Imputed righteousness

Transcription

1 Imputed righteousness By grace and faith in Christ alone Morning Worship, Lord s Day 10 th May, 9.30am Rev D. Rudi Schwartz 1 Bible Readings New Testament: Romans 4:1 12, Old Testament: Psalm 32 Hymns/Songs Main Points 1. Approach: All people that on earth do dwell 2. Forgiveness of sins: Not what I am, O Lord 3. Thanksgiving: When morning guilds the skies 4. Response: Before the throne of God above 1. Introduction: a short summary of the Gospel 2. God accredits righteousness by grace alone a. Background b. David c. Non Jews d. Jews 3. Infused righteousness and the Roman Church 4. Conclusion 1. Introduction: a short summary of the Gospel In his death on the cross, Jesus Christ fulfilled and replaced the Old Testament sacrificial system. He offered up himself as the supreme, once for all sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood. By his one act of righteousness, salvation as a free gift is for all who believe. In being delivered up to death (interposed; taste), Jesus accomplished several things: He paid the penalty of sin. In his body Jesus Christ bore the sins of the world so that humanity might receive forgiveness and that their sin would be imputed to Christ s account, in order that Christ s righteousness might be 1 Feel free to copy, quote or duplicate this document.

2 Imputed righteousness by faith and grace alone 2 reckoned to their account. He was the propitiation of God s wrath against sin. He broke the power of sin by paying the ransom price so that believers could be free from slavery to sin. He removed the pollution of sin by making men clean through his blood. He destroyed the partition of sin to reconcile human beings to God and put them back into a right relationship with him, so that they may never again be separated from God. In the chapter of Roman we read today the word accredit is repeated over and over again. The concept is also found right through the Old Testament. Another word for this concept is reckon or account. In theology we use the word impute, the standard statement is the God imputes to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Impute: Impute has a cousin in the word compute, that s why we have reckon and account or accredit. A thing is reckoned as or to be something, i.e. as benefited for or equivalent to something, as having the like force and weight. To reckon or account. This word deals with reality. If I logizomai or reckon that my bank book has $25 in it, it has $25 in it. Otherwise I am deceiving myself. This word refers to facts not suppositions. 2. God accredits righteousness by grace alone a. Background The synonym verb in Hebrew used for the Greek word here has two basic meanings throughout the OT. One is count, value, calculate. The second is plan, think out, conceive, invent. The first encompasses the bringing together of numbers and quantities and values with an eye to weighing or evaluating or calculating. The second encompasses the bringing together of ideas and plans for some intended project. In some occurrences of the word it means to reckon or credit something (as something) to someone s account. This is what one finds in Gen. 15:6: Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6) God credited (or reckoned, imputed) Abraham s faith in God to him as righteousness. A second instance of this construction appears in 2 Sam. 19:20. Shimei, the Benjaminite who had led a revolt against David, now comes before a restored David and pleads for mercy. His plea to the king is let my lord not reckon to me [my] wrongdoing. When we now go to Romans 4 all of these serve as a background to understand what the term accredited or reckon means. This chapter is an extended

3 Imputed righteousness by faith and grace alone 3 exposition of Genesis 15:6 in which the text is quoted three times and the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew word counted is quoted eleven times. In this chapter Paul argues that salvation comes only through faith for Abraham, then David, then the Gentiles, then for those under the Law. b. David In the case of King David, Paul refers to David s blessedness and joyous relief at having his sins against Bathsheba and Uriah forgiven and an undeserved righteousness bestowed upon him, as described in Psalm 32:1, 2. Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. (Psalm 32:1 2) Paul introduces this Psalm of penitence where David pleaded for God s forgiveness in verse 6 and quotes its opening two verses in verses 7, 8: Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him. (Romans 4:7 8) Paul points to Psalm 32:2 and its use of the term impute, count or reckon because David had broken at least four of the Ten Commandments outright when he coveted Bathsheba, committed adultery, murdered Uriah, and lied about it and the Old Testament sacrificial system made no provision for such premeditated sin. But anyone who sins defiantly, whether native born or alien, blasphemes the Lord, and that person must be cut off from his people. (Numbers 15:30) This is why David cried in Psalm 51:16, 17: For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. David s case was hopeless. There was nothing he could do but cast himself on God s mercy. And this is what David did by faith and thus God forgave his transgressions, covered his sin, and did not count, or impute, his sins against him. In effect God credited him as righteous apart from works, as Paul said in Romans 4:6. Regarding this, F. F. Bruce, a great expositor of the Word of God, says of Psalm 32: And if we examine the remainder of the Psalm to discover the ground on which he was acquitted, it appears that he simply acknowledged his guilt and cast himself in faith upon the mercy of God. Paul here calls David blessed, and David twice calls himself blessed in Psalm 32 because when there was no work that could possibly atone for his sins, he was forgiven on the basis of faith. So the principle of imputed righteousness was mightily illustrated in the life of Israel s greatest king a man after [God s] own heart. Likewise, nothing you and I can ever do can atone for our sins. Our only hope is the righteousness of God [that] has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe (Romans 3:21, 22).

