During the Ice-pocalypse of 2026, I spent some time reading Ruined Sinnners to Reclaim.¹ It is a theolgically rich and convicting book that re-ignited my interest in an aspect of Covenant Theology called “Federal Headship.”

Federal Headship is one of the most frequently misunderstood doctrines of Covenant Theology. It is also one of the most commonly abandoned; often without recognizing it until it is too late. And when it is abandoned, the theology of sin does not become simpler or more humane. It simply veers—almost inevitably—into one of two damning ditches.

Federal Headship is the biblical teaching that God deals with humanity through covenantal representatives. Adam stands as the head of the human race–the old creation; Christ stands as the head of the new creation. As such, Covenant Theology holds that guilt and righteousness are not first acquired by imitation, but by representation. Scripture’s controlling categories are not merely “following Adam” or “following Jesus,” but being “in Adam” and “in Christ.”²

When that covenantal structure is flattened into moral influence or denied altogether, the theological consequences become predictable. The story of redemption slips off the road into one of two theological ditches: Pelagianism or Liberalism.

The First Ditch: Pelagianism and the Denial of Condemnation

Pelagianism denies that Adam’s sin is imputed to his descendants. Imputation can be defined as God’s covenantal act of counting a representative’s guilt or righteousness as belonging to those united to him. Pelagius (360-420AD), from whose namesake we get “Pelagianism,” rejected the imputation of Adam’s sin upon mankind (regularly called “original sin”). Humanity, in his view, is born morally neutral. Adam is not a covenant head whose guilt is reckoned to us, but merely a negative example whose behavior we unfortunately repeat.³ Repeated behaviors grow to enslave the will, leading to bondage and slavery to sin. Significantly, for Pelagius, each individuals bondage to sin is self-acted and disconnected to Adam’s first sin.

The result is subtle but devastating. Condemnation is no longer covenantal; it becomes merely behavioral. Sin is reduced to imitation rather than inheritance. Judgment is grounded not in representation, but in accumulated personal acts. In effect, Pelagianism evacuates works of their covenantal weight in condemnation. Man is not guilty in Adam; he only becomes guilty once he personally chooses to sin.

And while this is an appealing perspective, it fails to align with Scripture. As Saint Augustine (354-430AD) repeatedly argued against Pelagius, this account cannot explain either the universality of death or the logic of Paul’s Adam/Christ parallel in Romans 5.⁴ Adam ceases to function as a Federal Head. Instead, he becomes a teacher—albeit a bad one.

The Second Ditch: Liberal Theology and the Restoration of Works for Salvation

At the opposite end of the biblical story, Theological Liberalism performs a remarkably similar move—but this time with Christ. Here—not in every liberal account explicitly, but functionally—Jesus is not the second Adam who stands in the place of His people, bearing their guilt and securing their righteousness. He is reduced to a moral exemplar, a model of love, justice, and self-giving that we are meant to imitate. The cross, therefore, is not substitutionary but exemplary. It serves no role in justification; only inspiration.⁵

Salvation, in this framework, is no longer something declared but something achieved. Justification falls away and moral transformation becomes the controlling category. The question subtly shifts from “What has Christ done for us?” to “How closely are we following Him?”

Ironically, this move reintroduces works as the basis of salvation—not always explicitly, but inevitably. If Christ is primarily an example, then final acceptance with God rests on the quality of our imitation. Christ, like Adam before Him, is no longer a covenant head. He too becomes merely a teacher.

Same Grammar, Different Ends

Pelagianism and Liberal Theology are often treated as theological opposites. In one sense, they are. One minimizes guilt while the other minimizes grace. One is optimistic about human moral capacity, while the other is optimistic about moral progress. But structurally, they share the same grammar.

• Both reject Federal Headship.
• Both replace imputation with imitation.
• Both collapse covenant into ethics.

Pelagianism removes works as the ground of condemnation, whereas Theological Liberalism restores works as the means of salvation. One tells us we were never truly guilty. The other tells us we must now become worthy.

The Narrow Road Between the Ditches

Biblical Christianity refuses both errors—not by splitting the difference, but by standing firmly on covenantal ground. In Adam, we are truly guilty apart from personal acts of disobedience. In Christ, we are truly righteous apart from personal acts of obedience.

As the Reformed confessions consistently insist, the same representative logic that grounds our condemnation is the logic that grounds our assurance.⁶ Federal Headship humbles us by removing boasting at the front end of the story, and it comforts us by removing fear at the back end. The narrow road is not moralism, and it is not optimism. Importantly, Federal Headship is not an abstract legal theory; it is the lived reality of union with Christ. Paul makes this explicit in Romans 6, where he grounds both justification and sanctification, not in moral effort, but in participation in Christ’s saving work:

"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Rom. 6:3–4)

Notice the logic. Paul does not say that baptism symbolizes our intention to follow Jesus’ example. He says we were baptized into Christ—into His death, burial, and resurrection. The believer’s new life flows from a prior union, not from moral imitation. Because Christ is our covenant head, His death counts as our death, and His life counts as our life. Sanctification is not the means of entering union with Christ; it is the fruit of already belonging to Him.

This is why Federal Headship is not opposed to spiritual transformation or sanctification (often referred to as “Antinomianism”). Rather, it is the only foundation that can sustain these things. When union with Christ is preserved, obedience becomes possible without becoming meritorious, and grace remains grace. Only a Gospel grounded in representation rather than imitation can both condemn us honestly and save us completely.

1. David Gibson, Jonathan Gibson, Ruined Sinners to Reclaim: Sin and Depravity in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2024). ↩︎
2. Romans 5:12–21; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 45–49. Paul’s Adam/Christ typology depends explicitly on representative headship rather than imitation. ↩︎
3. Pelagius’s views are preserved primarily through his Commentary on Romans (fragments) and through the writings of his opponents. See Pelagius, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, trans. Theodore de Bruyn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). ↩︎
4. Augustine, On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants, esp. Book I–II, where Augustine directly ties original sin, death, and federal representation to Romans 5. ↩︎
5. For representative examples of moral-exemplar Christology, see Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, and Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? These works explicitly reinterpret atonement away from substitution toward moral influence. ↩︎
6. Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. 6 (“Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof”) and ch. 11 (“Of Justification”), which explicitly ground both condemnation and justification in federal headship and imputation. ↩︎