The Greatest Question a Sinner Can Ask
Job asked it long ago: “How should man be just with God?” (Job 9:2). It is the most important question a human being can raise, for upon its answer hangs his eternal destiny. A holy God of infinite purity, who cannot look upon iniquity, sits as Judge of all the earth; and before Him stands fallen man, guilty, condemned, and utterly unable to clear himself. The Scripture has already pronounced the verdict over the whole human race: “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10), and “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). How, then, can such a sinner ever stand accepted before such a God?
The answer is the doctrine of justification, and at its heart lies one of the most precious words in all of theology: imputation. To impute is to reckon, to credit, to charge to one’s account. The gospel announces that God justifies the ungodly — not by overlooking sin, not by lowering His standard, not by accepting an imperfect obedience, but by a great and gracious exchange in which the sinner’s guilt is charged to Christ and Christ’s perfect righteousness is credited to the sinner.
What Justification Is — and Is Not
It is vital to understand what justification means, for here whole systems of religion have gone astray. To justify is a legal or forensic term; it is the opposite of to condemn. When a judge justifies a man, he does not make him good — he declares him righteous in the eyes of the law. Justification is therefore not the same as sanctification. Sanctification is the work of God in us, making us actually holy over time; justification is the act of God for us, declaring us righteous in an instant. The one is a process; the other is a verdict. Confusing the two has been the ruin of much false teaching.
Justification does not mean God finds something good in us and rewards it. It means God, the righteous Judge, pronounces the believing sinner fully acquitted and accepted — not because the sinner is innocent in himself, but because a righteousness not his own has been placed to his account.
The Two Halves of the Exchange
The great transaction has two sides, and both are necessary. The single clearest verse in all of Scripture sets them side by side:
Consider first what was done with our sin. Christ “knew no sin” — He was spotless, without a single fault — yet God “made him to be sin for us.” Our guilt was charged to His account. He was treated, on the cross, as though He had committed every sin of every one of His people. “The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). He bore in His own body the penalty our sins deserved, and the wrath of God against them was exhausted upon Him.
Consider second what was done with His righteousness. “That we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Just as our sin was reckoned to the sinless Christ, so His righteousness is reckoned to the unrighteous believer. We are not merely pardoned, as though set back to a clean but empty slate; we are clothed in a positive, perfect righteousness — the very righteousness of God Himself, wrought out by Christ in His sinless life and obedient death. This is the double imputation: our sin to Him, His righteousness to us. This is the great exchange.
The Witness of Romans 4 — Righteousness Reckoned, Not Earned
Nowhere is imputation taught more fully than in Romans 4, where Paul takes Abraham as the great example. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Romans 4:3). The word “counted” is the language of the ledger — righteousness was credited to Abraham’s account. And Paul is careful to show that this was not a payment owed for work done:
Mark the astonishing phrase: God “justifieth the ungodly.” He does not wait until a man has made himself godly and then justify him as a reward; He justifies the ungodly man who simply believes. Paul then cites David, who described “the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works” (Romans 4:6). Righteousness without works — credited, reckoned, imputed — this is the heart of the gospel. The believer’s standing rests not on a single thread of his own doing.
A Righteousness Not Our Own
The Apostle Paul, who had more grounds for confidence in his own religious attainments than almost any man, counted them all as refuse for one reason: he wanted to be found in Christ clothed in a borrowed righteousness, not his own.
Here are the two righteousnesses set in stark opposition: “mine own” and “the righteousness which is of God by faith.” Every man must be clothed in one or the other. The first — our own — is, at its very best, but “filthy rags” in the sight of a holy God (Isaiah 64:6), wholly insufficient to cover us. The second is the spotless robe of Christ’s righteousness, received freely by faith. The believer’s great desire, like Paul’s, is to cast away every shred of his own supposed merit and to stand before God in nothing but the righteousness of his Saviour. “He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10).
By Faith Alone, Apart from Works
How is this imputed righteousness received? By faith, and by faith alone. Faith is not a work that earns justification; it is the empty hand that receives the gift. “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Romans 3:28). “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16). Were justification by works even in the smallest part, then salvation would be partly of debt and the sinner would have ground to boast; but God has so ordered it that “no flesh should glory in his presence” (1 Corinthians 1:29). Faith looks away from self entirely and rests wholly upon Christ and His finished work.
It must be added, lest any abuse this truth, that the faith which justifies is never alone in the person justified. True saving faith works by love and brings forth the fruit of good works — not as the ground of justification, but as its evidence. We are justified by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is never alone. Good works are the fruit of a justified man, never the root of his justification.
Against the Error of Infused Righteousness
This doctrine was the great recovery of the Reformation, and it stands against a deadly error that persists to this day. There are those who teach that God does not impute a righteousness from outside the believer, but infuses righteousness into him, making him gradually righteous by an inward change, so that he is finally justified by a righteousness that has become his own through cooperation with grace. This is the teaching of Rome, and it is a different gospel. It confuses justification with sanctification; it makes the sinner’s acceptance rest, even partly, on a righteousness worked within him rather than wholly on the righteousness of Christ reckoned to him; and it robs the troubled conscience of all sure peace, for an infused righteousness is always imperfect and incomplete in this life. The believer who must look even partly to his own progress can never know with certainty that he stands accepted. But the believer who looks wholly to Christ’s finished and perfect righteousness, imputed and complete, may have full assurance — for his standing rests not on what grace has yet made him, but on what Christ has already done.
The Comfort and Glory of This Truth
What unspeakable comfort lies here for the believing sinner. His acceptance before God does not rise and fall with the fluctuations of his own holiness. On his worst day and his best, he stands before God clothed in the same unchanging righteousness of Christ — no more accepted when he is strong, no less accepted when he is weak. He can never add to it, and he can never lose it, for it was never his own doing to begin with. When Satan accuses and conscience condemns, the justified soul may answer with the apostle: “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth” (Romans 8:33).
And what glory redounds to God. In this great exchange, justice and mercy meet and embrace: God remains perfectly just, for sin was fully punished in Christ; and God is the justifier of the one who believes, for the penalty has been paid and a perfect righteousness provided. He is shown to be “just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). The sinner is saved, the law is honored, and God receives all the glory. Not unto us, but unto His name be the praise.
Let every soul that trembles under the weight of its own sin look away from itself entirely, and rest upon the righteousness of Another. There is no peace in our own poor doings; there is perfect peace in the finished work of Christ. To be found in Him, clothed in His righteousness, is to stand before the throne of God without spot and without fear, now and forever.