The Great Exchange: The Good News of Christ's Passive and Active Obedience

The following essay was recently published in video form as an episode of The Christian Mind program on Sola’s YouTube channel. Keep reading if you prefer, or visit our channel to watch or listen.

In this edition of Modern Reformation, we're talking about something exciting, something amazing—something at the very heart of the gospel itself.

Obedience.

Now, you might hear obedience and think, well, that's not very exciting. It's good. But is it good news?

What Is Obedience?

To obey, properly, biblically speaking, is to fulfill God's revealed commands—his law—in thought, word, and deed. And this obedience must be perfect in God's sight, because remember James' warning: "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it" (Jas. 2:10). So of course Paul can confidently say in Romans that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). Us trying to keep the law for righteousness is like an archer trying as hard as he can to score a perfect bullseye but never quite able to pull it off.

Obedience is excellent. But my life and your life have more or less been exercises in disobedience: failing to keep God's law, falling short, missing the mark of loving him as he deserves and loving our neighbors as he commands. Always missing that bullseye, no matter how close we might get. And that's you and me at our very best—if we're honest with ourselves, most of us struggle even to show up for target practice!

So how is obedience good news? The answer is that it's not our obedience that's good news. It's Jesus' obedience. And it's the best possible news.

Let's look at two sides or aspects of Jesus' obedience, which are really two beautiful faces of the same precious jewel.

Christ's Passive Obedience

Passive probably isn't the best word nowadays to use to refer to the first aspect—the first facet—of the jewel of Jesus' obedience. When I hear "passive," I think unintentional or disengaged. Sitting on the couch, flipping through the channels, not even noticing what's on TV. When theologians talk about Jesus' passive obedience, that's not at all what we mean. Passive comes from Latin passio, meaning suffering or enduring. We refer to Jesus being passive in reference to the heavy burden of sin and its consequences he voluntarily carried. Passive obedience is Jesus' suffering.

The Context of the Cross
by Harrison Perkins

Perkins defends the centrality of Christ's penal substitution on the cross as our atoning sacrifice—especially the imputation of our sin to Christ—against modern views that challenge or modify this historic Reformation understanding of the atonement.

Jesus' suffering certainly wasn't unintentional or unfeeling. And it didn't begin at the cross or in the garden of Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion, when he struggled so desperately in prayer with his Father. Isaiah, in his famous prophecy of the suffering servant, describes Jesus as "a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief" because of constant rejection and dishonor (Isa. 53:3). Isn't it easy for us to think, when someone suffers, it must be because they did something to deserve it? But that's not always the case. And for Jesus, perfectly sinless, totally innocent like a lamb without spot or blemish, his own sin had nothing at all to do with why he suffered. So why did Jesus suffer so much sorrow and grief? Isaiah tells us:

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed (verses 4–5).

Jesus suffered for sin. But not his own.

We can't only appreciate Jesus' suffering as something that happened to Jesus. His suffering necessarily involves what was done to him, no doubt. Especially during his trial and crucifixion, he was falsely accused, insulted, abused, tortured, and murdered. But please don't think that in all this everyone else was busy except Jesus. While the religious and political leaders were conspiring to pursue evil and harm against him, Jesus was—quietly, constantly—doing something too.

Paul says Jesus "humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:8). In other words, Jesus obeyed not just by being crucified but by being obedient to the very end, even to bearing the curse of crucifixion. "I gave my back to those who strike," the suffering servant says, "and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting" (Isa. 50:6). In the midst of injustice and mistreatment, Peter says Jesus "continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly" (1 Pet. 2:23). The author of Hebrews says Jesus "endured the cross, despising the shame" (Heb. 12:2). Even at the end, at the point of death, Mark says Jesus "uttered a loud cry and breathed his last" and John says he "bowed his head and gave up his spirit," so that "by this we know love, that he laid down his life for us" (Mark 15:37; John 19:30; 1 Jn. 3:16).

And when the Bible says Jesus laid his life down, it means all the way down. He suffered death, the grave, hell itself, drinking the cup of God's wrath till it was empty. All these testimonies of Jesus' suffering are full of terrible, wonderful activity. Suffering is something done to Jesus, but no less something done by Jesus.

"It is finished" is passive. But it's also obedience.

Why Passive Isn't Enough

This last point starts to get at why, theologically speaking, affirming Jesus' passive obedience (as gracious and amazing as it is) still isn't gracious and amazing enough to fully describe such a great salvation. It's a beautiful face of the jewel, but not the only one. That's because suffering condemnation and punishment, by itself, isn't actually accomplishing the righteousness God requires.

Theologian Francis Turretin once remarked that there's no halfway between being alive and being dead. You're either one or the other. But it is possible to imagine being halfway between eternally condemned and possessing a full right to eternal life and glory. Such a halfway point, Turretin says, would be tragic: "a life of bondage in a state of pilgrimage ... in which man is still bound to the performance of duty." Stuck forever between heaven and hell. Forgiven for our sin, maybe, but lacking the righteousness and holiness without which no one will see the Lord, and never being good enough to attain it. Such a desolate place to imagine is where we would really be if Jesus had suffered punishment on our behalf, but offered us nothing more.

Imputation and the Gospel
by R. C. Sproul

Sproul critiques the Evangelicals and Catholics Together statements for the crucial ommision of the doctrine of imputation. He argues that justification by faith alone is unintelligible apart from the double reckoning of our guilt to Christ and his righteousness to us.

