TH E objections against imputation all resolve themselves into objections against substitution in any form. Vicarious[1] suffering is even more unreasonable to some than vicarious obedience, and the arguments used in assailing the former apply with greater force against the latter. Yet human law recognizes both; the "laws of nature" show the existence of both; and the divine Law, as interpreted by the great Lawgiver Himself, acknowledges both. Man is willing to act on the principle of substitution or representation by another in earthly transactions—such as the payment of debt or the performance of duty or the descent of property.[2] But he is not so willing to admit it or proceed upon it in the great transaction between him and God as to condemnation and righteousness. That to which he objects not in temporal things—giving one man the benefit of another's doings or another's sufferings; treating the man who has not paid the debt as if he had done so because another has paid it for him; or recognizing the legal right of a man to large wealth or a vast estate, no part of which he had earned or deserved, but which had come to him as the gift and fruit of another's lifetime's toil—he repudiates in spiritual things as unjust and unreasonable.

Men do not object to receive any kind or amount of this world's goods from another, though they have done nothing to deserve them and everything to make them unworthy of them, but they refuse to accept the favor of God and a standing in righteousness before Him on the ground of what a substitute has done and suffered. In earthly things they are willing to be represented by another, but not in heavenly things. The former is all fair, and just, and legal: the latter is absurd, an insult to their understanding, and a depreciation of their worth! Yet if they prized the heavenly as much as they do the earthly blessing, they would not entertain such scruples[3] nor raise such objections as to receiving it from another as the result of his work. If God is willing that Christ should represent us, who are we that we should refuse to be represented by Him? If God is willing to deal with us on the footing of Christ's obedience and to reckon that obedience to us as if it had been our own, who are we that we should reject such a method of blessing and call it unjust and impossible? This principle or theory of representation, of one man being treated far beyond his deserts in virtue of his being legally entitled to use the name or claims of another, runs through all earthly transactions. Why should it not in like manner pervade the heavenly?

Rejection of "imputed righteousness" because the words do not actually occur in Scripture is foolish and weak. Such terms as Christianity, the Trinity, the Eucharist, and Plenary Inspiration are not to be found in the Bible. Yet, inasmuch as the thing, or object, or truth which these words truly and accurately cover is there, the term is received as substantially accurate and made use of without scruple. Such an objection savors more of little-minded caviling[4] than of the truth-seeking simplicity of faith.

Refusal to accept the divine "theory" or doctrine of representation in and by another indicates in many cases mere indifference to the blessing to be received; in others, resentment of the way in which that doctrine utterly sets aside all excellency or merit on our part. Men will win the kingdom for themselves; they will deserve eternal life; they will not take forgiveness or righteousness freely from another's hands or be indebted to a substitute for what they are persuaded they can earn by their personal doings. Because the plan of representation or substitution is distasteful and humbling, they call it absurd and unjust. They refuse a heavenly inheritance on such terms, while perhaps at the very moment they are accepting an earthly estate on terms as totally irrespective of their own labor or goodness.

The Judge must either be the justifier or the condemner: that Judge is Jehovah. It is His office to condemn; it is His office also to justify. He does not condemn by infusing sin into the person who appears before Him; so He does not justify by infusing righteousness into the sinner whom He acquits. It is as Judge that He acquits. But He does not merely acquit or absolve. He goes beyond this. The marvelous way in which He has met the claims of justice so as to enable Him to pronounce a righteous acquittal enables Him to replace, either on his own former place of innocence or on a higher, the sinner whom He absolves so freely and so completely. It was by representation or substitution of the just for the unjust that He was enabled to acquit, and it is by the same representation or substitution that He lifts into a more glorious position the acquitted man.

