this is given as the reason why Christ was made a curse for us, that the law threatened a curse to us…. But the same law that fixes the curse of God, as the consequent of not continuing in all things written in the law to do them (v. 10), has as much fixed doing those things as an antecedent of living in them (as v. 12, the next verse but one); there is as much of a connection established in one case as in the other. There is therefore exactly the same need from the law of perfect obedience being fulfilled, in order to our obtaining the reward, as there is of death’s being suffered, in order to our escaping the punishment, or the same necessity by the law, of perfect obedience preceding life, as there is of disobedience being succeeded by death: the law is without doubt, as much of an established rule in one case as in the other.[56]

Edwards here employs plain syllogistic reasoning. If the law still necessitates adherence, then it still requires obedience. The law still requires adherence because the penalty for disobedience is enforced. Therefore, the law still requires complete obedience. In this sense, the suffering sacrifice of Christ provides the most obvious evidence that the law requires a righteous obedience.

III. Distinguishing Between Christ’s Active And Passive Obedience

Edwards consistently distinguishes between active and passive obedience, though it is essential to note that his construction of the relationship differs from that of other theologians.[57] For Edwards, passive, or penal, obedience composes, albeit partially, Christ’s active obedience—that is, it is included within the overarching active obedience. This is because Edwards viewed Christ’s passive obedience as intrinsically meritorious (or “active”).

Admittedly Edwards formulates a complicated construction. Perhaps this is why he confessed there were problems with the “invented” distinction between active and passive obedience.[58] He delineated two difficulties: first, the distinction between active and passive obedience could be used to falsely separate Christ’s work into two parts; second, the terminology was misleading.[59] Many modern theologians have fallen into the former issue, especially by neglecting to view Christ’s passive obedience as meritorious. The latter issue has also caused trouble, as the terms active and passive are inherently misleading.[60] Taking the terms at face value, the idea of Christ’s passive obedience could suggest that Christ was “inactive” in his penal work. This, however, Edwards would oppose, noting it is unscriptural.

Edwards laid the initial foundation for his understanding by addressing this latter problem. He noted that “all obedience considered under the notion of obedience or righteousness, is something active [i.e., not inactive, but purposeful, deliberate, etc.].” Yet Edwards goes beyond the notion of mere activity. He claims that Christ’s passive obedience was not only purposeful but actually a real obedience to God’s specific and direct command. This is key. Edwards continues: “[It is] done in active and voluntary compliance with a command.”[61] This is the lynchpin for Edwards’s understanding: Christ’s suffering—his passive obedience—was satisfactory; but, by this, it was meritorious. This is because “Christ underwent death in obedience to the command of the Father.”[62]

Based upon this understanding, Edwards’s view of the distinction can be explained. However, Biehl raises a question that must first be examined, as Biehl has argued that Edwards rejected this distinction completely in his later years[63] (though in his early works he had utilized it[64]). Edwards does at one point write, “Is there from hence any foundation to make two species of obedience, one active and the other passive? There is no appearance of any such distinction ever entering into the hearts of any of the penmen of Scripture.”[65] Severing this deduction from Edwards’s larger theology could suggest that because there was “no foundation” in Scripture, Edwards decided to abandon the distinction completely. However, this would be an incorrect conclusion. Biehl goes too far in claiming Edwards abandoned the distinction entirely.

Even in the section of “Justification by Faith Alone” where he suggests there is no scriptural foundation for doing so, Edwards continues to employ the distinction throughout the rest of his work. The key is Edwards’s concern about making “two species” of obedience—that is, two separate kinds. Edwards wanted to ensure that men understood that it is Christ’s “positive obeying, and actual complying with the commands of God [i.e., active obedience]” by which believers are justified. Edwards did not care “whether we call it active or passive.” His concern was that it was recognized that it is by “positive obedience, and a righteousness, or moral goodness, that it justifies us, or makes us righteous.”[66]

