Importance of the Death of Jesus, pt. 2
Last week we discussed the doctrine of propitiation; we now turn to the doctrine of imputation.Imputation is one of the principle doctrines of the Christian faith and the very essence of the Gospel (good news). Belief in the doctrine of imputation is what historically defines an evangelical, but many evangelicals are ignoring or abandoning it today. Why? People don’t like to think of themselves as sinners, and they don’t want to think of God as a holy judge who punishes sinners. They choose instead to believe in a divine Santa Claus who grants wishes, gets us out of a jam, or performs therapy to make us feel better. Even among many Christians, the current emphasis is on subjective feelings, new divine revelations, or experiences of God rather than knowing Him through His Self-revelation in the Scripture. Biblical doctrines (including imputation) are downplayed as unimportant and unnecessarily divisive.
Recently, a Christian organization conducted a survey at an evangelical pastor’s conference. Sixty-seven percent of the pastors surveyed were completely unfamiliar with the doctrine of imputation. Many who were familiar with the term considered it unimportant in their ministries. Only a small percentage recognized the doctrine as vital to the Christian faith. This is startling, and if accurate, Christianity is in real trouble, not from an outward attack, but from the inward neglect of pastors to teach the clear doctrines of the Bible.
What is the doctrine of imputation? To impute means to credit an account. There are three important aspects of imputation in the Bible. First, Adam was the federal and biological head of the human race. When Adam sinned, his sin was imputed (credited) to the whole human race. Adam’s sin brought guilt and death to all (read Romans 5:12-19). Second, our sin was imputed to Christ at his death. God the Father placed our sin and guilt upon Christ (Romans 5:6-11). Finally, the perfect righteousness of Christ (He kept the Law perfectly) is imputed to us. God provided in Christ what he demanded from us in the Law. In 2 Corinthians 5:21 Paul writes, “For our sake he made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (see also Romans 5:18-19). Salvation and eternal life is not earned by doing good deeds; it is given to us as a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-9). This gift must be received by trusting in Christ and his perfect work upon the cross (Romans 10:9-11).
Many object to Adam’s sin being imputed to the whole human race, but rarely does anyone complain about our sin being imputed to Christ (the last Adam), or Christ’s righteousness being imputed to us. Besides, we’ve all sinned enough on our own to be in big trouble on judgment day.
This is the essence of the Gospel: if we trust in Christ, we will not stand at judgment in our sin; we will stand before God with the righteousness of Christ credited to our account. This is truly good news.
a pdf version of this entry is avaliable here
Labels: death of Jesus
posted on Thursday, November 01, 2007 |
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