Romans 4:22

And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness— To what has been said concerning the word rendered imputed in Romans 4:8 we add the following remarks: All manner of imputation seems to be a metaphor taken from books of account between creditor and debtor; and from mercantile affairs, it is sometimes applied to judicial; as crimes to be accounted for, are also sometimes called debts. When the matter, however, is well understood in one view, it is easy to apply it to the other: to impute any act of sin, or of obedience to a person, is therefore properly no other than to set it down to his account. The great God of heaven and earth is represented in Scripture,—with humble condescension to our manner of acting and conceiving of things,—as keeping a most exact book of records and accounts, in which those things are registered concerningevery one of us, which he will bring into that last review and survey, by which our characters and states shall finally be determined. And as the most exact and perfect obedience is a debt which we owe him as our great Creator, Benefactor, and Governor: so, on the breach of his law, we owe him some proper satisfaction for it. In this view we are all charged as debtors, poor miserable insolvent debtors, in the book of God. Innumerable sins are imputed, or set down to our account; and were things to go on in this course, we should ere long be arrested by the divine justice, and, being found incapable of payment, should be cast into the prison of hell, to come out no more. But God, in pity to this our calamitous state, hath found out a surety and a ransom for us; hath provided a satisfaction in the death and sacrifice of his only-begotten Son. It is with a gracious regard to this,—to express his high complacency in it, and, if we may so speak, his pleasing remembrance of it, that all who are justified meet with divine acceptance and favour.—But then, it is an invariable rule in the divine proceedings, that this atonement and satisfaction of Christ be a means of justifying those, and only those who believe. Pursuant therefore to the above metaphor, when any particular person believes, this is set down to his account, as a most important article, or as a memorandum, if we may so express it, in the book of God's remembrance, that such a one is now actually become a believer, and therefore is now entitled to justification through Christ. In this sense his faith is imputed for righteousness. Yet it is not regarded by God as the grand consideration which balances the account, or indeed as paying any of the former debt,—which it is impossible it should; but only as that which, according to the gracious constitution of the Gospel; gives a man a claim to what Christ has paid, and which God has graciously allowed, as a valuable consideration, in regard to which he may honourably pardon and accept of all who shall apply to him in his appointed way, or in the way of humble believing. Abraham the father of the faithful, had a clear view of this great Atonement in the visions of God. "He rejoiced to see the day of Christ: and he saw it, and was glad," John 8:56. And he believed, not only in the temporal promises relating to his natural seed, but above all in the spiritual promises which regarded the Messiah, himself, and his spiritual seed: and his faith was counted to him for righteousness. See the Notes on Gen. chap. 22: