“For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.”
— II Corinthians 5:21
According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.
— Ephesians 1:4
Double imputation. That is a fancy theological term, but it represents a very important concept. Important because of the state man finds himself in.
To briefly review, when Adam disobeyed God’s command he became a sinner. He didn’t just become a sinner in the sense that he had committed a sin against God, but he became a sinner by nature. It became part of his natural makeup to sin. This sin nature has been passed on to every one of Adam’s descendants, and we are all sinners (Job 14:4; Romans 3:10-12, 23; 8:6-8). As a result, we are all dead to God in sin (Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13) and have nothing to look forward to but eternal punishment (Hebrews 10:27). That is the state all of mankind is in: separated from our God and under the judgment of an everlasting burning. This brings us to the importance of the theological concept of imputation.
Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (2nd ed.) defines “impute” as “to attribute (something, especially a crime or a fault) to another; to charge with; to ascribe to.” With reference to theology, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.) says this: “to attribute or ascribe (righteousness, guilt, etc.) to a person by vicarious substitution.” Imputation is the act of taking something from one person and placing it on another.
As sinners God can have nothing to do with us (Psalm 5:4; Habakkuk 1:13). Therefore, we must be free of sin if we would come before Him. This is where imputation comes in. Jesus Christ took our sins from us and placed them on Himself. Peter tells us that Jesus “bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness” (I Peter 2:24, also Galatians 3:13). This is the vicarious substitution. Those for whom Christ died now stand before God without sin (Psalm 103:12; Isaiah 38:17; Micah 7:19).
But I spoke of a double imputation. It isn’t enough to be sinless. Like the servant of Luke 17:7-10, if we were not born with the taint of Adam’s sin and had perfectly obeyed God all our life, we must say we are unprofitable servants. All we have done is our duty. We have not added to (not profited) God in the least. We might not be in the negative because of sin, but neither would we be in the positive; we would be sitting at zero. We need more than that to come into the presence of God; we need righteousness. Here is the second imputation: Jesus gave us His righteousness. The redeemed have put on Christ and are covered by His righteousness (Galatians 3:27; Philippians 3:9; Romans 3:22; I Corinthians 1:30). When God looks at them, He sees the righteousness of Christ.
The two verses at the beginning lay out the principle of double imputation. Ephesians shows us that if we are to stand before God, we must be without blame (sin) and holy. II Corinthians tells us that Jesus took our sins and gave us His righteousness.
There is one more important point regarding imputation: Christ is completely sovereign in this act. There is nothing about us that might inspire or obligate imputation. When Christ took our sins and gave us His righteousness, we counted Him our enemy (Romans 5:8-10). Salvation is by grace; it is purely Christ’s gift to give (Ephesians 2:8). If there were any work on the part of man, it would cease to be of grace (Romans 11:6). If salvation/imputation ceased to be by grace, there would be no salvation (Galatians 3:21); for man cannot (and would not if he could) save himself, as we have already seen. There can be no salvation except in Christ (Acts 4:12). Christ imputing our sins to Himself and His righteousness to us is solely a gift of His love.
•Philip Green is pastor of Greenwood Primitive Baptist Church.