Christ’s work was meritorious. This was Edwards’s point. Even Christ’s suffering in passive obedience, which is commonly restricted to being only satisfactory, was grounds for justification—the very meriting of eternal life itself. Edwards’s concern was that some would formulate their distinction wrongly, as though Christ’s passive work was satisfactory only and his active obedience was what was meritorious. This division is what Edwards objects to. This would make “two species” of obedience—one part satisfactory and one part meritorious. Edwards would strongly object to this, which is why he saw a problem with the distinction in the first place. It would allow men to ignore the positive nature of Christ’s suffering. Christ’s passive work was obedience to God that was expressed by satisfying the penalty of the law. Thus, in Edwards’s view, Christ’s passive obedience was actually active—that is, meritorious.

Edwards belabors his reasoning in an extended paragraph, which is necessary to quote in full:

‘Tis true that of late, when a man refuses to obey the precept of an human law, but patiently yields himself up to suffer the penalty of the law, it is called passive obedience; but this I suppose is only a modern use of the word obedience; besure [certainly] it is a sense of the words that the Scripture is a perfect stranger to; and it is improperly called obedience, unless there be such a precept in the law, that he shall yield himself patiently to suffer, to which his so doing shall be an active voluntary conformity. There may in some sense be said to be a conformity to the law in a person’s suffering the penalty of the law; but no other conformity to the law is properly called obedience to it, but an active voluntary conformity to the precepts of it: the word obey is often found in Scripture with respect to the law of God to man, but never in any other sense.[67]

Edwards’s point is that Christ’s penal work is inherently meritorious. Consequently, contrasting two forms of obedience—one passive, suffering the penalty of the law; the other active, obeying the commands of the law—is immediately flawed, at least according to Scripture. Obedience implies a positive command, and, in Scripture, this brings with it a reward. All perfect obedience is properly meritorious. Using Edwards’s example, while there are criminals who suffer for their crimes, their work is not meritorious and thus cannot be properly termed obedience of any kind. Any suffering they undergo is deserved, not voluntarily complied with. This should also be transposed to the sinner: salvation could only come from one who would willingly obey the positive command of God and “make his soul an offering for sin”—an impossibility for those who deserved death in the first place.

For Edwards, to exclude a meritorious feature to Christ’s passive obedience would be nonsensical. Christ suffered the penalty attached to the crime—yet his suffering was of a different sort. This was because, for him, it was a voluntary undertaking of God’s command. His passive obedience was accordingly meritorious, or active.

To divide then between passive and active obedience as commonly done by many theologians is improper. Passive obedience is not only satisfactory. This belief misses the point of Christ’s work. “The atonement for disobedience, or a satisfaction for unrighteousness” clearly included this “notion of positive obedience [active obedience], and a righteousness, or moral goodness, that … justifies us, or makes us righteous.”[68]

Due to this understanding, Edwards subsumes passive obedience under active. Christ’s active obedience required his “voluntary submitting and yielding himself to those sufferings.”[69] Thus, Edwards suggests that passive obedience makes up[70] part of Christ’s active work—the passive aspect is included within the active.

Edwards distinguishes not between two equal parts—one active and the other passive—that make up a whole. Rather, he concludes that the whole, which is active obedience, has a passive component of suffering to it. Huggins notes, “Edwards [felt] that the active obedience of Christ includes his passive obedience of enduring the cross because he willingly submits himself to it…. [This is] the principal part of his positive righteousness and moral goodness.”[71] By being the propitiation for sin, Christ’s death also merited life. “Christ’s blood is not only a propitiation for sin—a satisfactory price to save from hell—but ‘tis also to be considered as the price of happiness and glory.”[72] “Christ’s laying down his life … [is] part of that obedience by which we are justified.”[73]

This is why the culmination of Christ’s work—his death upon the cross—is to be considered both the supreme penal satisfaction as well as the “principal part of that active obedience that we are justified by.”[74] The death of Christ was not atonement only; it “also merited eternal life; and hence we may see how by the blood of Christ we are not only redeemed from sin, but redeemed unto God.”[75]

