Evaluating the New
Perspective on Paul (13)
The biblical basis for
the doctrine of imputation includes more passages than those we have had
occasion to consider briefly. However, these are sufficient to illustrate the
biblical teaching that the justification of sinners occurs by means of the
reception of the righteousness of Christ, granted and imputed to them by God
and received through faith. No other basis than that of Christ's
righteousness--comprising the entirety of His mediatorial work, not only His
death for sin but His perfect life of obedience--can make a sinner acceptable
to God.
The importance of the doctrine of imputation can also be confirmed by its intimate connection with other biblical and theological themes. Consequently, we conclude our treatment of imputation by noting its relationship to several theological corollaries.
In the classic
reformational view of justification, the expressions “by faith alone” (sola
fide) and “on account of Christ alone” (solo Christo) are used to
affirm precisely what the doctrine of imputation affirms. We are said to be
justified “by faith alone” (sola fide), not because the faith that alone
justifies is an alone faith (without works), but because it is the exclusive
instrument or means to receive the free gift of righteousness that is
the basis for our acceptance with God. If the doctrine of imputation emphasizes
that the ground of justification lies outside of us in a righteousness that God
grants and imputes to us, then faith alone answers to the nature of the
act by which God justifies sinners. A gift can only be received. It cannot be
earned. Faith, therefore, as a receiving instrument is just the response that
answers to the granting and imputing of righteousness that justification
requires. Similarly, to say that our justification is “on account of Christ
alone” (solo Christo) is equivalent to saying that it is on account of
the righteousness of Christ that becomes ours through imputation. The doctrine
of imputation serves as an indispensable safeguard against the teaching that
sinners can find acceptance with God on the basis of any righteousness other
than that of Christ alone.
Even as imputation
affirms what is expressed by the language of “faith alone” and “Christ alone,”
it also affirms what belongs to the biblical doctrines of Christ's
substitutionary atonement and the believer's union with Christ. If Christ's
life, death and resurrection occurred by God's design for or in the
place of His people, then it follows that all that He accomplished counts
as theirs, so far as God is concerned. How could Christ's work on their
behalf and for their benefit not be reckoned to their account, if indeed it is just
as though they had performed it!
Furthermore, when
believers become united to Christ through faith, they come to participate in
all the benefits of his saving work. Faith is the “empty hand” by which
believers acknowledge and receive all that Christ has accomplished for
them. To say that God grants and
imputes the righteousness of Christ to believers is, accordingly, to
acknowledge what is required by the doctrines of Christ's substitutionary
atonement and the believer's union with Christ through faith.
Luther, in his
well-known sermon, “Two Kinds of Righteousness,” illustrates this point by
appealing to the analogy of the bride's intimate union with the bridegroom:
Therefore a man can with confidence boast in
Christ and say: “Mine are Christ's living, doing, and speaking, his suffering
and dying, mine as much as if I had lived, done, spoken, suffered, and died as
he did.” Just as the bridegroom possesses all that is his bride's and she all
that is his--for the two have all things in common because they are one
flesh--so Christ and the church are one spirit.1
The biblical doctrine
of imputation is often charged with being a “legal fiction.” God is said to
regard sinners as though they were righteous, even though they remain
sinners still. For the same reason that
many object to the imputation of the guilt of Adam's sin to his posterity. The
guilt is “alien,” not personal and real--imputation is often decried as a cold,
legal transaction that leaves sinners in the same condition as before.
There are two critical
problems with this objection. The first
problem, which is not so much our concern here, is that it ignores the way
Christ by His Spirit simultaneously sanctifies the believer whom He justifies.
God, who declares the sinner righteous in justification, also makes the sinner
righteous through the process of sanctification. The second problem, which is
our concern, is that this objection ultimately charges God, who declares the
ungodly righteous on account of the work of Christ, with declaring to be
real what remains only a fiction. The same objection in principle could be
offered against God's declaration that all are subject to condemnation and
death on account of the one trespass of the one man, Adam.
However, the verdict
of innocence that God pronounces in freely justifying sinners for the sake of
Christ's saving work is no fiction.
Rather, it is a divinely ordained and accomplished reality.2 What could be more real than the perfect
obedience and satisfaction of Christ, which are graciously granted and imputed
to believers who place their trust in Christ alone? Perhaps the best answer to this objection, therefore, is to reply
in the words of the apostle Paul: “Who
shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to
condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died--more than that, who was raised--who
is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us?” (Romans 8:33-
34).
The story is told that
J. Gresham Machen, shortly before his death, sent a telegraph to his colleague
John Murray with the words: “I'm so
thankful for active obedience of Christ.
No hope without it.”3 Though Machen's words express the truth
more poignantly and per- sonally than does the language of “the imputation of
the righteousness of Christ,” they capture the heart of this biblical
teaching. The doctrine of imputation is
simply a way of asserting that Christ's life, death and resurrection are the
sole basis upon which sinners are set right with God and become heirs of
eternal life. Clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ, believers may
have confidence in the presence of God.
They know that the wages of their sins were fully paid by Christ. They know that the obligations of obedience
were perfectly fulfilled by Christ.
They know that Christ, as their Advocate, continues to intercede for
them before God. In short--being found in Christ, they know with the
confidence of faith that “[t]here is therefore now no condemnation for those
who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans
8:l). And so they sing:
Man's work faileth,
He is all our righteousness.
He, our Savior, has forever
set us
free from dire distress.
Through His merit, we inherit
light
and peace and happiness.
(Fortunatus, c. 530-609)
Endnotes
1 “Two
Kinds of Righteousness,” in Martin Luther: Selections from His
Writings, ed. by John Dillenberger (New
York: Anchor, 1961), pp. 86-87.
2 Cf.
James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification
(Grand Rapids: Baker reprint, 1955 [1867]),p. 337: “When we
are brought face to face with such realities as these, it is vain to talk of
'legal fictions,' whether under the Law or under the Gospel; for while
condemnation, on the one hand, and justification, on the other, are strictly
forensic or judicial acts, and must necessarily have some relation to the Law
and Justice of God,--and while the representative character both of the first
and second Adam, and the consequent imputation of their guilt and righteousness
to those whom they respectively represented, can only be ascribed to the
sovereign will and appointment of God,--yet the results are in their own nature
real and true, and not, in any sense, fictitious or imaginary.”
3 As
quoted by Ned B. Stonehouse, J.
Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memorial; 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: The Banner of
Truth Trust, 1987 [1954]), p. 508.
Used by the gracious
permission of Dr. Venema and The Outlook