Over the years I have observed the sweeping popularity of ideas from the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) throughout the international missions community.
Many are not even aware of the origin of their NPP-influenced notions nor of how quickly ideas spread and evolve past their original intent. Usually ideas spread and morph through conversations and conferences rather than through studying the sources. Understanding the original sources and ideas helps us to discern their applied implications in contemporary missions.
According to the NPP, being justified means to be declared a covenant member of God’s family apart from doing the works of the law. These works of the law would entail practices like receiving circumcision and keeping dietary laws. So, here, justification is ultimately a matter of ecclesiology, not soteriology. Then faith—or faithfulness—proves who is in the covenant community, not the means through which God declares the unrighteous to be righteous. N.T. Wright, a famous proponent of the NPP, does not explicitly deny that Christ took our sins or that we eventually receive righteousness.[1] But he does not believe that is what Paul meant by “justification.” Wright believes that “if you start with the popular view of justification, you may actually lose sight of the heart of the Pauline gospel.”[2] His criticism of artificial “once-saved-always-saved” evangelicalism surely has legitimacy, but his new perspective is no more convincing. Moreover, his argument is not merely a matter of reemphasizing a feature of the gospel (e.g., union or reconciliation) to correct an imbalance and present the full-orbed gospel package. Instead, Wright seeks to improve our understanding of justification and faith so much so that they are redefined altogether. He claims not to deny initial justification through faith but goes on to teach final justification through faithfulness. And the bigger issue at hand is that the NPP’s ideas have taken on a life of their own through social media, missions conferences, and popular evangelical jargon. And by the time they reach the mission field, the NPP’s proposals from years ago are currently applied in ways that counterfeit the gospel of grace altogether.
According to the NPP, part of the different gospel being proposed in Galatians was that Gentile believers needed to undergo circumcision and remain kosher to be justified, which means being included as a member of the covenant family. The false gospel, then, issues from racism, classism, and ethnocentrism. The Jews were imposing ceremonial boundary markers that originally excluded the Gentile believers. These are supposedly what the “works of the law” mean. Alternatively, “justifying faith” means Spirit-wrought covenant obedience—faithfulness, allegiance, devotion.
So, the big brouhaha was over who could eat with the Jews at the table. But the question arises, then, to put it crassly yet bluntly: What Gentile man in his right mind would have wanted to suffer persecution, stop eating bacon, and get his foreskin carved off just to be a member of a finicky Jewish-Christian church that argued their way was Yahweh?[3] Why not just plant a Gentile church? Or was the issue more eternally consequential than mere community-belonging? Theologian J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) tersely reasoned against a variation of this interpretation in his day that he called “medieval,” “the old interpretation of Galatians which was urged against the Reformers,” and “anti-Reformation exegesis”: “What Paul is primarily interested in is not spiritual religion over against ceremonialism, but the free grace of God over against human merit.”[4]
Justification necessarily corresponds to and solves the plight of condemnation just as sanctification is the solution to corruption.
When the Holy Spirit through Paul uses justification and salvation language in Paul’s other letters to Thessalonica and Corinth, the letters never address the false teaching that Gentiles needed to undergo circumcision and to observe Jewish laws to be part of the church community.[5] The letters use such justification and salvation language only in terms of all people (Gentiles and Jews alike) finding grace before God’s righteous standards. Justification language always relates to salvation before God. Justification necessarily corresponds to and solves the plight of condemnation just as sanctification is the solution to corruption.
The NPP proponents—who seek to rescue us from the modern Western-enculturated trappings of a medieval, Greco-Roman, Lutheran guilt-orientation—fall into their own cultural echo chamber. They seem to reflect Western cultural values of multiculturalism, egalitarianism, inclusion, social justice, and antiracism. This is ironically committing the exact enculturation fallacy they claim to circumvent. In other words, possibly the charm of the NPP is that it resonates with our classless brotherhood-of-man-moment in the global village.
These well-meaning, NPP-influenced theologians are rightly concerned with superficial, lukewarm Christianity that treats Christ like “fire insurance.” Ostensibly seeking to deter cultural Christians from such a faux “easy believism,” they emphasize faithfulness, loyalty, and allegiance as the meaning of faith. They nobly accentuate discipleship and devotion. Yet they inadvertently conflate the instrumental cause of justification (faith) with the necessary evidence of sanctification (faithfulness).