IV. The Principal Part Of Active Obedience

For Edwards, Christ’s active obedience was primarily comprised of his death on the cross. While “every [act] that Christ performed in obedience to the Father, after he once put himself into a state of subjection, was part of his righteousness imputed to us,”[76] Edwards repeatedly classifies Christ’s death as the “main act” or “principle part” of Christ’s active obedience. Edwards is clear:

The principle command that he had received of the Father was, that he should lay down his life, that he should voluntarily yield up himself to those terrible sufferings on the cross…. [This was his] principle errand into the world; and doubtless the principle command that he received.[77] 

Christ’s righteousness, by which he merited heaven for himself and all that believe in him, consists principally in his obedience to this mediatorial law.[78] 

Christ’s laying down his life … was doubtless Christ’s main act of obedience.[79]

In one act of death, Christ satisfied the penalty and therefore merited life. To picture the meritorious or active nature of Christ’s sufferings, Edwards presents on several occasions the idea of the price of glory. This wage of life was set at the price of shedding blood. “Christ has actually purchased justification by his own blood.”[80] “The blood of Christ was not only a price to pay a debt, but it was also a price to buy positive blessings with. Christ hath purchased the church with his blood (Acts 20:28); the purchased possession is purchased by Christ’s blood.”[81] This was the “price of redemption.”[82] It is, in fact, “the main price by which heaven is purchased,” just as it was “the main price by which we are redeemed from hell.”[83]

Edwards notes that Christ’s death and blood “are very often spoken of in Scripture as saving, as a righteousness, or as meritorious, and as sweet and acceptable to God’s holiness.”[84] Edwards even goes beyond this at one point: “Scripture seems everywhere to attribute the whole salvation to the blood of Christ.”[85] He cites numerous examples from Scripture for support. Referencing John 6:51–55, Edwards writes, “Christ’s body broken and his blood shed don’t only deliver us from eternal misery, but procur[e] for us eternal life.”[86] Speaking of Rev 5:12, Edwards attests that it was “Christ’s dying or being slain [that] not only satisfied for sins, but also merited as a righteousness, for he was worthy upon the account of his being ‘slain to receive power and riches.’”[87] Huggins notes that Edwards used other passages such as Phil 2:7–8 and Heb 5:8 to demonstrate that Christ’s death was his “principal active obedience.”[88]

Edwards also used the picture of the OT sacrifices to express how this same price of “spilled blood” was both propitious and meritorious.[89] He starts with Adam and Eve in Eden. At once the lamb’s blood was propitiatory, but its blood was shed chiefly to allow for the construction of a robe of righteousness. Edwards writes:

Of the skins of the sacrifices seems to signify the same thing as the skins that God clothed Adam and Eve with, which are also supposed to be skins of sacrifices, which signified the righteousness of Christ, the great sacrifice. These skins were to be dyed red to denote that Christ’s righteousness was wrought out through the pains of death, under which he, in obedience to God, yielded up his life and shed his precious blood…. Our covering of the righteousness of Christ is obtained by laying down his own life, and as it were giving us his own skin for our covering.[90]

As to why Christ’s death was his greatest active obedience, Edwards explains, “His obedience was of infinite value, because he was at infinite expense to obey.”[91] The solution to the “infinitude of sin” was the “infinite value of Christ’s obedience—infinite both because of Christ’s own dignity and also because Christ put himself to infinite expense to perform it.”[92] Edwards writes:

It was the greatest trial of his obedience, because it was by far the most difficult command: all the rest were easy in comparison of this. And the main trial that Christ had, whether he would obey this command, was in the time of his agony; for that was within an hour before he was apprehended in order to his sufferings, when he must either yield himself up to them, or fly from them.[93]

The sheer agony of his passive suffering makes it the most valuable obedience. Because Christ’s death was “attended with immensely the greatest difficulty” and was “the greatest trial of his obedience,” it is counted as the preeminent component of Christ’s active obedience.[94] The infinite Son of Man’s death was an “infinitely meritorious act of obedience.”[95] “His obedience was of infinite value, because he was at infinite expense to obey.”

