The good news of imputation.
The good news of imputation.
A brief word on the gospel of God’s non-reckoning of sin with the help of Horatius Bonar.
In 2 Corinthians 5, the apostle Paul refers to the “ministry of reconciliation” as that which God the Father establishes through his Son Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:17–18). This, of course, is something that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have been cooking up from “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24; Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:20; Rev. 13:8). Ever since the Fall, the entire cosmos has been treated to the Trinitarian resolve to redeem all of creation from sin and darkness. Such is what the apostle has in mind when he clues us in on how that divine work of reconciliation is brought about. How does God go about “reconciling the world to himself”? By “not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor. 5:19). “Counting” is a Greek word that can also be translated as “impute,” meaning “to credit,” “to reckon,” or “to number among.” To put it succinctly, then, God in Christ brings about the ministry of reconciliation by not reckoning you and me as sinners. In an eternally gracious surprise, he has chosen not to credit our sin against us.
Now, how is it possible that an infinitely holy, all-knowing God would “not count our trespasses against us”? Don’t we deserve judgment? Don’t we deserve to be punished? How does it make sense that the one who is fully and eternally righteous could regard the likes of us who are ceaselessly unrighteous as though we deserved anything other than divine justice? Well, Paul tells us. He resolves the tension of God’s “non-imputation” or non-reckoning of sin by explaining where those sins went. “For our sake,” Paul writes, “he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). The reason your transgressions weren’t credited to you, the reason you didn’t have to pay for them was that all your sin and mine was laid on Jesus’s shoulders. God’s divine justice for the wrongs you and I committed was poured out on Christ alone. The Son became sin for us.
This is, perhaps, the most foundational truth in all of Scripture. It is certainly the most staggering. Christ himself took all of the punishment that our sin deserved, bearing it “in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:24). He has “redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us,” Paul declares elsewhere (Gal. 3:13). The naked and disfigured body of the Lord Jesus hanging in shame on the cross was no less the King of Glory who, at that very moment, was resolving the problem of sin by becoming sin for us. Pegged to a tree he spoke into being, the Lord of all endures a penalty he least of all deserved. He suffers under the weight of the Father’s wrath for crimes you and I perpetrated. He paid the price for our rebellion.
Yet, it is precisely on that cross where the Christ of God is reckoned a sinner that we find the heart of the good news of imputation. And more to the point, we find the heart of the good news itself. “The things that He did not do were laid to His charge,” writes Scottish churchman Horatius Bonar in his splendid work Everlasting Righteousness, “and He was treated as if He had done them all; so the things that He did do are put to our account, and we are treated by God as if we had done them all” (84). The gospel is an announcement detailing how the Creator of everything has taken up residence in a creation racked with sin and wretchedness and has seen to it that all of that sin and wretchedness is subsumed in his gracious substitution.
The sinless one takes the sinner’s spot. The King has been imputed a criminal’s fate that he might pardon criminals like you and me. He has been “numbered with the transgressors” in order that he might make “intercession for the transgressors” (Isa. 53:12). The Christ of God bears the brunt of all our iniquity, shouldering “the awesome weight of sin” for us, carrying “every bitter thought” and “every evil deed” on his bruised and bloodied back in order that we might be free and made righteous because of him. Bonar declares:
This righteousness is ‘reckoned’ or ‘imputed’ to all who believe; so that they are treated by God as if it were actually theirs. They are entitled to claim all that which such a righteousness can merit from God, as the Judge of righteous claims. It does not become ours gradually, or in fragments or drops; but is transferred to us all at once. It is not that so much of it is reckoned to us in proportion to the strength of our faith, or the warmth of our love, or the fervour of our prayers; but the whole of it passes over to us by imputation. (83)
What news could ever compare to this? Indeed, nothing. This is the best news of all. The news we need to hear over and over and over again. The gospel of imputation is the condensation of “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). It is the sum and substance of God’s revelation to us, the sum and substance of the Bible itself. On our own, there is nothing for us but wrath — wrath that is divine and deserved. But in and because of Christ, however, there is nothing but favor. “We believe, He imputes,” Bonar concludes, “and the whole transaction is done” (72). Sinner, it is finished. The exchange has been accomplished. You are righteous and complete in him. Amen.
Works cited:
Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness: or, How Shall Man Be Just With God? (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1993).