Does God See Our Sin, Our Works, Or His Son When He Looks At Us?
"We receive the righteousness of God through the ministry of Christ when God imputes his perfect obedience to us by faith alone." ~J.V. Fesko Imputation
I truly believe that understanding (or not) double imputation will deeply impact our view of God, how we think He sees us, and how we see and treat others.
You may ask, what is double imputation, or imputed righteousness?
“God imputes Adam’s sin to all people, the sins of the redeemed to Christ, and Christ’s righteousness to the redeemed, to those who are in Christ. “
“It’s not enough merely to have our sins forgiven; we need the positive merit of Christ reckoned to our account if we are to be declared just before a holy God.”
“Justification is not only the non-imputation of sin but the imputation of righteousness. It’s not enough merely to have our sins forgiven; we need the positive merit of Christ reckoned to our account if we are to be declared just before a holy God. By living a perfect life and by dying an atoning death, Christ merited perfect righteousness, and He credits this righteousness to all those who place their faith in God’s Son (Rom. 4:6; Gen. 15:6). As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (ESV).”
~Matthew Barrett It's Not Enough to Have Your Sins Forgiven: Why the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness Is Essential - Credo Magazine
Believing in salvation as only salvation from Hell apart from double imputation is to both cheapen our salvation and turns us back to ourselves. Either God looks at us and see His Son or He doesn’t…
If we believe that God treats us differently based on our actions, or our good works or lack thereof, and he will turn from us when we aren’t good enough, we will accept others’ abuse of us as a sort of “I deserved this for not being good enough”.
We either believe God looks at us and sees His Son or we don’t… but it can’t be only sometimes when we are good enough.
This thought or teaching also causes great anxiety as we never know if we are being good enough…
Michael Reeves says in his book, Evangelical Pharisees,
“Simply put, when our righteousness and acceptance (before God or man) is dependent on our performance, the worry will always be whether we have performed sufficiently well. Seasons of success-fueled pride are all usually punctuated with moments of uneasy—sometimes crushing—doubt. Self-reliant Christianity is workaholic, hamster wheel, Christianity, and that can never be a contented place.“
I recently heard that salvation was just Jesus getting us out of hell, but that then we had to be filled with the Spirit every day, and that only happened if we were letting go of sin. That somehow we got the Holy Spirit at the time we got saved, but that being filled with the spirit was different and we could prohibit that from happening by our actions.
If we believe that what Jesus accomplished on the cross was simply a sort of an escape from Hell, but that our works gain favor with God, keep God from being disappointed in is, can make God turn His face from us, or can prohibit the Holy Spirit from in dwelling in us or working in and through us, then we haven’t understood the gospel. Our good works are evidence of the grace of God sanctifying us, but they don't affect our standing with God. The Westiminster Confession speaks to our good works in Chapter 16.
The gospel is GOOD NEWS that Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life FOR us, fulfilled the law FOR us, and died to take the penalty of sin and to set us free from the penalty and power of sin. Yes, sin’s presence will be with us until we are glorified, but understanding that on the cross, when Jesus took the sins of the world and God turned His face from His Son, His righteousness was also placed on us so that when God sees us, He sees His Son.
We are covered in the blood of the Lamb! That is good news! This means that we are righteous before God and no longer have to worry about how He sees us. We cannot disappoint Him because we are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus, and He can never be more or less righteous. As justified believers, it is possible to grieve the Holy Spirit, as Eph. 4:30 says, and therefore incur the loving chastening of the Lord, but we do not have to fear receiving the wrath of God for our sin. I know I have used this illustration before, but to think that our works somehow add to what Jesus did—as in, we now need to prove our salvation, work to have or keep the Holy Spirit, free ourselves from sin, or to get or earn God’s favor— is to climb on the cross and slap Jesus while shouting “THIS IS NOT ENOUGH!!” That is inconceivable!
Romans 8:1
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus”
Galatians 2:20-21
I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.
Galatians 3:27
For those of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.
Romans 5:8-11
But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, then how much more, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.
Romans 5:12-21
HC Q60: How are you righteous before God?
A: Only by true faith in Jesus Christ; that is, although my conscience accuse me, that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have never kept any of them, and am still prone always to all evil; yet God without any merit of mine, of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never committed nor had any sin, and had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me; if only I accept such benefit with a believing heart.
HC Q61: Why do you say that you are righteous by faith only?
A: Not that I am acceptable to God on account of the worthiness of my faith, but because only the satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ is my righteousness before God and I can receive the same and make it my own in no other way than by faith only.
HC Q62: But why cannot our good works be the whole or part of our righteousness before God?
A: Because the righteousness which can stand before the judgment-seat of God, must be perfect throughout and wholly conformable to the divine law; but even our best works in this life are all imperfect and defiled with sin.
HC Q63: Do our good works merit nothing, even though it is God's will to reward them in this life and in that which is to come?
A: The reward comes not of merit, but of grace.
HC Q64: But does not this doctrine make men careless and profane?
A: By no means: for it is impossible that those, who are implanted into Christ by a true faith, should not bring forth fruits of thankfulness.
HC Q86: Since then we are redeemed from our misery by grace through Christ, without any merit of ours, why should we do good works?
A: Because Christ, having redeemed us by His blood, also renews us by His Holy Spirit after His own image, that with our whole life we show ourselves thankful to God for His blessing, and also that He be glorified through us; then also, that we ourselves may be assured of our faith by the fruits thereof; and by our godly walk win also others to Christ.
Romans 11:6
Now if by grace, then it is not by works; otherwise grace ceases to be grace.