The representative or substitute being the Son of God and therefore of infinite dignity in His person, the excellency of that which He is and does, when conveyed or reckoned to another, gives that other a claim to be treated far higher than he could otherwise in any circumstances have possessed . . . that the man who believes in Jesus Christ from the moment that he so believes, not only receives divine absolution from all guilt, but is so made legally possessor of His infinite righteousness that all to which that righteousness entitles becomes his, and he is henceforth treated by God according to the perfection of the perfect One, as if that perfection had been his own. "As he is, so are we in this world" (1Jo 4:17), that is, even now in our state of imperfection, though men of unclean lips, and though dwelling among a people of unclean lips. As it is elsewhere written, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1). Not only are we "delivered from the wrath to come" (1Th 1:10), not only shall we "not come into condemnation" (Joh 5:24), not only are we "justified from all things" (Act 13:39), but we are "made the righteousness of God in him" (2Co 5:21).

The transaction is not one of borrowing. The perfection made over to us is given, not lent, by God. It becomes ours in law, ours for all legal ends, ours as efficaciously as if it had been from first to last our own in very deed.

The transaction is a real one between the sinner and God. [It] carries with it all legal consequences, just as if the sinner had personally discharged his own debts and obtained a judicial absolvitor[5] from all further claims whatever, a receipt in full from Him to whom the great debt was due.

The transaction is one to which all the parties concerned have consented as being fully satisfied that injury has been done to none; nay, that all have been greatly more benefited by this mode of settlement than by the more direct one of the parties punishable undergoing the punishment in their own persons. When thus not merely no injustice is done to anyone, but when more than justice is done to all; when no one is defrauded, but when each gets far more than his due; how foolish, how preposterous, to speak of imputation as a violation of law and a subversion of the principles of righteous government!

The transaction is not one of indifference to sin or obliterative6 of the distinction between righteousness and unrighteousness. It is one which, of all that can be imagined, is most fitted to show the evil of evil, the malignity of sin, the divine hatred of all departure from perfection, the regard which God has to His Law, His awful appreciation of justice, and His determination to secure at any cost—even the death of His Son—the righteous foundations of the universe and the sanctities[7] of His eternal throne.

If the Christ of God in His sorrowful life below be but a specimen of suffering humanity or a model of patient calmness under wrong, not one of these things is manifested or secured. He is but one fragment more of a confused and disordered world where everything has broken loose from its anchorage, and each is dashing against the other in unmanageable chaos without any prospect of a holy or tranquil issue.[8] He is an example of the complete triumph of evil over goodness, of wrong over right, of Satan over God—one from whose history we can draw only this terrific conclusion: God has lost the control of His own world; sin has become too great a power for God either to regulate or extirpate;[9] the utmost that God can do is to produce a rare example of suffering holiness which He allows the world to tread upon without being able effectually to interfere; righteousness after ages of buffeting and scorn must retire from the field in utter helplessness and permit the unchecked reign of evil.

If the cross be the mere exhibition of self-sacrifice and patient meekness, then the hope of the world is gone. We had always thought that there was a potent purpose of God at work in connection with the sin-bearing work of the holy Sufferer which, allowing sin for a season to develop itself, was preparing and evolving a power which would utterly overthrow it and sweep Earth clean of evil—moral and physical. But if the crucified Christ be the mere self-denying man, we have nothing more at work for the overthrow of evil than has again and again been witnessed when some hero or some martyr rose above the level of his age to protest against evils which he could not eradicate and to bear witness in life and death for truth and righteousness—in vain.

The transaction is, in all its aspects and in its bearings on all parties and interests, strictly and nobly righteous. It provides a righteous channel through which God's free love may flow down to man. It lays a righteous foundation for the pardon of sin. It secures a righteous welcome for the returning sinner. It makes the justification of the justified even more righteous than his condemnation would have been; while it makes the condemnation of the condemned not only doubly righteous, but at once a vindication and an exhibition of infinite and immutable[10] justice.

There can be no justification without some kind of righteousness, and according to the nature or value of that righteousness will the justification be. That justification will necessarily partake of the value of the righteousness which justifies. If the righteousness be poor and finite, our standing as justified men will be the same. If it be glorious and divine, even such will our standing be. God the Justifier, acting according to the excellency of that righteousness and recognizing its claims in behalf of all who consent to be treated according to its value, deals with each believing man—weak as his faith may be—in conformity with the demands of that righteousness. All that it can claim for us, we may ask and expect; all that it can claim for us, God will assuredly bestow. He by whom, in believing, we consent to be represented puts in the claim for us in His name; and the demands of that name are as just as they are irresistible.

