The Importance of Imputations; Gal.
2:16; Gen. 2:17
We have to understand
imputations or we will not understand the doctrine of justification by faith
alone. We have seen that the doctrine of imputation itself is built upon an
even more foundational doctrine, the doctrine of the integrity of God. We have
seen that what the righteousness of God approves the justice of God provides
through the grace of God, namely the fullness of blessing from God as a love
gift to the believer. That is on the positive side. At least since the fall the
blessing of God comes from the justice of God. That is our point of contact. On
the other hand, what the righteousness of God condemns the justice of God
judges, but always in the love of God so that the divine solution is provided
through the grace of God.
The basis for man’s
condemnation is not because of his personal sins. We are not condemned because
of our personal sins; we are condemned because of Adam’s original sin and its
imputation to us. Romans 5:12 NASB “Therefore, just as
through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death
spread to all men, because all sinned—” The verse begins with the phrase dia touto [dia touto]. dia
means through or for, it is really an idiom which means wherefore or therefore.
It is very strong, much stronger than the Greek word oun [o)un] which is the
normal word used for “therefore”; it is highlighting a conclusion. Literally it
means “for this reason.” For what reason? Paul is
going to explain the foundation for what he has just explained. In Romans 3
& 4 he explains man’s condemnation and he explains the basic doctrines
related to salvation—redemption, propitiation, reconciliation and the
imputation faith. So “therefore” indicates a conclusion. Everything Paul has
said up to this point is going to lead into what he says in these verses from
Here we are going to see a
comparison which is indicated in the next word, hosper
[w(sper], a comparative word translated as “as.” He is going
to draw a comparison between the first Adam and the second Adam. The term
“second Adam” is a title for the person of Jesus Christ. The first Adam was
created perfect; the second Adam was born perfect. The first Adam sinned; the
second Adam was sinless. The first Adam is the source of ruin and condemnation
for the human race; the second Adam is the source of eternal salvation for the
human race. The first Adam died as a result of his sin; the second Adam died as
a substitute for the sins of the world, not for His own sin. So what is set up
here in these nine verses is a contrast between the first Adam and the second
Adam in order to illustrate the significance of our salvation. “Therefore, just
as through one man sin entered into the world…” The verb translated “entered”
is the verb eiserchomai [e)iserxomai]
which means to enter, to go into. The significance revolves around the tense.
It is a culminative aorist tense which means that it
focuses on the cessation of the act, that this was an act that occurred in the
past, it has ceased, and the results go on. It focuses on the result of this.
As a result of this one man sin came into the world. It points out that sin
already existed. This is the implication. Sin already existed in the universe.
Where did it come from? It entered into the universe through the sin of the
angel Lucifer. Isaiah 14; Ezekiel 28 tell us of Lucifer’s
fall. In the garden Adam was perfect and sin was not in the present
world order at that time; it was perfect. Sin is introduced,
the door is opened by Adam. That is the thrust of this opening sentence.
How did this take place?
Genesis 1:26 NASB “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image,
according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over
the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’” When God created Adam and Eve he
began with Adam. [27] “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He
created him; male and female He created them. [28] God blessed them; and God
said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and
rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every
living thing that moves on the earth.’” So God creates man and places him in a
position over the earth. Man is the representative of God to everything on the
earth and man’s responsibility is to rule over the natural order and to fill
the earth through procreation, and the human race would then be in a position
to dominate and rule the earth. But something happened. When God created man He
created him in perfect environment and the first years were the years of human
perfection. Adam was created in the image of God. Just as God is perfect
righteousness, Adam was perfect righteousness. God is perfect righteousness and
perfect righteousness has affinity and rapport with perfect righteousness, so
God could love man personally in the garden. So divine love is the point of
contact between God and man in the garden of Eden.
