The Necessity of Imputed Righteousness

"Shall I present my first-born for my rebellious acts," was the anguished cry of Isaiah’s contemporary, "the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" (Micah 6:7). The honest man, when confronted with a sense of the holiness of God in glory, recognizes that he has nothing to offer. The prophet was aware that the sacrifices of Old Testament did not accomplish reconciliation with Him who reigns from heaven. "With what shall I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him," he asked, "with burnt offerings, with yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams, in ten thousand rivers of oil?" Would these offerings really take away man’s sin? Would even the offering of an earthly son grant remission? The answer, of course, is NO!

"Now the Lord saw," was the vision of Isaiah, "and it was displeasing in His sight that there was no justice. And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no one to intercede; then His own arm brought salvation to Him; and His righteousness upheld Him" (Isaiah 59:15,16). In order for man to walk humbly with His God, he would have to be reconciled to His God. And since there is no man capable of interceding, then the Lord Himself would have to bring salvation and righteousness to man.

 

Mankind’s Darkened Condition
The apostle Paul, in order to make clear the gospel of salvation to the Roman brethren, discussed the descent of man from the Flood of Noah’s day. "Even though they knew God," he maintained, "they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened" (Romans 1:21). Thus man, made in the image of God, voluntarily plunged over the declivity into the dark domain of Satan. As they set aside their worship of God for allegiance to devil-induced imaginings, their morality plunged as well. Thus given over to a depraved mind, the Gentiles were described as being "filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil," etc. (Romans 1:29). The peoples of the world, observed Paul to the Ephesians, darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, "have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness," and were "strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world" (Ephesians 4:19; 2:12).

Notice that God lays the responsibility for the dive into blackness on the individuals themselves. "They did not honor God … they did not acknowledge God … they have given themselves over," are the words from the mouth of the inspired apostle. It is choice, not chance!

The Father, then, not desiring the death of the wicked, began injecting increasing degrees of light into the darkness. Using Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants, the successive revelation of the will and character of God was brought into the world. The Jew of Jesus’ day thus might well regard himself as "a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth" (Romans 2:19,20).

But knowing and doing are two different things. "For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law," is Paul’s affirmation of God’s justice, "and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law" (Romans 2:12). And what will that judgment for the Jew who sinned under the Law be? "Cursed," quotes the apostle, "is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the Law, to perform them" (Galatians 3:10).

"We have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin," was the plain conclusion of the apostle to the Gentiles, "as it is written, ‘There is none righteous, not even one.’ " (Romans 3:9,10). All of mankind, very clearly, is in desperate need of a Savior from on high.

 

Fallen Man Is Capable of Reason
The assumption of those of pure Calvinist persuasion is that fallen man is totally depraved and incapable of reasoning on spiritual matters. Therefore preaching is "preaching into the air" and the Holy Spirit, with no involvement whatsoever on the part of the individual, will cause — if He so chooses — the individual to be "born again," at which point he can "repent and believe the gospel." Such, applied with varying degrees of consistency, is the foundation of modern evangelicals and fundamentalists.

The word of God, however, paints a different picture as to how the message of redemption is to reach the lost. "Come now, and let us reason together," was the prophetic appeal of God through Isaiah, reaching to the time of the new covenant, "though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow" (Isaiah 1:18). God uses a reasoned presentation of the facts of His inspired testimony to produce faith in all who will be saved. "Faith comes from hearing," avouched Paul, "and hearing by the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17).

When the apostle Peter delivered the first message of salvation in the history of the world, recorded in Acts 2, his was a reasoned presentation. Beginning from the prophecy from Joel, the apostle with the keys of the kingdom described how the events connected with Jesus would result in the salvation of those who would call on His name. Peter detailed the crucifixion of Jesus, His bodily resurrection from the dead, and His ascension to glory. Then he used the word every logician would recognize: therefore! "Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain," was the required inference indicated by the apostle, "that God has made Him both Lord and Christ — this Jesus whom you crucified" (Acts 2:36). This is a logical appeal as a result of a logical presentation to a sizeable body of lost Jews. Can fallen man reason? Yes. Will he reason? That is a moral question, to be answered only by the individual.