Hebrews 13:20-21
Now may the God of peace, who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus — the great Shepherd of the sheep — through the blood of the everlasting covenant, equip you with everything good to do his will, working in us what is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Matthew 22:37-40
He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
The law demands that we love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. None of us can do that! Do we strive to, yes, because we have to love of the Father in us. (1 John 4:7-21; 5:1-4) But if we think that we can live God and others enough to please God and have the Holy Spirit because of our works, we diminish the law and the gospel. To think that our works are for God’s acceptance or favor is to make him a fickle God and a Gid whose emotions are affected by his creatures- he could be happy with us one minute and unhappy the next. It also teaches that we are capable of not sinning, or even that we know every time we sin! I guarantee that we don’t always know when we are sinning. It lessens the law and cheapens grace. This also places a heavy burden on us to constantly be looking at ourselves and worrying about how God sees us. And to believe that God could ever look at us and be angry, disappointed, ashamed, sad, or anything other than pleased with the sight of His Son, is to believe that Jesus really didn’t pay the price for our sins. Either it is finished, and God’s wrath was satisfied, or it isn’t.
And I believe that this is incredibly important for us to understand- for our rest in Christ, our assurance, our love for God, and our love of neighbor. Because we tend to treat others how we think God treats us.
"God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does." ~Martin Luther
Our works, good or bad, don't affect our standing with God, but they do affect our relationships with those around us. We will have good works, but they will flow from a love for God, not out of fear of His wrath, nor will they be to be seen of men or to prove our righteousness, as displayed by the Pharisee in Luke 18.
I will close with another couple excerpts from Evangelical Pharisees, and encourage you to read this short book:
“At the same time, paradoxically, those who are themselves anxious in their self-sufficiency often create a culture of fear around them. This certainly was true of the Pharisees, as witness the number of times in the Gospels that people hide and dissemble "for fear of the Jews" (John 7:13; 19:38; 20:19). Those who feel little need for redemption tend to suppose Christianity is at heart a lifestyle of social- and self-improvement. What they want, then, is not mercy but the power to make a difference. And since they fail to see the deep sinfulness of their own hearts, they implicitly trust themselves to wield their influence wisely. Yet they have not been deeply shaped by —or they have forgotten—the experience of knowing themselves to be wretched failures in desperate need of redemption. Nor have they appreciated Christ's self-giving on the cross for sinners. They tend, therefore, to be intolerant of weakness in others. They are also apt to judge those around them according to their usefulness while simultaneously fearing the more gifted as potential rivals.
In other words, not only does their self-sufficiency make them personally anxious; it is a breeding ground of toxicity for the culture around them.
Small wonder, then, that the Pharisees had no good news for the lost or hope for sinners. Unlike Christ, who would not break a bruised reed (Matt. 12:20), they would "tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves [were] not willing to move them with their finger" (23:4).
So it must be with all who share the Pharisees' basic trust in themselves. The weak will frustrate and annoy them. Not knowing the loving mercy of God, they are more prone to unsparing and hard censoriousness than kindness and compassion. Vigorous in constant and prickly defense of their own dignity, they will be swift to lash out in judgment of others. Their high sense of self also makes them equate the gospel with their own particular style of presenting the gospel: their buzzwords, their mannerisms, their particular culture. Not only pitiless but partisan, they eye others with suspicion for the minor differences that are deemed
to represent different gospels.”
"In other words, justification by faith alone is not merely a doctrine concerning how to be saved: it is the solution to our trust in self. For Jesus, our problem is not simply moral. It is theological. Repentance comes from hearing the gospel. It is only when we appreciate Christ’s complete sufficiency as a Savior, that we will be weaned off our self-sufficiency. Far from being an intellectual game, the truths of the gospel are the animating soul of Christian integrity. Without this Gospel, we instinctively assume– like the Pharisee – that sin is merely an occasional action, and that we are quite capable of reforming ourselves. We place our hopes in the basic goodness of our lives, in our experiences, (past or present), or in our efforts. Or, in less blithe moments, we rake our hearts in the hope that we might feel secure in them. It is only at the foot of the cross, where the depths of our sin is supremely revealed, that the full horror of our thoroughgoing internal rottenness strikes us."
Elyse Fitzpatrick writes, "God’s love doesn’t fluctuate from day-to-day. It was settled the moment he set it upon you before the foundation of the world.”
“Few doctrines bring greater comfort to lost sinners. Imputation is the Christian’s only hope for right standing in the heavenly courtroom before the divine Judge. Clothed in the righteousness of Christ our Savior, we have every assurance that we are no longer enemies of God but declared just in His sight.”~Matthew Barrett
I commend also reading these books:
It is incredibly important to understand the law gospel distinction:
The Great Exchange & The Christian Life - White Horse Inn
God's Two Words: What Is the Law? - White Horse Inn
God's Two Words: What Is the Gospel? - White Horse Inn
God's Two Words: Why the Order Matters - White Horse Inn
God's Two Words: How to Do Law and Gospel Wrong - White Horse Inn
Resources On the Imputation Of The Active Obedience Of Christ | The Heidelblog
Our Journey: Legalism and Antinomianism — Kaisis
*I did edit a few sentences to clarify: We are able to grieve the Holy Spirit, although God will never turn His face from us, and our good works are evidence of God's regeneration and sanctifying work in our lives. We will have good works, but they will flow out of a love for Christ not out of fear of his wrath, nor to prove our righteousness (as displayed by the Pharisee in Luke 18).
Here is a great message that goes well with this, from John Fonville at Paramount Church:
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