One of the “sticky wickets” between the “Piperazi and the Wrightonians” (quoting Mike Bird here) is the issue of imputation (crediting) of Christ’s righteousness to our account.
Mike Bird‘s paper “What Is There Between Minneapolis and Durham?: A Third Way in the Piper-Wright Debate” offers some good insights.
In my view, if we take all the bits and bobs together including this language of “counting” from Romans 4, the gift of righteousness in Rom 5:17 and Phil 3:9, the representative nature’s of Adam and Christ as federal heads, the forensic nature of dikaioō and dikaiosyne in several passages (e.g., Rom 3:21-26, 10:10 and Gal 2:15-21, 5:5), and the indebtedness of salvation to Jesus’ faithfulness and obedience in his task as Son, then, something like “imputation” sounds like a logical necessity of describing the application of salvation for those who are “in Christ”. Rather than speak of an imputed righteousness, I think we should speak of an incorporated righteousness. Whereby our apprehension of an alien righteousness, our participation in the faithfulness of the Son of God and his vindication, takes place in the sphere of union with Christ.
Download the entire paper here.
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