When the apostle Paul delivered his message of salvation to the Gentiles on Athens’ Hill of Mars, recorded in Acts 17, his was a reasoned presentation. Beginning with their altar "to an unknown god," the apostle to the Gentiles described how this God is the Creator of all, not dwelling in temples made with human hands. Paul detailed how he made all the people of the earth from one man, how he determined the appointed times and boundaries of each nation, how even their poets recognized that all men were His offspring, and that mankind, being spiritual, ought not to think that the Spiritual One who made them was a mere image of metal or stone. Then he used the word every logician would recognize: therefore! "Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent," was the required inference indicated by the apostle, "because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead" (Acts 17:30,31). This is a logical appeal as a result of a logical presentation to a sizeable body of lost Gentiles. Can fallen man reason? Yes. Will he reason? That is a moral question, to be answered only by the individual.

Typical of the record of the scripture is that of Paul in Corinth: "And he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks" (Acts 18:4). Every recorded message of Jesus was a reasoned presentation. Every message of the apostles and preachers in Acts was a reasoned presentation. Every epistle is a reasoned presentation. God appeals to man on the basis of his reason.

Fallen man can reason. Saved man can reason. Will fallen man reason clearly? He can if he so chooses. Will saved man continue to reason clearly? He can if he so chooses.

 

Imputed Righteousness
Once apprised of his lost condition, the reasoning man would look for the means by which he might be rescued. The lost Gentile would clearly see that he had nothing by which he could justify himself in the presence of God’s glory and holiness, and was therefore open to further instruction. The lost Jew, however, would have had a little more difficult time in seeing the path that he was to follow. The teachers and preachers of the New Testament had to work harder to show the Jew that the things of the Law were shadows set in motion to eventually bring the substance of Christ to spiritual view. Hence we note Peter’s statement to the gathering in Jerusalem in Acts 15 over the issue of whether the Gentiles had to be circumcised and keep the traditions of the Law: "We believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus," he affirmed in regard to the salvation of the Jews, "in the same way as they [the Gentiles] also are" (Acts 15:11). The salvation of the Gentiles by faith through grace was more clear than the salvation of the Jews because it was not cluttered by the physical things God had required of the Jews — things required to keep them from falling into the idolatry of the Gentile world before the coming of Christ in the flesh. The system centered about the Law of Moses was a maintenance system wherein Israel would be overrun by paganism if not isolated from the world; the Christian system is more powerful and capable of turning the Gentiles from their idolatry to serve God and to wait for the return of His Son from heaven.

Preaching the Law is a part of preaching the gospel (see I Timothy 1:8-11). "Through the Law comes the knowledge of sin," was Paul’s inspired assessment. The result of preaching the righteousness of God as exemplified in the Law is that "every mouth" is closed, and "all the world" becomes accountable to God (Romans 3:19,20). In this process, the Jew, whose mouth was harder to close, would come to understand that "by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight."

To the Jew, then, the apostle asks this question, "What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh [ancestor of the Jews physically], has found?" (Romans 4:1). If the apostle can get the Jew to the background of the venerated Abraham, he can get him to understand that the Law was only a stopgap designed to preserve a people through whom the Christ could come. "For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about." If a person could keep the whole standard of righteousness perfectly, this would indeed recommend him to God and qualify him for entrance into heaven based upon his own works. Could Abraham offer that kind of performance? "Not before God," comes the answer. How does Paul affirm from the Old Testament scripture that Abraham did not try to qualify for fellowship with God based on his works? "For what does the scripture say?" is the question. "And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Romans 4:2,3). The scripture affirms that "Abraham believed" rather than "Abraham worked."

