Really, we are all guilty…

Allowing the law-court imagery to predominate places us in the realm of legal standards — right and wrong, guilt and innocence. This immediately causes almost everyone to start thinking that there are guilty people and innocent people, whereas we have been taking pains to show that “the line runs through each person.” If we are faithful to the gospel as “the justification of the ungodly” (cf. Rom. 4:5), we will not talk about being morally right according to a set of legal commandments, but about being delivered from hostile, enslaving Powers that are waging war against God’s purposes. If we begin by talking about being acquitted in the courtroom, we are working from a diminished perspective. If legal language is introduced from the outset, biblical interpreters will find themselves in trouble because they will be operating in the realm of morality, not cosmology — and that will render the church theologically impotent in our geopolitically interlocked world.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 320 (emphasis original)