V. Conclusion

Edwards’s understanding of Christ’s work holds “every act of obedience [as] meritorious.”[96] By nature the most difficult and expensive work, which was Christ’s passive obedience, rightly is judged “as Christ’s principle act of obedience.”[97] This conception, as noted in the introduction to the present work, is decidedly different than the majority consensus of modern theologians. The recognition of the distinction is generally held: active and passive obedience both exist. But perhaps the distinction and inter-relationship needs to be reevaluated—and, if necessary, reformulated. It is my contention that Edwards’s thesis properly allows the biblical theologian to explain precisely why the cross of Christ, for us, is of chief importance (1 Cor 15:3). His was a wondrous work whereby Christ not only “by his sufferings has fully satisfied divine justice,” but further: “Christ performed a glorious righteousness for his people, perfectly fulfilled the law, being obedient unto death.”[98] Accordingly, his obedience in death merited life.

Notes

1. Jonathan Edwards, “John 10:17, ” in The “Blank Bible,” ed. Stephen J. Stein, vol. 24 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 945-46. (Initial references to volumes in the Yale series [26 vols., 1957-2008] will include a full bibliographical citation; subsequent references will be to Works with volume and page only.)
2. Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973).
3. For a good overview of scholarship on Edwards, see Kenneth P. Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards in the Twentieth Century,” JETS 47 (2004): 659-87.
4. John H. Gerstner, Jonathan Edwards: A Mini-Theology (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1996), 82-83; Samuel T. Logan, “Justification and Evangelical Obedience,” in Jonathan Edwards and Justification, ed. Josh Moody (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012); Carl W. Bogue, Jonathan Edwards and the Covenant of Grace (Cherry Hill, NJ: Mack Publishing, 1975). See also Patricia Wilson, “The Theology of Grace in Jonathan Edwards” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1972).
5. Thomas A. Shafer, “Jonathan Edwards and Justification by Faith,” CH 20 (1951): 55-67; George Hunsinger, “Dispositional Soteriology: Jonathan Edwards on Justification by Faith Alone,” WTJ 66 (2004): 107-20; Anri Morimoto, Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 101-3.
6. Michael McClenahan, Jonathan Edwards and Justification by Faith (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2012), 5, 7.
7. Jonathan Edwards, Quaestio, in Sermons and Discourses, 1723-1729, ed. Kenneth P. Minkema, trans. George G. Levesque, vol. 14 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 60-66. The original title of Edwards’s thesis, delivered at his Yale commencement, was “Quaestio: Peccator non iustificatur coram Deo nisi per iustitiam Christi fide apprehensam” (“A Sinner Is Not Justified in the Sight of God except through the Righteousness of Christ by Faith”). Cf. the editor’s introduction in Sermons and Discourses, 1720-1723, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach, vol. 10 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 60-65.
8. Cf. Morinoto, Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation, 74-78. McClenahan’s thesis is that this marked the “beginning of Edwards’ life-long public quarrel with Anglican Arminian theology” (McClenahan, Jonathan Edwards and Justification, 5). See also Levesque, “Introduction,” in Works, 14:51.
9. Huggins points these out (Jonathan Ray Huggins, “Jonathan Edwards on Justification by Faith Alone: An Analysis of His Thought and Defense of His Orthodoxy” [MA thesis, Reformed Theological Seminary, 2006], 52).
10. Jonathan Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, ed. M. X. Lesser, vol. 19 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], 143-242. One of five works included in Discourses on Various Important Subjects, this study on justification was the first and longest.
11. Edwards’s treatise dealt with Rom 4:5 as the base text. See Huggins, “Jonathan Edwards on Justification,” 24-26, for an introductory treatment. See also McClenahan, Jonathan Edwards and Justification, 91.
12. McClenahan, Jonathan Edwards and Justification, 89.
13. “Editor’s Introduction,” in Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith, ed. Sang Hyun Lee, vol. 21 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 62. Edwards later wanted to expand the work into a proper treatise, yet this was not to be. He did leave various outlines and notes in preparation, however. Cf. Edwards, “Controversies: Justification,” in Works, 21:332-413.