Martin Luther, in working through this passage, came to his famous conclusion that a person is saved by "faith alone." Luther really did not allow the scripture to define faith, and he wasn’t paying close enough attention to the context to note that the apostle Paul was speaking of "works of the Law." In consequence his spiritual descendants and their close cousins, the Calvinists, arrived at a false definition of faith and a false way of salvation which excludes immersion. There is obviously a problem in the thinking wherein Romans 4 would contradict the teaching of the book of Acts and what would follow in Romans 6.

When the apostle spoke that "Abraham believed God," he was emphasizing the underlying motive. "Now to the one who works," was his annotation, "his wage is not reckoned as a favor, but as what is due" (Romans 4:4). The motive of the "one who works" would be an attempt to circumvent the need for grace or favor from God; his effort would be to present a list of accomplishments before God as a means by which he would earn a place in heaven.

In juxtaposition to this thinking, the apostle then stated, "But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness" (Romans 4:5). What Abraham "found," and what all who follow in his steps find, is that the action that the individual takes is not to justify himself, but to further the program of God as directed by His words.

Abraham believed God. God had promised him that through Isaac he would be the "father of many nations." Abraham trusted God through years of childlessness, through years of nomadic wandering, through having to send away his son Ishmael so that he would in no sense be a threat to the son of Sarah, and through offering Isaac on Mt. Moriah. None of these things were done in an attempt to cover for any of Abraham’s sin; these were done in accordance with the directive of God to further the plan of God.

In that sense, then, Abraham did not "work." Any justification for the sins of Abraham was going to be done by God. Because Abraham believed in the distant promise of God and was willing to commit his life to the execution of God’s stated purpose, God was abundantly willing to justify him; Abraham’s faith was "reckoned as righteousness."

"David also speaks of the blessing upon the man to whom God reckons righteousness apart from works," states the apostle, bringing additional light to bear. "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven," is the quotation from Psalms, "and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account" (Romans 4:6-8). This action of God to cover the sins of one willing to walk by faith is imputed righteousness.

Because Abraham was a man of faith, God was willing to count him righteous. Because Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, and the whole host of Old Testament heroes were men and women of faith, God was willing to count them righteous. "In the forbearance of God," were Paul’s words, "He passed over the sins previously committed" (Romans 3:25). The Almighty was willing to cover the sins of the Old Testament faithful with the blood of Jesus, passing over them until the blood could be sprinkled in the true holy place. "And for this reason," says Hebrews’ author, of Jesus, "He is the mediator of a new covenant, in order that since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance" (Hebrews 9:15).

 

Imputed Righteousness under the New Covenant
The reckoning of righteousness is much clearer in light of the full revelation contained in the New Testament as contrasted with a somewhat vague demarcation in the records of the Old. "But now," writes Paul of the new covenant, "apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets." This righteousness would be God’s righteousness, a righteousness that would be granted to both Jew and Gentile, "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction" (Romans 3:21,22).

"Faith" in the Old Testament was comparatively ill defined; the writings of the New Testament focus clearly on Jesus Christ as the Originator and Object, the Author and Perfecter of faith. The preaching of Jesus brings all to account, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Having thus demonstrated to the hearers their lost condition, God is now reaching out to the honest ones who are now ready to listen to the good news about the Savior.

The preaching and teaching of the word of God is consistent; in order to be saved, all must believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, all must repent, all must confess with the mouth that Jesus is Lord, and all must be immersed by the authority of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and thus receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This was the message delivered to those of Jewish background (Acts 2:38), and this was the message delivered to those of Gentile background (Acts 10:47,48). God shows no partiality and has only one way of salvation for all men. Referring to the conversion of the first Gentiles to become Christians, when he spoke to the household of Cornelius, Peter at the meeting in Jerusalem noted that God "made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9).

Salvation by faith through grace includes immersion in the name of Jesus. "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus," wrote Paul to the Galatians. "For all of you who were immersed into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ" (Galatians 3:26,27). When the apostle Paul speaks of God’s being the "justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus," he is referring to those who have been, from the first, properly immersed into Jesus Christ (Romans 3:26).

