# Negative and Positive righteousness



## Benjamin (Aug 2, 2008)

Hi,

I was wondering if any of you came accross these terms, or if any of you know of other theologians discussing this aspect of justification by faith alone.

Here is an article I was reading, just a quote of it, by Jonathan Edwards on "Justification by Faith alone"

"First, I would show what justification is, or what I suppose is meant in Scripture by being justified.

A person is to be 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. That we should take the word in such a sense, and understand it as the judge’s accepting a person as having both a negative and positive righteousness belonging to him, and looking on him therefore as not only free from any obligation to punishment, but also as just and righteous and so entitled to a positive reward, is not only most agreeable to the etymology and natural import of the word, which signifies to pass one for righteous in judgment, but also manifestly agreeable to the force of the word as used in Scripture."

Thanks beforehand


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## moral necessity (Aug 3, 2008)

I personally have not across any others using these particular terms before. But, their meaning, or the aspect of the words, as you call it, I'm sure is definitely addressed by others, although with different words and phrases. As I'm sure you gathered, his meaning is that justification involves two parts: (1) a freeing from or being justified from the guilt and punishment of sin, and (2) the being justified to or having a just entitlement to the reward of life, by the having of Christ's righteousness imputed to us to be had as our very own. And so, we are both righteous from our deserved punishment of death and righteous to our new reward of life. Edwards just has his own quirky way of simplifying things in his mind. Instead of referring to a cow as being colored black and white, he might say the cow was positively black and negatively black. He's just........different.

Blessings!


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