Righteousness as Imputed or Imparted?

“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’s blood and righteousness.”

So the old hymn goes. But is that righteousness imparted to us like sustenance from food or imputed to us like a declaration of our acquittal, what’s the difference, and does it matter?

In Medieval Catholic thought, justification was the process of becoming just or righteous, a process that happens synergistically when grace is infused into a person by partaking of the sacraments to empower them to do works of love and such works constitute the basis for having a righteous status. Of course, you never really knew if you were righteous enough, so you constantly needed a refill of sacramental grace and more concerted efforts to do charitable deeds. But in the end, you were probably going to end up in purgatory anyways because you were never as righteous as Christ. In contrast, in Protestant thought, it is emphasized that the reason why believers are justified is because the obedience and merit of Jesus Christ is imputed to the believer. This means what makes someone righteous before God and right with God is not their own moral quality of righteousness, but that Christ’s own righteousness is imputed to them and counted as theirs. It is this alien righteousness rather than an innate righteousness that is the basis for justification by faith. Protestants thus believe in imputed righteousness rather than an infused righteousness.

I think the Protestant view is nearer to Pauline thought than the Medieval Catholic view, that said, things are still not so simple. The fact is that the normal texts used to proof-text the imputation of Christ’s righteousness say no such thing (see 2 Cor 5:21; Rom 4:1-5; 1 Cor 1:30; Phil 3:6-9). These texts all come very close to saying something like that, they do employ the language of “reckoning” or “crediting,” they refer to the gift of a righteous status, but no biblical text says that the obedience or merits of Jesus are imputed to the believer.

If we focus less on Protestant dogmatics and engage in a close reading of Paul’s letters, we will see that believers are indeed justified by faith, and this justification is forensic, a status, not based on their moral state – but the key ingredient is not Jesus’s accumulation of merit, but rather, union with Christ. I would argue that rather than speak of an imputed righteousness it is more accurate to refer to an incorporated righteousness. Jesus is the “righteous one” (Isa 53:11; Acts 3:14; 7:52; 22:14) who was vindicated in his resurrection (1 Tim 3:16) and declared to be the Son of God in power by his resurrection (Rom 1:3-4).

Through faith in Christ, we have union with Christ so we are incorporated into Christ and into his righteousness and share in his vindication and righteousness. Now, I would be prepared to accept that imputation is an implication of our union with Christ, explaining how this union results in a forensic status for the believer. But, I remain adamant, that no text explicitly speaks of the imputation of Christ’s merits to the believer. Union with Christ does the heavy lifting in what is normally attributed to the doctrine of imputation.