Theopedia

Imputed righteousness

“and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”

— Philippians 3:9

Definition

Imputed righteousness is Christ’s own righteousness, his lifelong obedience to God’s law and his atoning death, credited to the believer’s account by faith, so that God accepts and accounts the believer righteous “not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them,” but for Christ’s sake alone.1 This positive crediting of righteousness is what justifies, distinct both from the non-imputation of the believer’s own sin and from imparted righteousness, the actual, inward righteousness God works in believers over a lifetime.2

Confessional Witness

The Westminster Standards and the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession state the doctrine as one witness. The Westminster Larger Catechism asks directly what justification is and answers: “Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which he pardoneth all their sins, accepteth and accounteth their persons righteous in his sight; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.”1 Because that righteousness is Christ’s own, not the believer’s, the catechism calls justification an act of free grace: God “provide[d] this surety, his own only Son, imputing his righteousness to them, and requiring nothing of them for their justification but faith, which also is his gift.”3 The Westminster Shorter Catechism states the same point in near-identical terms.4

The 1689 confession states the same doctrine in its own chapter on justification: God freely justifies the elect, “not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous… by imputing Christ’s active obedience unto the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness by faith.”5 That twofold, active-and-passive crediting is examined on its own terms at double imputation; what both catechisms and the confession share here is the positive half of the exchange, Christ’s righteousness credited to the believer, as distinct from the negative half (the believer’s sin credited to Christ) and from imparted righteousness.

Biblical Basis

All mankind has fallen short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23) and lies dead in sin (Eph. 2:1), with no righteousness of its own to offer. Paul states the remedy as his own settled desire: to “be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil. 3:9). He grounds the same doctrine in Abraham’s justification: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3), a reckoning credited “not to him who works” but “to the one who does not work but believes” (Rom. 4:4-5). Paul immediately pairs that positive crediting with its negative counterpart, citing David: “just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin’” (Rom. 4:6-8). The two halves of the same verdict, righteousness credited and sin not credited, run through the passage together; John Gill later systematized this same pairing as “positive” and “negative” imputation.2

Historical Development

Owen against Baxter’s neonomianism

John Owen (1616-83) wrote two works defending the doctrine within English Puritanism itself, not only against Rome: Of the Death of Christ and of Justification (1650) and the full-length The Doctrine of Justification by Faith through the Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ (1677).6 One of Owen’s interlocutors, the fellow Puritan Richard Baxter (1615-91), became a main figure in what came to be called the Neonomian controversy. Baxter “taught a neonomian doctrine of justification by denying the imputation of Christ’s active obedience and claiming that an obedient faith fulfills the condition for justification”: on his account the gospel is a “new law” that sinners obey by faith, so that faith itself, as an act of obedience, is what God imputes as righteousness, rather than Christ’s own obedience credited to the believer.7 Owen’s 1677 treatise appeared the same year the Second London Baptist Confession itself was finalized.

Gill’s positive and negative imputation

A generation later, the Particular Baptist theologian John Gill (1697-1771) set the doctrine’s dual shape out systematically. In his Body of Doctrinal Divinity (1769), Gill separates pardon from justification by what each imputes: “Pardon lies in the non-imputation of sin; justification in the imputation of righteousness: righteousness is imputed, but pardon is not.”2 He grounds this in the reality of Christ’s own obedience rather than in a bare legal transaction: “the righteousness of Christ, by which men are justified… is inherent in him, the author of it,” not a fiction conjured for the occasion but Christ’s own, actual, lifelong righteousness, credited to those united to him.8

Opposing Views

Rome: righteousness infused, not imputed

Roman Catholic theology grounds justification in an inward transformation rather than a forensic crediting. Among the Council of Trent’s canons on justification, two directly target the Protestant doctrine: Aaron Thomas O’Kelley summarizes them as denying “justification on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Christ.”9 In its place, Trent teaches that the sinner is made righteous through grace infused at baptism and increased by cooperation with good works, a righteousness that grows or diminishes within the believer rather than one credited whole from outside, the same inward-versus-forensic line that separates imparted righteousness from imputed righteousness generally.

