Federal Theology

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 The confessions frame covenant as the storyline of redemption. Scripture frames covenant as the structure of reality. Until we recover that, “kingdom” will remain a chapter—never the architecture. #MGKline 

 Augustine’s famous line—“When God crowns our merits, He crowns His own gifts”—is often invoked to defend the idea of “congruent merit.” But the line actually exposes the problem. If God is truly crowning His own gifts, then nothing in the believer can function as a cause, condition, or criterion of eschatological reward. The moment the “gift” becomes something God evaluates in us to determine a differentiated outcome, the structure has shifted from grace to works, even if the vocabulary remains pious.  This is the problem with congruent merit. It claims to preserve grace while making Spirit‑wrought obedience the differentiating factor in final reward. But if obedience differentiates the outcome, then obedience functions as a secondary cause. That is a works principle—softened, baptized, and rebranded, but structurally identical. Augustine’s insight only holds if the “crowning” is the public vindication of Christ’s merit in His people, not an evaluation of their performance.  A coherent Reformed soteriology requires a forensic-first union: Christ as covenant head, His obedience and death imputed to His people before any transformative work of the Spirit. Only this ordering preserves justification as verdict, sanctification as consequence, and glorification as the public declaration of Christ’s merit—not a judgment of ours. Congruent merit collapses this architecture by reintroducing works under the language of grace.  #Augustine #MGKline #UnionWithChrist #Soteriology 

A coherent Reformed soteriology requires recovering the older insight that union with Christ is foundationally forensic. Union begins not in participation but in representation: Christ as covenant head stands for His people, His obedience and death imputed to them before any transformative work of the Spirit. This ordering is not optional. It is what safeguards justification as a verdict, sanctification as a consequence, and glorification as the public vindication of Christ’s merit rather than an evaluation of the believer’s performance. The contemporary tendency to treat union as participatory (Beale) or existentially transformative (Gaffin) collapses this structure and reintroduces a works‑correlated eschatology under the language of grace. A forensic‑first union restores the biblical architecture: strict merit in Christ, filial inheritance for believers, and obedience as evidence rather than condition.  “In light of the broader context of Paul's thought, we see that such people will be judged not on whether their deeds have been perfect but rather on whether they have borne the fruit of good works in keeping with and as a result of their resurrection existence and union with Christ's resurrected person.” Beale, Union With the Resurrected Christ, 369 #MGKline #UnionwithChrist 

 Christ obeyed the Pactum Salutis as the Second Adam under a pure works principle, meriting the entire eschatological inheritance; believers receive that reward by grace alone, apart from any obedience of their own, even though obedience is ontologically necessary as the inevitable life of new creation. #Pactum Salutis

 The modern church keeps collapsing in two opposite directions—law without gospel and gospel without law—and both errors spring from the same architectural failure. Neonomianism smuggles the works principle into the covenant of grace: “final justification by obedience,” “covenant faithfulness as instrument,” “grace gets you in, works keep you in.” It confuses the intrusion at Sinai with the administration of the Abrahamic–New Covenant. When works and grace are blended, the gospel is destroyed at the level of covenant ontology. Antinomianism erases the works principle entirely: no Adamic covenant of works, no typological republication, no judicial backbone for Christ’s active obedience. But if there is no works principle, there is no federal headship; and without federal headship, there is no gospel. Both errors flatten the two-age, two-covenant, two-kingdom architecture Kline preserved. The works principle is not abolished—it is relocated to Christ alone as federal head. The grace principle is not antinomian—it is judicial, satisfying the law rather than relaxing it. And Christian obedience is not meritorious—it is priestly, doxological, and Spirit-formed within the eschatological kingdom. When the church loses this architecture, it loses the gospel. #LawGospel