The Problem
One common defective theme among popular covenant theologians and writers is their propensity to take the corporate reality of the Christian faith to an extreme. They rightfully assert that believers have a covenant relationship with their Creator. But often they allege this relationship with God is primarily, or only, corporate, and not personal nor on an individual level.
N. T. Wright, a highly popular and influential covenant scholar, leads the charge in the evangelical community on this matter, positing that our relationship with God is primarily covenantal, and therefore not individual or personal. He argues that Christians who say they have “a personal relationship” with Jesus are off base and miss the mark. He describes such verbiage as being improperly “individualistic” and the errant by-product of a secularized, myopic, and self-oriented paradigm resulting from Greek categories, Western society, and the Enlightenment. He applies his view of corporate-centrality to many doctrines, but most predominantly to soteriology, the doctrine of salvation. He opines that Christians should not think of salvation primarily in terms of believing in Jesus and being saved from individual sins. In his view, that is one-dimensional and shallow.
Wright’s views have become popular in many quarters since the publication of his best-selling little book titled, What Saint Paul Really Said (published 1997). One point he pushes in that work is the claim that the church at-large has misunderstood the doctrine of justification since the days of Luther and Calvin…because Luther and Calvin got it wrong. The two great Reformers supposedly misunderstood Paul’s teaching on justification, and so salvation, and have led the rest of us astray. Wright claimed back in 1997, “if you start with the popular view of justification [i.e., Luther’s view], you may actually lose sight of the heart of the Pauline gospel” (p. 113). In context, what he means is, that Paul’s gospel did not focus at all on individual salvation and forgiveness of personal sins to be rescued from Hell. He alleges that Paul’s view of salvation was not a privatized matter at all, and the apostles were “not even primarily interested in, as we say today, ‘going to heaven when they died’” (p. 32). Instead, for Paul, justification, and salvation, was “communal,” “corporate,” “covenantal”–not individualistic. Wright further claims that Paul was not even concerned with how an individual sinner might attain a “right relationship with God” (p. 120).
The Community vs. the Individual
Despite Wright’s popularity, his views are patently false when it comes to Paul and the other apostles’ teaching on salvation in general and justification in particular. They cared about securing a right, personal relationship with God through the substitutionary death of Jesus so that one’s sins could be forgiven and some day in the future attain the glories of heaven. Paul said categorically that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20), and he described heaven as glorious, and it was preferred over this current fallen world (Phil 2:12-15). After all, Paul made a special, unprecedented visit to heaven at the invitation of God (2 Cor 12:1-4). The apostle John revealed that the culmination of God’s redemptive plan is fulfilled in heaven (Rev 21-22).
The author of Hebrews highlights that believers all through history looked forward to “a better country, that is a heavenly one” (Heb 11:16). And Jesus made it clear that people don’t get into God’s heaven by group affiliation or with the collective, but on a personal, individualized basis by belief in His gospel. Jesus famously said during the Last Supper, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father [who is in Heaven, cf. Matt 6] but through Me” (John 14:6).
Some would say that N. T. Wright is actually liberal and not a true conservative evangelical, so his views are not pertinent to Bible-believing Christians. In many respects that is true. But Wright is not the only one who downplays the personal, individualized side of Jesus’ provision of salvation. More conservative covenant theologians do the same. Take the popular, and conservative Reformed covenant theologian, Michael Horton, for example. He frequently criticizes American Christians who speak of their Christian faith in personal and privatized terms. Horton often sounds like Wright. For example, he says the following:
On one hand, a rampant Western individualism has unleashed a war of all against all. The individual self is sovereign. This has infected the church profoundly, in both its faith and practice, wherever the emphasis on “me and my personal relationship with God” has supplanted the biblical assumption of covenantal solidarity. Covenant theology, in fact, requires such solidarity….Significantly, nearly all of the emphasis in Scripture in this regard falls on metaphors of solidarity: the people of God, the holy nation, the congregation, the body” (p. 16, Introducing Covenant Theology, baker Books, 2006).
The Proper Balance
There are several points here where Horton overstates the case. He is right in that we should not overemphasize the personal and private nature of our salvation and our relationship with God at the neglect of corporate realities. But he and Wright throw the baby out with the bathwater by going to the other extreme of demeaning the blessed reality that our salvation entails a very personal, intimate, privatized, and even subjective reality regarding the faith. They create a false dichotomy by pitting the corporate and communal nature of Christianity against the personal and private nature we enjoy.
The two are not at odds; they coexist simultaneously. It is not either/or; it’s both/and. This is a good reminder that at the root of every heresy or errant view in theology is a false dichotomy. Every deviation of doctrine errs to one extreme or the other, always losing the proper biblical balance.
Horton denigrates the Christian who refers to “me and my personal relationship with God,” clearly implying such a thought is not biblical. He doesn’t like the singular pronouns, “me” and “my,” nor the adjective “personal.” But Paul liked singular personal pronouns and used them to describe his very own intimate, personal and individualized relationship with Christ when he wrote,
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal 2:20).