Turretin asks us to consider another situation: Who would ever say that a criminal kept the law because he was punished for breaking it? Justice might be served when he's condemned for his crime, but that doesn't mean by being punished he has earned a right to be praised or rewarded. "Life is promised by the law," Turretin says, "not to him who suffers, but to him who performs."

Jesus didn't pay our debts just to place us on never-ending parole. He didn't come to rescue us from punishment only to leave us to wander ceaselessly through the wilderness. Jesus sets the captives free. He brings us home.

You see, righteousness is properly obedience in the sense in which I started this essay: to fulfill the law of God perfectly—actively—in thought, word, and deed. Moses says in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that the person who keeps God's commandments will live (Lev. 18:5; Deut. 4:1, 30:16). Moses even explicitly ties this obedience to righteousness: "It will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us" (Deut. 6:25). The prophets repeat the same message (for example, Isa. 1:19–20; Jer. 7:23; Ezek. 20:11, 13).

In the New Testament, Jesus reiterates this promise of righteousness and life earned only by perfect obedience to the lawyer who asked him for a summary of the law, trying to justify himself. Jesus says the same thing to the rich young man who asks him what he must do to inherit everlasting life (Luke 10:28; Matt. 19:17).

It's no wonder Paul emphasizes that any life and righteousness that could come through keeping the law can't belong to faith, but to works (Rom. 10:5; Gal. 3:12). True righteousness requires perfect obedience.

A Dying Man's Consolation
by Michael Horton

Horton explores the riches of the good news of Jesus' active obedience for our righteousness and assurance before God in this life and the next.

Put all this biblical testimony together, and here's what we've got: God's word shouts to us that righteousness isn't merely being punished for law-breaking, but being rewarded for law-keeping. For sinners to be forgiven, punishment for sin is absolutely necessary. And for sinners to be adopted into God's family and made heirs of life, nothing short of perfect love for God and neighbor will do.

And it must belong to me personally.

The Great Exchange

Christians confess that on the cross Christ suffered for our sin. But how does his suffering take away my sin? If all he was doing was expressing solidarity with me in my brokenness and struggle, then I'm still on the hook—not only for my past sins, but for all the others I'm going to inevitably commit.

And how does his righteousness—however wonderful it might be—benefit me? It can't be just as an example to inspire me or a model for me to follow. I'll just keep missing the mark. When the standard is God's justice, only perfection passes the test.

The Great Exchange
by Kate Treick

A beautiful and grounded overview of the biblical teaching that our sin is imputed to Christ and his righteousness is imputed to us—and how this understanding of justification is not only foundational to Christian faith but meaningful for all of life.

No, what we need is Christ's own passive obedience (Christ's perfect suffering) to take away ours. And we need Christ's own active obedience (Christ's perfect righteousness) to be given to us. We need Christ in our place and us in his. In other words, we need the great exchange.

The great exchange or the wonderful exchange is what the church fathers called the glorious mystery of Christ for us revealed in 2 Corinthians 5, which Paul calls "the ministry of reconciliation" proclaimed by the apostles:

In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:19–21).

Church father Jerome reminds us to pay close attention to exactly what Paul says here: "'That we might become the righteousness of God in him': not our righteousness, nor in ourselves." Jesus didn't merely suffer because of our sin, but he became our sin. Jesus didn't merely make us righteous, but made us righteousness. This is the doctrine of double imputation, in which what rightfully belongs to us is credited or reckoned to Jesus and what belongs to him is counted as truly ours.

Did Luther Invent Justification?
by Michael Horton

In this brief article, Horton invites us to realize that the Reformation commitment to justification by faith alone—especially the imputation of Christ’s righteousness—is not a Lutheran novelty but rooted in Scripture and the teaching of the church fathers.

The sin and shame that belonged to us was imputed to Jesus. Jesus was counted as condemned and hung on the cross as a cursed sinner (Gal. 3:13; 1 Pet. 2:24). The entire legal record of all our debts against God and neighbor were credited to his account. They were nailed to the cross, Paul says (Col. 2:14). How can Paul say our debts were nailed to the cross? Because Jesus was.

In return, Jesus didn't just give us righteousness but made us righteousness itself—even the endless riches of the righteousness of God. Instead of unpayable debt against our account, we now have untold wealth, because the faithful obedience that belongs to Jesus is imputed to us. Jesus doesn't just help us to have better aim as we endlessly try to hit the target of God's glory. In him, we're the arrow striking the bullseye straight and true. How can Paul say you and I are the righteousness of God? Because we're counted perfectly just in God's sight by faith, possessing the perfect justice of Christ the Righteous.

Jesus, my friends, is personally your faithfulness—your living, breathing assurance—standing victorious in the throne room of heaven.

This is the good news of Jesus' obedience: in his passive obedience, our sin is imputed to him so that he freely suffered to take away our bondage to death, and in his active obedience, his law-keeping is imputed to us so that he freely accomplished all righteousness to give us his own right to everlasting life.

This free, faultless obedience by Christ for us is our faith’s only sure foundation and our love’s only pure motivation for renewed obedience as we walk in God’s ways by his grace. As Peter put it while quoting Isaiah, "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed" (1 Pet. 2:24).

Behold, the beautiful jewel of salvation in the great exchange! In Jesus' death, we died, and in his life, we live. Christ made sin for our sake. Believers made righteousness for his sake. His death, our guiltlessness; his life, our glory. Our disobedience his heavy burden to bear once for all; his obedience our light yoke to carry—now and forever.