Sermon Tone Analysis

Zechariah’s Fourth Vision

3 And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing ⌊before⌋ the angel of Yahweh; and Satan was standing on his right to accuse him.

2 But Yahweh said to Satan, “Yahweh rebukes you, O Satan! Yahweh who has chosen Jerusalem rebukes you!

Is this not a stick snatched from the fire?” 3 And Joshua was clothed in filthy garments and was standing ⌊before⌋ the angel.

4 And he answered and said to the ones standing ⌊before⌋ him, saying, “Remove the filthy garments from him.”

And he said to him, “See, I have taken away your guilt from you, and will clothe you with rich garments.”

5 And I said, “Let them put a clean headband on his head.”

And they put a clean headband on his head, and they clothed him with garments.

And the angel of Yahweh was standing by.

6 And the angel of Yahweh assured Joshua, saying, 7 “Thus says Yahweh of hosts: ‘If you will walk in my ways, and if you will keep my requirements, then you will judge my house, and you will also guard my courtyards, and I will give to you passageways among these that are standing here.

8 Listen, please, O Joshua the high priest, you and your companions that are sitting ⌊before⌋ you.

For the men are a sign that, look, I am going to bring my servant the Branch.

9 For consider, the stone that ⌊I set before⌋ Joshua, on one stone are seven eyes.

Look, ⌊I am going to engrave an inscription on it⌋,’ ⌊declares⌋ Yahweh of hosts, ‘and I will remove the guilt of that land in a single day. 10 On that day,’ ⌊declares⌋ Yahweh of hosts, ‘you will invite ⌊one another⌋ under the vine and under the fig tree.’

”

21 But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, being testified about by the law and the prophets—22 that is, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

For there is no distinction

3. The Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ to His People

The righteousness upon the ground of which God justifies the ungodly is, according to Paul, witnessed to in the OT (Rom 3:21).

In order to obtain the blessedness which comes from a right relation to God, the pardon or non-imputation of sin is necessary, and this takes place through the “covering” of sin (Ps 32:1, 2).

The nature of this covering by the vicarious bearing of the penalty of sin is made clear in Isa 53.

It is, moreover, the teaching of the OT that the righteousness which God demands is not to be found among men (Ps 130:3; 143:2; Isa 64:6).

Accordingly, the prophets speak of a righteousness which is not from man’s works, but which is said to be in Jeh or to come from Him to His people (Isa 32:16 f; 45:23 ff; 54:17; 58:8; 61:3; Jer 51:10; Hos 10:12).

This idea finds its clearest expression in connection with the work of the Messiah in Jer 33:16, where Jerus is called “Jeh our righteousness” because of the coming of the Messianic king, and in Jer 23:6 where the same name is given to the Messiah to express His significance for Israel.

Although the idea of the imputation of righteousness is not explicitly asserted in these passages, the idea is not merely that the righteousness spoken of is recognized by Jeh (Cremer), but that it comes from Him, so that Jeh, through the work of the Messiah, is the source of His people’s righteousness.

This idea is taken up by Paul, who makes explicit the way in which this righteousness comes to sinners, and who puts the idea of imputed righteousness at the basis of his doctrine of Justification.

By the righteousness of Christ Paul means Christ’s legal status, or the merit acquired by all that He did in satisfying the demands of God’s law, including what has been called His active and passive obedience.

Notwithstanding the fact that most of the modern expositors of Paul’s doctrine have denied that he teaches the imputation of Christ’s obedience, this doctrine has a basis in the apostle’s teaching.

Justification leads to life and final glorification (Rom 5:18; 8:30); and Paul always conceives the obtaining of life as dependent on the fulfilment of the law.

If, therefore, Christ secures life for us, it can only be in accordance with this principle.

Accordingly, the apostle emphasizes the element of obedience in the death of Christ, and places this act of obedience at the basis of the sinner’s justification (Rom 5:18).

He also represents the obedience of the cross as the culminating point of a life of obedience on Christ’s part (Phil 2:8).

Moreover, Paul affirms that our redemption from all the demands of the law is secured by the fact that Christ was born under law (Gal 4:4).

This cannot be restricted to the fact that Christ was under the curse of the law, for He was born under law and the result of this is that we are free from all of its demands.

This doctrine is also implied in the apostle’s teaching that Justification is absolutely gracious, taken in connection with the fact that it leads to a complete salvation.

The importance in Paul’s thought of the doctrine of the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the believer can be seen from the fact that the question how righteousness was to be obtained occupied a central place in his religious consciousness, both before and after his conversion.

The apostle’s conversion by the appearance of the risen Christ determined his conception of the true way of obtaining righteousness, since the resurrection of Christ meant for Paul the condemnation of his entire past search for righteousness by works of the law.