And when an unbeliever inquired about how he might come to know God on a personal level so that his sins might be forgiven so he could go to heaven, Paul did not rebuke such a one for having an overly self-centered, privatized desire, saying, “Stop thinking so Westernly and in a non-covenantal manner! Get some solidarity, man! It’s not about you…it’s about the group!” Instead, when the Philippian jailer queried in a very individualistic manner, utilizing singular personal pronouns, asking, “What must I do to be saved?” Paul gladly accommodated his inquiry with a personal invitation to salvation, proclaiming, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). The pronoun “you” here in the Greek text is singular.
Further, Horton wrongly claims that metaphors describing the faith are virtually all of a corporate nature and not of an individual nature. This is just patently false. There are plenty of metaphors describing the believer on an individual basis. Jesus told a parable that a good shepherd cares not just for the flock, but for the individual sheep as well, even being willing to leave the flock to go after the one that strays from the group, leaving the ninety-nine behind to save the one sheep who is lost. Jesus’ summary truth of that parable was, “I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent” (Luke 15:7).
Ironically, in this parable Jesus actually gives preference to the individual over the community. The exact opposite of Horton’s lopsided theory. God cares about individuals just as much as He does about the group.
Does Jesus Love Me?
This prominent spin on prioritizing corporate solidarity over personal faith among covenant theologians is not just academic or reserved for elitist theologians like Wright and Horton. It can be a practical and pastoral problem as well in the church with the saints in the pew. I remember years ago one of our church members came to me and asked, “Pastor Cliff, I don’t feel personally loved by God. I feel like I am just part of the crowd. Does God really love me as an individual? It doesn’t seem like it. Even the most popular Bible verse in history says that God so loved “the world.” I’m just one of billions in the crowd. I can’t find a Bible verse that says God actually loves me as a person, on an individual basis.”
This woman grew up in the church with good theology, had been saved a long time, was in her fifties, and admitted she struggled with this thinking since she was saved as a teenager. I assured her that God loved her on a personal and individual level and then I read Galatians 2:20 to her, emphasizing Paul’s assertion that the “Son of God loved me” and “gave himself for me.” She was blown away…and very encouraged. She had heard that verse countless times over the years, but that day she understood it in a new and very tailored, personalized manner.
The Limits of Federal Theology
Why do many covenant theologians err by emphasizing the corporate at the expense of the individual? That is a key question. The answer is they take the doctrine of “federal theology” to an illegitimate extreme. “Federal” means “representative.” Applied to the Bible and theology, this primarily refers to the fact that Adam, the first real human in history created directly by God on the sixth day of the week, represented the whole human race in some specific ways. One way he represented all of humanity was when he sinned. When Adam sinned, all other humans sinned in that every person born from his loins inherited his sin, and stood legally condemned before God just as Adam stood condemned before God. Adam’s sin was imputed to all of us…because he was our representative, our “federal” head. Paul affirms the truth of this doctrine:
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned (Rom 5:12).
In like manner, Jesus is the representative, or “federal” head, of all those who are saved. His righteousness is imputed to us at justification after we believe in His gospel (Rom 5:15-18).
So federal theology is legitimate when properly understood and applied. The problem arises when it is misapplied. And that is what Wright and Horton have done. I know a pastor who ascribes to covenant theology and he applies federal theology to all of life, including his marriage. He told me that because of federal theology, God has made every husband and dad the representative of the family, and as such he is just as responsible for all of his wife’s sins as she is, and he is just as responsible for all of his kids many sins as they are. I then read to him Ezekiel that clearly teaches that no person is responsible for the sins of another:
The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself (Ezek 18:20).
I also went on to explain to him the proper context and limitations of federal theology.
The Personal Nature of Salvation
In light of the foregoing, if you are Christian it is OK to take your relationship with Jesus very personally. After all, Jesus is the one who said when you pray, go by yourself, alone into a private place, away from everyone else, and after you have closed the door, pray to your Father who is in secret…just the two of you (Matt 6). Jesus did that very thing, often getting away from the crowds and His disciples to go pray to the Father at length in private (Mark 1:35).
Further, when you get to Heaven Jesus will evaluate you and reward you as an individual, based on the deeds you did. Paul says, “each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done” (2 Cor 5:10). I love those singular personal pronouns!
Moreover, Jesus said you will be welcomed into heaven on an individually personalized basis, with the greeting, “Well done, good and faithful slave” (Matt 25:21). And the apostle John says that when you get to heaven, God will give you a new name that only you and God will know–that is the most emphatic personalized metaphor in the Bible highlighting the deeply private and intimate nature of a relationship between a saint and the Savior (Rev 2:17). When you get to heaven, you won’t be lost in the crowd.
And finally, I close with one of the most remarkable and glorious truths in Scripture accentuating the reality of our current, very personal and intimate relationship we with have with God on an individual basis, as Paul reminds us that we know our Him not just as Creator, but as Father, and from the heart:
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ (Rom 8:15).