Intro
Have you ever read something, and when you finished, you asked yourself, “What did I just read? What did these paragraphs say?” A common reason for that is we did not know what some of the words meant, so we just skimmed over them.
There is a word in our text today that is tempting to skim over. Yet it is essential to understanding Romans 4. If we are not clear on what it means, we can read the chapter over and over again, and still not understand the message. The word in the Greek is logizomai. It occurs 11 times in Romans 4.i It is the heart and soul of the chapter.
Depending on the context, logizomai can mean: to count, to think, to evaluate, to credit, or to place to one’s account.ii In Romans 4, the context indicates the word should be understood as to credit or to place to one’s account. The NIV consistently translates it that way, using the word “credited.” Follow with me as we read Romans 4:1-3 from the NIV translation: “What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? 2 If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. 3 What does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited [logizomai] to him as righteousness.’”iii Last week we talked extensively about the first part of verse 3: “Abrahm believed God.” This week we want to make sure we understand the last part of that verse: “and it was credited to him as righteousness.’”iv
When you deposit your paycheck, the bank credits it to your account. That money is considered yours, and you are treated as having that resource. Even if a benefactor deposited it to your account instead of you working it out, once it is deposited to your account it is considered yours. We will see in Romans 4 that in justification by faith, God gives us the righteousness of Christ—he credits it to our account, and we are treated accordingly. The KJV sometimes translates logizomai with the word impute.v “‘Impute’ means to put something to somebody’s account.”vi
There are three major imputations in the Bible:
(1) The sin of Adam was imputed to the human race.
(2) The sin of the world (including your sin) was imputed to Christ on the cross.
(3) The righteousness of Christ is imputed to those who believe in him. We will talk about the imputation of Adam’s sin when we get to Romans 5. The imputation of Christ’s righteousness to believers is the focus of our text. But our understanding of that is enhanced when we understand the imputation of our sin to Christ on the cross. So, I want to process that first.
I. IMPUTATION OF THE WORLD’S SIN TO CHRIST ON THE CROSS
God was teaching this truth through the Old Testament sacrifices. For example, Leviticus 4 describes the rituals for a sin offering. Leviticus 4:4 instructs the sinner: “He is to present the bull at the entrance to the tent of meeting before the Lord. He is to lay his hand on its head and slaughter it there before the Lord.” Verse 15 gives similar instruction for a community except it is the city elders who lay hands on the head of bull. What is this laying on of hands about in those verses? The sin is being imputed to the bull, and then punished in him rather than in the
people.
On the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 two goats were brought before the Tabernacle. One was slaughtered as a sin offering, and the blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat (v. 15). This symbolized Christ’s atonement of sin on the cross.vii Then the high priest took the other goat. Verse 21 gives this instruction to him: “He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head.” This principle of imputation is being taught to the people of God.viii This live goat is then sent into the wilderness carrying the sins of the people.
The prophet Isaiah saw the fulfillment of these revelations in Messiah. In Isaiah 53:4-6 he said of Christ, “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” “And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
That is imputation. Our sins being credited to Christ who bore the punishment on the cross.ix Our sins were credited to his account, and he paid the debt. First Peter 2:24 says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.” Second Corinthians 5:21 states the two-sided transaction of the cross: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” One side of the transaction is the crediting or imputing of our sin to Christ who would bear its just punishment. The other side of the transaction is the crediting or imputing of Christ’s righteousness to all who believe in him.x
In this way justice is done, and the sinner is spared the punishment of his sin. God, the Son, bore it in his place. In this way, God is “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).
Can you understand why the Gospel is good news? Our message is not: try harder and become a better, moral person. The world often assumes that is our message. Of course, that would not be good news because no one can better himself enough to come up to God’s standard. Making that erroneous assumption about our message, sinners often reject the gospel before they even hear it. The good news is that Jesus took your place on the cross—your sins were imputed to him, and he bore the just punishment for those sins. What is offered to the sinner is this great exchange: You can receive the righteousness of Christ as a gift of grace when you put your faith in Christ and trust him for your salvation. That is the best of all possible news.
II. IMPUTATION OF CHRIST’S RIGHTEOUSNESS TO THE BELIEVER
Romans 4:3 is the key verse for this chapter: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” God imputed righteousness (the righteousness of Christ) to his account.
Look with me at the other places in Romans 4 that Paul uses this word logizomai. The NIV translates it credit or credited.
Verse 4: “Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation.”