Justice was not an issue because man was perfectly righteous. The only area
where justice functioned in the garden of Eden was in
relationship to the mandate on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2:16, 17 NASB
“The LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may
eat freely;
Spiritual death brought
ruin and condemnation not only on mankind but all of nature. It had
ramifications for every aspect of nature. Spiritual death is the immediate
penalty that comes from Adam’s disobedience. The result of that is ultimate
physical death which goes throughout the whole natural order, both man and
animal. It also results in condemnation for all of nature. But the immediate
penalty that God emphasises here through an infinitive
construct syntax is that immediately “You will die.” That is what is going to
happen in chapter three.
That is the only
indication of divine justice in the garden. Divine personal love is the point
of contact and is the motivation of the essence of God. Divine love supplied
all of their needs, but divine love could not provide eternal security; it
could not guarantee that they would stay in that environment for the remainder
of their days. Divine love could provide them with doctrine to make the right
choices but divine love could not protect them from their own volition and
ensure that they would make the right decisions. What we learn from this is
that while divine love was their point of contact divine love could not provide
security.
What we have then is the
fall. At the fall Satan comes along and has decided that the weakest link in
the system here is going to be the woman. So he is going to come up and entice
the woman with the fruit. He begins in Genesis chapter three by challenging
what God has said. This is always the way in which Satan operates. He questions
the veracity of God’s word: How do we know that God really said that, and is
that really in your best interest? That is what he indicates by his opening
salvo in verse 1: “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of
the garden’?” The woman’s response shows that she had not paid complete
attention in her Bible classes in listening to the Lord. Genesis 3:2, 3 NASB
“The woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we
may eat;
The woman takes the fruit
and eats, and at that point she falls, she is now a sinner. But Adam is not a
sinner. Adam is the head of the race and the responsible party here. The woman
calls the man and gives the fruit to her husband and he makes a choice between
God and the woman, and he decides to go with his companion and he eats. Genesis
3:7 NASB “The result: Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and
they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made
themselves loin coverings.” Adam’s sin is critical from two perspectives. First
of all, it is a personal sin. But there is something else about Adam’s sin that
is unique, and that is that it is an original sin. It has a unique place in
relationship to the entire human race because Adam’s sin as our seminal head
and our federal head. So Adam’s decision has an impact on all of his decisions.
Seminally means that the entire human race is physically related to Adam. We
are an organic whole. Every human being is genetically tied to Adam. Federal
headship has to do with the fact that he is designated as our representative. Federal
headship means their decision is our decision, good or bad; it means federal
representation. So Adam’s sin is our sin. When Adam sinned it is our sin
because he is our federal head. But we are also physically related to him, so these
two come together. In theology these two systems are usually demonstrated as
one or the other, and that you hold either to a seminal view or a federal view.
But they are both present in Scripture, there is Scriptural support for both,
and both are true.
At the fall things
changed. Prior to the fall love was man’s point of contact. After the fall love
could no longer be our point of contact because God was (and still is) perfect
righteousness and man lost perfect righteousness and is now minus R. Because of
that there is a divider between God and man which is called the sin barrier. On
God’s side what the righteousness of God rejects the justice of God condemns. It
was necessary for God to condemn man because man did not measure up to God’s perfect
standard.
Did Adam’s sin advance the
plan of God? Never! Sin never advances the plan of God. What happened at Adam’s
fall because of sin the justice of God now condemns man. Because man is now
condemned divine love comes into act as the motivator but is no longer the
point of contact because justice stands in the way of divine integrity. God’s
love motivates God to provide a solution based on grace. Grace is unmerited and
undeserved favour, it is the plan and the policy of
God. This grace solution is based on the understanding of imputation.
