Yoder and justification

Forgive the incoherence of these thoughts, they come from the cloud of a swine flu mind. I am captured by Yoder's thoughts on justification.  He asserts that Paul had the unification of Jew and Gentile as the stuff of justification.  Justified, the people groups have been made right in Christ.  The wrong of their separation has been replaced by one new body, that of Christ.  Here justification is also a work of God that makes us clean, but it is more than simply a judicial proclamation that we are clean, it is true because Christ in his work has actually worked the justice and removed our enmity between one another. To this evangelical Christian these thoughts are surprising, powerful and right.

I was praying the evening prayer with divineoffice.org one night this week and was struck by the reading of Romans 8:10. In the version they were using (perhaps the old Jerusalem Bible) it read differently than the multitude of English translations. Most like the NIV run something like this "But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness."  This version ended "because of Justice."  Like Ruth Padilla DeBorst said, all the Spanish translations have justicia (The Grace Community). What does this mean for us? The body is dead because of sin, yet the justice worked in and through our body brings life to my spirit. I am alive because of the justice God has worked for me to bring me into one life with others from whom I had been separated. I am alive in my spirit more and more because of the work of justice being done through me.

My spiritual formation, no, even my spiritual life is predicated then on the extent of God's justice being alive in me. I am called to justice in ways of radical subordination. This is truly a work of transformation.  For here we have to lay down our expectations to effectiveness, and like the Israelites at the Red Sea, we must give ourselves to God to make the way. My limited expereinces with extended apophatic centering prayer have taught me this as well.  We stand in the dark staring at the naked God (The Cloud of Unknowing 80) without image or word and allow God to work in his terms. It is the way of powerlessness.