Aug 26
23
IMPUTATION
Romans 5:13: (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14: Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression…
God gave these verses to show that God imputed sin to us because when Adam sinned, we sinned (v12). That is how God imputes. God imputes what a man has been made by a prior act. These verses declare that. “For until the law sin was in the world”—from the garden until Mt Sinai, God gave no law, yet men sinned—“but sin is not imputed when there is no law”—God is righteous. God will not impute sin unless a man has really been made sin under law—”Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses”—it means God imputed sin to them, that is why death reigned over them—“even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.”—even over them that had not sinned by breaking a known law as Adam did in the garden. But how was God just to impute sin to them if they did not break a known law as Adam did?Because in Adam all really have sinned. That is the point of these verses.
God only imputes to a man what the man has been made by a prior act. Creeds and tradition teach otherwise but we bow to God’s word. Let’s see a few examples. In Leviticus 17: 4 if a man kills an animal and does not offer an offering to the Lord then blood shall be imputed to the man. Why? He hath shed blood; it is fact. In 2 Samuel 4: 2 and Josuah 18: 25 the people imputed the town of Beeroth as belonging to Benjamin because Joshua had given Beroth to Benjamin; it was fact. Read 1 Samuel 22: 15; 2 Samuel 19: 19-20; Psalm 106:30-31; 1 Corinthians 4:1; 2 Peter 3: 15. In each scripture, imputation is imputing what is fact. Men may impute to another what is not true, as Saul did to Elimelech, but that is unjust imputation; it does not make the person be what was unjustly imputed to them. God only imputes what a person has been made by a prior act.
God imputed sin to us because Adam made us sin. God imputed sin to Christ because “he hath made him sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” God imputes righteousness to his saints because Christ made us righteous.
Clay Curtis