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Union with Christ in Catholic and Reformed Theology, by David Chiang (page 9/10)


"Jesus is Lord . . . God raised him from the dead" (Rom 10.9) is the Gospel in a nutshell, because his resurrection is the principle of our own resurrection. He died to rescue us from death, and was raised so that we might be raised with him. But insofar as we see the death of Christ as a payment for sins, we will not see his resurrection as salvific, but as a sign that his death was a sufficient payment. If we further see Christ's death as a punishment on our sins, then there is no possibility of seeing his resurrection as our own resurrection, because emerging from the infinite wrath of God is something we could not possibly share in, nor would we want to. It is not surprising, then, that modern evangelical presentations of the Gospel all too often omit the resurrection entirely.

Good Reformed theology, however, does give a place to our participation in Christ's resurrection, in our regeneration and sanctification and glorification. I will generally follow Reformed teaching here (rather, particular currents in it), where the tension between participation and substitution is not so vicious. Penal substi-tution does have a mirror image, but traditionally not in the Resurrection: Christ's whole life of obedience is said to substitute for ours. I do have some criticism of this idea, but even here Gaffin's insight that Christ's resurrection can be seen as a declaration of his righteousness provides, I believe, a point of contact between the Reformed and Catholic views.


http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~dchiang/catholic/union.pdf

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