Verse 5: “However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.”
Verse 6: “David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works.”
Verse 7: “Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
Verse 8: “Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against [logizomai] them.” KJV translates this with the word impute.
Verse 9: “Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness.”
Verse 10: “Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before!”
Verse 11: “And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them.”
Verse 22: “This is why ‘it was credited to him as righteousness.’”
Verse 23: “The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone,”
Verse 24: “but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.”
In Romans 4:3, Paul is using Genesis 15:6 to prove justification by faith: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him [logizomai] as righteousness.” Then in Romans 4:6-8 he turns to another Old Testament passage to support his argument: Psalm 32:1-2. There logizomai is used to talk about God not counting a person’s sins against him. Romans 4:8: “Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against [logizomai] them.”
By doing this, Paul is “using the Jewish interpretive principle gezerah shavah, which links different texts containing the same key word or phrase.”xi In this case the word is logizomai. The passage in Psalm 32 deals with the negative side of justification in which God does not impute the believer’s sin to him. Those sins were imputed to Christ on the cross where divine justice was served. The Genesis 15:6 addresses the positive side of justification in which God imputes Christ’s righteousness to the believer.
The righteousness credited to the believer’s account is something greater than the innocence Adam had before his fall. Christ’s righteousness is tried and proven, perfect and pure, just and right in every way. What was going on between the birth of Christ and his death on the cross. Among other things, Jesus was living a perfectly righteous life in full obedience to the Father. In John 8:29 he could truthfully say of the Father, “I always do what pleases him.” Hebrews 4:15 confirms this when it says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with
our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” A perfect, obedient life without ever yielding to temptation. In biblical justification, that perfect righteousness is credited to the believer.xii We might say a believer is justified by works, but it is not his own works (Isa. 64:6). It is the works of Christ imputed to him.
III. IMPUTATION IN THE CONTEXT OF GOD’S WHOLE WORK OF SALVATION
There are a number of dynamics involved in the salvation God gives to those who believe in Christ. It takes the whole Bible to reveal all these different aspects of God’s work in our behalf. Some passage clarify salvation as God’s act of redemption in which he pays the price to purchase us out of the bondage of sin.xiii Some passages reveal the necessity of atonement or propitiation.xiv Other passages like Romans 4 deal with our legal standing before the court of justice. Still others explain the transformation of the new birth. It takes the whole revelation of Scripture to understand what God has done for us in this great salvation. We must not focus on only one dynamic and ignore the others. We need the whole counsel of God to understand what God has done for us in Christ.xv
When you place your faith in Christ, several things happen simultaneously. As Romans 4 explains, Christ’s righteousness is imputed to you. At that moment, you stand perfectly righteous before the most holy God.xvi What else happens? You are brought under the headship of Christ and into the everlasting covenant of grace. We will talk about that in Romans 5. What else happens? You are born again (John 3:3). The divine seed is planted (1 Pet. 1:23), and a sanctification process begins that will ultimately consummate in the perfection of the resurrection. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” A transformation occurs in your innermost being that will ultimately lead to perfection spirit, soul, and body.
But what we must understand about Romans 4 is that in this passage, Paul is not dealing with the transformative side of our salvation.xvii He is not dealing with the regeneration, sanctification, and glorification that establishes righteousness in our ontological being.xviii He is only dealing with our legal standing before the divine court of justice. Our sin is not imputed to us. It was imputed to Christ and judged in him on the cross. The righteousness of Christ is imputed or credited to our account. So that, judicially, we stand perfectly righteous before God.
What are the practical implications of this revelation of imputation for Christians’ daily lives? Because of this marvelous act of grace on God’s part, we can come boldly to God’s throne with our petitions (Heb. 4:16). We have a defense against the accusations of Satan. Our sins were dealt with on the cross. We stand righteous in the spiritual realm. Out of that righteous standing, we can resist the devil and he will flee from us (James 4:7).