If the underlying motive of the individual is correct — if he is truly repentant — then he is not trying to justify himself in immersion; his immersion is his appeal to God for a good conscience. As one who "believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness" (Romans 4:5). At his immersion, the former sinner is now clothed with the righteousness of Christ; this is imputed righteousness under the terms of the new covenant. The apostle Paul humbly noted that his desire was thus to be found in Jesus, "not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith" (Philippians 3:9). "Blessed," indeed, "are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account" (Romans 4:7,8).

 

Continued Opportunities for Imputed Righteousness
The underlying assumption of Calvinism is that man does not have a choice: if God decides to save him, the man cannot stop him, and if God does not decide to save him, there is nothing he can do about it. Likewise, since there is no choice, after the man is "saved," then he cannot be lost; he cannot "fall from grace." Thus, in Calvinistic thinking, imputed righteousness is a once for all time covering of sin. This whole system of thought, of course, does not comport with scripture, as this one quotation from Paul makes evident: "You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace" (Galatians 5:4).

Under Calvinism, man was considered to be depraved, even though saved. As John Wesley and his followers struggled to bring a sense of life and holiness to dead movements, they recognized that the scripture called for the Christian to be more than depraved but saved. Still operating under the vague assumption that man had no choice, they eventually codified a doctrine of "a second work of grace" wherein there was a second falling of the Holy Spirit ("Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me."). Once this second work of grace occurred, the individual was defined to be sanctified, and now he could not sin. Under strict Calvinism, the thought was that the "Christian" had to continue to sin, because sin was not a choice; and he was saved anyway, because that was not a choice. Under the Wesleyian Holiness movement, the second work of grace "Christian" could not sin, because sin was not a choice; and the work of the Spirit in keeping the "Christian" from sinning was all the work of the Spirit, because the individual could not choose. Such teaching does not comport with the New Testament, which always requires the Christian to choose his course of action, as this quotation from Peter makes clear: "Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul" (I Peter 2:11).

All sin is choice. Man chooses to sin in the first place, choosing to transgress the law of righteousness. When man comes under the dominion of sin, he is a slave of sin, and his body develops sinful habits. When a person chooses to be immersed into Christ, he is granted the imputed righteousness of Christ, but the dripping wet body still has, in varying degrees, ingrained bad or sinful habits. The understanding Father knows that it is going to take some time to get those thought patterns redirected, and has a provision called "grace" to cover the gap between a Christian’s expected performance and his actual performance. "Therefore having been justified by faith," affirmed the apostle Paul, "we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God" (Romans 5:1,2). There is no grace, in this sense, for the non-Christian; the only ones for whom there is grace are the saints of God. "Grow," then, says Peter, "in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (II Peter 3:18).

Part of the mechanism for change is delineated by the Roman epistle, emphasizing choice. "I urge you therefore, brethren," is the Holy Spirit’s appeal for Christians to choose properly, "by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service." How is the body going to be presented as holy before the Lord? It is the mind that chooses the course of action for the body, so the mind must be redirected in order for the body to follow along. "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect" (Romans 12:1,2). Notice that this transformation is a process rather than the result of an instantaneous zap from heaven. The mind has to be renewed or reprogrammed in order for this transformation to take place. And while this transformation is taking place, the sincere brother is covered by the grace of God; this, too, is the imputed righteousness of Christ.

 

Imputed Righteousness to Result in Practicing Righteousness
Great indeed is the grace of God. Because of Adam sin entered the world, and spiritual death spread to all men because all sinned. But the grace of God is great enough to cover the destruction caused by sin. "For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one," was Paul’s assessment, "much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:17). The grace of God is able to forgive sin, abolish death, and grant that the gift of righteousness would reign in the Christian. That’s why words like much more and abundant are used by the Holy Spirit!

So smothered in the grace of God, the Christian might tend to loll on his laurels rather than press onward. "What shall we say then?" asks the apostle Paul of the brethren. "Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?" Some might answer that as long as we live in this fleshly body, we are going to continue in sin. But not the inspired Paul: "May it never be!" is the quick retort, followed with another question, "How shall we who died to sin still live in it?" (Romans 6:1,2).

