You can read my full review here in the Canadian Journal of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity 3.1 (2013): 150-154.

In Justified in the Spirit, Frank Macchia attempts “to develop a pneumatological theology of justification inspired by a Pentecostal metaphor, the baptism in the Spirit” (14).

Macchia’s proposal challenges those who have understood justification as a forensic act in which God declares a believer justified on the basis of Jesus death since, according to Macchia, justification is a pneumatological reality that comes through the divine embrace of the Spirit both now and in the future.

Macchia’s proposal also challenges any Pentecostal who believes that the metaphor of Spirit baptism pertains only to a post-conversion empowering experience as Macchia continues to develop his understanding of “the eschatological expansiveness of Spirit baptism” (92), which he previously presented in his Baptized in the Spirit (Zondervan, 2006- my review of his earlier book here).

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