“Therefore, (Rom. 8:1), “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Condemnation is the opposite of justification. Justification is the positive verdict of not guilty. Condemnation is the negative verdict of guilty. They are both objective, legal realities. There may be subjective emotions attached to each. But neither is an emotion. When Satan launches an accusation against your mind, you will feel guilt if you don’t have the revelation taught in Romans 4. But when your faith is not in your own performance, but in the perfect performance
of Christ, you can reject those accusation with the solid evidence of the cross as the basis of that rejection. You can say and know it is objectively true: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The conviction of the Holy Spirit for personal disobedience is a different thing and is managed differently. But even then, God has made provision for your victory because 1 John 1:9 assures us: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Conclusion:
So, when you think of imputation (logizomai) think of the bookkeeping transaction that happened on the cross. In God’s bookkeeping system, the believer’s sin was credited to Christ’s account. Divine justice required the debt to be paid. Jesus paid it all at Calvary. In God’s bookkeeping system, Christ’s perfect righteousness was credited to your account when you placed your faith in Jesus. Live in that objective reality. Minister out of that objective reality. You can count on God to honor it.xix
ENDNOTES:
i Romans 4:3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 22, 23, 24.
ii Barclay Newman, Jr., “A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament” in The Greek New Testament, Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Carlo Martini, and Bruce Metzger, eds., 4th ed. (United Bible Society, 1983), s.v. “Logizomai,” 108.
iii All Scripture quotes are from the New International Version (2011), unless indicated otherwise.
iv “CREDITED TO HIM (v. 3) translates a Hebrew phrase (the verb hashab followed by the preposition le) that means “to assign something to a person for his benefit that he does not possess” (emphasis Vanlaningham’s). Michael Rydelnik and Michael Vanlaningham, eds., The Moody Bible Commentary (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2014), s.v. “Romans” by Michael G. Vanlaningham, 1750.
v English words like “counted,” “reckoned,” and “imputed” in the KJV and “accounted” in the NKJV, and “credited” in the NIV “all add up to the idea of a bookkeeping transaction on the part of God.” Donald Grey Barnhouse, Romans, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 205. With the KJV using the term “imputed,” theologians refer to the subject as the doctrine of imputation.
vi D. M. Lloyd-Jones, Romans: An Exposition of Chapters 3:20-4:25 Atonement and Justification, 1970 (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2015), 167. In Philemon 1:8 Paul uses a synonym of logizomai which also means to impute (ellogeo). This verse helps clarify what it means to impute.
vii Cf. Heb. 10:1.
viii “After being chosen by lot (vv. 7-8), the animal is brought before the high priest, who places both his hands on the goat’s head and confesses all the nation’s sins. This action symbolically transfers the sns to the goat (v. 21). “Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, NICOT, R. K. Harrison and R. L. Hubbard, Jr., eds. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 233.
ix 1 Pet. 3:18: “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.”
x “As God goes to the cross for the legal basis to remit sin, so He goes to the same cross for the legal basis to impute righteousness.” Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, Vol. VII, 1948 (Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 1974) 193.
xi Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 422. This rule is “attributed to the great Jewish teacher Hillel.” “This hermeneutical rule argued that when the same word, expression or theme is found in two or more passages of Scripture, wherever located and however diverse, the same considerations apply to them all.” Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans, 499.
xii Many Christians feel that God just tolerates them because of his love. This thinking hinders their effectiveness in life and ministry. When God sees the perfect righteousness of Christ on his children, he is pleased.
xiii Cf. Gal. 3:13; Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14; Titus 2:14; 1 Pet. 1:18; Rev. 5:9.
xiv Cf. Rom. 3:25; 5:11; Col. 1:20; 1 John 2:2; 4:10. See also Richard W. Tow, Authentic Christianity: Studies in 1 John (Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press, 2019), 43-49,
xv Cf. Acts 20:27. Some groups put all the emphasis on imputation. Others make covenant their focus. But it is a balanced diet of teaching on each of these aspects of salvation that produces the strongest disciples.
xvi As far as your legal standing before the divine court of justice, you will never stand more righteous than the day you place your faith in Christ.
xvii Imputation does not change the internal character of the one who believes. It is a legal declaration of righteousness. Regeneration begins the transformation of internal character. The Holy Spirit then leads the believer through a growth process (2 Pet. 3:18) which is usually referred to as sanctification. At the resurrection of the body, the work of salvation is completed.
xviii The Catholic doctrine of justification “is set forth in the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent (Session VI, “Decree Concerning Justification”) and is summed up in Chapters VI and VII.” Murray writes, “for Rome, justification is not a forensic or declarative act but consists in the sanctification and renewal of the inward man.” Their confusion of justification with regeneration, renovation, and sanctification tends to move their position toward a justification by works, the very thing Paul is disputing in Romans 4. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, vol. 1, NICNT, F. F. Bruce, ed., 1959 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 359-362.
xix I have concluded with an appeal to Christians. An appeal to those unsure of their salvation would be equally appropriate.