14. Edwards’s central doctrine was that “we are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of virtue or goodness of our own” (“Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:149).
15. These are the number of extant manuscripts, estimated to be approximately four-fifths of Edwards’s total sermons preached. Cf. Kimnach, “Introduction,” in Works, 10:130.
16. Edwards’s text for this sermon is John 16:8, which he uses to show that the righteousness by which the world is reproved “undoubtedly meant the righteousness of God in Christ, or the righteousness of Christ as mediator” (“The Threefold Work of the Holy Spirit,” in Works, 14:391-92).
17. Edwards, Quaestio, in Works, 14:60.
18. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:193.
19. Edwards, “Miscellanies 399,” in The “Miscellanies,” a–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer, vol. 13 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 465. See also Edwards, “Miscellanies 794,” in The “Miscellanies,” 501-832, ed. Ava Chamberlain, vol. 18 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 496. Edwards does not neglect to note that the command comes in a different form. Regardless of the nature of the command, the thing required is adherence to the righteous decree of God. “It is no matter whether the positive precepts were the same [as in the garden], if they were equivalent” (“Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:196).
20. Craig Biehl, The Infinite Merit of Christ: The Glory of Christ’s Obedience in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Jackson, MS: Reformed Academic Press, 2009), 119.
21. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:150.
22. Biehl, Infinite Merit of Christ, 26.
23. Edwards, “Of God the Father,” in Works, 25:147. This function theologians would recognize as a difference between the essential trinity and the economical trinity—the latter allows for Christ’s subordination according to his work. “It was for our sakes that Christ became subject to God’s authority. He is naturally equal with God and not under his authority. It was for our sakes that he took upon himself the office and character of a mediator whereby he himself became subject. It was by putting himself in our stead and it was for our sakes that he took on him our nature and so was in the form of a servant and became subject to the same law of God that we are subject to” (Jonathan Edwards, The Glory and Honor of God, vol. 2 of Previously Unpublished Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Michael D. McMullen [Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2004], 218-19).
24. Edwards, “Miscellanies 327a,” in Works, 13:406. Edwards, in another place, notes that by his obedience, Christ “manifested an infinite regard to the glory of God” (Edwards, “Christ’s Sacrifice an Inducement to His Ministers,” in Sermons and Discourses, 1743-1758, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach, vol. 25 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006], 667).
25. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:150-51.
26. Huggins, “Jonathan Edwards on Justification,” 42. Regarding Rom 4:25 and 1 Tim 3:16, Edwards notes that Christ “was raised again not only for his own, but also for our justification” (“Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:151).
27. Edwards, “Threefold Work of the Holy Spirit,” in Works, 14:393.
28. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:193.
29. Edwards, Glory and Honor of God, 220.
30. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:185.
31. Edwards, “Miscellanies 498,” in Works, 13:540. Speaking of conditionality, Edwards gives an elongated explanation on how “faith is not properly the condition of the covenant.” The condition was the obedience of Christ. “Christ’s righteousness is alone the proper condition of eternal life to the second Adam and his spiritual seed, according to the tenor of the new covenant made with him. But the covenant of grace, if thereby we understand the covenant between Christ himself and his church or his members, is conditional as to us: the proper condition of it, which is a yielding to Christ’s wooings and accepting his offers and closing with him as a redeemer and spiritual husband, is to be performed by us. A proper condition of a covenant is that qualification or act of the party with whom the covenant is made by which, according [to] the tenor of the covenant, the part is interested in the benefits therein promised” (Edwards, “Miscellanies 1091,” in The “Miscellanies,” 833-1152, ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw, vol. 20 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002], 478-79).
