The Missouri Synod teaches “Objective Justification.” Objective Justification is the teaching that God, at the resurrection Christ (according to this teaching) justified the entire world. At the resurrection God forgave the sins of all mankind and declared them righteous. However, this objective declaration of righteousness does not benefit sinners until they believe that the world has already been declared righteous. At the moment one believes the Objective Justification, he is then “subjectively,” or personally, justified.
Objective Justification, as described above, is the official position of the Missouri Synod. The Brief Statement of 1932, which outlines Missouri’s doctrine, states in its article on justification:
Scripture teaches that God has already declared the whole world to be righteous in Christ, Rom. 5:19; 2 Cor. 5:18‐21; Rom. 4:25; that therefore not for the sake of their good works, but without the works of the Law, by grace, for Christ’s sake, He justifies, that is, accounts as righteous, all those who believe, accept, and rely on, the fact that for Christ’s sake their sins are forgiven.[1]
Without using the terminology, the Brief Statement succinctly states what Objective Justification really is. It teaches that “God has already declared the whole world to be righteous in Christ.” This is something we find nowhere in Holy Scripture. In Scripture, the only ones who are “in Christ” are those who believe the Gospel. The Scriptures nowhere declare the entire world to be “in Christ.”
The Brief Statement cites Romans 5:19, 2 Corinthians 5:18-21, and Romans 4:25 as proof texts for this declaration that the world is righteous “in Christ.” However, none of these verses say what the Brief Statement claims they say. Romans 5:19 reads, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” The Brief Statement reads this verse to mean God has declared the world righteous in Christ. But this isn’t how the Formula of Concord reads Romans 5:19! This interpretation of Romans 5:19 contradicts how the Formula of Concord interprets the verse. The Formula confesses:
Therefore it is considered and understood to be the same thing when Paul says that we are justified by faith, Rom. 3:28, or that faith is counted to us for righteousness, Rom. 4:5, and when he says that we are made righteous by the obedience of One, Rom. 5:19, or that by the righteousness of One justification of faith came to all men, Rom. 5:18. For faith justifies, not for this cause and reason that it is so good a work and so fair a virtue, but because it lays hold of and accepts the merit of Christ in the promise of the holy Gospel; for this must be applied and appropriated to us by faith, if we are to be justified thereby. (FC SD III:12-13)
Lutherans confess that Romans 3:28, Romans 4:5, and Romans 5:18-19 all teach the same thing: that faith is accounted for righteousness. There is no mention of an Objective Justification—a universal declaration of righteousness—based on Romans 5:18-19.
The next passage the Brief Statement cites is Romans 4:25, which says that Christ “was raised because of our justification.” It does not say the entire world was justified at Christ’s resurrection. Rather it means that Christ’s resurrection demonstrates that His death made full satisfaction for our sins, so that all who believe will be imputed with Christ’s righteousness and justified as the preceding verse says, so that all who believe have peace with God, as the next verse, 5:1, says. This echoes the third article of the Apology which confesses that Christ “was raised again to reign, and to justify and sanctify believers, etc.”
The final passage the Brief Statement cites to prove a universal justification of the world is 2 Corinthians 5:18-21. Paul writes, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them.” The tense of the verbs in verse 19, however, does not indicate a one-time action that took place on Easter Sunday. The verb tense indicates a continuing act in the past. Christ, who is God Himself, was reconciling individuals to God by forgiving their sins during the days of His earthly ministry. All who believed the gospel in Christ’s day were reconciled to God because by faith God didn’t count their sins against them. Christ committed this ministry of reconciliation to the apostles. They preached “Be reconciled to God” (5:20), not, “You are already reconciled to God.” Christ, through their preaching, continued to reconcile sinners to God by faith, so that all who believe “become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21)
Throughout the Brief Statement these passages are continually used to teach that God has, in the past, reconciled the entire world to Himself and declared it righteous. Article 8 “On Redemption” says that through Christ, “God reconciled the whole sinful world unto Himself.” Article 9 “On Faith” claims that ministry of reconciliation that Paul speaks of in 2 Corinthians 5 exists to proclaim that God has already, in the past, made reconciliation for the entire world. The object of faith is not Christ’s universal merits and atonement which He acquired, but the “reconciliation effected by Christ.” Pieper says this more explicitly in his Christian Dogmatics, the textbook used in the LCMS seminaries. “The ‘universal justification, fully accomplished,’ is the object of justifying faith.”[2] Elsewhere he writes: “Objective Justification precedes faith, for it is the object of faith, and its proclamation creates faith (Rom. 10:17).”[3]
Contrary to Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions, the official doctrine of the Missouri Synod is that God has declared the entire world righteous in Christ, and that in order to be justified individually, sinners must believe that their sins have already been forgiven in the past at the justification of the world.
