I copied the link so you could read the entire blog. It's very informative.
Very informative, thank you.
The Pauline epistles in general clearly show that
this phase of imputation is the groundwork of the Christian’s acceptance and standing before
an infinitely holy God. Only this righteousness can find acceptance for salvation, and through
it alone one may enter heaven. The pregnant phrase “the righteousness of God” (Rom. 1:17;
3:22; 10:3) signifies not merely that God Himself is righteous but that there is a righteousness
that proceeds from God. Since no human being in God’s eyes is righteous (3:10), it is clear
that an imputed righteousness, the righteousness of God Himself, is sinful man’s only hope of
acceptance with the Holy One. Possessing this righteousness is the only thing that fits one for
the presence of God (Phil. 3:9; Col. 1:12). When this righteousness is imputed by God to the
believer, it becomes his forever by a judicial act, since it was not antecedently the believer’s.
It is thus patent that this demands a righteousness that is made over to the believer, just as
Christ was made to be sin for all men (2 Cor. 5:21). By the believer’s baptism by the Spirit
“into Christ” this righteousness is made a legal endowment by virtue of the death of Christ.
Indeed, imputed righteousness becomes a reality on the basis of the fact that the believer is
“in Christ.” As hitherto one was “in Adam” (Rom. 5:12–21), so by the Spirit’s baptism (6:3–
4) he is now placed in the resurrected Christ and is a recipient of all that Christ is, even of the
“righteousness of God” that Christ is. It is a transcendent truth that Christ is made to the
believer the righteousness “from God” (1 Cor. 1:30), and, being “in Christ,” the believer
“might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). The glory of this “in Christ”
position is beyond description or human comprehension, “for by one offering He has
perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14). The “fulness” of Christ (John
1:16; Col. 1:19; 2:9–10) becomes the believer’s portion in Christ, “for in Him all the fullness
of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete.”
The basis of the
legality of such imputation, resulting in such a position for the believer, resides in the fact
that Christ offered Himself “without blemish” to God (Heb. 9:14). This means that Christ not
only was made a sin offering, but His death (by which remission of sin is made legally
possible on the basis that He substituted for those who believe and presented Himself as an
offering well-pleasing to God) also made possible a release of all that He is in infinite merit,
bestowing this merit on the meritless. When others did not possess and could not gain a
standing and merit before God, He released His own self in infinite perfection for them (see 2
Cor. 8:9).
As the cross furnishes the legal basis for the remission of sin, so it furnishes
likewise the legal basis for the imputation of righteousness. Both aspects of a sweet savor and
a non-sweet savor in the estimation of the Father are typically expounded in the five offerings
of Lev. 1–5. There was that in the death of Christ that was a non-sweet savor to God
manifested in the terrible words “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Ps. 22:1;
Matt. 27:46). The character of the perfect, sinless Lamb of God (Heb. 9:14) suggests the
sweet savor aspect.
Thus the sweet savor aspect of Christ’s offering, and its accomplishment
in the believer by his union with Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit, is the legal
ground for the imputation of God’s righteousness to the believer. Foundational to essential
Christian teaching and the essence of the gospel are these three imputations. They are typical
in the Mosaic system; antitypical in the Christian era. M.F.U.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. S. Chafer, Systematic Theology (1948), 2:296–315; 3:243–44; 5:143–44;
7:191–94; W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology (1952), 2:148–257; J. Murray, The
Imputation of Adam’s Sin (1959); C. Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans
(1965), pp. 221–99; G. C. Berkouwer, Sin (1971), pp. 436–65; H. Bavinck, Our Reasonable
Faith (1978), pp. 224–30, 240–46; F. B. Westcott, The Biblical Doctrine of Justification
(1983), pp. 165–82, 188–209.
Unger.