<idle musing>
Personally, I'll stick with Pauline language. The abstractness of imputation doesn't bring home the necessity of a changed life. I still say, no transformation, no salvation.
</idle musing>
Friday, November 23, 2012
How scriptural is it?
“...there is no text that explicitly says that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to believers. That does not make imputation entirely redundant as imputation constitutes a cogent (and perhaps necessary) theological explanation of the mechanism through which union communicates righteousness to the believer. Several texts speak of the non-accounting of sin (e.g. Rom. 4.8 and 2 Cor. 5.19), imputation is implicit in the representative roles of Adam and Christ, righteousness is a free gift, and the language of “reckoning” certainly moves in the direction of imputation. Nevertheless, to articulate righteousness as a status given by God wholly apart from union with Christ is to exchange Paul’s christocentric language of justification for an abstract theory based on computation.” —The Saving Righteousness of God, page 182
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2 comments:
Your "idle musing" reminds me of this quote from J.C. Ryle, the beginning of ch. 2, "Sanctification", from his book, Holiness:
[quote]
If the Bible be true, it is certain that unless we are “sanctified,” we shall not be saved. There are three things which, according to the Bible, are absolutely necessary to the salvation of every man and woman in Christendom. These three are, justification, regeneration, and sanctification. All three meet in every child of God: he is both born again, and justified, and sanctified. He that lacks any one of these three things is not a true Christian in the sight of God, and dying in that condition will not be found in heaven and glorified in the last day.
[/quote]
Well, I sense a connection, anyway!
Very good quotation! Thanks for sharing it.
James
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