In PostBarthian's excellent article on Martin Luther and The Great Exchange, we read that Luther observed that "Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thyself what is mine and hast given to me what is thine. Thou has taken upon thyself what thou wast not and hast given to me what I was not." Likewise, the same article reminded us that John Calvin once wrote "that we cannot be condemned for our sins, from the guilt of which he absolves us, seeing he has been pleased that these should be imputed to himself as if they were his own. This is the wondrous exchange (mirifica commutatio) made by his boundless goodness. Having become with us the Son of Man, he has made us with himself sons of God. By his own descent to the earth he has prepared our ascent to heaven. Having received our mortality, he has bestowed on us his immortality. Having undertaken our weakness, he has made us strong in his strength. Having submitted to our poverty, he has transferred to us his riches. Having taken upon himself the burden of unrighteousness with which we were oppressed, he has clothed us with his righteousness." Hence, we see that Luther and Calvin both understood that this teaching about the imputation of sin and righteousness was one of the most important doctrines of Scripture.
In the sixteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus, the doctrine of imputation is foreshadowed in a ceremony involving the High Priest and two goats. The High Priest was instructed to take two goats and sacrifice one of them as a sin offering for the people of Israel and carry its blood within the Holy of Holies and sprinkle it on the Ark of the Covenant. Next, Aaron was instructed to place both of his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all of the sins of the people of Israel. Finally, the High Priest was instructed to designate someone to drive that goat into the wilderness to symbolically carry the people's sins away from God and them. In other words, the innocent is made guilty, and the guilty is made innocent!
Similarly, in the fifty-third chapter of the book of Isaiah, we read that the Lord's servant would carry our weaknesses and sorrows. We are told there that "he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all." Furthermore, we are told that this servant "had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone." Finally, we read there that "because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins."
Of course, from the perspective of the New Covenant that righteous servant whom Isaiah had written about was Jesus of Nazareth - the Christ or Messiah! In the Gospel of Matthew, we read that an angel informed Joseph that Jesus would save his people from their sins. In the Gospel of John, we read that the Baptist declared that Jesus was "The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" Likewise, in Paul's second letter to the Christians of Corinth, we read: "For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ." He also wrote to the saints at Philippi that he regarded everything that he had done in terms of his adherence to the tenets of the Torah to be worthless garbage! Paul wanted to be found in Christ - "not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith."
Nevertheless, we find what is probably the most eloquent expression of this teaching in Paul's letter to the Christians at Rome. He wrote: "But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus."
Paul continued his thought by comparing a Christian's righteousness to the kind of righteousness which was imputed by God to Abraham because of his faith in God's promises to him. Paul said that this imputation of righteousness to Abraham was also done for the sake of all of the Christians whom Christ would someday make his heirs. He wrote: "to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." Continuing, Paul noted that God had demonstrated his love for us in that "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." He went on to observe that just as sin had been introduced into the world through one man, Adam, that mankind would be made righteous through Jesus Christ! Paul wrote: "just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous."
Finally, in the epistle to the Hebrews, we are told that Jesus of Nazareth had been "tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin." Moreover, a little later in the same letter, we read that Christ had "appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him."
This is "The Glorious Exchange" indicated in the title of this post! We (Christians) should all be grateful that our sins were imputed to Jesus Christ, and that his righteousness has been imputed to us! Moreover, just as our death was imputed to him, his life has been imputed to us! In short, this is what has enabled us to stand before God clean and righteous - to have hope and life!
This is a perceptive statement on an important topic - a topic I seldom see discussed in such detail. While this post aligns my understanding of imputation, I recently discovered that the concept is more complex than I thought and caused me to revisit it. David Bentley Hart is a theologian for whom I have much respect. And in an article he wrote about Paul, he stated that Paul did not believe in imputed righteousness. I was taken aback. Hart did not explain further. I wrote to him about this statement, and he did not respond. He had just published a translation of the New Testament, so I read how he translated the passages that describe imputation.
ReplyDeleteI cannot speak in his name, but I believe that he sees imputation from a certain angle. He sees it as a double-entry accounting transaction. We are credited with the righteousness of Jesus and Jesus is debited with our sin. And I believe he objects to a certain sense in which some may use the word “impute.” Augustine apparently believed in something called “infused righteousness” and he defined this as follows: "In Augustine's view, God bestows justifying righteousness upon the sinner in such a way that it becomes part of his or her person." In other words, we are not only accounted as righteous, but we become inherently and intrinsically righteous. If I am receiving this issue correctly, I agree with Hart and disagree with Augustine. And my view is based on the term for imputation as translated by Hart. Instead of “impute” he uses “to account as” or some syntactically appropriate variation using the verb “to account.”
I believe it is a grievous error for Christians to see themselves as now inherently righteous as Jesus Christ was. No, we are all still sinners struggling to be like Jesus and falling short. There is a bookkeeping methodology that makes us “accounted” as righteous but inherently we are still in need of sanctification. We must realistically and humbly keep ourselves and the books separate, or we might be inclined to erroneously believe that we have no need to eschew sin – that we are not free of sin in the accounting sense but also in the ontological sense, which, if it is not delusional, borders on blasphemous.
I must say I have never met anyone who overtly claimed to be inherently and existentially righteous because of the transference of the perfection of Jesus to them. But Agustine’s view may be reflected among Reformed churches. I have not researched that far. I think most people get the idea of imputation right. But I do enjoy semantics and I think this is a topic where semantics is critical.