Matt Chandler on Justification

Forensic — righteousness imputed, not infused

THE POSITION

Forensic and imputed. In The Explicit Gospel he warns that unless preachers say plainly that righteousness is imputed by Christ, who on the cross absorbed the wrath aimed at us, people will hear Jesus as come to condemn. At the 2010 Southern Baptist pastors' conference he said, as The Christian Post reported, that his "right standing in front of God has nothing to do with me." The book's wording was read only as a reviewer quotes it from an advance copy, and the book is co-written with Jared C. Wilson.

22 OTHERS HOLD THIS

ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Lead pastor of teaching at The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, since 2002, and from 2012 president, later chairman, of the Acts 29 church-planting network. He is known for joining Reformed soteriology to openly continuationist practice, a pairing he has described as feeling like a theological orphan. This entry rests on his 2009 interviews and conference messages with Desiring God, a 2011 Tabletalk interview, his 2017 foreword to a book by Sam Storms, a 2024 podcast transcript, press reports of his sermons, The Explicit Gospel (2012, with Jared C. Wilson) as reviewers quote it, and his church's statement of faith, which is used only where a cell says so.