Three Imputations (Part 1) - April 9, 2012

No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with no compromise.

What Imputation Means and Why It Matters

Well, it was last Sunday I had the privilege of baptizing Daniel and Eric, and I remember the last question I asked Daniel, I asked Daniel some other questions like, did you contribute anything to your salvation?

Do you love the Lord Jesus? Those kind of questions. And then I asked him at the end, kind of as a joke, what were the three great imputations? And I began to think about that question this week and reminding myself, what were the three great imputations and does it even matter?

So this morning I'm going to do something that I've never done at Bethlehem Bible Church in the, I counted, I'm close to being correct, 736 weeks that I've been here. I'm going to switch Sunday morning sermon with Sunday night sermon, because you need to learn about the three great imputations.

Three great imputations, that if I could put it in the vernacular, I want to rock your world. I want you to say, what's an imputation? Now I get it. And you'll be able to say to yourself, God, you are a great God.

You're not like me at all. You're different. You are transcendent. The way you think, I would never think. And so if you want to understand salvation, if you want to understand the mind of God, and if you want to understand how God saves people, you need to know what imputation means.

Now the Eshers are going to give you a little card as they come down the aisle and I want you to write a definition of imputation and we'll hand those in to Pastor Jeffreys afterwards. You guys all look really scared.

We're not going to do that, but by the end of the sermon today and probably next week as well, you'll understand what does the Bible teach about imputation and why is it important? This is not an academic issue.

This is a biblical issue that you need to know. And I think it's fairly under preached, so I want to preach that. And if you say, I don't like big words, I just want to kind of lay back and let God, I'm not into big issues and big words.

Well, this is going to be a biblical word that you need to know. And whether you're in the kitchen or in corporate America, you use big words and the Bible's no different. And so you need to know what imputation means because we are very, very concerned to understand how God saves and who God is.

So let me give you a quick definition of imputation before we go to the text this morning. What is imputation? Imputation means to set something to one's account. To set something to one's account. To reckon it to a person.

To charge it to a person. To number something. To attribute something to someone else. I could put it this way. When Paul sent Anesimus back to Philemon, here's what he told Philemon to do. If he has wronged you at all or owes anything to you, charge that to my account.

We get the idea of imputation means to charge to another account. When I was in corporate America and I was not a Christian, we tried to find the hotel room that the big shot national sales manager was staying at.

Because if we knew we were at the Four Seasons and the boss stayed at room 521 when we went down to get a massage, 521. Charge it to his account. When we went and had a nice dinner, 521. Charge it to his account.

We tried to do that regularly. Now, I'm not saying you should do that. Don't try it at home. But it's charging something to someone's account. When you get married, the old terminology was, with all my worldly good, I thee endow.

Everything I own is now placed to your account. And so, if Kim would have been a multi-millionaire, all her assets would have been credited to my account. That would have been wonderful. And if you marry someone and they have a lot of debt, you say, I do, all their debt is credited to your account.

With all my worldly good, I thee endow. That is imputation. God had Abraham look up at the stars, he was still Abram at the time, and so shall your seed be. And the text says Abraham believed God and it was counted, it was credited, it was charged to Abraham's account.

It was reckoned, imputed to him for righteousness. And so, to credit, to impute simply means to count, to take an account, to credit something to someone, or to charge to someone else's account. Turn with me, if you would, to Romans chapter four, and I'll show you just why this is important.

This is called the imputation chapter. What is imputation? Well, I think we really need to understand imputation because it's everywhere in the Bible. If the word atonement's in the Bible, well, we should know it, satisfaction, we should know it, propitiation, we should know it, and imputation is in the Bible as well.

The ESV translates it, count. This is found 10 times in Romans chapter four, to count. Maybe if you have the King James version, it's to reckon. And so this language that Paul uses, we ought to know what it means, to charge something to someone's account, to reckon.

By the way, I hate accounting. How many people here hate accounting? How many people here despise cost accounting? Some do. This is accounting language, by the way, to take something and put it in the credit side, to take something and put it on the debit side.

And for years, I hated poetry. I hated poetry because I thought, who could really be a man and like poetry? That's what I thought. I'm not saying I'm proud of that, but that's what I thought. Then I realized a lot of the Bible's poetry, I think I should probably learn to like poetry.

I think very godly men have written wonderful poems, and David, I should have learned to like poetry. Well, you know what? I hate accounting, but this language of imputation, reckoning, counting, taking from this side of the ledger to put over on that side, do you know what?

It's biblical language. Now, I'm not saying you must love accounting, but you should want to understand accounting because that's the way God's universe works. Now, let me read Romans chapter 4, some of the verses, and you see if you can count the 10 times the word count or counted or counts is used.

