KingJ,
You say that Romans 6:7 describes only the believer's identification with Christ and therefore does not establish justification before faith. But that response does not address the legal language Paul actually uses or the representative death underlying the passage.
The question is not whether Romans 6 describes believers. Of course it does. The question is:
What is the legal significance of their death with Christ?
1. Romans 6:7 Uses the Language of Justification
Paul writes:
The verb translated “freed” is
dikaioō, the same word regularly used for
justification or judicial acquittal.
The point is that death ends sin's legal claim over the person who has died.
Paul's argument throughout the chapter is grounded in union with Christ:
The believer's death with Christ is therefore not merely an illustration. It is central to Paul's argument concerning the believer's release from sin.
2. Christ's Death Was Representative
Paul also says:
Your position seems to recognize that Christ died for His people, yet you separate His death from their actual legal release until a later act of faith.
But Paul connects Christ's representative death with the death of those He represented.
Likewise:
The ground of justification is Christ's blood, not the sinner's faith. Faith does not make Christ's blood effective or complete an unfinished atonement. It receives and manifests the benefit of what Christ accomplished.
3. Faith Does Not Complete the Atonement
This is where I believe your order creates a serious problem.
If Christ bore the sins of His people and fully satisfied divine justice for those sins, what remained unpaid until they believed?
Faith cannot be the payment.
Faith cannot add efficacy to Christ's blood.
Faith cannot make a debt satisfied that Christ's death failed to satisfy.
Paul says:
And:
The issue, therefore, is not whether the elect consciously enjoy justification before faith. They plainly do not. The issue is whether Christ's death actually accomplished the legal ground and discharge of their sins before they came to faith.
I maintain that it did.
4. You Are Confusing the Accomplishment of Salvation With Its Application
Romans 6 certainly describes those who are consciously united to Christ as believers.
But that does not prove that Christ's death accomplished nothing for them until the moment they believed.
The cross accomplished redemption.
The Spirit gives life in time.
Faith receives Christ and brings the believer into the conscious enjoyment of the salvation accomplished for him.
Those are not the same question.
A person may not yet know or enjoy what Christ accomplished for him, but his ignorance does not make Christ's work incomplete.
The Bottom Line
You keep asking me for a verse stating, in those exact words, that “the elect were justified before faith.” But Scripture often teaches doctrine through the combined force of its propositions.
The argument is straightforward:
- Those united with Christ died with Him.
- Death brings release or justification from sin in Paul's argument (Romans 6:7).
- Christ died representatively for those He represented (2 Corinthians 5:14).
- Justification is grounded in His blood (Romans 5:9).
- Faith does not pay the debt, complete the atonement, or make Christ's sacrifice effective.
So my question remains:
If Christ fully bore the sins of His people and satisfied God's justice for those sins at the cross, what legal liability remained for them to pay or have removed when they later believed?
Faith does not make Christ's work effective.
Faith receives, by the work of the Spirit, the salvation Christ actually accomplished for His people.