The apostle follows with the inspired message of how to overcome sin, pointing out that there are two major thrusts in immersion. Immersion into Christ is first of all a burial, in which the corrupted old man of sin is crucified and eliminated. This sets the new Christian free from any bondage of the past. The second thrust is that in immersion, the new Christian participates in the resurrection of Jesus; he is raised to walk in newness of life. These twin concepts work together to set the saint free from sin’s slavery and enable him to live a victorious life in Christ Jesus. The picture is so powerful that the context of the scripture here in Romans is that mature Christians are reminded to go back and review their own immersions!

Immersion is more than a mere symbolic gesture; God actually works during immersion. When the repentant believer is immersed into Christ, he is "immersed into His death." Therein His sins are washed away by the sprinkled blood of Jesus the sacrifice, and he is "buried with Him through immersion into death," the old self "crucified with Him," the "body of sin" done away with so that the individual is no longer a slave to sin, "for he who has died is freed from sin" (Romans 6:3-7). God actually performs a spiritual operation above and beyond mere forgiveness of sins; He actually removes the sinful "body" that had become a slave of sin. The apostle makes the same point to the Colossian brethren, using the foreshadow of circumcision to make the same point: "… in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands," acclaimed Paul, "in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in immersion" (Colossians 2:11,12). This removal takes place in the realm of faith; an individual has to believe God has done this or it is of no consequence to him. That is why Paul in his Roman epistle takes the brethren back to that point in their beginnings as new creations.

As significant as the freedom from the bondage to sin is, it is less important than the new power to perform great things for God. In God’s economy, what is destroyed is less important than what is built. While immersion portrays the crucifixion of the old man of sin, it also is the means by which the Almighty brings into existence a new creature — a new creature in the image of Christ, who is commanded to think a certain way. "Christ," said the apostle, "having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him" (Romans 6:9). The Lord Jesus won an awesome victory over Satan, the forces of evil, and sin and death when, through death, He conquered by His resurrection. "For the death that He died," impresses the apostle, "He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God" (Romans 6:10). The triumph of Christ is described in these terms: the life that He lives. Christ in glory is referred to as dead to sin … alive to God. So the next verse is one of those great power verses of the New Testament for the Christian, if he will walk by faith. "Even so consider [reckon] yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:11). The Christian is to reckon Himself, by faith, to be already as Jesus is in glory. He is commanded to think of himself in this way!

God is the One who authored the principle that as a man thinks, so he is (Proverbs 23:7). God is the One who therefore commanded that the new creature in Christ view himself as already raised up with Christ and seated with Christ on the throne.

This dual picture — of the old man of sin as crucified, and the new self as alive to God in Christ Jesus — is designed by God as the mechanism by which the disciple overcomes sin! It is the answer to the question, "Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?"

God, through our faith, reckons us righteous, that we might reckon ourselves as already triumphant in Christ!

God imputes righteousness to the faithful, that the faithful might impute to themselves the character of Christ. "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (II Corinthians 5:21).

The scripture is replete with examples of how the imputed righteousness of Christ is to become actual, or practicing, righteousness in the lives of His sons and daughters. "How shall we who died to sin still live in it?" was one of Paul’s rhetorical questions. "Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? was another (Romans 6:15). "But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit," stated the apostle of Jesus Christ, "resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life" (Romans 6:22). Christians are now "slaves of righteousness" (Romans 6:18). Jesus our Lord will "equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen" (Hebrews 13:21). "But the wisdom from above is first pure," affirmed James, "then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace" (James 3:17,18). "As obedient children," was the exhortation of Peter, "do not be conformed to your former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior" (I Peter 1:14,15). "Little children," beckoned the aged John, "let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil" (I John 3:7,8).

 

Exhortation
In the twenty-first century, as in the first century, there are those who are already mentally committed to failure, who are already committed to living a life locked into sin, but still wanting to justify themselves in the sight of men. "For certain persons have crept in unnoticed," was Jude’s inspired observation, "those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ" (Jude 4). The purpose of the grace of God, by contrast, is to produce righteous people, a people who follow in the footsteps of Jesus, "who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness" (I Peter 2:21-24).