And you'll say after I read this, this whole counting imputation is very important. Romans chapter 4, Paul is trying to show us an illustration of Abraham and how justification is by faith alone, not by works.

What then, Romans 4, 1, shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? You want someone who models justification by faith alone? Verse 2, for if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteous. It was imputed to him. It was reckoned to him. It was charged to his account. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts, credits, reckons, imputes righteousness apart from works.

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not, what, impute, count, reckon his sin. He doesn't charge it to your spiritual account.

That man's blessed. Verse 10, how then was it counted to him? Verse 11, towards the end, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well. Verse 22, that is why faith was counted, or reckoned, or imputed to him as righteousness.

And not just for Abraham, hallelujah, to verse 23, but the words, it was counted to him, Romans 4, 23, were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted, reckoned, imputed to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

You need to know what the word counted, or reckoned, or imputed means, even if you wanted to understand Romans chapter 4. So let's give you the three biblical imputations this morning, if you'd like to understand God's mind, God's salvation, God's universe, and what this word means.

And hang in there with me. If you're new to the church, this will be still a good sermon for you, but I'm laying the groundwork here for understanding God and salvation. S. Lewis Johnson basically said, you don't understand God or salvation if you don't get imputation down.

So it's not going to do us any good to say, that's a polysyllabic word that will leave for another time. I just need to be kind of coaxed and cajoled, and I just need a feel-good sermon. May I challenge you that you'll feel good after you understand truth?

I think you will feel good. This week, I could not wait to preach the sermon. This week, I had to say, I can't preach this on Sunday night to the elect 80 people who show up. I have to preach it to the reprobates, too, on Sunday morning.

They need to know. I mean, who could take some kind of accounting language and think that it was going to be cool or exciting or wonderful? I think it would be boring, stuffy. I think the only D I got at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, the only D was in Costa County.

I've never been the same since. But it's exciting, and it has implications. So you need to understand biblical imputation, and there are three biblical imputations that you need to know. We'll go one, two, three.

Let me give you all for right now. The first one is, Adam's sin in the garden was credited to your account, reckoned to your account, counted against your ledger, Adam to all his posterity. That's one.

Two, your sins, if you're a Christian, were counted to Christ, imputed to Christ, reckoned to Christ. He never sinned, but God credits Christ's account with your sin. Biblical imputation number two. And finally, number three, which one do you think it is?

Adam to us, our sins to Christ, Christ's righteousness, Christ's perfection, Christ's righteous life is credited to, imputed to, reckoned to, charged to our account. Those are the three great imputations.

And if you are thinking properly, you'll say to yourself, this has everything to do with everything. Original sin, why do people die? How do you get saved? How does God save people? This is very, very important.

And so we need to understand three biblical imputations to understand God properly. Implication. And by the way, if you understand God in a way that's not biblical, Tozer just said that's idolatry. So you've got to get down this idea.

God likes federal representation. God deals with things in a federal fashion and in a sense that someone else represents another person. That's just the way God works. Imputation number one, Adam's sin to all his posterity, to everyone except Christ Jesus, of course.

Federal representation, the imputation of Adam's sin. Adam's sin was not his alone. God gave you credit for that sin. God said, I'm charging Adam's sin in the garden to you. Automatically, you might be saying to me, well, that's not fair.

I don't like that arrangement. The sin of Adam was set to the account of all his descendants. And let's look at Romans chapter five to understand that. First Corinthians talks about death came by a man, death came, as in Adam all die.

But let's look at the passage in Romans chapter five. This is the sine qua non of all federal representation, Romans chapter five, verse 12. This is why my professor, Dr. Zimmick, said at the Master's Seminary, when you open your Bibles up, they should automatically and always open to Romans chapter five, because this truth you've got to get.

I'll go so far to say that you don't understand Christianity unless you get this truth. Romans chapter five, Adam was our representative. God said in my wisdom, Adam will be in the garden and what he does will determine what everyone else will do.

It was a representative arrangement. It was God's arrangement. And here in Romans chapter five, we see the tale of two Adams, the first Adam and the last Adam, Jesus. How can God provide salvation for people?

That's the context of Romans five. And we're going to see that he does it by representation. Jesus was a representative of us, but so too is Adam. And so representation is nothing new in the Bible. And Paul is trying to say, hey, by the way, Jews, you want to go back and say it's Romans chapter four, Father Abraham, and you don't really like universality of sin.

Let's push you back, Jew, and you back, Gentile, all the way to your first father, Father Abraham, and talk about what he did or didn't do in the garden. It's a very simple comparison in Romans chapter five, verses 12 and following.

In both cases, the deed of the one affects the many. Now I'm going to read five, 12 to 21, and here's what I want you to look at when I read it. Look at the word one, because we're going to be talking about the one sin in the garden, and look for the words.

