What is the difference between imputed and imparted righteousness?

"And having on the breastplate of righteousness." — I know not how better to take this up than by contradicting two errors. The Protestant error, in connection with justification by faith, has been to make the righteousness of Christ applied to a person who has been previously occupied with Christ — imputed righteousness. This is untrue. The Romanist says there is no such a thing as imputed righteousness. The Protestant would establish some ground for Christ's favour by his own happy feelings and so on; and, when these are gone, the whole process has to be gone through again of getting his soul into that state once more. He only sees imputed righteousness, and not imparted; and this error has arisen in answer to the Roman Catholic notion of imparted righteousness only, with no imputed righteousness. These say, when you have overcome all the evil in you, God will give you the benefit of imparted righteousness.

The result contemplates all those, obviously, of whatever age or dispensation, who obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ; and it should be as evident that the connection with Christ that is spoken of is with Him as the last Adam, that is, vital connection. The many being constituted righteous gives, I have no doubt, the fullness both of imputed and imparted righteousness. For as the life communicated by the last Adam is necessarily such as He Himself is, so also it carries with it the efficacy of the work accomplished — of the death through which the corn of wheat could, alone bring forth fruit. "The gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:23, Greek): justification is therefore "justification of life." These go together. How completely this connection harmonizes with the apostle's argument in the next three chapters will be plain to those who are happily familiar with the doctrine there, — a doctrine which comes in as the answer to the practical question with which they begin: "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Upon this, however, I cannot enter here.

The next objection is on the grand point of our whole controversy. The contrast of imputing righteousness and imputed righteousness is presented as absurd. For all that, though I cannot give intelligence to my adversaries, I can assure them that it strikes at the root of the whole question. Mr. Trench ought to be able to comprehend it, because his Thirty-nine Articles have given the true sense of imputing righteousness, as his friend, Dr. O'Brien, has very justly remarked. In defining the true meaning of justifying, it says, "We are accounted righteous before God," &c. Now that is the force of imputing righteousness to a man-accounting a man righteous — no more. That is always its scriptural sense. Thus: "that righteousness may be imputed to us also." "Faith was imputed to him for righteousness." In this last case, if it were not so, it would be the merit or worth of his faith.

Imputing righteousness to a man is accounting a man to be righteous, without by that saying why. When imputed righteousness is said, it means that righteousness has been in some way made out by another, so that it exists; and so, being made out, is then, as a sum worth so much, put to the account of the person. Now imputing righteousness never means this in scripture. It means, simply accounting a man righteous (whatever the reason), as Article II justly states it. One is holding a man in a given state; the other is a quantum made up beforehand which is then put to his credit. In the former case, the reason for accounting a man to be righteous has still to be settled. As a general statement I have no objection to Article II, though I should have liked to see Christ's blood more in the foreground, but as far as it goes it is all well. My opponents may hold Christ's fulfilling the law to be the accomplished righteousness which is put to our account; another the value of His precious blood; others may take a wider view of the whole matter. But in any case imputing righteousness to a man, in scripture, only means holding him for righteous, and does not state why he is held so. This may be stated too, but imputing righteousness does not mean it. One is a person held to be in a certain state; the other, a thing done, a sum of righteousness accredited to a person. A person being accounted righteous may be in a thousand ways, may be by his own keeping the law, but you could not call this imputed righteousness. Imputed righteousness can only be in one way, namely, righteousness in a needed quantity, made out by another and afterwards appropriated. I insist on this, because I affirm, that in scripture imputing righteousness only means what the Thirty-nine Articles give as the force of justifying. And all the errors of my opponents flow from a totally false use of the words of scripture, assigning to them a meaning they never have nor can have there.

139 I believe in imputed righteousness with my whole soul in the true sense of the words, that it is by the perfectness and work of Christ, and not by any desert or state of mine, that I am through grace accounted righteous. I am held by God to stand, as alive in Christ, in all the worth, value, and perfectness of that in which He has glorified God. It is not my doing, but I am accounted righteous according to the value and by reason of what He has done, and what He is. Part of this my opponents could not say, but of that by and by. I object to their imputed righteousness — a thing not found in scripture; because they, in the teeth of scripture, put me under the law, and then make Christ fulfil it for me. I reject inherent righteousness altogether as my standing before God, though practical righteousness be wrought in a Christian; but my adversary's view of imputed righteousness I reject as antiscriptural. I will give my own in a moment. The rest of the objections hardly demand any notice.