Calvinism continues its creep into the church of Christ. With pressure coming from the fundamentalists and evangelicals, as they are called, many are buying into some of the underlying Calvinistic concepts. Some have drifted so far that they have accepted the idea that salvation is by "faith alone," and that immersion is a work that follows that faith. Others have accepted the Calvinist concept of the continuing depravity of the redeemed, using expressions (apparently in an attempt to appear humble in public) such as "I sin every minute," or "I’m a black-hearted sinner." When a pure Calvinist uses the expression "imputed righteousness," he implies, in that terminology, that he himself has never by choice, even as a "Christian," performed a righteous act. Any good thing accomplished through him was accomplished without his willing complicity; God looks at him as righteous, but he by choice in no sense is righteous; God does all the righteous acts through him, and the accomplishment of those righteous acts, which he could not choose to do, is his proof that God has "saved" him. The expression in modern terms is "a changed life."

The scripture uses the expression "imputed righteousness" differently. God always requires men to choose. When lost man recognizes his condition and is then obedient to God’s command of immersion, God grants him the "imputed righteousness of Christ." As the new creature in Christ grows, he renews his mind, and, in conjunction with what is written in the word of God, and with the strengthening supplied by the indwelling Spirit, he increasingly lays aside the deeds of the flesh and puts on the practicing righteousness of Christ. "Imputed righteousness" continues to be a necessary ingredient in the process, for without the continuing grace and mercy of God, the disciple of the Lord would not have any reason to press on; he would have already been condemned for one shortfall, no matter how hard he tried. And if he were to live a minute or an hour without sin, the "imputed righteousness" would still be a necessary ingredient in his success in choosing properly; for if he still continued to view himself as a sinner, he would have continued to sin, but in being able to view himself as a saint through the imputed righteousness of God, he is now able to make a string of righteous choices for a minute or an hour. As he thinks within himself, so he is. Imputed righteousness is God’s mechanism for producing practicing righteousness.

In our attempts to expose the errors of Calvinism, we have had to debunk Calvinist concepts of depravity and imputed righteousness, as did many of the early Restorationists. Some, in their zeal perhaps to protect the "brotherhood" from erroneous teachings, have lifted some of these debunkings out of context and have claimed that there are those who are teaching "sinless perfection apart from the imputed righteousness of Christ." We know of no one who denies the necessity of the imputed righteousness of Christ.

It is our claim that all sin is choice: "sin is transgression of the law [or lawlessness]" (I John 3:4); "to one who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin" (James 4:17); and "whatever is not from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23). It is our claim that because sin is choice, the Christian can choose to live above sin for the minute. It is our claim that the imputed righteousness of Christ is designed to work with the child of God, to help him develop the mental habits of making the right choices, to be "a slave of righteousness" (Romans 6:19) It is our claim that "by the Spirit [we] are putting to death the deeds of the body" (Romans 8:13). It is our claim that if we "walk by the Spirit, [we] will not carry out the desire of the flesh" (Galatians 5:16). It is our claim that "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). It is our claim that God is "able to keep [us] from stumbling, and to make [us] stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy" (Jude 24).

Some deny these claims. Some are confused; some are deliberately running contrary to scripture.

Some are "springs without water, and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved. For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved" (II Peter 2:17-19). The twenty-first century is no different in this respect than was the first century AD.

We exhort the champions of the faith to preach the whole counsel of God. When a lost individual is immersed into Christ, he is clothed with Christ. If that newly regenerated disciple of Christ continues to behold in the mirror the glory of the Lord, he will be transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. It was in the context of those who denied this that Jude penned these words: "Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). Imputed righteousness comes to an individual on the basis of God’s definition of faith, the faith once for all delivered. The faithful are those who follow in the steps of Abraham, who was "fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform" (Romans 4:21).

Preach it!

Summary