For instance, Wright rephrases Romans 1:17 as such: “The gospel, [Paul] says, reveals or unveils God’s own righteousness, his covenant faithfulness, which operates through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for the benefit of all those who in turn are faithful.”[6] Wright redefines faith as faithfulness, which becomes the basis for our final justification, and in his system, righteousness is not transferred to the believer. He does allow that believers “are declared, in the present, to be what they will be seen to be in the future, namely the true people of God. Present justification declares, on the basis of faith, what future justification will affirm publicly (according to 2:14–16 and 8:9–11) on the basis of the entire life.”[7] Our covenantal faithfulness becomes the basis for our final justification, which apparently becomes the object of our faith. So, to unpack the progression, faith is not instrumental to our salvation but, rather, the sign that we are part of the covenantal family. And our entrance and membership in the covenantal family depends on our faithfulness to the covenant. This allegiance to Christ and loyalty to the covenant is a lifetime community effort. In sum, Horton is terse and to the point: “J.I. Packer has a great line: Tom Wright foregrounds what the Bible backgrounds, and backgrounds what the Bible foregrounds—but Wright does more than that; he denies a crucial component of justification, namely imputation. . . . In denying imputation, Wright is preaching another gospel.”[8] And beware of any missionary, despite good intentions and academic credentials, who adamantly adopts Wright’s new perspective.
Occasionally I hear missionaries blend the abovementioned notion with what New Testament scholar John Barclay observes about the ancient practice of gift giving.[9] (As discussed previously, we must be careful of using the ANE culture to unlock hidden meanings in biblical texts that diverge from the inspired composite whole). Apparently, ancient gifts were not wages; they were indeed gifts. But the giver gave them to worthy recipients. Consequently, some rabbinic leaders insisted on Israel’s worthiness for God’s election of them. Israel’s allegiance and desire to obey God, imperfect as they were, qualified them as worthy recipients of God’s divine gift. So the grace gift was contingent on a degree of loyalty, worthiness, and devotion to God. Perfection was not expected, but effort was. There was also a stress on corporate solidarity, being faithful to God’s covenant together as a community.
But diverging from the ancient Jewish cultural notions of grace and gifts, the Holy Spirit through Paul uses this rabbinic terminology but confronts and redefines the grace gift as free, unmerited, and bestowed on entirely unworthy rebels. The reality is they are never faithful and sincere enough. New Testament scholar Will Timmins, commenting on Abraham’s faith, helpfully explains the “polemical edge” of Romans 4 issued against Second Temple Judaism’s notion of Abraham’s worthiness:
Both the phrase, “hope against hope,” and the depiction of Abraham’s full conviction concerning God’s ability, implicitly reference the incapacity and the inability of Abraham as one whose body is dead (vv. 18–19), and, therefore, as one who contributes the grand total of nothing to God’s promised salvation. The believing Abraham brings nothing to God; he receives everything. This suggests that Paul’s depiction of Abraham’s faith in Romans 4 carries with it a polemical edge, being contrasted with the view that was common in Second Temple Judaism, which is that Abraham was exemplary for his faithfulness and obedience to God in the midst of trial.[10]
The problem was that Jews and Gentiles alike could never desire or remain faithful to God enough, even in part, neither qualitatively nor quantitatively. As Machen decisively argued,
Paul saw very clearly that the difference between the Judaizers and himself was the difference between two entirely distinct types of religion; it was the difference between a religion of merit and a religion of grace. If Christ provides only a part of our salvation, leaving us to provide the rest, then we are still hopeless under the load of sin. The guilty soul enters again into the hopeless reckoning with God, to determine whether we have really done our part. And thus we groan again under the old bondage of the law. Such an attempt to piece out the work of Christ by our own merit, Paul saw clearly, is the very essence of unbelief; Christ will do everything or nothing, and the only hope is to throw ourselves unreservedly on His mercy and trust Him for all.[11]
So, we must ask the question: When is enough, enough? Does God have a sliding scale where he capriciously justifies some at the final judgment based on whether they “just did their best”—89 percent sincerity and 64 percent faithfulness for some, and 73 percent sincerity and 51 percent faithfulness for others? I do my best, and God does the rest. What god does that? That’s Allah, not Adonai. That is not an immutable God.
Stephen Westerholm helpfully explains: “For Paul, God’s gift of salvation necessarily excludes any part to be played by God-pleasing ‘works’ since human beings are incapable of doing them. Human beings are all sinners, the ‘weak,’ the ‘ungodly,’ God’s ‘enemies.’ They are slaves of sin. In their flesh lives no good thing. Their mind-set is one of hostility toward God; they cannot please God.”[12]
The Holy Spirit through Paul teaches, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:4–5). The verb works is contrasted with the verb believes. And “wages” are due the one who “works,” whereas “a gift” corresponds to the one who has “faith.” It doesn’t say “faithfulness” or “worthiness.” Notice, additionally, that the Holy Spirit emphasizes the individual dimension here. We are individually justified and individually responsible. This does not emphasize the collective in justification. It does not say, “To those who work, their wages . . . their due. To those who believe, their faith.” Salvation is neither a community effort nor a collective enterprise. The Holy Spirit through Paul is not differentiating between keeping the signs of Jewishness (circumcision, etc.) and Spirit-empowered covenantal loyalty, as some suggest. Yet, the NPP is essentially arguing that we as a collective are declared righteous based on our covenant faithfulness, not our Jewish kosher-keeping.[13]
But, if the imputation of Christ’s righteousness through faith alone no longer holds center in the gospel system, then we have lost Christ himself.