However, not all Missouri Synod pastors believe and teach this. While most use the terminology of objective and subjective justification, not all pastors in the Missouri Synod mean the same thing by those terms. For instance, it’s not uncommon to hear Missouri Synod pastors equate Christ’s atonement for the sins of the world—the universal atonement—with Objective Justification. This view holds that Christ’s merits and atoning death on the cross are God’s Objective Justification of the world since Christ’s sufferings and death did in fact atone for the sins of the entire world.
But this isn’t the definition of “Objective Justification.” Pastors who make Objective Justification and the atonement synonymous conflate two different actions into one. “To justify” means to forgive sins and declare one righteous. Lutherans confess this in the Formula of Concord. “Accordingly, the word justify here means to declare righteous and free from sins, and to absolve one from eternal punishment for the sake of Christ’s righteousness, which is imputed by God to faith, Phil. 3:9” (FC SD III:17). To atone for something means to make full payment and satisfaction.
When pastors claim that Christ’s atonement and Objective Justification are the same thing, they are combining two different actions, atonement and justification. They are also teaching a private opinion as if it were the Synod’s official doctrine.
The Synod reaffirmed its dedication to Objective Justification at the 2016 convention. Resolution 5-10 reaffirmed the doctrine of the Brief Statement, including its understanding of Romans 5:19 which is contrary to the Lutheran Confessions. Resolution 5-10 also reaffirmed the 1983 CTCR document on justification which teaches Objective Justification. The resolution also condemns as false teachers “those who deny the justification of all the world [Objective Justification].”[4]
The doctrine of Objective Justification points men to a declaration of forgiveness that isn’t in the Scripture. Scripture teaches that Christ acquired forgiveness of sins and perfect righteousness for all mankind on the cross. He applies those benefits to men when they believe the promise of the gospel. That application is called justification throughout the Scriptures and Book of Concord. Scripturally, there is no “justification of all the world.” There is only the justification by faith.
Nor is a “justification of all the world” the object of our faith. Scripturally, Christ is the object of faith. To say that Christ is the object of our faith includes His perfect life lived under the Law in our stead and His sacrificial death which atoned for the sins of the world. This is what Jesus says in John 3:16. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Faith trusts Christ and the promise that all who believe in Him receive the forgiveness of sins and are declared righteous with Christ’s righteousness. Objective Justification moves the object of faith from Christ’s merits and promise to God’s declaration that the entire world is righteous in Christ, which is found nowhere in Scripture.
Pieper says that if Objective Justification is not maintained, Christianity is lost and gospel is changed into rules for works-righteousness.[5] The truth is that if Objective Justification is maintained, Christianity points sinners to believe a word that God never said rather than the word He says right now through His gospel and sacraments.
[1] Brief Statement, paragraph 17.
[2] Christian Dogmatics, II, 540
[3] Ibid, 552
[4] Today’s Business —Proposed Resolutions, 66th Regular Convention, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, Milwaukee, WI, July 9-14, 2016. (St. Louis, Concordia, 2016), 81.
[5] Christian Dogmatics, III, 347-351