Well, let me read that and we'll just see if it kind of pops out. Romans 5, 12 to 21, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sin.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, how much more have the grace of God and by the free gift, by the grace of that one man, Christ Jesus abounded for many.

And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin. The judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, verse 17, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundant grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience, for the many rather were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

The law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

See how many times one is there, you think it's important? One man's act, Adam in the garden, affected everybody in Adam because God said, Adam, you are my federal representative. You are my covenant representative.

Now let's turn to Genesis chapter three. Keep your Bible, your finger there in the Bible in Romans five. Let's learn about the fall and let's see what happens. Let's see as William Jenkins said, our Puritan writer, our father was Abraham, our grandfather was dust, and our great grandfather was nothing.

Let's look that up and see what that is all about. And we're going to see imputation. And I'm going to just tease you ahead of time. The federal head was not Eve. She sinned and the posterity of all Eve did not have sin credited in their account.

Eve sinned first, but she wasn't the covenant head. And the covenant head, the federal head, Adam, when he sinned, then as one commentator said, all hell broke loose. Genesis chapter three, verse one.

Of course we get our corrupt nature from Adam, but that's not what Paul is talking about in Romans five. And that has nothing to do with imputation. Genesis three, verse one. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, did actually God say, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.

Neither shall you touch it unless you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and there was a delight to the eyes and the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. That was sin. But so far, the federal representative, Adam, hadn't sinned yet.

She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. What was that tree that they weren't supposed to eat from?

In the Middle Ages, they said that tree was celibacy. And once Adam and Eve had relations, that was the fall. Well, that's not right. I almost said that's stupid, but that's what I was thinking. Some say it was grapes and the fruit was grapes.

And you know what happens to grapes back in those days? They turn into wine and so they drank wine. It was a simple test of dependence. Will you obey me or will you not obey me? Will you believe me? Will you trust me?

Will you obey me? That's all it was. They did not believe God. It was unbelief. They didn't believe God's word. They distrusted him and then rebelled. And now because of this one man's sin, we have universal sin and universal death.

Now, back to Romans chapter 5. This is very fascinating. Paul doesn't say in Romans 5, 12, how did sin come into existence? It already was in existence, the fall of Satan. It just says, how did it come into humanity?

Notice the text in Romans 5, 12, as sin came into the world through the one man and entered through Adam. Not Eve. Eve, she wasn't the federal head, even though she sinned first. Now here's where we come to a very tricky part where you need to have your seatbelts buckled.

Verse 12, death through sin and so death spread to all men because all sin. What does the all sin mean? Well, the Pelagians, those who don't really think much of man's depravity, they say, well, everybody sins today because they make the free choice to sin.

But Romans 5, 12, all sin, that's imputed sin. Other people say, well, we've got an inherited depraved nature from Adam, therefore we sin. That's true, but that's not what Paul is trying to say. Of course that's true, but five times here in Romans 5, one man sin, one man sin, one man sin, one man sin, one man sin.

How did everybody sin? Because the one man sin was credited to everyone else. Representatively, all sin because of imputation. You weren't in the loins of Adam as it were sinning in Adam's offspring, no.

You have a divinely ordained representative, Adam. And when he sinned, the guilt of his sin was credited to everyone's account. You say, well, I don't like that. That's not fair. Let me just say a few things.

One, if you were in the garden, would you have done better? Two, what if Adam would have been put in the garden and God would have kept him from sinning and he never sinned the whole time? What would we have said of Adam, our father?

Great job, Adam, you did it. The way God has ordained all this is you have a federal representative and he sinned and you get the credit, but that's not the end of the story, is it? What's the end of the story that we've already read a little bit in Romans 5 and I'm getting ahead of myself for imputation two and three, but I have to do it.

You get another representative. You say, well, I don't want to have Adam as my representative. Then don't you dare want to claim Jesus for your representative. God's program is this, Adam was your representative and therefore all sinned because all received that credited to their account, that sin.

He's going to give another representative, Jesus Christ, to show his grace and his mercy and where Adam fell, Jesus will succeed. You say, I don't like federal representation. Well, then you probably don't like President Obama representing you to the nations or Hillary Clinton.

You probably don't like the two senators that we have here representing our state. Everywhere we go, we have representatives and God in his wisdom says, Adam will be the representative for me in the garden.

I'm God, I do whatever I want and whatever Adam does, everybody gets credit for it. You say, I hate that. Do you know you were credited for Adam's sin before you were born? Who was in the garden? Well, some of you maybe look old enough to be in the garden, but nobody was there and God gives you credit by imputation.

How could I be responsible for something that Adam did? Answer, God said, you get the credit and you're responsible for what Adam did. That's so unjust. Well, would you rather be judged in your own righteousness or judged based on Adam and be condemned in Adam yet be declared righteous by Christ?

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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