Imputation of Righteousness

Waters also says, “Leithart also forthrightly rejects the Reformed doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer.”

I don’t do that either. What I have questioned, however, is whether we have exegetical grounds for distinguishing “imputation” as an act of reckoning from “justification” as a distinct declarative act. The picture often assumed is that in justification God engages in a double action: First, borrowing a common and Scriptural image, He “clothes us” in Christ’s righteousness; second, He views us so clothed, and declares that we are righteous. Imputation is the transfer of righteousness; justification is the declaration made on the basis of this transfer.

Some sort of picture like this must be in view when imputation is described as the “ground” or “basis” of God’s declaration that we are just. Hodge, for instance, says: “The ground of this justification in the case of the believing sinner is the imputation of the righteousness of Christ” (ST, vol 3, p. 147).

Robert Reymond emphasizes the simultaneity of imputation and declaration, but still sees the former as logically prior: For believers, “God pardons him of all his sins . . . and constitutes him righteous by imputing or reckoning the righteousness of Christ to him . . . . And on the basis of his constituting the ungodly man righteous by his act of imputation, God simultaneously declares the ungodly man to be righteous in his sight” (Systematic Theology, p. 742; Reymond’s emphasis). Reymond sees the imputation/constitution as the “actual act of justification,” and defends his distinction between this reckoning and declaration of pardon by appealing to Jesus’ words to the woman who washed his feet (Luke 7; p. 749, fn 56).

This distinction may be right, and maybe I’m straining at gnats. But I’m not convinced by Reymond’s appeal to Luke 7 and it seems to me that Paul regularly (though perhaps not exclusively) uses LOGIZOMAI (“reckon”) in a sense that is close to or actually is synonymous with “judge.” (You can find the posts if you search. Look for posts on “imputation.”) It seems to me that once the Father clothes us in His Son through the Spirit, there is nothing more to be done; that “investiture” simply is our justification, not the “basis” for it.

Though mainly an exegetical point, it does have systematic consequences, for if justification and imputation are two terms for the same act of God, then it rather dissolves the debate over the imputation of Christ’s active obedience.

On which, Hodge says: “the distinction between the active and passive obedience of Christ is, in one view, unimportant. As Christ obeyed in suffering, his sufferings were as much a part of his obedience as his observance of the precepts of the law. The Scriptures do not expressly make this distinction, as they include everything Christ did for our redemption under the term righteousness or obedience. The distinction becomes important when it is denied that his moral obedience is any part of the righteousness for which the believer is justified, or that his whole work in making satisfaction consisted in expiation or bearing the penalty of the law. This is contrary to Scripture, and vitiates the doctrine of justification as presented in the Bible.”

For what it’s worth, I don’t deny, and have never denied, that Christ’s perfect obedience is essential to His work of redemption; I have never denied that His obedience was essential to the righteousness that is ours in Him. No one I know denies this either.