That the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the believer does lie at the basis of Paul’s doctrine of Justification can be further seen from the fact that Justification is absolutely free and unmerited so far as the sinner is concerned (Rom 3:24; 5:15; Gal 5:4; Tit 3:7); its object being one who is ungodly (Rom 4:5); so that it is not by works (Rom 3:20, 28; Gal 2:16; 3:11; 5:4; Phil 3:9); and yet that it is not a mere pardon of sin, but is a strictly “forensic” or judicial judgment freeing the sinner from all the claims of the law, and granting him the right to eternal life.

This last truth is plain because God’s retributive righteousness lies at the basis of Paul’s doctrine of Justification (Rom 2); is manifested in it (Rom 3:25 f); because Christ’s expiatory work is its ground (Rom 3:25); and because our redemption from the curse of the law rests upon Christ’s having borne it for us, and our redemption from all the demands of the law depends upon their fulfilment by Christ (Gal 3:13; 4:4).

Hence the gracious character of Justification, according to Paul, does not consist in its being merely a gracious pardon without any judicial basis (Ritschl); or in God’s acceptance of a subjective righteousness produced by Him in the sinner (Tobac); or in the acceptance of faith instead of a perfect righteousness (Cremer).

The gracious character of Justification consists for Paul in the fact that the righteousness on the ground of which God justifies the ungodly is a righteousness which is graciously provided by God, and which Paul contrasts with his own righteousness which comes from law works (Phil 3:9).

The sinner, therefore, is pardoned and accepted as a righteous person, not on account of anything in himself, but only on account of what Christ has done for him, which means that the merits of Christ’s suffering and obedience are imputed to the sinner as the ground of his justification.

This truth is explicitly affirmed by Paul, who speaks of God’s imputing righteousness without works, and of righteousness being imputed (Rom 4:6, 11).

The idea of the imputation of righteousness here is made clear by the context.

The one who is declared righteous is said to be “ungodly” (4:5).

Hence he is righteous only by God’s imputation of righteousness to him.

This is also clear from the contrast between imputation according to grace and according to debt (4:4).

He who seeks righteousness by works would be justified as a reward for his works, in antithesis to which, imputation according to grace would be the charging one with a righteousness which he does not possess.

Accordingly, at the basis of Justification there is a reckoning to the sinner of an objective righteousness.

This same idea is also implied and asserted by Paul in the parallel which he draws between Adam and Christ (Rom 5:18 f).

The apostle says that just as men are condemned on account of a sin not their own, so they are justified on account of a righteousness which is not their own.

The idea of imputed sin and imputed righteousness, as was said, is the precise point of the parallelism between condemnation in Adam and justification in Christ.

This is also the idea which underlies the apostle’s contrast of the Old and New Covenants (2 Cor 3:9).

The New Covenant is described as a “ministry of righteousness,” and contrasted with the Old Covenant which is described as a “ministry of condemnation.”

If, therefore, this last expression does not denote a subjective condition of men under the old dispensation, but their relation to God as objects of His condemnation, righteousness must denote the opposite of this relation to the law, and must depend on God’s judicial acquittal.

The same truth is expressed by Paul more concretely by saying that Christ has been “made unto us righteousness from God” (1 Cor 1:30).

Here the concrete mode of expression is chosen because Paul speaks also of Christ being our sanctification and redemption, so that an expression had to be chosen which would cover all of these ideas.

one of the clearest statements concerning this objective righteousness is Phil 3:9.

The apostle here affirms that the righteousness which the believer in Christ obtains is directly opposite to his own righteousness.

This latter comes from works of the law, whereas the former comes from God and through faith in Christ.

It is, therefore, objective to man, comes to him from God, is connected with the work of Christ, and is mediated by faith in Christ.

The idea clearly stated in this last passage of a righteousness which is objective to the sinner and which comes to him from God, i.e. the idea of a new legal standing given to the believer by God, explains the meaning, in most cases, of the Pauline phrase “righteousness of God.”

This phrase is used by Paul 9 t: Rom 1:17; 3:5, 21 f, 25 f; 10:3 (twice); 2 Cor 5:21.

It denotes the Divine attribute of righteousness in Rom 3:5, 25 f.

The customary exegesis was to regard the other instances as denoting the righteousness of a sinner which comes to him from God, in accordance with Phil 3:9.

More recently Haering, following Kölbing in general, has interpreted all these instances as denoting God’s justifying action.

But this interpretation is most strained in 2 Cor 5:21, where we are said to “become the righteousness of God,” and in Rom 10:3–6, where the righteousness of God is identified with the righteousness which comes from faith, this latter being contrasted with man’s own inward righteousness.

That a righteousness of man which he receives from God is here referred to, is confirmed by the fact that the reason given for the error of the Jews in seeking a righteousness from law works is the fact that the work of Christ has made an end of this method of obtaining righteousness (Rom 10:4).