And now a word as to "imputed righteousness." No such term is in Scripture, but imputing righteousness, of which the sense is wholly different in English, and a different word employed in Greek. Imputing righteousness is simply counting or reckoning us righteous. Imputed righteousness is a certain valuable sum put over to our account. Thus in Philemon: "If he owe thee anything, put that to my account." And so "sin is not imputed where there is no law." You cannot put that specific act as a transgression to the man's account, because, when there is no law, it has not been forbidden, as it could be under the law in Israel, though the reign of death proved they were sinners and lost. Now this and the passage in Philemon are the only places where this word is used. But imputing righteousness used some eleven times is, as the Thirty-nine Articles justly state, simply accounting the man righteous. But, whatever the blessed fruits of divine life or of the Spirit, which there surely will be where that life and the Spirit are, and be the proof that it is really there, still, if God justifieth the ungodly, and that it is to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, that faith is imputed for righteousness, it is evident that it is not because of what a man is himself, but of another, that he is accounted righteous. "By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." And mark the difference. We are not accounted righteous according to the poor measure of the fruits which we produce, with the defects which may accompany them, but according to the measure of Christ's work, in which He has borne our sins on the one hand, and perfectly glorified God, when made sin, on the other; the former represented by the sin-offering in Leviticus, and the other by the burnt-offering, or, in another aspect when both were parts of one sin-offering, by the blood on the mercy-seat, and the sins of the people laid on the head of the scapegoat.

I would also observe here that there is much force and value in the word "made:" it shows out most fully that righteousness was just as foreign to the nature of man as sin was to the nature of Christ. Man had no righteousness of his own, or in other words, he knew no righteousness, and therefore he had to be "made" righteousness. Christ "knew no sin," and therefore had to be "made sin" in order that we might be made righteousness, even "the righteousness of God in Him." But further, we learn from the passage to which we are referring that the Lord Jesus having been "made sin for us," is not more real, not more true, not more palpable, than that the believer is "made righteousness in Him."

There is a profound depth in verse 21 that defies all our feeble attempts at explanation. That God should make Christ to be a sacrifice for sin might be explained in terms of those Old Testament sacrifices that furnish a type of His sacrifice. But that God should make Him, who knew no sin, TO BE SIN for us baffles all explanation. Again, we might offer some explanation of how we are justified, of how righteousness is imputed to those who believe. But how we may in Him be MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD is beyond us. Sin wholly characterized us, and all that we were He was made when He died on the cross. Righteousness wholly characterizes God, and that which He is we are made in Christ.

of the Lord Jesus, the free gift came upon all unto justification of life, and, with this new life, our new responsibilities and moral obligations. For, as by one man's disobedience, the many were constituted sinners — not in act, though after acts proved its truth but in fact, in condition, in state — so by the obedience of one shall the many be constituted righteous, not in act, though after acts will prove it, but in fact, in condition, in state.

We get the expression, "this blessedness," in verse 9. It refers to faith being "counted for righteousness," or "reckoned for righteousness," or righteousness being "imputed." These, and similar expressions, occur a number of times in the chapter. What do they mean? Whether referring to Abraham or David or to ourselves who believe today, they mean that God accounts us as righteous before Him in view of our faith. We must not imagine that all virtue resides in our faith. It does not. But faith establishes contact with the work of Christ, in which all the virtue does reside. In that sense faith justifies. Once that contact is established and we stand before God in all the justifying virtue of the work of Christ, we are of necessity justified. It could not righteously be otherwise. God holds us as righteous in view of our faith.

1865 264 Christ is righteousness, and it is imputed to us, for it is not our own doing. But the point which is always avoided is, that imputing righteousness has the sense in Scripture of accounting the man righteous (and not seeing this is at the root of the fallacy of all they say), not of something done which is imputed. It might be in that way or not; but it does not say this; it is not in its meaning. It is not somebody else's righteousness imputed to me, but my being accounted righteous. Many being constituted sinners by one man's disobedience is not saying that the individual's sin was imputed to them, but that they by him all entered into and stood in that standing before God into which he got by that one sin. All are looked at as in his loins, and as alienated, and in sin before God. It is really the opposite of imputation of a particular act, as far as this passage goes.

God imputes Righteousness. — It should be observed that whilst we meet with the phrase the righteousness of God in chapter 3 the apostle never once mentions it in chapter 4, although eight times in that chapter the word righteousness occurs. This, when noticed, is helpful in the understanding of the subject. The righteousness of God, as treated of in the Romans, it has been already remarked, speaks of God's consistency with Himself, i.e., it is a divine attribute. Now it is plain that though a divine attribute may be manifested, it cannot be imputed to a creature. Hence, where the subject in hand is God imputing righteousness, as in chapter 4, the apostle does not name God's righteousness. God could impute righteousness to Abraham. He imputes it likewise to us, who believe on Him as the raiser-up of His Son from the dead, i.e., He reckons us righteous. But He is not said to impute to any His righteousness. He shows it, however, in reckoning us righteous.