This kind of covenant-faithfulness reasoning is not good news for anyone but especially for those whose tender consciences seek escape from works-based religions. We had a Reformation for this reason. This focus on covenant faithfulness indeed “contextualizes” for many cultures around the world. And this kind of allegiance-oriented gospel, for karmic cultures, is not necessarily foreign, moronic, or offensive. It makes sense to a karmic culture. But, if the imputation of Christ’s righteousness through faith alone no longer holds center in the gospel system, then we have lost Christ himself. True, God has predestined the saints to be united to Christ from before the creation, and evidence of that union is fruit-bearing. But that vital union is only legally possible because of justification through faith alone. If there were no exchange of our sin and Christ’s righteousness on the cross, there would be no legal union with Christ. Imputation through faith alone is not a legal fiction—no imputation, no salvation.
Some missionaries promote the gospel of allegiance for obvious reasons: impenetrable people groups, like Buddhists and Muslims, latch onto this idea quite easily. It conceptually makes sense based on the expectations for doing right in their value systems. And given enough exposure to the benefits of Christianity, people from karma-based systems might find Christianity appealing. Historically, Christianity has underscored transcendental virtues of love, mercy, kindness, human equality, sacrifice, and eternal rest. To many, these virtuous benefits are attractive alternatives to the hopelessness of reincarnation or the anxiety of Allah’s variability.
To people from karma backgrounds, the gospel of covenantal allegiance to Christ the King sounds like a lateral move from one karmic, merits-based religion to another. And, indeed, they’re right. Adherents to the gospel of covenant faithfulness seamlessly move from the bondage of a Christ-less karmic religion to the chains of an apostate Christian liberalism, which is “rather a different religion entirely.”[14] And those who promote a salvation-through-covenant-faithfulness gospel should beware that they are much like the Jews. They have a passion for God and yet without knowledge of the righteousness of God in Christ: “For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end [telos] of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:2–4). Only those who rest alone in Christ as their faithful covenant-keeper are counted righteous. So, the law no longer constrains, threatens, or condemns them. It is finished. Machen contended,
“The grace of God is rejected by modern liberalism. And the result is slavery—the slavery of the law, the wretched bondage by which man undertakes the impossible task of establishing his own righteousness as a ground of acceptance with God. It may seem strange at first sight that ‘liberalism,’ of which the very name means freedom, should in reality be wretched slavery. But the phenomenon is not really so strange. Emancipation from the blessed will of God always involves bondage to some worse taskmaster.”[15]
Let’s beware of repackaging the gospel in more transferable ways for a target culture, claiming we are building bridges to their cultural value systems. We should consider, rather, how the Holy Spirit has illumined the gospel throughout the ages, as confirmed by the confessing universal church.[16]
Editor’s Note: This article is an excerpt from Christ Our Righteousness (Cape Coral: Founders Press, 2025). Used with permission.
[1] N.T. Wright notes that the NPP debate has developed over time to where the differences are more in terms of emphasis rather than antithesis. This is especially true among various adherents and proponents of Wright’s works; see N.T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 36.
[2] N.T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 113.
[3] Theologian Stephen Westerholm makes a similar, more mannerly, observation: Stephen Westerholm, Justification Reconsidered: Rethinking a Pauline Theme (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013). See especially, Horton, Justification, 2:12.
[4] J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 121.
[5] 1 Thess. 1:6–10; 2:4, 13, 16; 5:9; 2 Thess. 1:8; 2:12; 3:2; 1 Cor. 1:18–25; 4:4; 6:9–11; 9:20–23; 10:33; 11:32; 15:1–2; 2 Cor. 2:15–16; 3:7–9; 4:3; 6:1–2.
[6] Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 109. Quoted also in Horton, The Christian Faith, 633.
[7] Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 129 (emphasis added). See also Horton, The Christian Faith, 634.
[8] Burk Parsons, “An Interview with Dr. Michael Horton (pt. 4),” Ligonier Ministries, December 3, 2009, https://www.ligonier.org/blog/interview-dr-michael-horton-pt-4.
[9] See John M.G. Barclay, “Grace within and beyond Reason: Philo and Paul in Dialogue,” in Paul, Grace, and Freedom: Essays in Honour of John K. Riches, ed. Paul Middleton, Angus Paddison, and Karen Wenell (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 1–21.
[10] Will N. Timmins, “A Faith Unlike Abraham’s: Matthew Bates on Salvation by Allegiance Alone,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 61, no. 3 (2018): 613–14 (emphases original).
[11] Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 21.
[12] Westerholm, Justification Reconsidered, 32 (emphasis original).
[13] For a practical and accessible evaluation of the issues at hand in the NPP, for which I am indebted, see Horton, The Christian Faith, 630–41.
[14] Machen calls liberalism “contrary to the doctrines of the Christian religion” and “another religion.” Machen, Christianity and Liberalism,16, 18.
[15] Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 121.
[16] For example, see The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, XI.1–2.
