IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS

God’s method of salvation is imputation. Faith is accounted for righteousness in God’s way of dealing with sinners.

In Genesis 15, we read that God made a promise to Abraham concerning his descendants and Abraham believed the promise. God then credited (imputed) righteousness to Abraham. This point is revealed in Genesis and expounded by Paul in Romans 4—that God credits righteousness today just as He did with Abraham. God’s method of saving man has never changed. It is always in response to faith. When we have faith, God imputes righteousness to us.

If we come to God, He is not concerned with how good we have been but how good He can make us. And perfection is the key to consider. God can make us perfect and that is exactly what we are and have in Christ. God gives us the perfection of Christ as a gift, which is what “righteousness” is. And it is given in response to faith.

The latter part of Romans 4 ties Abraham’s experience to our own. God made Abraham a promise that, humanly speaking, was impossible—namely, that Abraham would be the father of a multitude although he had no children and was too old to father any. But Abraham believed this promise simply because God made it, and Abraham’s faith was credited as righteousness.

Paul says that, like Abraham, God has made a promise to us—that Christ died for our sins and was raised because of our justification. If we, like Abraham, believe this promise, we too will receive righteousness as a gift. Righteousness will be credited to our account just as it was to Abraham’s.

If we are to appreciate anything at all about salvation and the way God makes us righteous, we must think about the concept of imputed or credited righteousness. The only righteousness we will ever have is that which God gives us.

Dewayne Dunaway