Arminian and Wesleyan: faith itself as the believer’s righteousness

Where Rome relocates the ground of justification to an infused, transformative righteousness, the Remonstrant and Wesleyan traditions relocate it to the believer’s own faith. Seventeenth-century Remonstrant theologians Philip van Limborch and Stephanus Curcellaeus denied that Christ’s own righteousness is imputed at all, teaching instead that faith itself, as an act, “is imputed for righteousness.”10 Later Arminian theology continued the same move: William Pope, surveying the tradition’s history, judged that Arminians had “gradually denied altogether the direct imputation of Christ’s righteousness.”11 John Wesley’s own preaching shows the same reluctance. In a sermon on justification he insisted God’s judgment is “always according to truth,” so that God cannot “judge that I am righteous or holy, because another is so,” concluding that such a notion of justification is “neither reconcilable to reason nor Scripture.”12

New Perspective on Paul

N. T. Wright’s New Perspective on Paul presses a related but distinct objection against imputed righteousness generally: that Paul’s own δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ language names God’s covenant faithfulness rather than a moral standard capable of being transferred to another person at all, a reading J. V. Fesko, Brian Vickers, and others answer at greater length in imputation’s own account of the exchange.

Objections and Responses

If Abraham’s faith itself was “counted… as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6), doesn’t the text say faith, not Christ’s righteousness, is what God imputes, supporting the Arminian and neonomian reading rather than the Reformed one? Paul’s own argument distinguishes the two. Faith is the instrument that lays hold of a righteousness outside the believer, not the substance of that righteousness itself: Abraham’s faith is counted for righteousness because it reaches for what he does not have, “to the one who does not work but believes” (Rom. 4:5). Where Baxter and the Remonstrants made obedient faith itself the believer’s righteousness, Owen and the Reformed tradition he defended held faith to be the empty hand that receives an alien righteousness, Christ’s own, rather than the ground of the verdict itself.7

Isn’t crediting Christ’s righteousness to someone who remains, in themselves, actually unrighteous a legal fiction? Gill’s answer rests the doctrine on the reality of what is imputed rather than on the mere fact of imputation: the righteousness credited to believers is not invented for the transaction but is “inherent in [Christ], the author of it,” his own actual, lifelong obedience and satisfaction, really accomplished before it is ever reckoned to anyone else.8 The verdict is not detached from reality; it is grounded in a real righteousness, just not the believer’s own.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647), Q. 70. ↩ ↩2

  2. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book VI, chap. 8, “Of Justification”: “Pardon lies in the non-imputation of sin; justification in the imputation of righteousness: righteousness is imputed, but pardon is not (Rom. 4:6, 7).” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647), Q. 71. ↩

  4. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), Q. 33. ↩

  5. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 11, “Of Justification,” para. 1. ↩

  6. Carol Man Fen Chen, A Historical, Biblical, and Theological Interpretation of Covenants: Unconditionality and Conditionality in Relation to Justification and Sanctification (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 29-30. ↩

  7. Michael Brown, Christ and the Condition: The Covenant Theology of Samuel Petto (1624-1711) (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 105, quoted in Chen, 30: “taught a neonomian doctrine of justification by denying the imputation of Christ’s active obedience and claiming that an obedient faith fulfills the condition for justification.” ↩ ↩2

  8. Gill, Body of Doctrinal Divinity, book VI, chap. 8: “The righteousness of Christ, by which men are justified, is the fulfilling of the law… which is inherent in him, the author of it.” ↩ ↩2

  9. Aaron Thomas O’Kelley, “Grace and Merit in Late Medieval Theology,” in “A Historical-Theological Critique of the New Perspective on Paul” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 64: “canons 10 and 11 deny its corollary: justification on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Christ.” ↩

  10. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 190-191. ↩

  11. William Pope, A Compendium of Christian Theology, vol. 2 (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1882), 443, quoted in Micah John McCormick, “Historical Survey,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 83. ↩

  12. John Wesley, sermon on justification, quoted in McCormick, “Historical Survey,” 84. ↩