Raised in Splendor: The Hope of GlorySample

Christ’s Active and Passive Obedience

Can you imagine what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph to watch Jesus grow? Luke records that Jesus grew in stature and favor with God and men (Luke 2:52). Likewise, the author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus lived life like we do, without sin (Heb. 4:15). Theologians call this His active obedience. Active obedience describes Jesus fulfilling the law where Adam failed. He lived His life perfectly as a Jew (which Israel had failed to do). He did this without ever sinning, even though He experienced external temptations to sin (Heb. 4:15; Matt. 4). This obedience is true even to the point of death upon the cross (Phil. 2:8).

His active obedience is an expression of His righteousness which is imputed (credited) to us when we trust in Him. When God looks at believers, He sees Christ’s righteousness and declares us righteous. This righteousness is ours in this present life (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Cor. 1:30), but though we are declared righteous in this life, we do not experience the fullness of righteousness without sin until our glorification. However, because we are united to Christ in this way, it guarantees that our glorification will be similar to His human glorification because Christ has secured this reality for us in His active obedience.

His Passive Obedience

In His life and death, Jesus perfectly obeyed God’s Law in obedience to the triune will. What He did passively is receive the reality of humanity in His body, which is especially seen in His trials and crucifixion. We should understand passive obedience as those things Jesus received in His human nature from others. As Louis Berkhof states, “His passive obedience consisted in His paying the penalty of sin by His sufferings and death, and thus discharging the debt of all His people.” Further, Berkhof says that Christ’s sufferings:

"did not come upon Him accidentally, nor as the result of purely natural circumstances. They were judicially laid upon Him as our representative, and were therefore really penal sufferings. The redemptive value of these sufferings results from the following facts: They were borne by a divine person who, only in virtue of His deity, could bear the penalty through to the end and thus obtain freedom from it. In view of the infinite value of the person who undertook to pay the price and to bear the curse, they satisfied the justice of God essentially and intensively. They were strictly moral sufferings, because Christ took them upon Himself voluntarily, and was perfectly innocent and holy in bearing them."

Though Christ actively submitted Himself to the triune will in His humanity, there were things done to Him by others which He received in His mortal body. Peter displays this best when he says to the crowd at Pentecost, “Though he [Jesus] was delivered up according to God’s determined plan and foreknowledge, you used lawless people to nail him to a cross and kill him” (Acts 2:23).