Rom 4:8 quotes from the
Psalms: “BLESSED IS THE MAN WHOSE SIN THE
LORD WILL NOT [impute] TAKE INTO
ACCOUNT.” We have sinned, and what that
verse is telling us is that God does not impute to us our iniquities. That is
not the basis for our condemnation. The basis for our condemnation is Adam’s
original sin. Romans 5:12 NASB “Therefore, just as through one
man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to
all men, because all sinned—” What kind of death is “death through sin”? The
command in Genesis 2 focused on spiritual death, not physical death. Physical
death is a consequence but physical death is not the issue. We see a very
similar passage over in 1 Corinthians 15 where the subject is resurrection. 1 Cor
Physical death is the
consequence of sin; spiritual death is the penalty. As a result of the penalty
of spiritual death there is physical death in the universe. That means that
there was no physical death in the universe prior to Adam’s fall. We might ask:
What about all the dinosaurs and fossils that we are told existed before man
and had to die before man? Evolution is 180 degrees antithetical to
Christianity. You can’t merge them, mix them, or try to figure out some way of
compromise at all because the Bible says death is a physical consequence, the
result of Adam’s sin, and it is specifically related to the cross. The cross
resolves the problem of physical death and that is the point of 1 Corinthians
15 which concludes: “but thanks be to God, who gives
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” That is, victory over physical
death. That is the point of the cross. Physical death is part of the consequence
of sin. If physical death happened before Adam sinned then physical death had
nothing to do with sin, therefore it was not necessary for Christ to go to the
cross. That is why evolution is a very subtle attack on the cross; it is a satanic
attack on the very foundation of Christianity and the Bible. So
we must either take the Bible literally and everything it says, from Genesis
1:1 on, or throw the whole thing out, because the Bible is an integrated whole.
1
Corinthians 15 deals with physical death. We know that because it focuses on the whole issue of resurrection and
physical life, but Romans 5 deals primarily with spiritual death. 1 Corinthians deals with the consequence of the penalty for sin;
Romans 5 deals with the penalty itself which is spiritual death.
The doctrine of divine imputation
The English word “imputation”
comes from the Latin word imputarus. The Latin word means to reckon, to attribute, to
ascribe something to someone, or to charge something to one’s account. It is a
commercial concept and it is a legal concept where you have taken on the full
legal responsibilities for the payment of a debt. The apostle Paul uses the
word in this sense in Philemon 1:18 NASB “But if he has wronged you
in any way or owes you anything, charge that to my account.” Imputation is foundational
to understanding grace. ellogeo [e)llogew] is a
cognate of the verb logizomai [logizomai] and these are the basic words used for imputation in
the Greek New Testament. In the Greco-Roman world at that time these words
indicated a tremendous amount of responsibility and legal accountability. So
Paul assumes that responsibility and that legal accountability on the part of
the escaped slave Onesimus.
Theologically this has
great implications. Just as Onesimus was a slave in the
physical realm so we are slaves in the spiritual realm. The apostle Paul took
on the debt of the slave Onesimus, and now that was
Paul’s debt. In the spiritual realm Jesus Christ will have our debt imputed to
Him on the cross so that our minus-R is now imputed to Him with the result that
eventually His plus-R, His perfect righteousness, can be charged to our
account. Now what we have on our account, on our ledger, is perfect
righteousness. That is imputation in a nutshell.
Theologically the word “imputation”
is used to describe an act of God—specifically from the integrity of God or the
divine justice—whereby either condemnation or blessing is ascribed, attributed,
reckoned, given or imposed on the human race. It is the function of the justice
of God directed towards man and is the foundation of all of
God’s plan for mankind. In the Greek we have the word logizomai, and in the Hebrew the word chashab which means to think, to
count, to reckon, to attribute. One example in the Old Testament is Leviticus
17:3, 4 NASB “Lev 17:3 “Any man from the house of Israel who
slaughters an ox or a lamb or a goat in the camp [for food], or who slaughters
it outside the camp,
When talking about the
theological concept of imputation there are three factors. They are the source,
which is God Himself, the nature of the imputation, and the recipient of the
imputation. There are two different categories of imputation that we must
understand: real imputations and judicial imputations.