'So Thankful for The Active Obedience of Christ. No Hope without It.'
Conceptualization of Machen's telegram by PCA elder Brad Isbell
December 1936, seven years after founding Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS), John Gresham Machen found himself on a train headed to Bismarck, North Dakota to fulfill a number of speaking engagements at various churches. Once arrived, Machen (who by this time was 55 years old), was greeted with sub 20-degree weather and yet another long trip to his first speech, some 100 miles away. Despite being able to fulfill his numerous commitments, Machen developed pleurisy due to the frigid weather and strenuous demands of the travel and was subsequently hospitalized for pneumonia. On January 1, 1937, Machen, near death, dictated his final words in a telegram to colleague John Murray at Westminster: “I’m so thankful for [the] active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.” [1]
Of all the things that could be said during the final moments of one’s life, why this? Why, with such specificity, refer to a theological doctrine that was (and still is) otherwise lost on the majority of society? It is because these final words recognize the only means by which the unrighteous will inherit the Kingdom of God; the perfect obedience of Christ through faith.
There exist two truths that man must come to terms with in order to understand why the gospel is “good news.” The first is that the law of God requires that sin be punished; God cannot be holy if he merely overlooks or omits sin. Second, Adam, as the representative head for all of mankind, was tasked with obeying the commands of God, in the garden, perfectly; that is, he was not only to abstain from sin but to submit to God in perpetual, perfect obedience, to obtain eternal life. Unfortunately for us, these demands still apply today.
In our fallen state, we stand before God condemned in Adam (Rom. 5:18), whereby his unrighteousness has been imputed or counted to our account. And yet, while in this depraved condition, we have sought to be justified before God by the law, and in doing so, have broken all of it (James 2:10). So what must we do? We must pay the due penalty of sin that satisfies the wrath of God, while also obtaining a positive righteousness that merits eternal life. For us, both are unattainable.
But despite this bad news, there exists the good news of Christ and his perfect obedience. In Romans 5:18-19, we see the good news juxtaposed with the bad,
“So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. (NASB)”
This “obedience” that Paul refers to, whereby the unrighteous are made righteous by the last Adam (Christ), is two-fold; active and passive. Christ’s passive obedience refers to his willingness to bear the punishment of sin that the law required, throughout his entire life. And His active obedience refers to his fulfillment of the demands of the law, or as Brandon Crowe of WTS writes, “Jesus’s perfect, positive accomplishment of all that God’s law requires of humanity.”[2] If we are to obtain only Christ’s passive obedience, that is, his death on the cross, we will not have obtained the active obedience which necessitates eternal life. By obtaining only Christ’s active obedience, we will not have obtained the passive obedience which satisfies the wrath of God against our sin. And while this may seem, to some, to be a distinction without a difference, one cannot acquire salvation without both. Theologian Louis Berkhof says as much, if not better, in his Systematic Theology,
“...if Christ had not rendered active obedience, the human nature of Christ itself would have fallen short of the just demands of God, and he would not have been able to atone for others. And finally, if Christ had suffered only the penalty imposed on man, those who shared in the fruits of His work would have been left exactly where Adam was before he fell.” [3]
Herein lies the good news; man can receive Christ’s full obedience, both active and passive, when he repents of his sin and turns to Christ in faith. That Christ’s righteousness, necessary for salvation, is imputed to our account when we trust in His finished work. The gospel is not that Christ has obtained a possible salvation, whereby the Christian does his meritorious part in obtaining positive righteousness, but that Christ, by His blood, has obtained “eternal redemption, (Heb. 9:12, NASB)” and all we are called to do is trust in it.
What Machen understood, hours before his death, is that to obtain eternal life in heaven, he must have Christ’s perfect obedience to the law. As Ned Stonehouse, of WTS, writes in his biography of Machen,
“And so he gave expression to the conviction that he had assurance not only of remission of sin and its penalty but also of being accepted as perfectly obedient and righteous, and so an heir of eternal life, because of the perfect obedience of Christ to the divine will.” [4]
While the knowledge of this doctrine is not necessary for salvation, knowledge of it allows us to better understand, and praise God for, the substitutionary work of Christ on our behalf. It allows us to see the riches of Romans 8:1 when we are told that “therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” and Colossians 2:13, when Paul explains that the record of debt that stood against us has been canceled along with its legal demands.
This Thanksgiving, we, as the redeemed, should not only be thankful for the cross but for the entirety of Christ’s life, which has purchased eternal life for us; for there would be no hope without it.
[1] Stonehouse, Ned Bernard. J. Gresham Machen: a Biographical Memoir. Banner of Truth Trust, 2019. p. 599.
[2] Barrett, Matthew. The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands or Falls: Justification in Biblical, Theological, Historical, and Pastoral Perspective. Crossway, 2019, p. 443
[3] Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology. Banner of Truth, 2012, p. 380.
[4] Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, 600.