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NASB | Romans 4:6 just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Romans 4:6 And in this same way David speaks of the blessing on the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: |
Subject: Imputed Righteousness |
Bible Note: You wrote: "God calls the righteousness that we have in Christ a gift - Rom 6:23." Romans 6:23 says that eternal life is a gift of God. It does not say that we are made righteous. You wrote: "God does not simply see us as righteous. He does not pretend that we are righteous. He does not see what is not there. He sees us as righteous because we ARE righteous. But this righteousness doesn't not come from ourselves or our actions, it comes from God. We are MADE righteous at salvation - Rom 5:17,19." Notice the verb tenses in Romans 5:19. Many were made sinners (past) because of Adam's transgression. Many WILL BE made righteous (future) because of Christ's obedience. Our becoming righteous in nature is still a future event. Think about what you are saying for a moment. Synonyms for righteous include "holy" and "perfect." You can't be saying that those who have trusted Christ have now been made perfect in character? That is what I would call pretending! Martin Luther and his opponents at the Council of Trent already debated this thoroughly. What you are putting forward is the Roman Catholic view of "infused" righteousness, in which God MAKES us righteous (the only difference is that Rome claims baptism does it; you are claiming conversion does it). The fact is, as Luther adequately pointed out, is that we AREN'T righteous in practice. The term Luther used was "simul iustus et peccator" -- at the same time just and a sinner. God doesn't pretend that we are righteous when we become Christians. He declares us so by virtue of our identification with His perfectly righteous Son. His perfect righteousness is applied to our account just as our sins were applied to His at Calvary. Justification doesn't make us righteous in ourselves any more than the atonement made Jesus a sinner. Jesus earned our righteousness for us, but making us more righteous is a process called sanctification, and that starts at our conversion and continues until we join the Lord. You wrote: "We have been given something new, a new human spirit that is as righteous and holy as Christ." We are indeed re-created, but you fail to show from Scripture how our new natures are as righteous and as holy as Christ. If that is so, commands to Timothy to PURSUE righteousness would be meaningless (1 Timothy 6:11; 2 Timothy 2:22). Nowhere does Scripture tell us that our new natures are perfect ones. And our lives bear that out daily. You wrote concerning the new nature: "It is my source of righteousness and holiness and it has been given to me as a free gift." The Bible says: "But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption," 1 Corinthians 1:30 "And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ; having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God." --Philippans 1:9-11 Jesus Christ is our righteousness and the continuous source of the fruit of righteousness, not our new natures. You wrote: 'This part of us, the spirit (not the soul, not the body) is "born of God" - John 3:6 - and therefore cannot sin - 1 John 3:9.' John writes: "No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." --1 John 3:9 This verse, if taken in isolation from the rest of the epistle, would seem to support your point. However, John makes it clear that we who are born of God do commit sins (1 John 1:8-10; 1 John 2:1-2). Looking at the verse which follows the one you sited gets at John's true point: "By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother." --1 John 3:10 John is talking about our lifestyle, our practices being the fruit of the life that is within us. First John 3:9 is sandwiched between two verses which contrast the one who is of Satan and the one who is born of God by their overall fruit. It by no means is suggesting that our new natures are absolutely free from sin, or else John is contradicting himself in the same small letter. The fact is that we do have a new nature, but that new nature is not perfectly righteous or holy in itself. To say that our spirits are perfect and our body of flesh is the sinful part of us opens the door to Gnosticism, the very thing that John was writing against in his epistle. If this were true, we could sin all we wanted, because we are "righteous" and we can attribute all our sin to our "flesh." That is so out of harmony with Scripture that it doesn't even merit treatment here. --Joe! |