I am now 43 years into my experience with Christ, (the God who became flesh and dwelt among us), still yet the old Jacob within me struggles with the prize won at Calvary- total resurrection! Not just in the after life, but in the NOW! As I pray each morning, I find myself re-navigating the same waters as my spirit can hardly comprehend His marvelous grace!
My flesh still attempts to filter the gospel through my sinfulness and daily falling short of the mark of the high calling in Christ Jesus. I’ll wage a bet, the same for you? Yet, God’s perspective is unambiguously different. The filter through which He views my performance is the sinlessness of Christ. His righteousness is imputed to me!
The word “imputed” has always intrigued me, both legally and theologically. It means “to ascribe (righteousness, guilt, etc.) to someone by virtue of a similar quality in another; to lay the responsibility or blame for, often falsely or unjustly.” 1 That is in fact what God did in Christ. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten…laid on him the iniquity of us all…died for the sins of the whole world.”2
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”3 So go the Chris Tomlin lyrics of Amazing Grace: “My chains are gone. I’ve been set free. My God, my Savior has ransomed me. And like a flood His mercy reigns. Unending love, amazing grace.” 4
“…in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”5
“And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.”6 Hear that, we are “no longer called servants, but friends,8 …no longer slaves but God’s child!9 I am a friend of God, a child of the most High, a King’s Kid!
The Old Testament filter of the Law and sin causes my flesh to cry out for rescue and redemption! The new covenant however, proclaims Good News: Resurrection and all things made new!
“Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means (any longer) anything; what counts is the new creation.”10
Selah!
2 Jn 3:16,Isaiah 53:6, I Jn 2:
3 II Cor. 2:5-7
5 Romans 8:37-39 NIV
6 James 2:23
7 Jn 15:15
8 Galatians 6:15
9 Galatians 4:7
10 Galatians 5:6