Over the last century the relationship of justification and participation in Pauline theology has been disputed. Since the Reformation the divine-human relationship has most often been framed around the doctrine of justification. With Schweitzer, however, participation (“being-in-Christ”) unseated justification as the central aspect of Paul’s soteriology. E.P. Sanders reaffirmed Schweitzer’s basic premise but held to a closer identification of participation and justification. Famously, however, Sanders argued that we “seem to lack a category of ‘reality’” to understand Paul’s participationist eschatology (PPJ, 522–23). Several scholars have proposed different means of capturing that reality which have borne some fruit (Hays: Eastern fathers; Macaskill: covenant; etc.). At the same time, when it comes to describing justification, discussions continue to center only around “status”—before God or within the community—and participation plays little or no role. How, then, can we understand justification within Paul’s participationist eschatology as Sanders proposed? Two things are necessary: 1) a proper understanding of the social imaginaries that undergird ancient and modern approaches to participation (cf. Charles Taylor), and 2) readings of justification that show how participation in the “life” of God through Christ and the Spirit are more fundamental to Paul’s theology than “status”. The latter has been attempted but has generally been found wanting, partially because readers often struggle to think outside of modern social imaginaries. For example, it seems more than a coincidence that the focus on status as “imputed” righteousness arose when nominalism, the philosophical foundation of the modern social imaginary, began to flourish. Accordingly, I will first explain how participation makes sense in light of the ancient social imaginary of a porous self in an enchanted and structured cosmos, rather than the modern social imaginary of a buffered self in a disenchanted and flat universe. Then, I provide a test-case reading from the letter to the Romans that demonstrates how justification is more centrally identified with participation in “life” rather than “status” (alone).