Sunday, November 4, 2018

Matthew Poole on the Salvific Importance and Efficacy of Jesus' Resurrection in Romans 4:25

In my article:


I discuss how many Protestants, both historical and modern, reject the naïve reading of John 19:30 and τετελεσαι, namely, that, reverently speaking, all that was needed for salvation was “done and dusted” at the cross and completed at Jesus’ utterance of “it is finished/done.”

Matthew Poole, himself a Calvinist who held to penal substitution, wrote the following about the salvific importance and efficacy of the resurrection of Jesus one finds in Rom 4:25:

25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.

. . . And was raised again for our justification; not that his death had no hand in our justification; see Rom. iii.24; but because our justification, which was begun in his death, was perfected in his resurrection. Christ did meritoriously work out justification and salvation by his death and passion, but the efficacy and perfection thereof with respect to us depend on his resurrection. (Matthew Poole, A Commentary on the Holy Bible, volume 3: The New Testament [1685; repr., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1963, 1990], 493)