Imputed Righteousness

What does all of this have to do with Imputed Righteousness? Without understand that Jesus is the Source by which we receive anything from God, we are attempting to biblically show how Abraham was “counted as righteous” before God.

What imputed righteousness is where we are “declared, reckoned, or considered” righteous in the sight of a Righteous and Holy God. Once we have received Christ into our hearts, we are now by that simple act of faith, declared righteous before God now. It’s not by our own righteousness, but by what God brought through the loins of Abraham and Isaac, which was Christ.

In Charles Lincoln’s, “Message of the Cross,” he refers to what we have just described as “positive righteousness” and defines it as; “the righteousness imputed to the believing sinner by the perfect, sinless life of Christ, who is our representative man.”

Lincoln then states that the next form of righteousness that we simultaneously receive from God is called “negative righteousness” and is explained as “the righteousness imputed to the believing sinner by the removal of the sin debt, which was paid for on the Cross.”

King David spoke of what this would be when he said, “Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile” (Ps 32:2). The Apostle Paul quotes this scripture a little differently when he says, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.”

This means that not only has God implanted His Spirit and His Righteousness in us; He has also taken out our sins. We are given a righteousness that was not our own, we are also cleansed of all of our unrighteousness! Understand that we cannot be a possessor of both righteousness and unrighteousness. We can’t be contrary to ourselves, because Christ is not divided. We are the Body of Christ, therefore we bare in our Body the righteousness of Christ and no longer the unrighteousness that we once did. This is how we are the “righteousness of God in Christ!”