32. Schafer, “Introduction,” in Works, 13:92.
33. Edwards, “Miscellanies s,” in Works, 13:174.
34. McClenahan, Jonathan Edwards and Justification, 103.
35. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:150.
36. “Justification is manifestly a forensic term, as the word is used in Scripture, and the thing a judicial thing, or the act of a judge: so that if a person should be justified without a righteousness, the judgment would not be according to truth: the sentence of justification would be a false sentence, unless there be a righteousness performed that is by the judge properly looked upon as his” (ibid., 19:188-89).
37. “Now what is it to justify a person, as the subject of a rule or law, but to judge him, or look upon him, and approve him as standing right with respect to that rule? To justify a person in a particular case, is to approve of him as standing right, as subject to the law or rule in that case; and to justify in general, is to pass him in judgment, as standing right, in a state correspondent to the law or rule in general” (ibid., 19:150).
38. “We are no more justified by the voice of the law, or of him that judges according to it, by a mere pardon of sin, than Adam our first surety, was justified by the law, at the first point of his existence, before he had done the work, or fulfilled the obedience of the law, or had had so much as any trial whether he would fulfill it or no” (ibid., 19:150).
39. Ibid., 19:187.
40. Ibid.
41. Edwards, “Miscellanies 812,” in Works, 18:522-23. Edwards continues: “If one that is called before a judge, and is tried—whether he be guilty of such a crime, and so whether he be bound to the punishment of it—be acquitted in judgment as being found innocent, and so under no obligation to punishment, then he may properly be said to be justified. But if he be found guilty, and is condemned, but afterward, as a justly condemned malefactor, is freely pardoned, whoever calls that justifying of him?... Persons cannot be justified without a righteousness consistent with God’s truth, for it would be a false sentence” (p. 523).
42. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:190-91.
43. Edwards, “Threefold Work of the Holy Ghost,” in Works, 14:394.
44. Edwards, Quaestio, in Works, 14:60; emphasis added.
45. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:150.
46. Edwards, Quaestio, in Works, 14:60.
47. “Now in order to a sinner’s being thus accepted with God, there must be some real righteousness that must be the sinner’s. God don’t [sic] look upon sinners as righteous for nothing, when they have no righteousness properly theirs; he don’t [sic] look upon them to be or to have what they are or have not. ‘Tis not a notion, but a reality” (Edwards, “Threefold Work of the Holy Ghost,” in Works, 14:395).
48. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:188.
49. Huggins, “Jonathan Edwards on Justification,” 24.
50. Edwards, “Threefold Work of the Holy Ghost,” in Works, 14:397.
51. Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987), 1:638.
52. Cf. Edwards, “Threefold Work of the Holy Ghost,” in Works, 14:398. Huggins recognizes this too in Edwards’s thought: “He argues that there is just as much need for Christ to obey the law in our place in order for us to obtain the reward as there is for his suffering the penalty of the law for our sake in order to escape the penalty” (Huggins, “Jonathan Edwards on Justification,” 41; emphasis his).
53. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:188.
54. Biehl, Infinite Merit of Christ, 89.
55. Ibid., 56.
56. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:186-87; emphasis added.
57. McClenaham makes the significant observation that Edwards greatly valued distinctions. His objection against the Arminians was their “prejudice against distinctions” (Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:795). Edwards sought a robust theology that handled the whole of Scripture (and was therefore necessarily complex). McClenaham provides various examples of Edwards employing distinctions to great advantage (Jonathan Edwards and Justification, 94-95). For a helpful discussion, see Willem van Asselt, “The Theologian’s Tool Kit: Johannes Maccovius (1588-1644) and the Development of Reformed Theological Distinctions,” WTJ 68 (2006): 23-40.
58. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:194.
59. Ibid., 19:195.
60. This is why I prefer the terms preceptive and penal to identify the active and passive obedience of Christ, respectively. Both terms inherently self-define themselves, at least to some extent.
61. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:194; emphasis added.
62. Ibid., 19:195. Here Edwards cites Ps 40:6-8, John 10:17-18, and John 18:11.
63. Biehl, Infinite Merit of Christ, 205.
64. Cf. Edwards, “Miscellanies 278,” in Works, 13:377-78; Quaestio, in Works, 14:60; “Threefold Work of the Holy Ghost,” in Works, 14:398-99.
65. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:195.
66. Ibid., 19:193-94.
67. Ibid., 19:195.
68. Ibid., 19:193-94. Edwards also writes: “By this it appears, that if Christ’s dying be here included in the words righteousness and obedience, it is not merely as a propitiation, or bearing a penalty of a broken law in our stead, but as his voluntary submitting and yielding himself to those sufferings, was an act of obedience to the Father’s commands, and so was a part of his positive righteousness, or moral goodness” (p. 194).
69. Ibid., 19:194. Edwards continues, “Indeed all obedience considered under the notion of obedience or righteousness, is something active, something done in active and voluntary compliance with a command; whether that which we do is something easy, and something that may be done without suffering, or whether it be something hard and difficult; yet as ‘tis obedience, or righteousness, or moral goodness, it must be considered as something voluntary and active” (ibid.).
70. Christ’s suffering (passive obedience) is a “part of his active obedience” (ibid., 19:195).
71. Huggins, “Jonathan Edwards on Justification,” 43.
72. Edwards, “Christ’s Sacrifice an Inducement to His Ministers,” in Works, 25:666.
73. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:198.
74. Ibid., 19:196.
75. Ibid., 19:198.
76. Edwards, “Miscellanies 399,” in Works, 13:465. See also “Miscellanies 794,” in Works, 18:496.
77. Edwards, “Christ’s Agony” (sermon on Luke 22:44), in Banner of Truth Works, 2:871.
78. Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, ed. John F. Wilson, vol. 9 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 310. See also Edwards, “Miscellanies 794,” in Works, 18:496.
79. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:198. Edwards cites Phil 2:7-9 and Heb 5:8.
80. Ibid., 19:154.
81. Edwards, “The Sacrifice of Christ Acceptable,” in Works, 14:454.
82. Edwards, “Miscellanies 845,” in Works, 20:65-66.
83. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:198-99.
84. Edwards, “Miscellanies 845,” in Works, 20:65. He cites Isa 53:12 and John 10:17-18. Likewise Edwards considers Acts 20:28 as “certainly signif[ying] something more than being set at liberty from hell.” Further, “in the fifth chapter of Romans, v. 9, we are said to be ‘justified by his blood.’ In the second chapter of Ephesians, v. 13, we are said to be ‘made nigh by the blood of Christ’” (pp. 65-66).
85. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:198-99; emphasis added.
86. Edwards, “Miscellanies 845,” in Works, 20:66. Edwards also references John 6:55, Matt 26:29, and Heb 6:20; 10:19-20, to demonstrate his point.
87. Edwards, “Revelation 5:12, ” in Works, 24:1214.
88. Huggins, “Jonathan Edwards on Justification,” 44.
89. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:198-99.
90. Edwards, “Exodus 26:14, ” in Works, 24:241-42. Edwards continually uses the picture of sacrifices to explain his point. “The typical sacrifices are so very often said to be a sweet savor to God; the places are too many to be mentioned.” In Eph 5:2, it is Christ who gave “‘himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor,’ something positively pleasing, amiable and delightful to God, and therefore a price to purchase positive good from God.” Edwards also says that in Heb 10:5-7 and Ps 40:6-8, “Christ’s dying is spoken of as what he did as a servant doing God’s will, with delight and cheerfulness obeying his command” (Edwards, “Miscellanies 845,” in Works, 20:66).
91. Edwards, “Miscellanies 447,” in Works, 13:495.
92. Gerald R. McDermott, “Jonathan Edwards on Justification by Faith—More Protestant or Catholic?,” ProEccl 17 (2007): 96. Cf. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:199.
93. Edwards, “Luke 22:44, ” in Works, 2:871. See also Edwards, Glory and Honor of God, 216-19.
94. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:198. Edwards cites Phil 2:7-9 and Heb 5:8.
95. Biehl, Infinite Merit of Christ, 195.
96. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:198. Cf. Edwards, “Miscellanies 4978,” in Works, 13:540.
97. Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in Works, 19:198.
98. Edwards, “Glorifying the Savior,” in Works, 14:466.