A Mound of Pink Cotton Balls

More needs to said about the idea of cultural justification. Apart from an understanding of this, there is no hope of grasping the deep divisions that the debates over same sex mirages are revealing. Note that I did not say that these debates are creating these division, but rather that they are revealing them.

Same sex mirage is the earthquake; different approaches to cultural justification are the tectonic plates.

Justification is of course a theological category. For those who are in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation. When God looks at believers, what He sees is the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our federal representative and head, which means that He is the appointed face of the new human race, the appointed face of the new humanity. And when God wants to communicate with that new human race, He addresses us to our face. All that righteousness, that goodness, that obedience, is credited to us, imputed to us, declared to be ours, and bestowed on us by a verdict grounded in the everlasting wisdom and kindness of God.

Now a man can be in this justified group and be guilty of three murders, and a man can be outside it and be guilty of none. Notice that there are two aspects to this. There is the status, justified or not, and there are the standards, which run alongside the justification but are not foundational to it. We are not justified by works — not in the biblical form of justification, and not in the pagan knock-offs. Works are always evaluated in the light of justification, not the other way around.

Source: A Mound of Pink Cotton Balls | Douglas Wilson | Blog & Mablog