This righteousness, therefore, is one of which man is the possessor.

The phrase, however, cannot mean a righteousness which is valid in God’s sight (Luther), although this thought is elsewhere expressed by Paul (Rom 3:20; Gal 3:11).

It means a righteousness which comes from God and of which He is the author.

This is not, however, by making man inwardly righteous, since all the above passages show the purely objective character of this righteousness.

It is the righteousness of Phil 3:9; the righteousness which God imputes to the believer in Christ.

Thus we “become the righteousness of God” in precisely the same sense in which Christ was “made to be sin” (2 Cor 5:21).

Since Christ was made sin by having the guilt of our sin imputed to Him so that He bore its penalty, Paul must mean that we “become the righteousness of God” in this same objective sense through the imputation to us of the righteousness of Christ.

In the same way, in Rom 10:3, the contrast between God’s righteousness and the Jew’s righteousness by works of the law shows that in each case righteousness denotes a legal status which comes from God by imputation.

It is this same imputed righteousness which makes the gospel the power of God unto salvation (Rom 1:17), which has been revealed by the law and the prophets, which is received by faith in Christ by whose expiatory death God’s retributive righteousness has been made manifest (Rom 3:21, 22, 25, 26), and which is represented by Peter as the object of Christian faith (2 Pet 1:1).

In two passages Paul affirms that Abraham believed God and “it was imputed to him for righteousness” (Rom 4:3 AV; Gal 3:6).

The old Arminian theologians, and some modern exegetes (H.

Cremer) assert that Paul means that Abraham’s faith was accepted by God instead of a perfect righteousness as the meritorious ground of his justification.

This, however, cannot be the apostle’s meaning.

It is diametrically opposed to the context where Paul introduces the case of Abraham for the very purpose of proving that he was justified without any merit on his part; it is opposed to Paul’s idea of the nature of faith which involves the renunciation of all claim to merit, and is a simple resting on Christ from whom all its saving efficacy is derived; and this interpretation is also opposed to Paul’s doctrine of the absolutely gracious character of Justification.

The apostle in these passages wishes to illustrate from the case of Abraham the gracious character of Justification, and quotes the untechnical language of Gen 15:6.

His meaning is simply that Abraham was justified as a believer in God, and not as one who sought righteousness by works.

See SIN; ATONEMENT; JUSTIFICATION.

LITERATURE.—Besides the Comm., see works on OT Theology by Dillmann, Davidson, Oehler, Schultz; and on NT Theology by H. Holtzmann, B. Weiss, Schmidt; also Chemnitz, De Vocabulo Imputationis, Loc.

Theol., 1594, II, 326 ff; J. Martin, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin, 1834, 20–46; Clemen, Die Christliche Lehre von der Sünde, I, 1897, 151–79; Dietzsch, Adam und Christus, 1871; Hünefeld, Rom 5:12–21, 1895; Crawford, The Doctrine of the Holy Scripture Respecting the Atonement2, 1876, 33–45, 188–90.

Cf also the appropriate sections in the works on the Scripture doctrine of Justification, and esp. on Paul’s doctrine of Justification, e.g.

Owen, Justification, 1st Am. ed, 185–310; Ritschl, Die Christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, II2, 1882, 303–31; Böhl, Von der Rechtfertigung durch den Glauben, 1890, 115–23; Nösgen, Schriftbeweis für die evangel.

Rechfertigungslehre, 1901, 147–96; Pfleiderer, Die Paulinische Rechtfertigung, ZWT (Hilgenfeld herausg.),

1872, 161–200; Paulinism, ET, I, 171–86; with which compare Pfleiderer’s later view of Paul’s teachings, 2d ed, 1890, 178–89; G. Schwarz, Justitia Imputata?

1891; H. Cremer, Paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre2, 1900, 329–49; Tobac, Le problème de la justification dans Saint Paul, 1908, 206–25.

On Paul’s doctrine of the righteousness of God, of the many monographs the following may be mentioned: Fricke, Der Paulinische Grundbeariff der δικαιοσύνη θεοῡ, erörtert auf Grund v. Röm.

III, 21–26, 1888; Kölbing, Studien zur Paulinische Theologie, TSK, 1895, 7–51; Häring, Δικαιοσύνη θεοῡ, bei Paulus, 1896.

CASPAR WISTAR HODGE

  The righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer for his justification.

The word impute is familiar and unambiguous.

To impute is to ascribe to, to reckon to, to lay to one’s charge.

When we say we impute a good or bad motive to a man, or that a good or evil action is imputed to him, no one misunderstands our meaning.

Philemon had no doubt what Paul meant when he told him to impute to him the debt of Onesimus.

“Let not the king impute anything unto his servant.”