Our legal responsibilities as transgressors of the Law are transferred to Him; and His legal claims, as the fulfiller of the Law, pass over to us. It is not a transference of characters nor an exchange of persons that we mean by this, but a transference of liabilities, an exchange of judicial demands. Here is our thorough bankruptcy and God's full discharge. What can Law say to us after this? "It is God that justifieth" (Rom 8:33). We are bankrupts; our assets are nothing. God looks at the case, pities us, and clears everything.

The epithet[11] "fictitious" which some have applied to this representation need not trouble or alarm us. The question with us is not, "Can we clear up fully the abstract principles which the transaction embodies?" but, "Does it carry with it legal consequences by which we are set in a new standing before God and entitled to plead in all our dealings with God, the meritoriousness[12] of an infinitely perfect life, the payment effected in behalf of those who had nothing to pay, by an infinitely perfect death?"

Thus "grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom 5:21). God's free love has found for itself a righteous channel along which it flows in all its fullness to the ungodly. For while all that the believing man receives, he receives from grace. Yet it is no less true: all that he receives, he receives from righteousness, from the hand of a righteous God acting according to the claims of a righteousness, which is absolutely and divinely perfect.

He who refuses to be represented by another before God must represent himself and draw near to God on the strength of what he is in himself or what he has done. How he is likely to fare in such an approach, let his own conscience tell him, if he will not believe the explicit declaration of the Holy Spirit that "through him [Christ] we have access by one Spirit to the Father" (Eph 2:18); or Christ's own affirmation concerning this: "I am the way" and "I am the door" (Joh 10:9; 14:6).

As for him who, conscious of unfitness to draw near to God by reason of personal imperfection, is willing to be represented by the Son of God and to substitute a divine claim and merit for a human; let him know that God is willing to receive him with all his imperfection because of the perfection of another, legally transferred to him by the just God and Judge; that God is presenting to him a righteousness not only sufficient to clear him from all guilt and to pay his penalty to the full, but to exalt him to a new rank and dignity such as he could not possibly acquire by the labors or prayers or goodnesses of ten thousand such lives as his own.

"Christ is all and in all" (Col 3:11). He, who knows this, knows what fully satisfies and cheers. He who knows this best has the deepest and truest peace: he has learned the secret of being always a sinner, yet always righteous; always incomplete, yet always complete; always empty, yet always full; always poor, yet always rich. We would not say of that fullness, "Drink deep or taste not"; for even to taste is to be blest. But yet we say, "Drink deep"; for he who drinks deepest is the happiest as well as the holiest man.

Our characters are not transferred to Christ, but our liabilities are. And in our acceptance of God's mode of transference, we make the complete exchange by which we are absolved[13] from all guilt and enter into a state of "no condemnation." Sin reckoned to Christ as our Substitute, and righteousness reckoned to us as the acceptors of that Substitute: this is deliverance, and peace, and life eternal.

From The Everlasting Righteousness by Horatius Bonar reprinted by Chapel Library

1 vicarious — endured by one person substituting for another.
2 descent of property — the passing of property to heirs.
3 scruples — hesitations from the difficulties of determining what is right; doubts.
4 caviling — finding fault unnecessarily; raising trivial objections.
5 absolvitor — a decision of the court in favor of the defender.
6 obliterative — having the quality of wiping out, doing away with leaving no trace.
7 sanctities — qualities of holiness.
8 tranquil issue — calm end or termination.
9 extirpate — totally destroy; pull up by the roots.
10 immutable — unchanging.
11 epithet — an abusive or contemptuous word or phrase.
12 meritoriousness — the quality of being meritorious, of earning a reward.
13 absolved — pronounced clear of guilt or blame.