4 Imputed righteousness by faith and grace alone 4 c. Non Jews In respect to Gentiles, Paul argues in verses 9 12 of Romans 4 that Abram was saved by faith while he was a Gentile, and therefore the faith principle is universal. Paul shows that Genesis 15:6 occurred at least fourteen years before Abram was circumcised, and thus he was still a Gentile, or non Jew. Therefore both Jews and Gentiles have always been saved by faith. d. Jews Paul also makes a similar argument in respect to those under the Law. Paul explains in verse 13 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. The historical fact is, as Paul has written in Galatians 3:17, the Law came 430 years after Abraham was made heir to the promise by faith and there is thus no way the Law could invalidate or restrict the scope of that promise. To make the promise conditional on obedience to the Law, which was not even hinted at when the promise was given, would nullify the whole promise. Righteousness, and its promised benefits, has always come by faith to those who live by faith! Don t be fooled, says Paul in effect, the principle of faith transcends the Law. Abram was credited as righteous because of his faith. So was David. Righteousness through faith preceded the Jewish people and the Law. Salvation comes only through faith. That is the way it has always been. 3. Infused righteousness and the Roman Church It is not my intention to give you a completely worked out dissertation of the issue as understood by the Roman Church. But this whole issue is seen in the life of a brilliant scholar, and author of a theological dictionary in the previous century. H. Cremer was the son of a teacher in Unna. His mother, Louise, was the daughter of a Jewish merchant, who had been converted to Christianity with his family. Cremer became a student of a fellow named Beck. Cremer wrestled with the dogmatic and homiletical question how he could rightly preach penitence and forgiveness to a congregation which was living self righteously and complacently in open sin. His mentor, Beck, rejected the view that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer and that justification is something which a just pronounced, or accredited. Beck argued that Scripture never says that the divine justification takes place through a legal pronouncing of the sinner to be righteous. He said justification is not an act of imputation by God; it is a creative act of divine power. He says: The righteousness of divine grace does not merely give believers remission of sins as pardoning grace but also gives them as endowing grace the righteousness which is necessary to life, i.e., righteousness as a gift, i.e., as a new disposition.

5 Imputed righteousness by faith and grace alone 5 This essential righteousness works itself out in the life of believers. This is what Rome calls infusion. The righteousness of Christ is poured into me so that I can become like Him and work out his righteousness to become mine. Righteousness is therefore a lifelong process. What triggers it are the sacraments of baptism and penance. For the Roman Church, infused righteousness either gradually dissipates as the believer takes part in worldly sins or is enhanced by good works. If the believer dies without having the fullness of righteousness, coming in part from the last rites, he or she will temporarily spend time in purgatory until the sinful status is purged from his or her record. Although the sinner is justified by the justice of Christ, inasmuch as the Redeemer has merited for him or her grace of justification, nevertheless he or she is formally justified and made holy by his or her own personal justice and holiness. The Roman Church rejects the teaching of imputed righteousness as being a present reality. Let s go back to Cremer. He saw that something must be wrong in his theology. He noted that the proclamation of grace, not the seriousness of law, is the power of penitence. He thus resolved to preach more strongly the gospel of God s great love, grace and compassion in Jesus Christ who died to be our righteousness to his congregation. In Cremer s view there was not enough about grace and justification. He devoted two years to the study of the Scripture on this issue. His biblical study of the issue led him to see that the Reformers were right, not Beck. He understood that the judicial activity of God by which man is freed from the guilt and bondage of sin and thereby acknowledged and reckoned as a righteous is a divine verdict, having the special content of being in a state of justification because of divine pardon. God s grace in the crucified and resurrected Christ is favour, kindness, and compassion. It is the manifested favour of God to a sinful individual, which, proceeding from freedom, rules out legal claims, and unhindered by guilt, meets sin with forgiveness. 4. Conclusion Therewith I have increasingly learned to admire the sure beat of the evangelical church, which by the way of direct confession of faith has known before us what we have had to establish as truth by our researches. It was important that I should and could test these studies of mine in parish work. This then, my dear brother and sister in the Lord, takes us to the verse in Romans 4: The words it was credited to him [referring to Abraham] were written not for him alone, but also for us, 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. (Romans 4:23 25) Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ unties my with Him, so that what He did for me becomes mine through faith: He died for my sins; He was raise to life for my justification in other words, to put it in the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith: Because God call me to Him, He freely justifies me not by infusing righteousness into my, but by pardoning my sins, and by accounting (or imputing) and accepting my person as righteous. This is not for anything created in me, or done by me, but for Christ s sake alone. My imputes righteousness does not rest on my faith itself as if the act of believing deserves

6 Imputed righteousness by faith and grace alone 6 God s pardon; I am purely justified because God imputes, or accredits to my the obedience and satisfaction of Christ.